March 26, 2024 • 43 mins
The victim was alive when her head was cut from her body. As disturbing as that sounds, today's episode of Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan will attempt to breakdown the just released autopsy report of Mei Li Haskell. Her husband, Samuel Haskell IV is accused of killing her, removing her head from her torso, placing the torso in a bag and dropping it in a trash bin where a homeless guy would find it 14 hours later! Joseph Scott Morgan will breakdown the forensics that will come into the trial and Dave Mack will dig deep in the Hollywood that can give us a true horror story that is scarier than anyone would ever dare put on film.
Transcript Highlights
00:00:49 The son of a hotshot
00:03:04 “Don’t you know who I am?”
00:05:03 Discussion of “the finder”
00:08:58 Talk about the bags felt like meat
00:09:26 Discussion of workers bring back bags
00:12:20 Discussion of cross contamination
00:16:58 Talk about hiring workers
00:20:56 Discussion of what police can do
00:26:22 Talk about the person who found the body
00:30:54 Mentions victim’s parents still missing
00:33:01 Discuss autopsy report, victim alive when head cut off
00:38:20 Discussion of using power tools in dismemberment
00:42:54 Mentions trial will be all forensics
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Bodybacks with Joseph Scott Morgan.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
A few years ago, I went out to Hollywood for
actually the first time. I think I was actually I
never can tell where the line of demarcation is. I
think I was probably in Beverly Hills and I had
to go to a meeting, right I had to go
to this meeting with this hot shot agent guy that
was working on a show. And everybody in Hollywood's got
(00:42):
a new idea. They've all got a new idea, and
they if they think you're right for it, they want
to get you to participate in it. So I was
out there and I was thinking, Wow, this is It's
kind of cool, but it's a it's an odd world.
It's different, you know, it's it seems almost synthetic, and
(01:02):
I think a lot of it is. But you know,
what goes on behind the back doors and all these
deals and everything's completely different than you know, the individuals
that you see appear on screen, either the big screen
or a small screen. Can you imagine having a phone
conversation with the likes of George Clooney or maybe Whoopy
(01:26):
Goldberg or Dolly Pardon And it's kind of your norm,
you know, to be in that world. But for those
of us that, you know, just kind of live in
flow over country, it's a completely different take that we
have today. I want to talk about a man who
lived in that world and about his son who arguably,
(01:52):
arguably perhaps perpetrated a mass homicide. We're going to have
a conversation today about what Sam Haskell the fourth allegedly did.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Backs. I'm
(02:16):
here with my buddy Dave mac Dave. You get out
there in the in the thin air with with some
of these people, and I don't know. I guess there's
a there's kind of an idea that you you have
moral license maybe to do anything you want to that
you know laws don't apply to you. We've heard that
(02:37):
over and I mean, how many times have we heard that? Yeah,
the entitled people, I think I remember back, and I
know I'll catch some grief over this, but I remember, Uh,
what's what's her name? That? Uh? The young actress from
Little Blonde. She was legally blonde, I think, and uh Witherspoon,
(02:58):
and she got she got pulled over in Atlanta few
years ago with her husband and she did the whole
thing where she jumped out of the car and looked
at a Georgia State trooper and said, don't you know
who I am? And I'm thinking he's thinking I might
not right now, but I will in a minute. You're
going to know who I am too. You know. It's
(03:19):
it's when that the fantasy world kind of catches up,
you know, with the reality of the real world that
we all kind of exist in. And I don't know,
maybe that extends out to this family that we're talking
about today, SAMs what remains of a family?
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Right?
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Sam Haskell the third is the super agent who was
Dolly Parton and George Clooney's management when he was he
was working at the William Morris Agency. Sam Haskell the
third was, but his son, Sam Haskell the Fourth is
the murderer, or the alleged murderer. Sam Haskell the Fourth
(03:55):
is at the very center of a story that began
for most of us when a homeless guy out in
la is digging through a dumpster at six fifteen in
the morning in Encino and he comes across the headless
body a torso. Now the guy's looking for some old
food to eat, right getting his breakfast out of the
dumpster and finds a body or a headless body and
(04:19):
calls the cops. That's where most of us started with
the story because TMZ and a few other websites like
that had video going up of this poor guy. Can
you imagine what he's going through to this day, Joe,
a homeless guy.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Here's something from a death investigator's perspective. It's really amazing.
And I had this happen a number of times over
the course of my career. When you get out there
and we generally there's a term that we use in
our descriptor of people that initially lay eyes on the body,
and we will call them the finder, and that's in
(04:55):
our vernacular so that when we communicate with either other investigat, detectives,
maybe the dock whoever it is, even the crime lab,
will say, well, this is a sample from the finder,
and they automatically they understand what that means. And also
to kind of emphasize this, this is a found death.
(05:16):
This is not something that was witnessed per se. So yeah,
this guy, I've actually had people. I had a lady
one time that found a guy hanging nude in his
motel room by a dog. Collar, and he was involved
in autoroticism. And she, Dave, she was she probably she
(05:38):
may have been five foot tall, weighed about ninety pounds,
and I'll never forget. She was from Guatemala. And this
poor lady could not speak English. She was a housekeeper
and she had the pass key to the door of
obviously to the room. She didn't get an answer when
she knocked on. She opens the door and the bathroom
is immediately to the left and he's hanging from the
(06:01):
hinge by dog collar of the bathroom, fully naked, and Dave,
she was trembling on the floor. And I'll never forget.
This little lady had her rosary beads in her in
her hands and she was praying and she was she
couldn't stop trembling. So yeah, and it impacts people. I mean,
who goes about their daily routine. Even if this guy
(06:23):
is a homeless guy, he's living his life.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Man, he's looking for something to eat.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
It's six fifteen in the morning, Joe, And why this guy's.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Not I hope somebody's helping him. That's all.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
But to move on to the story. The story began
there the video up online TMZ and all of the
other websites, because anything in Hollywood takes on the added
glare of Hollywood and in Sino and where it tracked
back because according to police, once they got to the dumpster,
they found the headless body, they found this torso, but
(06:55):
there was other evidence. There were other clues inside the
bag that contained this torso And it was the clues
inside the bag that they still haven't told us what
they found. It will come out of trial, but it
led them straight back to Sam Haskell, the fourth. This family,
the Haskell family, is living in a six bedroom home
(07:16):
in Tarzana. He's living there with his wife, who, by
the way, is missing, and her mom and dad they're
both missing. And then they have three boys, six, eight
and twelve. They are not missing, they're accounted for and
they're now living with family other family. But Sam Haskell
the Fourth's wife and her parents, his in laws, all missing.
(07:41):
And that's where this crime begins. The investigation begins there
with the torso and the dumpster being found by a
homeless guy six fifteen in the morning on a Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah, this is a big home that they have. They
have six bedrooms. Man, I can only imagine what that
would set you back, even in Tarzana, which here was
a fine town.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Well you got Tarzania and Sino in all of the
valley I mean. And by the way, this is the
area of the first Karate Kid movie. To give you
an idea, right right, yeah, where Ralph Macchio when there?
I think they were in Encino on the Tarzana side,
But it wasn't like it is now. Okay, everything there
has gotten bigger and better. But something that they found
(08:25):
in that bag led them back to the house. But
here's the other kicker, Joe. The night before the body
was found at four o'clock in the afternoon, a group
of Hispanic men were paid five hundred dollars by a
guy to take some rocks, three bags of rocks and
(08:45):
just get rid of them. Paid them five hundred dollars. Now,
I don't know about you. Somebody offers me five hundred
dollars to get rid of three bags of rocks. I'm
your guy, I'm your huckleberry. The thing is, these Hispanic
day workers, they didn't think the bags felt like they
had rocks in them. And they're like a block away
from the house and they decide we're looking. They open
(09:06):
it up and they opened one of the bags and
what do they find? A belly button? They see a
belly button and that was enough seal it back up.
There were not rocks in these bags. It felt like
they were carrying meat. And they reach about fifty pounds
a bag. They take it right back to Sam Haskell
the Fourth's house, that's who hired them to move them.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
They put them in the driveway.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
And he says, oh, you're mistaken that these are just
halloween things. Nah, I don't worry about what it is,
but these guys are freaked out, Joe. They immediately leave
Sam Haskell the Fourth's home in Tarzana and head straight
to the first police station they can see. Meanwhile, seven
minutes after they leave, Sam Haskell the fourth has loaded
a bag into his car and he takes off.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Now.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
And the reason I bring this up now is because
the Hispanic men go to the first place they saw
that had police signs on it, right is the Highway Patrol, though,
and the California Highway Patrol is not a city police
department that would handle Tarzana.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
And that's what they were told. Go someplace else.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
None of them spoke English as a first language, so
there was a communication problem. They end up going to
another police station, and it's kind of a comedy of
errors as they're doing this thing, because they go inside
this police station in the entry area and they're trying
to explain what they have found to make the report,
(10:29):
and they're at the Banga station and the police on
the instead of going we don't nobody in here speak Spanish.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Go outside?
Speaker 2 (10:37):
How is that possible in.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
In La it Yeah, that's what actually did surprise me.
But a lot has been made about this. When they
said get out of here, go outside and call nine
one one, that's not what happened. There was nobody that
spoke Spanish in the building that could take the report.
But knowing if they would go outside and call nine
one one, they could get a Spanish speaking operator and
(10:59):
then they could make their that's why that'll happen.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Now.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Granted, there's been a big investigation that is still not
completed on this yet to troubleshoot what happens when somebody
comes in to file like a dead body claim, body
parts claim, blood claims, And you know what if the
guys didn't go outside and called nine one one, Joe,
what if they went outside and just left.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
No, yeah, yeah, no, kidd, And keep in mind, uh
Sam Haskell, the fourth's children are still alive.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Let that sink in just for a second. If there is,
If in fact he is involved in this and he
committed these crimes, how do you know that there would
not be another moment in time that would set him off.
And now, because you've kind of showed them away, those
kids get in jeopardy. I think they're in jeopardy anyway,
(11:48):
but you know, you just kind of kind of up
the antie. But back to the topainga station. I've got
a solution for it. It's pretty easy. How are people
that speak Spanish? That's that's pretty easy. You know, that's
kind of simple. But you know, that's a discussion for
another day. I find it. Yeah, no, And I'm wondering
(12:09):
with Okay, with their movement of these bags, okay, that
is the workers, I'm wondering how much cross contamination there
might be from them? What did they do? Were the
bags tied? Because if they're tied, that's in a very
specific configuration that is unique. It's not as unique as
(12:31):
like handwriting, but it is unique as to how people
tie the bags.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
If it's a real.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Complex knot or whether it's a simple knot. And who
in the world uses bags to move rocks? Now? I
see commercials on television where they say, well, this bag
can carry anything, But who in their right mind actually
decides you, I'm going to put a bunch of rocks
in a bag, a plastic bag. Most of the time
when you use plastic bags, just for instance. And I'm
(12:58):
not diminishing deaths here, but just understand it from a
biological standpoint. We have plastic bags in our home, in
our garbage cans, right. The reason we do that is
that they are non porous, they're non poorous, because we
don't want all of the nastiness that's in our home
after we're done cooking and all of that stuff. And
we put that and you know how it always kind
(13:20):
of gathers at the bottom, seeks the lowest point of gravity,
and Lord help you if you prick that bag and
it leaks everywhere, well, you know, if you have a torso.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
It's gonna leak.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
And I would think that whoever thought this thing through
didn't think it through quite enough, because it's very easy
to just feel the outside of a bag and tell
the difference between rocks and human remains. You've never worked
(14:06):
in a butcher's shop, You've never handled human remains. For
all I know, you might be terrified by the sight
of blood. But let's say your fury has driven you
to the point where you would begin to think about
killing someone that's in your orbit, and not just one person,
(14:32):
but three, And now you have to make a decision.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
What am I going to do with him?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
David, I think that that's a rather interesting position to
be in for the average person walking down the street.
Of course, the accused, the alleged perpetrator here is I
guess by the standards of us mere mortals out here,
he's not an average person. He has a lot of
(15:01):
resources at his disposal this sort of thing. Maybe he
thought that he could get away with this, but it
seems as though that the police have other ideas.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
At this point, we know, Joe, there is a lot
going on with this story and inside the home and
fascinating and talking to or not me talking to, but
in researching this particular case. Sam Haskell fourth his wife.
Her name is may me Eia may Lee Haskell. She's
(15:34):
thirty seven. As we mentioned earlier, they have three boys
that are just wonderful children. From everything I'm hearing from
everybody's six, eight and twelve. But it's interesting that they
would entertain in their home, the Haskells would and the
neighbors would come over. But whenever that happened, it was
like may Lee Haskell was the reason people were there.
(15:56):
They just adored her, and Sam Haskell would become very withdrawn.
He would pull back to himself, and even if it
was in his own home, he acted like he was
not belonging.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
He loved his samurai sword collection too, and he liked
to show it off. He also had a bunch of guns,
like to show those off. But people could not understand
the connection because on the one hand, you had his wife,
may that everybody loves, and then you got this other
guy who seems really not all there. I mean, he
just is an indulgent or I don't know him, but
(16:31):
he sure does seem to be one of the individuals
who thinks because my dad was super rich and successful,
so am I I'm going to go into the family business.
You know, Yeah, your dad's a doctor, so you don't
need to go to law school. And my dad's a doctor.
I'm good. Sam Haskell the Fourth is thirty five, son
of Sam Haskell the third. When you look at Sam
(16:52):
Haskell the Fourth's resume, he has done a low budget
video film.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
He did.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
A program. I don't know if it was a film
or what. I saw a clip of it that had
Brandy Glanville. She's in that well used to be in
the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and she had a
small part, and like it looked like a high school
teen drama type thing.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Anyway, So, but I've watched some TikTok videos that he posted,
and he just goes rambling, I mean Joe about things
that make no sense, talking about Hollywood stars and a
really entitled mess. And it's so funny to put him
over here on that side of what you see and
then what people talk about with his wife, and you
(17:38):
realize his beautiful thirty seven year old wife, the one
everybody loved, is missing along with her parents. We don't
know where they are.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, and if it's this is another thing that I
kind of came across here in this tale, and it
gives you an idea about the family dynamic, mainly and
their children. Her and Haskell's children all resided there, but
also her parents. My understanding is is that their note
(18:09):
did you see what the what the cost was their
monthly note on that house is? And I seven thousand
dollars a month at it? Yeah, and she paid the note.
But that's think in yeah, not him. She paid the
note on that monthly, that that monthly when it would
(18:32):
come due for the mortgage. And so I found that
that that quite interesting. And friends had made comments, you know,
relative to that. So what you're looking for, I think,
is if you have these individuals where they are missing,
you have this odd family dynamic where he's you know,
(18:56):
he's he's now supposed to be the head of the household,
if you will. He's supposed to be a breadwinner, he's
supposed to be achieving, and your wife is actually bringing
home the bacon per se. And I would imagine that
he began And I hate people that say, well, it
made me feel this way. I'm sure that it's making
(19:18):
him feel somewhat diminished. And you begin to think about
a lot of cases that we work, it comes into
focus that anger, that little bit of anger, because what
we're talking about here is a mass slaying and we're
also talking about not just a slaying dave, but we're
talking about the abuse of a corpse, and that goes
(19:40):
to a completely different level when you begin to try
to consider what may have happened, how did it happen,
and is it possible that the em he can explain anything.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
That's what I was going to ask you, because when
you start with the in this particular case, as I
mentioned at the very beginning, the investigation did not just
begin as six fifteen in the morning when a homeless
guy finds a torso and a dumpster. It began from
our standpoint of us hearing about it. But once that
call was made, all of a sudden, the previous day's activities,
(20:14):
all of a sudden made sense because it was the
day before about well actually fourteen hours earlier, at about
four o'clock in the afternoon, when Sam Haskell the Fourth
hires a couple of Hispanic day workers, pays them five
hundred dollars to get rid of three bags of rocks.
They returned saying this, there's there's a belly button in
here that this ain't rocks, and get They give him
(20:36):
the money back and leave the bags in the driveway.
And take off and go to the police. So you've
got that report being made after four o'clock the day
before the body is found, and the report it says
a neighbor called in until police they saw what appeared
to be body parts in Sam Haskell the Fourth's backyard
in his driveway, so police went out to look. By
(20:59):
the time they got there, Sam Haskell the fourth was
gone and they didn't see any sign of any bags
or any body parts. So without having anything to go on,
they couldn't just reach the gate and go looking. They
didn't have a search for it, so they couldn't go
any further, and they had no reason to investigate further.
Might have been a prank call, neighbor that doesn't like him.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, it could be. And you know, most of the time,
if you uh, this goes to something that that we
use in that that we talked about in in uh
UH in investigations. I think a lot of people don't
understand this. But there's two there's two frameworks that you
work under. If you're you have things that are in
(21:41):
plane view, it's called a plane view doctor. And if
you pull somebody over in a car and you look
in and there's a human hand laying on the seat,
then that that provides you cause there's also another uh
another uh legal uh uh precedent that that was established
in called the open fields doctrine, and it's kind of
(22:02):
the same thing, but it's like, if you don't have
to use something in order for you to view an area,
if you can plainly see it in an open area
of open fields doctrine, that will give the police probable cost.
And this is not a welfare check. You know, lots
of times if cops are going out a welfare check,
(22:23):
they can force their way in if they think somebody
is in danger at that point in time, you don't
have to go get a warrant at that point in time. Now,
once you've confirmed that they're there and they're deceased, then
you have to back out. People don't understand that you
cannot stay in the house with the dead body, even
if it's a homicide. You have to go get a warrant.
So you secure the scene. You go get a warrant,
(22:44):
and then you come back and you work the scene.
You don't let anybody else into the house, but you
have to get a warrant before you enter back in
and there's.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Even though you know the body's dead is sitting there
and wow.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Or once you've established that there is no longer an
emerging situation, then.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Okay, So once you notice it's static, nothing's going to change, nothing's.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Going to change, and the police will set up a
perimeter at that point, and what you do. And I've
spent hours outside of a house. I actually actually had
a guy that was laying out of a threshold of
a house. He'd been shot in multiple times.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
But we had to wait.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
And it's in literally plain sight of the entire neighborhood.
Cameras are there, everything else, and there is a body
laying across the threshold that has obviously sprung several weeks.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
And we had to wait. I know, it took us
probably five hours day to get that warrant so that
we could make entry because the ADA for whatever reason,
was not available. There wasn't a magistrate available. Wow. And
it's problematic, But listen, you would rather wait and be
safe because anything that you find, anything that you find
at that scene. Let's say that you have a headless corpse,
(23:57):
all right, but if the head has been taken and
placed into the freezer, Okay, that's a that's a protected
hidden space without a warrant. The authorities don't have to
have they don't have the legal backing to go in
and go digging through hidden spaces, okay, you know in
small areas, so they have to do that.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
In the dumpster where the homeless guy finds the torso
in a bag in the dumpster, I wanted to ask
you about it because that that's an open area accessible
to anybody.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah, so the law regards that as you no longer
caring about it, you've tossed it, so those constitutional protections
from that perspective fade away. So if we we can
go around to any number of dumpsters that might be,
and I hope that they did to recover everything that
they would need to recover because that's essential here.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Well, it's fascinating how this worked out with people. I
don't want to say they were busy bodies, but somebody
saw a man in Alexis getting bags a bag out
of the back out of the trunk of his car
and took a picture of the car and its tag.
And so the next day, when the body or the
(25:16):
torso is recovered out of the dumpster, the person who
took the picture, went hey, I maybe this will help
police and sends it to him and the detective on
the scene said this, and I highlighted this because I
needed to ask you, Joe. He was asked a question
in a press conference about the condition of the core
of the torsos. Do you still refer to it as
a corpse even though it's.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Not okay you can use corpse?
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah, sure, he said, quote just from visual inspection, the
stages of decomposition were relatively early, so no more than
a day or two about how long the body had
been dead, because we haven't established anything at this point.
They just have a dead part of a body, no head,
(25:59):
and that's what they have in this bag, and that's
where they have to now trace it back. But again,
they knew to go to Haskell's house whatever was inside.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
That bag contained.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, I don't know if he left it.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
And they're saying, catch me if you can, here's my name,
here's my address, because they went straight to his house or.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
He dropped his wallet, you know, who knows, who knows
from that perspective, but yeah, maybe and you find this
and this is really difficult forensically, Dave, and I'm thinking
about the nightmare that is working a dumpster, because it
is it's like taking if you've ever seen somebody take
if you see somebody that takes like a thousand piece
(26:39):
jigsaw puzzle and they just try to do it piece
by piece without ordering ordering, imagine that and then multiply
that because if you ever take a look in a
dumpster and you just look around. First off, it's layered
because with every person that comes by to dump their refuse,
you're dealing with that bottom. And we call it in
(27:00):
the earth when we're doing burials, we call it stratification.
So you have stratified levels, all right, so you'll have
like a really ancient area that maybe the body is
deposited on. Same thing will apply to dumpsters. And if
you really want a nightmare, work a case from a landfill,
because not only do you have the evidence or say
(27:25):
or remain, a human remain that is stratified and they're
depended upon when the dump, when that dump took place.
With landfills in particular, they have a schedule as to
where and location, Like they direct their trucks to go
to grid section to B all right, and then next
day will be to sea. Because you don't. You want
(27:48):
to try to keep it even. And then what's really
problematic is that, just like with a dumpster, you may
have had other homeless people digging around in there if
it's an area to look for food, the plane in
they're bringing anything, and in anybody else that dumps household
garbage there, you've got them layering on top of it.
You got to landfill. You got those big machinery. If
(28:10):
you've seen those things, they don't have rubber tires, they've
got steel tires, and they actually drive over the stuff
to compact it. So it really becomes a nightmare. That's
why from a timeline, From a timeline perspective, it's so
important to try to determine when that dumpster was last emptied,
who emptied it, and where did they empty it. But
(28:32):
this is backing up to what the chief said when
we're talking about decompositional changes and trying to establish that
all important post mortem interval. This is a real tell
because we know that in this particular case, we're not
dealing with somebody that has been dead for days upon
(28:56):
days upon days. We're talking about kill. Yeah, you want
(29:18):
the ultimate puzzle, try try working on a puzzle that
involves a human body. And I'm not just talking about
from an intellectual exercise to try to determine disease and
on it. No, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm
talking about a body that has been dismembered, and you're
(29:40):
trying to understand, first off, when did these injuries occur,
what was fatal, and what type of instrument may have
generated this dissection. And I think that that's really important.
And Dave, we're talking about layers to put another layer
(30:01):
on this May's body is accounted for at this point
in Tom but you know there's two other adults living
in this hall other than Haskell himself in Maylee.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
So it's so sad. Yeah, the whole thing is so sad.
You know that the Haskells had three boys, six eight
and twelve. Thankfully when everything came down on that Wednesday
when they the body the torso was found in the
dumpster and police went to the Haskell home. The boys
all six eight and twelve. They were at school when
(30:35):
their dad was arrested and they were then put with
a family member after and that's where they've remained because
even though there was an assumption of who Torso they
recovered in the dumpster. Because Maylee was missing Malely Haskell,
her mom and dad are still missing, Joe. We still
(30:57):
do not have their bodies. They might not be you know,
that's the reality of it. They could be anywhere. Chances
are I think it's presumed that they're dead because of
what has transpired inside the home. When police went inside
the home, they said you could tell a body had
been dismembered. I've never heard of police officer, detective, or
investigator actually say words of that effect, yeah, when describing
(31:22):
a scene. But I think it's because the scene that
they ran into was so horrifying.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
The fact that Haskell was a big fan of samurai swords, guns,
all these methods, all these tools of destruction, to the
point where a neighbor loved Maylee will let her kids
play with Maylee's kids, but would not let the children
go upstairs where the guns were or thea and wouldn't
let them be around him Haskell.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
So when police tell.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Yeah, it tells you everything you need to know about
how people thought of this guy.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
But yeah, that's why I always tell parents to respect
the gut feeling ralways no matter what, and Uh, and
here here's the thing with the parents missing, and you know,
I think that it's it's very insightful. You're right. Police
normally do not say this sort of thing. They don't
make a comment like that. Okay, it's not it's it's
(32:15):
more atypical. They won't go into graphic detail like that.
But I'm sure that there's some level of frustration on
their part at this moment. Tom, give it.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
You know the autopsy, Joe, Yeah, we've been waiting for this,
for the results from the autopsy of the of the
torso that was found. Yeah, we they're playing some things
close to the best. But the one thing you do know, Yeah,
the one thing we do know is that this torso
that was found in the dumpster was missing the head.
(32:46):
And we know there was a gory scene at the
Tarzana home. So there are autopsy report came out. I
read some of it. It didn't make a lot of
sense to me because I couldn't figure it out. But
and I'm going to ask you this straight out and
need you to tell me all the stings use on it.
But was she alive? Was she tortured? Couldn't you tell
(33:09):
that in an autopsy? If she was kept alive long
enough to experience all of the damage and her head
being cut.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Off, yes, we could tell yeah, most definitely, and they
have not. As a matter of fact, the medical examiner
actually stated that that possibility could not be excluded. Dave,
And just so our friends understand, and look, I think
we've got very smart listeners and they will have heard
this elsewhere. But it bears repeating. When we're looking and
(33:40):
trying to assess an injury and trying to determine whether
it is anti mortem, before death or post mortem, the
trick is to always look for the hemorrhage. That's one
thing that we can tell. So the emmy saw something
there in these dissected out areas that gave them an
(34:05):
indication that there was possibly hemorrhage in these slices, and
that again is it will rock you to your core
when you begin to think about this, that if she
was not unconscious, that she may have had an awareness
(34:27):
that this was going on. Hopefully, I'm hoping against hope
that that is not the case, but the emmy could
not rule it out. He had also stated that to
this point he couldn't rule out the possibility of her
potentially having been drugged in some way, having been suffocated
or smothered or asphyxiated in some way. So there's still
(34:51):
a lot in the mix here, but they are seeing hemorrhage.
Now we don't know specifically where this hemorrhage is. I
do know this. This was striking and a real boy
you talk about really grab your attention. Whoever wielded this
instrument that wound up, you know, using this instrumentality for dismemberment.
(35:18):
It was so sharp that the margins were really clean.
So this is not like an event where where you're
talking about hacking away like with a hatchet or an
axe and that sort of thing. He did entertain the possibility,
(35:39):
and I think I have an idea of what he's seeing.
He talked about a power tool as well, which again
adds in a completely different level to this. If you
bring in an element of torture here, if you use
something like a sawsaw, which is one of those little
(35:59):
circular saws that you can cut through things with, those
margins are going to be very, very clean. They're not
going to be real jagged. And also when you get
to the bone itself, it will have distinctive markings on
that phone that can tie back to instruments. That's why
in our field we work very very closely with tool
(36:19):
mark examiners. They don't just look at pride marks on
windows of burgled homes. They don't just look at how
steering columns have been taken apart and what kind of instrument.
We actually work with them when it comes to bone
in particular, to try to match up an instrument with
the markings that are left behind. That's going to be significant.
(36:40):
You know, I think in.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
This case, do we know we're other parts of her
body severed?
Speaker 3 (36:47):
I noticed the plural being used where actually it says
the report states amputation sites plural. Right, we're remarkably smooth.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yeah, And what that means is that whatever location this
individual decided to amputate at, it would be Okay, let
me back up, because this is important. You mentioned something
(37:19):
that's really telling here, Dave about the gordiness. They saw
something in that house that was like, okay, somebody's been
dismembered here. Well, how do you come to that conclusion
if the body is not there? Well, first off, my
first gut reaction is going to be probably a copious
amount of blood more than likely if you're talking about
(37:44):
if you're talking about a power tool, as ghastly as
this is, you do just like saw dust, there is
bone dust that's left behind, and it will actually appear
blood tainted. You can see this white piled dust, you know,
be blood tainted. You'll see that they may have found
an instrument, because what did he say in the report?
(38:06):
He said power tool. So maybe they found something there
that's going to have a remnant of biological evidence on it.
That would not surprise me. It doesn't matter how you
could take that damn thing and put it in a dishwasher, Dave,
and there's still possibility that you're going to recover something
off of it. So how much more so if you're
(38:29):
just trying to scrub it down. There's because there's all
those little nooks and crannies around the thing that you
never fully account for. I think one of my concerns
with this. They talk about how horrific the scene is,
and one things they're going to be faced with, Dave,
in May's murder and the status of her parents, is
(38:55):
that if they're dealing if something has happened equally horrific
to the parents, you're going to have commingling of biological
evidence there, So you can have let's just say, person A, B,
and C. If they've all met roughly the same fate
and you're doing these dismemberments in the same location, you're
(39:18):
going to have commingling of DNA that are only surfaces.
It doesn't matter really how much you clean up, because
if he's doing this in a frenzy, they if they
are doing it in a frenzy allegedly, then you can
have this kind of mixing that goes on in there.
And are you going to be able to kind of
(39:39):
separate out these biological samples. First off, you expect to
find all of their DNA there anyway, because that's their domicile.
The trick is that what is the source of the DNA?
Is it blood? Is it bone? Is it hair? Its skin?
(40:01):
What is it? And when I say skin, I'm not
talking about dead skin sales, Dave. If this was a dismemberment,
you would actually find skin tax perhaps in a lot
of different places that may have come off of whatever
instruments left behind. This is not an easy process and
so that's what the police are kind of or the
(40:22):
forensic scientists at least are kind of, you know, kind
of suss through all of this stuff and try to
understand it. Either way, they've got one whale of a
case or cases on their hands right now.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
They also said in the autopsy report quote, with the
remains that were available for examination, an exact mechanism of
death was unable to be determined. I don't think they
have the head.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Yeah, I don't think that they do either at this
point in time. It's funny sometimes, you know, when you
get these dismemberment things, it seems more often than not,
many times the head is actually found away from the body.
You remember, it was just last week we talked about
(41:11):
the bodies in Long Island and those heads were separate.
As a matter of fact, I think the two heads
in that case were found proximal to one another and
the rest of their heads were in another place. And
that happens more often than not in these kinds of cases.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
And that's actually I was thinking about that case and
the amount of blood from two bodies causing enough to
clog the trains. Yeah and yeah, now in this home
where the home in Tarzana was a very big home,
and I'm going to assume a number of bathrooms are
there if you're going to try to get try to
(41:48):
get rid of there remains a three bodies. All I
can think of is he is we only have proof
of one. We only have and not even proof. We
have an alleged killing of one person, that is Meylee Haskell,
his wife. We have her torso, and we have an
autopsy that's been done. Based on what they have, they
gave us their opinion. Now we don't have I say
(42:11):
we They have not recovered. They have not found Maylee's parents.
They haven't found them, either in life or in death.
What they did come up with on Meylee was the
most likely possibilities of death because the torso didn't reveal enough.
But they said, when I saw these, thought Joe, I
(42:33):
could have come up with these. The possibilities are blunt
force trauma of the head and neck, gunshot wound of
the head and neck, sharp force injury of the head
and neck, and forms of astyxia because if we don't
have the head, those are all possible death modes.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Right, Yeah, you're absolutely right. And that's that's what's you know,
that's gonna that's gonna be one of the biggest problems. Uh,
you know, you begin to think about causality here and
they have to leave the table open. However, I think
that it is significant and we have to revisit this
(43:08):
that they're talking about sharp forces injuries and they're talking
about her having potentially have been alive. That significant in
the case that they're seeing hemorrhage there, Dave, and I
think that that's going to be the thing that is
when they can put the detectives, will put this narrative
(43:30):
together as they're conducting all of the interviews that they
have to have. When this thing finally goes to trial,
we might see more forensics in this trial than we
have in a long long time. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is Bodybacks
Bodybacks with Joseph Scott Morgan.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
A few years ago, I went out to Hollywood for
actually the first time. I think I was actually I
never can tell where the line of demarcation is. I
think I was probably in Beverly Hills and I had
to go to a meeting, right I had to go
to this meeting with this hot shot agent guy that
was working on a show. And everybody in Hollywood's got
(00:42):
a new idea. They've all got a new idea, and
they if they think you're right for it, they want
to get you to participate in it. So I was
out there and I was thinking, Wow, this is It's
kind of cool, but it's a it's an odd world.
It's different, you know, it's it seems almost synthetic, and
(01:02):
I think a lot of it is. But you know,
what goes on behind the back doors and all these
deals and everything's completely different than you know, the individuals
that you see appear on screen, either the big screen
or a small screen. Can you imagine having a phone
conversation with the likes of George Clooney or maybe Whoopy
(01:26):
Goldberg or Dolly Pardon And it's kind of your norm,
you know, to be in that world. But for those
of us that, you know, just kind of live in
flow over country, it's a completely different take that we
have today. I want to talk about a man who
lived in that world and about his son who arguably,
(01:52):
arguably perhaps perpetrated a mass homicide. We're going to have
a conversation today about what Sam Haskell the fourth allegedly did.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body Backs. I'm
(02:16):
here with my buddy Dave mac Dave. You get out
there in the in the thin air with with some
of these people, and I don't know. I guess there's
a there's kind of an idea that you you have
moral license maybe to do anything you want to that
you know laws don't apply to you. We've heard that
(02:37):
over and I mean, how many times have we heard that? Yeah,
the entitled people, I think I remember back, and I
know I'll catch some grief over this, but I remember, Uh,
what's what's her name? That? Uh? The young actress from
Little Blonde. She was legally blonde, I think, and uh Witherspoon,
(02:58):
and she got she got pulled over in Atlanta few
years ago with her husband and she did the whole
thing where she jumped out of the car and looked
at a Georgia State trooper and said, don't you know
who I am? And I'm thinking he's thinking I might
not right now, but I will in a minute. You're
going to know who I am too. You know. It's
(03:19):
it's when that the fantasy world kind of catches up,
you know, with the reality of the real world that
we all kind of exist in. And I don't know,
maybe that extends out to this family that we're talking
about today, SAMs what remains of a family?
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Right?
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Sam Haskell the third is the super agent who was
Dolly Parton and George Clooney's management when he was he
was working at the William Morris Agency. Sam Haskell the
third was, but his son, Sam Haskell the Fourth is
the murderer, or the alleged murderer. Sam Haskell the Fourth
(03:55):
is at the very center of a story that began
for most of us when a homeless guy out in
la is digging through a dumpster at six fifteen in
the morning in Encino and he comes across the headless
body a torso. Now the guy's looking for some old
food to eat, right getting his breakfast out of the
dumpster and finds a body or a headless body and
(04:19):
calls the cops. That's where most of us started with
the story because TMZ and a few other websites like
that had video going up of this poor guy. Can
you imagine what he's going through to this day, Joe,
a homeless guy.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Here's something from a death investigator's perspective. It's really amazing.
And I had this happen a number of times over
the course of my career. When you get out there
and we generally there's a term that we use in
our descriptor of people that initially lay eyes on the body,
and we will call them the finder, and that's in
(04:55):
our vernacular so that when we communicate with either other investigat, detectives,
maybe the dock whoever it is, even the crime lab,
will say, well, this is a sample from the finder,
and they automatically they understand what that means. And also
to kind of emphasize this, this is a found death.
(05:16):
This is not something that was witnessed per se. So yeah,
this guy, I've actually had people. I had a lady
one time that found a guy hanging nude in his
motel room by a dog. Collar, and he was involved
in autoroticism. And she, Dave, she was she probably she
(05:38):
may have been five foot tall, weighed about ninety pounds,
and I'll never forget. She was from Guatemala. And this
poor lady could not speak English. She was a housekeeper
and she had the pass key to the door of
obviously to the room. She didn't get an answer when
she knocked on. She opens the door and the bathroom
is immediately to the left and he's hanging from the
(06:01):
hinge by dog collar of the bathroom, fully naked, and Dave,
she was trembling on the floor. And I'll never forget.
This little lady had her rosary beads in her in
her hands and she was praying and she was she
couldn't stop trembling. So yeah, and it impacts people. I mean,
who goes about their daily routine. Even if this guy
(06:23):
is a homeless guy, he's living his life.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Man, he's looking for something to eat.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
It's six fifteen in the morning, Joe, And why this guy's.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Not I hope somebody's helping him. That's all.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
But to move on to the story. The story began
there the video up online TMZ and all of the
other websites, because anything in Hollywood takes on the added
glare of Hollywood and in Sino and where it tracked
back because according to police, once they got to the dumpster,
they found the headless body, they found this torso, but
(06:55):
there was other evidence. There were other clues inside the
bag that contained this torso And it was the clues
inside the bag that they still haven't told us what
they found. It will come out of trial, but it
led them straight back to Sam Haskell, the fourth. This family,
the Haskell family, is living in a six bedroom home
(07:16):
in Tarzana. He's living there with his wife, who, by
the way, is missing, and her mom and dad they're
both missing. And then they have three boys, six, eight
and twelve. They are not missing, they're accounted for and
they're now living with family other family. But Sam Haskell
the Fourth's wife and her parents, his in laws, all missing.
(07:41):
And that's where this crime begins. The investigation begins there
with the torso and the dumpster being found by a
homeless guy six fifteen in the morning on a Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah, this is a big home that they have. They
have six bedrooms. Man, I can only imagine what that
would set you back, even in Tarzana, which here was
a fine town.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Well you got Tarzania and Sino in all of the
valley I mean. And by the way, this is the
area of the first Karate Kid movie. To give you
an idea, right right, yeah, where Ralph Macchio when there?
I think they were in Encino on the Tarzana side,
But it wasn't like it is now. Okay, everything there
has gotten bigger and better. But something that they found
(08:25):
in that bag led them back to the house. But
here's the other kicker, Joe. The night before the body
was found at four o'clock in the afternoon, a group
of Hispanic men were paid five hundred dollars by a
guy to take some rocks, three bags of rocks and
(08:45):
just get rid of them. Paid them five hundred dollars. Now,
I don't know about you. Somebody offers me five hundred
dollars to get rid of three bags of rocks. I'm
your guy, I'm your huckleberry. The thing is, these Hispanic
day workers, they didn't think the bags felt like they
had rocks in them. And they're like a block away
from the house and they decide we're looking. They open
(09:06):
it up and they opened one of the bags and
what do they find? A belly button? They see a
belly button and that was enough seal it back up.
There were not rocks in these bags. It felt like
they were carrying meat. And they reach about fifty pounds
a bag. They take it right back to Sam Haskell
the Fourth's house, that's who hired them to move them.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
They put them in the driveway.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
And he says, oh, you're mistaken that these are just
halloween things. Nah, I don't worry about what it is,
but these guys are freaked out, Joe. They immediately leave
Sam Haskell the Fourth's home in Tarzana and head straight
to the first police station they can see. Meanwhile, seven
minutes after they leave, Sam Haskell the fourth has loaded
a bag into his car and he takes off.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Now.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
And the reason I bring this up now is because
the Hispanic men go to the first place they saw
that had police signs on it, right is the Highway Patrol, though,
and the California Highway Patrol is not a city police
department that would handle Tarzana.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
And that's what they were told. Go someplace else.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
None of them spoke English as a first language, so
there was a communication problem. They end up going to
another police station, and it's kind of a comedy of
errors as they're doing this thing, because they go inside
this police station in the entry area and they're trying
to explain what they have found to make the report,
(10:29):
and they're at the Banga station and the police on
the instead of going we don't nobody in here speak Spanish.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Go outside?
Speaker 2 (10:37):
How is that possible in.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
In La it Yeah, that's what actually did surprise me.
But a lot has been made about this. When they
said get out of here, go outside and call nine
one one, that's not what happened. There was nobody that
spoke Spanish in the building that could take the report.
But knowing if they would go outside and call nine
one one, they could get a Spanish speaking operator and
(10:59):
then they could make their that's why that'll happen.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Now.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Granted, there's been a big investigation that is still not
completed on this yet to troubleshoot what happens when somebody
comes in to file like a dead body claim, body
parts claim, blood claims, And you know what if the
guys didn't go outside and called nine one one, Joe,
what if they went outside and just left.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
No, yeah, yeah, no, kidd, And keep in mind, uh
Sam Haskell, the fourth's children are still alive.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Let that sink in just for a second. If there is,
If in fact he is involved in this and he
committed these crimes, how do you know that there would
not be another moment in time that would set him off.
And now, because you've kind of showed them away, those
kids get in jeopardy. I think they're in jeopardy anyway,
(11:48):
but you know, you just kind of kind of up
the antie. But back to the topainga station. I've got
a solution for it. It's pretty easy. How are people
that speak Spanish? That's that's pretty easy. You know, that's
kind of simple. But you know, that's a discussion for
another day. I find it. Yeah, no, And I'm wondering
(12:09):
with Okay, with their movement of these bags, okay, that
is the workers, I'm wondering how much cross contamination there
might be from them? What did they do? Were the
bags tied? Because if they're tied, that's in a very
specific configuration that is unique. It's not as unique as
(12:31):
like handwriting, but it is unique as to how people
tie the bags.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
If it's a real.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Complex knot or whether it's a simple knot. And who
in the world uses bags to move rocks? Now? I
see commercials on television where they say, well, this bag
can carry anything, But who in their right mind actually
decides you, I'm going to put a bunch of rocks
in a bag, a plastic bag. Most of the time
when you use plastic bags, just for instance. And I'm
(12:58):
not diminishing deaths here, but just understand it from a
biological standpoint. We have plastic bags in our home, in
our garbage cans, right. The reason we do that is
that they are non porous, they're non poorous, because we
don't want all of the nastiness that's in our home
after we're done cooking and all of that stuff. And
we put that and you know how it always kind
(13:20):
of gathers at the bottom, seeks the lowest point of gravity,
and Lord help you if you prick that bag and
it leaks everywhere, well, you know, if you have a torso.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
It's gonna leak.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
And I would think that whoever thought this thing through
didn't think it through quite enough, because it's very easy
to just feel the outside of a bag and tell
the difference between rocks and human remains. You've never worked
(14:06):
in a butcher's shop, You've never handled human remains. For
all I know, you might be terrified by the sight
of blood. But let's say your fury has driven you
to the point where you would begin to think about
killing someone that's in your orbit, and not just one person,
(14:32):
but three, And now you have to make a decision.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
What am I going to do with him?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
David, I think that that's a rather interesting position to
be in for the average person walking down the street.
Of course, the accused, the alleged perpetrator here is I
guess by the standards of us mere mortals out here,
he's not an average person. He has a lot of
(15:01):
resources at his disposal this sort of thing. Maybe he
thought that he could get away with this, but it
seems as though that the police have other ideas.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
At this point, we know, Joe, there is a lot
going on with this story and inside the home and
fascinating and talking to or not me talking to, but
in researching this particular case. Sam Haskell fourth his wife.
Her name is may me Eia may Lee Haskell. She's
(15:34):
thirty seven. As we mentioned earlier, they have three boys
that are just wonderful children. From everything I'm hearing from
everybody's six, eight and twelve. But it's interesting that they
would entertain in their home, the Haskells would and the
neighbors would come over. But whenever that happened, it was
like may Lee Haskell was the reason people were there.
(15:56):
They just adored her, and Sam Haskell would become very withdrawn.
He would pull back to himself, and even if it
was in his own home, he acted like he was
not belonging.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
He loved his samurai sword collection too, and he liked
to show it off. He also had a bunch of guns,
like to show those off. But people could not understand
the connection because on the one hand, you had his wife,
may that everybody loves, and then you got this other
guy who seems really not all there. I mean, he
just is an indulgent or I don't know him, but
(16:31):
he sure does seem to be one of the individuals
who thinks because my dad was super rich and successful,
so am I I'm going to go into the family business.
You know, Yeah, your dad's a doctor, so you don't
need to go to law school. And my dad's a doctor.
I'm good. Sam Haskell the Fourth is thirty five, son
of Sam Haskell the third. When you look at Sam
(16:52):
Haskell the Fourth's resume, he has done a low budget
video film.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
He did.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
A program. I don't know if it was a film
or what. I saw a clip of it that had
Brandy Glanville. She's in that well used to be in
the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and she had a
small part, and like it looked like a high school
teen drama type thing.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Anyway, So, but I've watched some TikTok videos that he posted,
and he just goes rambling, I mean Joe about things
that make no sense, talking about Hollywood stars and a
really entitled mess. And it's so funny to put him
over here on that side of what you see and
then what people talk about with his wife, and you
(17:38):
realize his beautiful thirty seven year old wife, the one
everybody loved, is missing along with her parents. We don't
know where they are.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, and if it's this is another thing that I
kind of came across here in this tale, and it
gives you an idea about the family dynamic, mainly and
their children. Her and Haskell's children all resided there, but
also her parents. My understanding is is that their note
(18:09):
did you see what the what the cost was their
monthly note on that house is? And I seven thousand
dollars a month at it? Yeah, and she paid the note.
But that's think in yeah, not him. She paid the
note on that monthly, that that monthly when it would
(18:32):
come due for the mortgage. And so I found that
that that quite interesting. And friends had made comments, you know,
relative to that. So what you're looking for, I think,
is if you have these individuals where they are missing,
you have this odd family dynamic where he's you know,
(18:56):
he's he's now supposed to be the head of the household,
if you will. He's supposed to be a breadwinner, he's
supposed to be achieving, and your wife is actually bringing
home the bacon per se. And I would imagine that
he began And I hate people that say, well, it
made me feel this way. I'm sure that it's making
(19:18):
him feel somewhat diminished. And you begin to think about
a lot of cases that we work, it comes into
focus that anger, that little bit of anger, because what
we're talking about here is a mass slaying and we're
also talking about not just a slaying dave, but we're
talking about the abuse of a corpse, and that goes
(19:40):
to a completely different level when you begin to try
to consider what may have happened, how did it happen,
and is it possible that the em he can explain anything.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
That's what I was going to ask you, because when
you start with the in this particular case, as I
mentioned at the very beginning, the investigation did not just
begin as six fifteen in the morning when a homeless
guy finds a torso and a dumpster. It began from
our standpoint of us hearing about it. But once that
call was made, all of a sudden, the previous day's activities,
(20:14):
all of a sudden made sense because it was the
day before about well actually fourteen hours earlier, at about
four o'clock in the afternoon, when Sam Haskell the Fourth
hires a couple of Hispanic day workers, pays them five
hundred dollars to get rid of three bags of rocks.
They returned saying this, there's there's a belly button in
here that this ain't rocks, and get They give him
(20:36):
the money back and leave the bags in the driveway.
And take off and go to the police. So you've
got that report being made after four o'clock the day
before the body is found, and the report it says
a neighbor called in until police they saw what appeared
to be body parts in Sam Haskell the Fourth's backyard
in his driveway, so police went out to look. By
(20:59):
the time they got there, Sam Haskell the fourth was
gone and they didn't see any sign of any bags
or any body parts. So without having anything to go on,
they couldn't just reach the gate and go looking. They
didn't have a search for it, so they couldn't go
any further, and they had no reason to investigate further.
Might have been a prank call, neighbor that doesn't like him.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, it could be. And you know, most of the time,
if you uh, this goes to something that that we
use in that that we talked about in in uh
UH in investigations. I think a lot of people don't
understand this. But there's two there's two frameworks that you
work under. If you're you have things that are in
(21:41):
plane view, it's called a plane view doctor. And if
you pull somebody over in a car and you look
in and there's a human hand laying on the seat,
then that that provides you cause there's also another uh
another uh legal uh uh precedent that that was established
in called the open fields doctrine, and it's kind of
(22:02):
the same thing, but it's like, if you don't have
to use something in order for you to view an area,
if you can plainly see it in an open area
of open fields doctrine, that will give the police probable cost.
And this is not a welfare check. You know, lots
of times if cops are going out a welfare check,
(22:23):
they can force their way in if they think somebody
is in danger at that point in time, you don't
have to go get a warrant at that point in time. Now,
once you've confirmed that they're there and they're deceased, then
you have to back out. People don't understand that you
cannot stay in the house with the dead body, even
if it's a homicide. You have to go get a warrant.
So you secure the scene. You go get a warrant,
(22:44):
and then you come back and you work the scene.
You don't let anybody else into the house, but you
have to get a warrant before you enter back in
and there's.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Even though you know the body's dead is sitting there
and wow.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Or once you've established that there is no longer an
emerging situation, then.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Okay, So once you notice it's static, nothing's going to change, nothing's.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Going to change, and the police will set up a
perimeter at that point, and what you do. And I've
spent hours outside of a house. I actually actually had
a guy that was laying out of a threshold of
a house. He'd been shot in multiple times.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
But we had to wait.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
And it's in literally plain sight of the entire neighborhood.
Cameras are there, everything else, and there is a body
laying across the threshold that has obviously sprung several weeks.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
And we had to wait. I know, it took us
probably five hours day to get that warrant so that
we could make entry because the ADA for whatever reason,
was not available. There wasn't a magistrate available. Wow. And
it's problematic, But listen, you would rather wait and be
safe because anything that you find, anything that you find
at that scene. Let's say that you have a headless corpse,
(23:57):
all right, but if the head has been taken and
placed into the freezer, Okay, that's a that's a protected
hidden space without a warrant. The authorities don't have to
have they don't have the legal backing to go in
and go digging through hidden spaces, okay, you know in
small areas, so they have to do that.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
In the dumpster where the homeless guy finds the torso
in a bag in the dumpster, I wanted to ask
you about it because that that's an open area accessible
to anybody.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah, so the law regards that as you no longer
caring about it, you've tossed it, so those constitutional protections
from that perspective fade away. So if we we can
go around to any number of dumpsters that might be,
and I hope that they did to recover everything that
they would need to recover because that's essential here.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Well, it's fascinating how this worked out with people. I
don't want to say they were busy bodies, but somebody
saw a man in Alexis getting bags a bag out
of the back out of the trunk of his car
and took a picture of the car and its tag.
And so the next day, when the body or the
(25:16):
torso is recovered out of the dumpster, the person who
took the picture, went hey, I maybe this will help
police and sends it to him and the detective on
the scene said this, and I highlighted this because I
needed to ask you, Joe. He was asked a question
in a press conference about the condition of the core
of the torsos. Do you still refer to it as
a corpse even though it's.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Not okay you can use corpse?
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah, sure, he said, quote just from visual inspection, the
stages of decomposition were relatively early, so no more than
a day or two about how long the body had
been dead, because we haven't established anything at this point.
They just have a dead part of a body, no head,
(25:59):
and that's what they have in this bag, and that's
where they have to now trace it back. But again,
they knew to go to Haskell's house whatever was inside.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
That bag contained.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, I don't know if he left it.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
And they're saying, catch me if you can, here's my name,
here's my address, because they went straight to his house or.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
He dropped his wallet, you know, who knows, who knows
from that perspective, but yeah, maybe and you find this
and this is really difficult forensically, Dave, and I'm thinking
about the nightmare that is working a dumpster, because it
is it's like taking if you've ever seen somebody take
if you see somebody that takes like a thousand piece
(26:39):
jigsaw puzzle and they just try to do it piece
by piece without ordering ordering, imagine that and then multiply
that because if you ever take a look in a
dumpster and you just look around. First off, it's layered
because with every person that comes by to dump their refuse,
you're dealing with that bottom. And we call it in
(27:00):
the earth when we're doing burials, we call it stratification.
So you have stratified levels, all right, so you'll have
like a really ancient area that maybe the body is
deposited on. Same thing will apply to dumpsters. And if
you really want a nightmare, work a case from a landfill,
because not only do you have the evidence or say
(27:25):
or remain, a human remain that is stratified and they're
depended upon when the dump, when that dump took place.
With landfills in particular, they have a schedule as to
where and location, Like they direct their trucks to go
to grid section to B all right, and then next
day will be to sea. Because you don't. You want
(27:48):
to try to keep it even. And then what's really
problematic is that, just like with a dumpster, you may
have had other homeless people digging around in there if
it's an area to look for food, the plane in
they're bringing anything, and in anybody else that dumps household
garbage there, you've got them layering on top of it.
You got to landfill. You got those big machinery. If
(28:10):
you've seen those things, they don't have rubber tires, they've
got steel tires, and they actually drive over the stuff
to compact it. So it really becomes a nightmare. That's
why from a timeline, From a timeline perspective, it's so
important to try to determine when that dumpster was last emptied,
who emptied it, and where did they empty it. But
(28:32):
this is backing up to what the chief said when
we're talking about decompositional changes and trying to establish that
all important post mortem interval. This is a real tell
because we know that in this particular case, we're not
dealing with somebody that has been dead for days upon
(28:56):
days upon days. We're talking about kill. Yeah, you want
(29:18):
the ultimate puzzle, try try working on a puzzle that
involves a human body. And I'm not just talking about
from an intellectual exercise to try to determine disease and
on it. No, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm
talking about a body that has been dismembered, and you're
(29:40):
trying to understand, first off, when did these injuries occur,
what was fatal, and what type of instrument may have
generated this dissection. And I think that that's really important.
And Dave, we're talking about layers to put another layer
(30:01):
on this May's body is accounted for at this point
in Tom but you know there's two other adults living
in this hall other than Haskell himself in Maylee.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
So it's so sad. Yeah, the whole thing is so sad.
You know that the Haskells had three boys, six eight
and twelve. Thankfully when everything came down on that Wednesday
when they the body the torso was found in the
dumpster and police went to the Haskell home. The boys
all six eight and twelve. They were at school when
(30:35):
their dad was arrested and they were then put with
a family member after and that's where they've remained because
even though there was an assumption of who Torso they
recovered in the dumpster. Because Maylee was missing Malely Haskell,
her mom and dad are still missing, Joe. We still
(30:57):
do not have their bodies. They might not be you know,
that's the reality of it. They could be anywhere. Chances
are I think it's presumed that they're dead because of
what has transpired inside the home. When police went inside
the home, they said you could tell a body had
been dismembered. I've never heard of police officer, detective, or
investigator actually say words of that effect, yeah, when describing
(31:22):
a scene. But I think it's because the scene that
they ran into was so horrifying.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
The fact that Haskell was a big fan of samurai swords, guns,
all these methods, all these tools of destruction, to the
point where a neighbor loved Maylee will let her kids
play with Maylee's kids, but would not let the children
go upstairs where the guns were or thea and wouldn't
let them be around him Haskell.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
So when police tell.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Yeah, it tells you everything you need to know about
how people thought of this guy.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
But yeah, that's why I always tell parents to respect
the gut feeling ralways no matter what, and Uh, and
here here's the thing with the parents missing, and you know,
I think that it's it's very insightful. You're right. Police
normally do not say this sort of thing. They don't
make a comment like that. Okay, it's not it's it's
(32:15):
more atypical. They won't go into graphic detail like that.
But I'm sure that there's some level of frustration on
their part at this moment. Tom, give it.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
You know the autopsy, Joe, Yeah, we've been waiting for this,
for the results from the autopsy of the of the
torso that was found. Yeah, we they're playing some things
close to the best. But the one thing you do know, Yeah,
the one thing we do know is that this torso
that was found in the dumpster was missing the head.
(32:46):
And we know there was a gory scene at the
Tarzana home. So there are autopsy report came out. I
read some of it. It didn't make a lot of
sense to me because I couldn't figure it out. But
and I'm going to ask you this straight out and
need you to tell me all the stings use on it.
But was she alive? Was she tortured? Couldn't you tell
(33:09):
that in an autopsy? If she was kept alive long
enough to experience all of the damage and her head
being cut.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Off, yes, we could tell yeah, most definitely, and they
have not. As a matter of fact, the medical examiner
actually stated that that possibility could not be excluded. Dave,
And just so our friends understand, and look, I think
we've got very smart listeners and they will have heard
this elsewhere. But it bears repeating. When we're looking and
(33:40):
trying to assess an injury and trying to determine whether
it is anti mortem, before death or post mortem, the
trick is to always look for the hemorrhage. That's one
thing that we can tell. So the emmy saw something
there in these dissected out areas that gave them an
(34:05):
indication that there was possibly hemorrhage in these slices, and
that again is it will rock you to your core
when you begin to think about this, that if she
was not unconscious, that she may have had an awareness
(34:27):
that this was going on. Hopefully, I'm hoping against hope
that that is not the case, but the emmy could
not rule it out. He had also stated that to
this point he couldn't rule out the possibility of her
potentially having been drugged in some way, having been suffocated
or smothered or asphyxiated in some way. So there's still
(34:51):
a lot in the mix here, but they are seeing hemorrhage.
Now we don't know specifically where this hemorrhage is. I
do know this. This was striking and a real boy
you talk about really grab your attention. Whoever wielded this
instrument that wound up, you know, using this instrumentality for dismemberment.
(35:18):
It was so sharp that the margins were really clean.
So this is not like an event where where you're
talking about hacking away like with a hatchet or an
axe and that sort of thing. He did entertain the possibility,
(35:39):
and I think I have an idea of what he's seeing.
He talked about a power tool as well, which again
adds in a completely different level to this. If you
bring in an element of torture here, if you use
something like a sawsaw, which is one of those little
(35:59):
circular saws that you can cut through things with, those
margins are going to be very, very clean. They're not
going to be real jagged. And also when you get
to the bone itself, it will have distinctive markings on
that phone that can tie back to instruments. That's why
in our field we work very very closely with tool
(36:19):
mark examiners. They don't just look at pride marks on
windows of burgled homes. They don't just look at how
steering columns have been taken apart and what kind of instrument.
We actually work with them when it comes to bone
in particular, to try to match up an instrument with
the markings that are left behind. That's going to be significant.
(36:40):
You know, I think in.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
This case, do we know we're other parts of her
body severed?
Speaker 3 (36:47):
I noticed the plural being used where actually it says
the report states amputation sites plural. Right, we're remarkably smooth.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yeah, And what that means is that whatever location this
individual decided to amputate at, it would be Okay, let
me back up, because this is important. You mentioned something
(37:19):
that's really telling here, Dave about the gordiness. They saw
something in that house that was like, okay, somebody's been
dismembered here. Well, how do you come to that conclusion
if the body is not there? Well, first off, my
first gut reaction is going to be probably a copious
amount of blood more than likely if you're talking about
(37:44):
if you're talking about a power tool, as ghastly as
this is, you do just like saw dust, there is
bone dust that's left behind, and it will actually appear
blood tainted. You can see this white piled dust, you know,
be blood tainted. You'll see that they may have found
an instrument, because what did he say in the report?
(38:06):
He said power tool. So maybe they found something there
that's going to have a remnant of biological evidence on it.
That would not surprise me. It doesn't matter how you
could take that damn thing and put it in a dishwasher, Dave,
and there's still possibility that you're going to recover something
off of it. So how much more so if you're
(38:29):
just trying to scrub it down. There's because there's all
those little nooks and crannies around the thing that you
never fully account for. I think one of my concerns
with this. They talk about how horrific the scene is,
and one things they're going to be faced with, Dave,
in May's murder and the status of her parents, is
(38:55):
that if they're dealing if something has happened equally horrific
to the parents, you're going to have commingling of biological
evidence there, So you can have let's just say, person A, B,
and C. If they've all met roughly the same fate
and you're doing these dismemberments in the same location, you're
(39:18):
going to have commingling of DNA that are only surfaces.
It doesn't matter really how much you clean up, because
if he's doing this in a frenzy, they if they
are doing it in a frenzy allegedly, then you can
have this kind of mixing that goes on in there.
And are you going to be able to kind of
(39:39):
separate out these biological samples. First off, you expect to
find all of their DNA there anyway, because that's their domicile.
The trick is that what is the source of the DNA?
Is it blood? Is it bone? Is it hair? Its skin?
(40:01):
What is it? And when I say skin, I'm not
talking about dead skin sales, Dave. If this was a dismemberment,
you would actually find skin tax perhaps in a lot
of different places that may have come off of whatever
instruments left behind. This is not an easy process and
so that's what the police are kind of or the
(40:22):
forensic scientists at least are kind of, you know, kind
of suss through all of this stuff and try to
understand it. Either way, they've got one whale of a
case or cases on their hands right now.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
They also said in the autopsy report quote, with the
remains that were available for examination, an exact mechanism of
death was unable to be determined. I don't think they
have the head.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Yeah, I don't think that they do either at this
point in time. It's funny sometimes, you know, when you
get these dismemberment things, it seems more often than not,
many times the head is actually found away from the body.
You remember, it was just last week we talked about
(41:11):
the bodies in Long Island and those heads were separate.
As a matter of fact, I think the two heads
in that case were found proximal to one another and
the rest of their heads were in another place. And
that happens more often than not in these kinds of cases.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
And that's actually I was thinking about that case and
the amount of blood from two bodies causing enough to
clog the trains. Yeah and yeah, now in this home
where the home in Tarzana was a very big home,
and I'm going to assume a number of bathrooms are
there if you're going to try to get try to
(41:48):
get rid of there remains a three bodies. All I
can think of is he is we only have proof
of one. We only have and not even proof. We
have an alleged killing of one person, that is Meylee Haskell,
his wife. We have her torso, and we have an
autopsy that's been done. Based on what they have, they
gave us their opinion. Now we don't have I say
(42:11):
we They have not recovered. They have not found Maylee's parents.
They haven't found them, either in life or in death.
What they did come up with on Meylee was the
most likely possibilities of death because the torso didn't reveal enough.
But they said, when I saw these, thought Joe, I
(42:33):
could have come up with these. The possibilities are blunt
force trauma of the head and neck, gunshot wound of
the head and neck, sharp force injury of the head
and neck, and forms of astyxia because if we don't
have the head, those are all possible death modes.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Right, Yeah, you're absolutely right. And that's that's what's you know,
that's gonna that's gonna be one of the biggest problems. Uh,
you know, you begin to think about causality here and
they have to leave the table open. However, I think
that it is significant and we have to revisit this
(43:08):
that they're talking about sharp forces injuries and they're talking
about her having potentially have been alive. That significant in
the case that they're seeing hemorrhage there, Dave, and I
think that that's going to be the thing that is
when they can put the detectives, will put this narrative
(43:30):
together as they're conducting all of the interviews that they
have to have. When this thing finally goes to trial,
we might see more forensics in this trial than we
have in a long long time. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan
and this is Bodybacks
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.