E459 A Coroner

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27:50At checkout just pay five dollars shipping. That's B-L-U-E-C-H-E-W.com promo code Theo. To receive your first month free visit BlueChew.com for more details and important safety information. We thank Blue Chew for sponsoring the podcast. I'm just amazed at how many senior citizens live with no running water, no electricity in August when it's 100 degrees outside. But it's all over Louisiana. You know, these senior citizens have a hard time paying for their medication, much less an expensive electricity bill. And then some people are just really hardcore on drugs. You know, we had a house one time that in the kitchen, there was a piece of plywood and when the officer slid the plywood back that's where they were using the restroom they were shitting in a hole in the kitchen and then they would cover it up with a piece of wood and i mean that's that that's pretty hardcore in your home but you'll see Vietnamese too really you'll see that you know with people that just abuse drugs to the point of you know they're living in condemned homes or yeah what's that been like with uh the drug use and stuff like do you guys do you guys come upon a lot of like ods and stuff what's that has that changed the way you even approach the industry i mean how busy has that gotten things yeah that's um you know when i first started you know 18 years ago we would have occasional ods accidental ods um but that has increased by a thousand since uh fentanyl has hit the streets fentanyl and crystal meth um the ods are every day every day you know it affects every age group you can imagine you know the opioid epidemic came um and that you know that was started the the the whole opioid thing was started when hospitals started using surveys to uh to compare themselves to other hospitals it was called the press gainy and one of the the questions in that in that survey was how did we treat your pain?

29:54And then the reason behind the survey was hospitals all have the same equipment. You have the same MRIs, the hospital 20 miles down the road, all your equipment's the same, but what can you do better than another? And that's customer service. So all these patients would get these satisfaction surveys in the mail and I worked in the hospitals. And so we would actually skit things. So when they got home, they would remember key words and they would rate us or they would give us a good rating. For instance, do you have, did they have enough time for you in the hospital? So we were instructed to say, is there anything else I can do for you?

30:28I have time. So it was this, we were planning. It's a plan, it's a strategy. Wow. Yeah. And so then how did we treat your pain was another one. And the Press Ganey, it was called? Yeah. And it was a, I mean, it's a great program, you know, and it teaches people how to really, people in hospitals, how to really, you know, go the extra mile for patients. We do things that we don't think about. We close that door before we do a test on you so you're not exposed. But you don't really know that we're doing that. So things like, hey, I'm going to close this door for your privacy. It was a great program, but one of the things was pain control.

31:04Do you think that that was the motive of the program, or do you think that that was just a side effect of the program? That was a side effect. So you don't think that they strategize this program just in order to get people to be able to give them, for them to notice, okay, for them to get that answer about the pain? Right. No, no, not at all. And it was absolutely a side effect, if you will, of that. Press Ganey, it's called? Yeah. Let's bring it up. I don't know if that's still a survey. They still do surveys, of course. Right. But in the 90s, that was one that 98 % of all hospitals used. A lot of hospitals were owned by the same corporation, so you had five or six hospitals in your area, and they would do side-by-side comparisons of each other.

31:50And we all wanted to have the highest rating. Right, so your hospital wants to go for the best rating. We're ranked number five in the nation. We're ranked number three in the parish, two in the state. Exactly. So this is Press Ganey right here, and they are get to know your patients like never before. See patients from every angle to prioritize and predict their needs. um you scroll down a little i just want to see what it is so it's about patient experience tools yes so this is a company that helps uh practitioners i guess know how to best treat their patients is that right correct okay press game when you go to the hospital even today when you get home you'll get a survey in the mail i see and then you know you fill out that survey and mail it back same as when you call at &t and they say would you hold you know to complete this customer service survey.

32:40But so then, you know, how did we treat your pain was one of them. And so then physicians started ordering more pain medication, not intentionally to hurt the patient. This wasn't the goal. But you'd get a patient with a broken arm and instead of getting 15 tablets on discharge, they'd give you 60. So a lot of the opiate addiction started from the over-utilization of prescribing pain medication. You know, a dentist might give you 40, whereas the 40 hydrocodones or Lortabs or oxycodones, you know, instead of giving you 10, they would, you know, give you 40 or 60. So the government came in with the opioid epidemic and they tamped that down and put it in regulations.

33:23So we wouldn't hand out so many pain pills. The addiction rose by 100%. But it took a long time for them to come in and do that. Yeah, it did. And so you guys were experiencing a lot of overdose deaths. Not so. Yeah. Yes. But, you know, the overdoses weren't necessarily from just taking hydro APAP. You know, there was always like a poly drug abuse, meaning multiple drugs being used. But those were still rare at the time. We didn't get as many overdoses as we do now. You know, I miss crack. The crack days were so much easier than the fentanyl days. Because why is that? because it's that much more lethal um oh crack is yeah fentanyl fentanyl is much more you know the crack epidemic was a thing um but then the the when the pain epidemic hit that's when we really started losing people um so what's the difference between like a crack death and a fentanyl death well i mean it's basically going to be a cardiac event um fentanyl you know you stop breathing.

34:30That's a very powerful drug.

34:36Back to the opioid, the docs were giving out medication. People were getting addicted. And then the government came in and stopped it. And they just cut everybody off. And they made it to where physicians could get in a lot of trouble if they overprescribed. And then I think they came back after that just recently and said, hey, we didn't mean not to treat people with pain because then you have a lot of people turning to heroin. You know, when you're taking opiates and you're on them for, you know, five or six years and you're addicted, and then one day you just can't get any, a lot of people turn to heroin.

35:09We really didn't have a great system to get people into rehabs. You know, if you want to commit somebody for drug abuse, they have to go voluntarily. And you can imagine that not everyone wants to go. So another role of the coroner's office, we have the ability to remove you from your – we can take you and send you somewhere against your will. Yeah, and that's the other arm of the coroner's office. Oh, I didn't know that at all. But how do you get those calls? Because you think the coroner or death investigators are just getting called about death. So who's calling you? Yeah, well, law enforcement, they know that.

35:48Oh, they say, hey, this guy over here, we think he should be 5150 or something? Yeah, he needs to be in a hospital. Okay. We need to get him to an ER and into a psych hospital. Can you guys help us with that? Right. So we, yeah, so that we fill out paperwork. The coroner actually signs off on the paperwork and then the police can go and remove you against your will and bring you to an ER. But we send all these patients to the ER and a lot of times they're let go. You know, I can have a 18 year old girl that's shooting heroin and smoking crack and drinking and she gets to the ER and they say, well, yeah, you have a problem.

36:22but drugs are your choice. So therefore I'm going to discharge you. And the reasoning behind that is we have a broken system. I don't know how you fix that, but so then they get to the ER and the ER doctors know, I can't force this person to go to rehab. You know, that if you want to quit, it has to be your decision. So a lot of those patients are let go. And then unfortunately, we'll get a coroner call on an OD from one of those exact patients that we sent to the ER. So you see a lot of repeat offenders, hypothetically, it's repeat offenders when these people show back up or repeatedly have harmed themselves with drugs.

36:57And then a lot of second, third times it's death. Absolutely. I mean, most patients, I say most patients, a lot of patients have a psychiatric diagnosis. So when there's a dual diagnosis, you can put them in a rehab in a psych facility. But even that is a five to six day stay. And then they're discharged. and then they have to get home and take their medication that was prescribed which they don't so then they end up coming back through their coroner's office and going back to the er you know some of these guys on drugs it was one that really really um that was really hard to deal with recently was a veteran um i know his family they they had played some audio recordings of this guy just crying at night um saying he needed help but then he would turn to meth and get high and then refuse help.

37:46Yeah. I mean, this guy had kills under his belt, you know, and we don't want to label people, well, he's just a meth junkie. I mean, these people all have problems, and they didn't grow up saying, I want to be this person, but this one in particular, you know, went to Iraq and killed some people, and now he's back and he's messed up, and he can't make the right decisions, and eventually he'll die. But he has to ultimately agree to go get help. So it's a hard process on some. Yeah. We lose people. Yeah, and it's tough waiting for somebody to get well enough or have enough of a break through their own vision or perspective to see that they need help.

38:27That's the hardest thing to try and – you can't really influence anybody. I mean, you can, but it's just nobody wants to hear that. People don't want to hear often you need help. They just don't accept it. Yeah, you can try. Or they're too drugged up sometimes. um yeah and you do interventions and stuff and sometimes people don't want that i tell families you know because we have them where you know the families will send them they'll go to a psych unit then they'll get out and they'll die either by suicide or drug overdose and a lot of times i'll tell families look you have to try you have to try you can't force your child to go to drug rehab a lot of people are nervous about sending people because the sheriffs show up and they put you in a cord and they bring you to the Eeyore and a lot of families just are scared to do it.

39:13And I always tell them, you know, we don't know the outcome of this, but you have to try. You have to get them in front of somebody professional. And if they get out and they keep doing the same thing over and over at the end of the day, you know, you tried. Yeah. Yeah, man, that's such a battle. It's heartbreaking to see the effects of all that, of all like the opioid epidemic and just all the fentanyl deaths. But are you noticing less of those? Are you noticing? No. So fentanyl deaths are every day. Wow. Every day. And it's, you know, I go out throughout the state, throughout the parish, and I've been giving lectures.

39:49And I'd love to do more on fentanyl. It's 100 times stronger than morphine. I forget the exact numbers on that. But it's extremely potent. Overall, drug overdose deaths rose from 2019 to 2021 with more than 106 ,000 drug overdose deaths reported in 2021. And that was during the pandemic. Deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone, primarily fentanyl, continue to rise. So imagine a football stadium that holds 100 ,000 fans. Okay. Tiger Stadium maybe almost. Pretty much. Almost. So that's how many people we're losing a year. The next time you watch a football game in a big stadium, just imagine that many bodies.

40:31And that's the ones we know about. There's so many unknowns that we don't catch. But we're losing that many Americans to it. And it's young kids. Oh, it's unbelievable. They have pill presses now. So I can take an oxycodone, a real one, and I can take a fake one and put it in front of a pharmacist that has 40, 50 years experience. and he can't tell me which one is real and which one is fake wow and they do the same thing with xanax um adderall so all these things kids take everybody has a crazy aunt and they've heard the word xanax before so you have a high school kid maybe the the girl's having boy troubles maybe she's on her period and a friend says hey take a half of xanax it'll help you relax and that one tablet is fatal yeah you know and that happens because it's a pressed pill you're saying it's pressed pill right yeah and so pressed pills is where they basically replicate it but they use fentanyl up in there correct because it is more powerful it's cheaper to replicate than making the actual product correct you can't get the actual product so they make it look identical to the real thing right and people don't know if you're buying especially you're some kid you don't know no you don't and you know what i was told was you can bring back you can smuggle across the border a coffee bag of fentanyl versus, you know, 20 pounds of meth.

41:53And you're going to have a higher profit margin on that little bag of coffee, which contains fentanyl, than you would on all that meth. So the cartels are sending in loads and loads of fentanyl. And it's snowballed into heroin, you know. So we see, when we were younger, you know, movie stars did heroin. You know, we didn't see much of that coming up. But now - Now it's like you had to have money to do it. Right. Now it's everywhere. You know, some of the people, you just, you'd be amazed at how many good looking young kids do heroin, but actually it's not heroin. You know, there's one form of heroin called China white, which is a snortable form.

42:31Yeah. People brag about that a lot in the recovery meetings. Yeah. About using that. Yeah. You can snort it. You don't have to shoot it. So what they're doing is they're selling it, but it's fentanyl. Fentanyl comes in a microgram dose. So when you get a milligram dose, I mean, that's just a fatal, a fatal dose. So we're seeing it every day. And when you roll up on a case like that, right, where are those cases at? What does that look like? What does that body look like as you come up on it? Yeah. So they're normally in a natural position on the couch or in bed. But we know, you know, this person has had repeated run-ins with the law.

43:09A lot of times we'll, we'll see the evidence, you know, they have a belt. you know, they've been shooting up. They have their belt, they have their syringes. And again, nobody touches the body until we get there. And I can talk to the family and get it out of them. Fentanyl is the worst that we've ever seen. And now they're mixing it with other drugs, like xylazine, which is a vet drug. You hear it referred to as TRANC. This is creating these massive ulcers on people. But they're even having to make fentanyl stronger. When someone dies on fentanyl the the users in the area you think they'd be scared of it like i don't want to i don't want to get that batch but they want it they want to know where that person got that batch so they can get a better buzz from it oh dude one time i was with my dad and he um would he would take us to the park and he would sleep in his car while we would play or whatever and uh he gave us like a bunch like a case of kit kat bars or whatever and we were breaking them and throwing them out to this squirrel right and the squirrel ate a bunch of it and died right and because i guess they can't have chocolate or whatever but in the distance dude you saw like 30 other squirrels hopping over yeah and by the end of the day bro we'd oh i have to remember that when we squirrel hunt we'd oh yeah bro you get a kit kat i don't know if it works with that new white chocolate one but i know like the original one the old school one bro i mean you could look in the distance of the park and you just saw them all just hopping over you know don't tell somebody from Louisiana that Kit Kats are going to skyrocket.

44:38That's what we do. We squirrel hunt. Oh, dude, you'll shoot anything if it's in a frigging tree out there. There's a parish. If a rope swing gets a little wild, somebody will gun it down. There's a parish in Louisiana, and up until literally a few years ago, the school board, opening day squirrel season, the school board closed down so everyone could go in the woods on that opening day. I mean, can you imagine that? The whole town is absent on opening squirrel season. Yeah. everybody all the men and kids are in the woods and all the women are in the bars that's a party you know uh that's a party all the squirrels but yeah um so the fentanyl deaths has been high that's been really really crazy it's out of control yeah it's out of control ods used to be you know death is seasonal we have different deaths in different parts of the year we know what to expect oh really yeah so you know um winter time you're gonna get your um you know a lot of naturals because the weather's changing.

45:30You're going to get hunting accidents. Cajuns falling out of tree stands, breaking their neck. Everything imaginable in the woods. You got Cajuns with guns in the woods. So then you get into the springtime. Weather starts getting nice in Louisiana. We don't have many months of nice weather. So then here comes the motorcycles. So we started getting motorcycle deaths. A lot of organ donors right there. Lots in the springtime. A buddy of mine's office is full of motorcycle helmets. And I asked him one, I'm like, why don't you have a motorcycle? I mean, literally around his whole office. And he'd run an autopsy clinic.

46:07And he said, I just keep the helmets on all the ones we do. Yeah. So that's a little bit of a collector's item he's got going. Yeah. So those all had living people in them that died on motorbikes. Absolutely. Yeah. Motorcycles are dangerous and I'd love to own one. But in Louisiana, we have so many roads that pop out on major highways and you're doing 60 miles, 70 miles an hour on a motorcycle and a car pulls out, you're done. Right. Yeah. You know, but we see that in the springtime. Summertime, we see drownings. So every season brings its own type of natural. Yeah. Manners of death. Manners of death.

46:41You know, the holidays are expect the unexpected. Really? You get, for us, you get the most brutal, you know, tear jerking, sad cases, especially around Christmas and New Year's. Uh, whether it's, um, like take me through something. Yeah. So, um, a family, you could, you know, a family dies or, or children, a lot of children that, so a family that, uh, mom and dad have three or four kids, three or four kids are killed two days before Christmas in a car accident. I mean, how do you deal with that as a parent? It's hard enough to lose one, much less all. But again, that's the holidays. We, we get these, these heart wrenching cases.

47:23I always tell people to expect the unexpected during the holiday time. You really have to be careful. In Louisiana, we drink 24-7 all day. Oh, yeah. It's just what we do in Louisiana. And so driving, a lot of people going to Christmas parties and events. They pull out in front of somebody. Drinking and driving. There's preventable deaths. And oftentimes I'll tell friends and family that if you have to go somewhere and it's a two-lane highway versus a four-lane, even though it might take 15 minutes longer to get to your destination, take that bigger highway where you're not one-on-one with traffic.

47:59Because I'd guess that 70 % of the cars you're passing are drivers under the influence. And that's all year long. I mean, you realize how close you come to other cars when you're on a back road, you know, trying to get somewhere. Well, especially in Louisiana, bro. Yeah, there's no lights. The roads are dark. and also i remember even back in the day man if when you got out of work you got a freaking beer yeah you would have you'd see people all the time driving home at the stock going across the causeway or something they wave at you and they show you their beer bro it was part of it's part of the culture i don't know about anywhere else but in louisiana we have places where you can pull up drive-in windows and get margaritas that's just common oh you could stick your head in a stranger's fucking house window and they'll put a shot of brandy in your throat that's right that's right you know if you need it so yeah that's just louisiana bro it's just part of it you know i think um so that makes road road safety that much more dangerous um take me on like has there ever has there been a case like take me on a kind of a heart-wrenching case you know and i don't know i feel horrible even saying that like but take me on one that really took your heart out of your body man um well first i want i want to give my condolences to the police officers that have been shot lately uh where i'm from the parish that i live in neighbors of our parishes next to us we all vermilion where you guys in saint landry okay so lafayette parish evangeline parish just in the last week they've had four three or four incidences where officers have been shot and killed um so it's really sad you know those are those are always tough uh police officers are good guys you know we were all scared of them when we were younger yeah but you know when you get to know these guys and they're all great people.

49:42And it's hard to see. I had an officer that was shot years ago and it was such a surreal thing to zip up an officer in a uniform. He had the black stripe across his badge. I guess that was around 2015 when they started doing those black stripes on their badges. And it was such a surreal event to do. But back to, you know, those heart-wrenching cases, for me, it would be friends, family of friends. Yeah, if you had to roll up on somebody and then it's somebody you know? Yeah, that's the thing is when I'm getting to a car accident, you know, in my hometown, I start seeing cars that I recognize. And as I'm walking up to that, But to the wreck, you know, I might see a Nissan Ultima or something.

50:32Oh, yeah. For a minute, your heart drops like, oh, is that so-and-so? My best friend lost his wife unexpectedly. And so they had moved in from Tennessee. And he had lost his wife unexpectedly. And that was really hard. They had, you know, three young children at the time. And it was hard dealing with that case. A 13-year-old girl taught me more that night than, I mean, still to this day when it was right around Christmas. And I can remember having to take them to the ER to show them their mother. And it was tough. She said, Mr. Toby, all I want for Christmas is my mom. And, you know, we put so much effort into Christmas and presents and holidays.

51:17And here I have this 13-year-old girl. It really puts things into perspective for you. you know um and still to this day i do my job because i was able to save my best friend's life by being able to remove him uh when he was depressed you know suicide is real um and he ended up getting help and i had to i had to help him get help but you know i feel if i wouldn't have reacted after that event that he may not be with us anymore so that's that's what keeps me going in this in this case so there's some personal involvement there in certain situations your ability to you guys are like oh well if there's drug use here i can help send this person or you know help commandeer them in a direction maybe that could help them if they're willing to go if there's like uh if i'm associated with the someone who's passed and i'm associated with a friend i can lead them into um therapy or keep tabs on them or i've seen enough instances right where you you statistically know hey bud there's probably a 50 chance you're going to stay alive after you've lost this person in your life, you really need to keep tabs on yourself or get some help.

52:24Absolutely. Wow. Absolutely. That's funny. I didn't know the coroner. You know, I didn't know some of the access points that they had and some of, like, the direction signs that the coroner's office can point people in, you know. Absolutely. You don't think about that. You just think about somebody rolling up, you know, and making a call, you know. Right. You know, Satan's line judge. You know, you rolling up and you're just the referee. You call them into heaven or you call them out. You know, only the coroner can arrest the sheriff. And that's from the early on, you know, 1900s, if not earlier.

52:59So when the sheriff needs to be arrested, only the coroner can go out and do it, which is interesting. Yeah, there's all kinds of things that we do. There's also sexual violence and when rapes are involved, that goes to the coroner's office. and they do, you know, we normally send people to get rape kits done, but domestic violence and things like that also fall under the coroner umbrella. We do a lot of things. And is it straight rapes or gay rapes? Like, do they all happen? It would be, well, I guess they all happen, but I don't know how to answer that one. When a woman is assaulted. And it could be a woman or man?

53:41Absolutely. Wow. Absolutely. We'll refer them to an ER where there's the appropriate staff to do that. We're a rural coroner's office. Now, how can somebody trick you? How do they trick the coroner? Say there's a police officer or something, right? Say somebody in a town wants to trick the coroner. A body is deceased. Ah, okay. And they want to, and maybe they did it, right? or there's some espionage going on how do they trick how do they get it past the corner because i've heard that if you can trick the corner sometimes you could get away with murder that would be a true statement but it's hard to trick the corner right um i don't know that well if someone does we had a case for instance where um the wife shot the man and he was laying there deceased.

54:36He was a farmer. There was a shovel on the ground. And you know, farmers don't put their tools up dirty. They're going to clean that shovel before they put it up. So there's a muddy shovel laying on the side of a deceased man. And the wife said it was self-defense. So when we walked up to the shovel, we just picked it up and dropped it from, you know, two or three feet and all the dirt fell off. So you mean to tell me you shot him twice, we could see that he grabbed his wounds. And so did he lay that shovel down nice and gently after you pumped a few in him, you know, or did you stage that there?

55:16So things like that, you know, that always don't make sense. You have to really think about some of those things, but we have ways we can tell if, let's say you strangled someone or used a pillow, You know, there's no, you know, that's one that's often thought about. When we're doing our assessment, we can see a thing called petechiae. So it's basically retinal hemorrhaging. So when we look into the eyes, we'll see little red dots. And we know that that person was strangled or suffocated. So let's just say, you know, I kill somebody and then I hang them. Well, I can tell if they were breathing when they were hung versus not.

55:55And that's all based on that retinal hemorrhaging. Really? Yeah. So we have a lot of, another thing is lividity, the liver mortis. So if you die laying on your back, after a few hours, your body will appear red on the surface that's laying on the ground because blood, when it stops flowing, drops. Okay. So if I walk into a house and you're laying on your stomach, but your back is red, well, somebody moved that body for sure. So we can tell when people try to, and a lot of times it's they rolled them over to do CPR. Most of the time it's innocent, but there's ways to tell. So that's when the forensics come into play.

56:38We look for deception when we're talking to people, We get stories from family members and even social media. You'd be surprised that since the evolution of social media, how much that helps us. Yeah, I saw that they had that case in South Carolina, that Murdoch case or something. Yeah, yeah. If you saw that or not, where the man allegedly killed. I think he was convicted of shooting his wife and son. But they had some social media of the kids where it was just been a few minutes earlier and they could hear the dad's voice in the background. So they determined that they had been in the same space at the same time or something.

57:15Cell phones, you know, Facebook, you know, I have I've had a case where the guy posted, I'm sweating like a whore in church. And then he's found deceased and he's holding his chest. Well, that tells me he had a heart attack after I examine him and rule out foul play. You know, maybe maybe an adult say, I mean, you know, people like to say, you know, how bad they feel on social media. My leg's killing me today. Well, we can tell if they threw a blood clot. So when somebody throws a blood clot, they have this cyanotic or bluish color from the nipple line up. And that tells us, okay, they threw a blood clot.

57:50We just throw a blood clot. Well, so basically a piece of fat gets clogged up in your pulmonary and cardiovascular system, and you die. I mean, it can happen to any one of us at any second of the day. Oh, God. I mean, you throw a blood clot. It's called a pulmonary embolism. And what do you do right when it happens? What do you do if you want to live? You start CPR, but sometimes you can't save them. I mean, most of the time it's really hard. Now, there are tests that can determine if you're likely to have one. So they start you on blood thinners. Okay. You know, very common that people are on blood thinners, people with heart disease.

58:28We can manage that with blood thinners, but you can't stop them all depending on the size of the clot. Yeah. It's called a DVT, deep vein thrombosis. And majority of people in Louisiana, what happens is the veins in the legs narrow. Oh, yeah. I've seen some. And that's from anything from nicotine to poor, you know, high cholesterol. Bad shrimp. Oh, yeah. Bad shrimp. Too much boudin cracklings. You know, all your arteries and veins get clogged up and there's not much room for error there. So a piece of fat breaks off and you're out. Lights out. Damn, bro. We've had people in the ER. I mean, I'm sorry.

59:04And I see you. They're there for a blood clot. and they code and there's not much we can do to save them. But, you know, we'll look at social media and the person might say, you know, hey, I just recently had a surgery on my leg or my knee's been throbbing or my legs are throbbing or my calf is, you know, swollen. People post all kinds of things. So that can help us paint that picture as to what may have happened in the death. Some of you guys have seen me in the past on social media, cooking up a beautiful little steak or little cutlet in a pan, a real pan that looked like it had been through the Civil War or something.

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1:02:29That's right. That's betterhelp.com slash Theo. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. ¿Estás disfrutando de mi podcast? Thanks to Babbel, I know what that means. Do you? Well, recently I've been learning to speak Spanish with Babel. And you can too. Because with Babel, you can start speaking a new language in just three weeks. That's it. Babel offers it. You know what I'm saying? The best way to learn a language is through immersion. Living where the language is spoken natively and using it every day. One in five Americans have learned a new language on their bucket list. If that's you, check it off the list this summer with Babbel.

1:03:20Because with Babbel, you start speaking a new language in just three weeks. That's beautiful. Wow. Science says our ability to learn new languages peaks when we're children. But since you can't go back to being a six-year-old, Babbel is the next best option. Here's a special limited time deal for our listeners. Let's get you started right now. Get 55 % off your Babbel subscription, but only for our listeners at babbel.com slash Theo. Get 55 % off at babbel.com slash Theo, spelled B-A-B-B-E-L.com slash Theo. Rules and restrictions apply. Wow, the coroner. Yeah, I guess there's a lot more to the coroner than I thought.

1:04:05There's a lot of avenues going on over there. It's a lot of investigation into very basic stuff like home appearance, body appearance, weight. Were they compliant with their medicine? Did they see their doctor? Did they go to the doctor often? There's so many things that we can tell about someone that's deceased. Now, what about like a suicide? Say there's like a hanging or something. What's that kind of – what does a body look like? I feel so morbid asking about some of this. yeah well how much would you be surprised what bodies look like from certain events that's what i think i'm because in my mind i think you i envision walking up on a body and it's still like oh yeah there's you know that's jerry right you know but would you even know a lot of times who the person is absolutely you can tell who they are things that change are their eyes we call that fixed and dilated okay their eyes are open and staring into space their pupils have dilated.

1:05:09So, you know, their face kind of has a different appearance or we can tell by their eyes that they're not with us. That's actually what he's looking at there is the retinal hemorrhaging. Wow. So if you try to smoke, if you try to suffocate someone or when they hang, they'll have those retinal hemorrhages from the... From the veins in your eyes. Yeah. And, you know, you can't breathe so it causes those hemorrhages to form but bodies look like bodies you can tell you know it's suicides are tough um you know there's uh they're supposed to leave the body hanging or in its natural state until we get there we need to look at the ligature marks which is actually the rope where they made the knot where's it at and then of course it bruises the body so So when you have a perfectly symmetrical line on their neck, you can tell if somebody maybe grabbed a wire and choked them and used force to do that because it's an even line.

1:06:07But when it's not even and the ligature mark is consistent with how they were hanging, then we can tell. And there should be petechiae. So we know that this person died by hanging. We use humor. It sounds bad, but we use humor to get through some of these cases. No, we had a police officer interview, and he said the same thing. He goes, sometimes you'll see cops standing around laughing. They have to do it. You have to because what you're dealing with is really hard to see. So you don't make jokes about the deceased per se, but you joke with the officers, and you try to lighten the mood some. Everybody can relax a little bit more.

1:06:50and one thing for hangings is you always put the rookie on the front of the body. So when you have to cut a body down, you know, you can't just cut them and let them drop. You want to protect their body. So you put the rookie cop in the front. And so when you cut that rope, that last little bit of air comes out of their mouth. And so that's the worst place to be standing is when you're actually removing someone from a rope because they exhale. Oh, that's that last puff, huh? It's that last, yeah. It's like a fart, but out of the front. Exactly, and it's rough. Oh, yeah, that's a long one, brother.

1:07:24So when you say, hey, put John on the front, everybody that has experience knows it's not where you want to be. Dang, and who catches him? You got to catch him? Well, everybody kind of helps, whoever is around. Oh, I thought it was like the bouquet at a wedding or something. Yeah, sometimes it is. We rely on the fire department, and those guys do a great job. We have bodies that are, you know, house fires or more so motor vehicle accidents where the body's been burned beyond recognition and they're stuck to the seat. You know, we can always call out the fire department. And those guys come and, you know, cut bodies out of cars and they'll help us put them in the body bags.

1:08:04Same as, you know, decomposure. You know, you get bodies that have been in a home with no electricity for three or four days or weeks. And the body is basically liquefied. Really? I mean, it's like a skeleton with like a puddle near or what is it like? Is it? Yeah, it's, you know, it's like really sunburned and bloated and seeping fluid. And the worst smell you can imagine. I mean, everybody says when you smell death, you'll know it if you smell it again. But, you know, scraping those bodies up is tough, you know, and sometimes, you know, it's a large person. You got to get the fire department out.

1:08:42recently i had one that was up a staircase that uh like kind of like the one you have here that spins up and the person was 300 pounds so we had to call in some extra muscle to get that subject down you know so fire department really comes out and helps us and how big is a body bag if it's a big big y 'all make big bags yeah they make you know small medium large and extra large you know for those people you ever needed to you ever needed to double bag somebody um yeah it depends on the body bag itself. We can do things to, you know, when it's really messy, suicides, gunshots to the head, we can wrap the heads in bags before we put them in the body bags and things like that.

1:09:23And that body bag in some ways is a very, very sacred thing, not sacred, that's the wrong choice of words, but that's where all the evidence is. So if you're working a homicide, when you put that body in that body bag and seal it, only we can do that. and once it's sealed it's not allowed to be broken until it gets to the autopsy facility because you'll have evidence on that body you know even the maybe the sheets they were laying in and all that can go into a body bag and we've had cases where the funeral homes you know for whatever reason wanted my new body bag so they would take the person out of the body bag and put them in an old one that's patched up with duct tape and send them to autopsy and you can't do that just to save the money they wanted to keep the bag you had that's a nice bag i'm going to keep that one and throw them in this one you can't do that that's that's that's really important evidence you know so but not you know we body bags are or an important thing that we use sometimes it's just to get the body out where there's a lot of people around so we'll put them in a body bag and or on the side of the road we'll have them put in the body bags but they're also uh used in the collection of evidence and so when you open a body bag you're getting everything in there and an officer walks through the body bag, it's like, man, you just walked through my evidence.

1:10:36Are you shocked sometimes by like the ineptitude sometimes of certain newbies or just whatever on forces? Yeah. And, you know, you learn to deal with it. People just don't know. They don't know what they don't know. Agree, man. But I've had, you know, I've had. So when I see an officer struggling in a home and the smell is really bad, if I see you struggling, I'm going to slow down because I can deal with it. I've trained myself to where the smells and things don't bother me. But, you know, I'll watch that officer kind of eyes are getting watery. Their face is red. They don't like where they're at.

1:11:10And I'll kind of slow my investigation down. Like, what's his date of birth? And, oh, let me go dig for that. So just as a way to kind of. Help him? Well, no. Or put him through it? Put him through it. You know, I'll slow down when I see him struggling. You're going to make him put him on the grill a little. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Oh, boy. You know, do you know where his last address was? and they're like, oh my God. Oh, I just want to get out of here. But I've had officers throw up on bodies. Really? Right on top of the body? Yeah, and we're sending that to autopsy. So it's like you just put all your DNA on there.

1:11:41It's like a baptism at Arby's, baby, right there. That's horrible. Yeah, well, speaking of Arby's, we can talk about that one later. What happened? There was a death at Arby's? Yeah, in Lafayette. Oh, of course. They found a lady in the cooler. Did they? Yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah, we got to meet, huh? Yeah. I mean, poor thing, though. So she was stuck in there. And she got stuck on accident? Yeah. I think the lock malfunctioned and they found her the next day. But that was in a small town. Oh, there's a dead body in Orbeez. I mean, even my brain went to, oh, man, did somebody put her in a freezer?

1:12:14Of course. I'm not thinking walk-in cooler. I'm thinking small cooler. Here we got it right here. New Iberia. Orbeez manager who died in the freezer. the family's attorney inspected the Arby's this week and is now telling all as part of his inspection attorney Paul Skrabanek locked himself in the Arby's freezer to get a sense for what she went through in her last moments the thermometer read between negative 20 and 30 degrees as soon as they opened the door I got a feeling that I didn't want to be in there with the door shut pierces your clothes you go stiff he was in the freezer for 4-5 hours is that what it says go back Skirmanek says, oh, the woman was in there for four to five hours.

1:12:56Employees that was, that they're, it's under my understanding from talking to one of the employees that there was, that was there with her son when he found her, that she had completely frozen. Wow. Hypothermia. Do you think that's a nice way to go, kind of? No, not at all. I mean, look, you know, you ever get cold? I can't imagine, you know, what that poor lady had to deal with. Yeah. in that circumstance. And her son is just weight, yeah. It's tough. What does that body look like? Did you roll up on it? No, that was in another parish. But, you know, I'm sure she was cold and stiff with, you know, but pretty normal.

1:13:39What position do people die in a lot? Is there a lot of you? I've always fathomed that I would be holding my crotch. I know that may sound crazy. Yeah, no. But I think it's like a protective mechanism, you know? Right. I think I would be like... Yeah, just holding your figs and... Yeah. Or like maybe... I don't know where my head would be, but... You think you'd rather die with your mouth closed or open. What is like a cooler... Not cooler, but like what's like... Yeah, I mean, we find bodies and all... You know, a lot of people collapse, fall face forward. A lot of people in bed. I think mouth open probably.

1:14:15Yeah. Like, you know, then you're almost like. Yeah. Opera singing. Yeah. Something or like, hey, bro. You know. We find bodies. Or a lot of guys holding their junk. Yeah, some. Not all, but some. But it happens sometimes? Yeah, absolutely. I knew that. Absolutely. Yeah, I always wonder, is there a position that's best? Say I'm going to die, right? Right. And the last thing that I can do is be helpful to the people that are going to find my body and to the coroner's office. what's the best way for me to die to make it easier on whoever's gonna the best to make it easy on you guys and the staff well i guess uh die in a bed you know okay that that's the easiest way that's the best way it's clean you have covers over you it's easy for the family yeah families oftentimes want to see their loved one we have to clean them up to a degree sometimes they can't see them you know because it's such a morbid uh picture but you know um dying in bed is very common on your back um one time i had a guy guy die standing up and i'll never forget that they called me out to a an apartment complex somewhere and so as i'm walking into the to the scene with one of the sheriffs a friend of mine they're like well that's him and we're not quite in the house yet and he said he's standing right there and i said what do you mean he's standing well the guy died standing up and i for a minute i thought they were messing with me.

1:15:43I'm like, y 'all, y 'all, y 'all gotta be messing with me. So I even like tapped him on the leg before I, you know, he had just, the way he had fallen, he was standing up at a sink and his head just kind of landed on the, he just kind of wedged himself in and his legs were locked. And that's how we found him. That was so odd, you know, that's interesting. Yeah. If he really just kind of locked in there, he's just getting his steps in, I guess. I don't know if he was brushing his teeth or what that was but oh i didn't i didn't believe him i'm like that can't be him and they were like i'm telling you he's standing up i said well that's that's one that's a one for the books yeah because what are the odds that it's like when you watch those videos of those people trying to throw a bottle in the air and make it land you know right right i've only had one die standing up in 18 years oh wow so it's a rarity that's very rare yeah in my opinion you know now and how tough is it like you like if there's an do you guys ever deal with animal animal animalia death yeah so do you guys this corner deal with that too or no yeah we deal with all all deaths so uh now don't get me wrong we've had people call us because they have a dead dog or they got bit by a dog and it's like oh you're calling the coroner's office i yeah go to the er yeah call your neighbor and call him an asshole yeah you know that's what's happening but no um animals well so if you die in a home that's locked with animals you're those animals will eat you really fast, especially a cat.

1:17:06Dogs will hold out until they have nothing left to eat, but a cat will remove your head in 24 hours. And I'm not talking, I'm talking literally hair on the floor, no head and nibbling into their chest. Um, even cats that were loved by their owners, or is it just cats that you think were had something with the owner and they're, and they're going to say, this is my time. Yeah, no, they're, they're absolutely feeding on you. Uh, you know, I don't care how much you love that cat and that cat loved you, he's going to eat you. And, you know, sometimes we get to cases where there's, you can tell that the cat or dog had been nibbling.

1:17:41You know, it might be on the face or the cheek or so, the toes. But then sometimes it's unbelievable. I mean, it was one of my first cases. And I just never imagined that they could do that much damage. Smaller dogs. Now, a lab won't. Labs, for some reason, don't eat their owners. you know unless they're locked in for months i guess they would but i find it more weenie dogs small dogs and cats cats cats don't they don't wait you know it's like a coon ass around a barbecue pit a cajun i should say around a barbecue pit they smell that that odor and they start nibbling so yeah yeah people start snacking early they want to appetize next time you're petting your cat yeah just know that when you die he's gonna eat you he's gonna pet you back with his teeth absolutely what uh and how how soon after we talking 30 minutes after yeah probably an hour or two i guess they start new this they start they start nibbling and i love my cat you know we have cats and dogs how could you still love your cat knowing how they're gonna yeah i don't care if they eat me after i'm dead you know that's cold as hell bro well think about that man my buddy He dies, bro.

1:18:52We've been friends forever, right? He's laying there, dude. And I fucking carve a little bit of him off. Yeah. It's pretty intense. I make a fucking sandwich or something out of my boy fucking Randall. Yeah. Well, they do it. After an hour. They do it. They do it. You know, I'm kind of new to cats. We just got one to keep the mice down. But yeah. Oh, he won't keep the mice down. He got a long. He's playing the long game, though, dude. Yeah. That's when they lay on your wrist. They checking your blood pressure, dog. That's what that cat's doing, bro. They're waiting for you. They're licking their lips.

1:19:23Wow. As is the weenie dog. The weenie dogs will do it too? Yeah, small dogs. I find that small dogs, well, they'll jump up on the lap of their owner and, you know, I guess start nibbling. Will they eat the wiener to jump to or not? I've never seen one, but absolutely. Absolutely. You know, most of the time it's, I kind of feel like they're nudging you to see if you're still alive. You know, maybe licking you at first and then when you don't respond and they just start, you know, they just go after it. It's pretty intense. And what about like a turf? If, say, the body's in the wild, it's in the water or something, do they eat the junk?

1:19:59Do they eat the junk off a body or not? Well, usually the body's covered. So it's going to be arms. Oh, okay. So it has clothes on. Yeah, you're going to have pants on. And how big was your waist get if you get bloated? Say I'm like a 34, 35-inch waist. How big would? Yeah, you can go to a 43. Oh, wow. In the bloating stage, the bodies. That's like my buddy Thomas. I think he's like a 43 or something. You do swell and get a lot of edema. And then it starts to almost liquefy. We've had cases where we have to move the body or pull that body out. And I've grabbed the leg of somebody. And when I pulled, everything came off.

1:20:38All the skin. You pulled the whole leg off. Yeah. It didn't detach the leg, but all the skin. If you'd have kept pulling, would it have? No, I don't think it would have pulled the leg off. but all the skin just, just, you know, that does happen. But the body's so frail at that point, you know, what is the, do you think you have some infatuation with death? Why are you able to handle this sort of thing? I couldn't handle some of the images that we pulled up, right? I mean, really, you know, like what, what makes you think you're able to digest that visually and emotionally and everything? And how does it digest for you?

1:21:12Yeah. You know, I started healthcare really young. in life, high school. All my friends were taking shop and I decided to take a nursing aid class. I figured I'd be able to bathe the girls. Well, that didn't work out so well. That body shop, homie. You know what I'm talking about. I should have took shop. That woodwork. But always had a fascination with healthcare. And then I went into other things. And at one point, cardiopulmonary respiratory therapy. So we manage life support systems. Okay. So then you're getting close to death then. Yeah. You're on the edge right there. RT deals with trauma.

1:21:47We're the airway in that regard. So we're involved in every traumatic death. RT when you say that? Respiratory therapists are always in the ER working for major codes and core accidents and things like that. So you were around a lot of that? So yeah, I mean, we've managed the life support system. Sometimes we have to pull the plug or turn the machine off. And that's what you say. You'd have to actually pull the plug? Yeah. Well, you just turn the power off, but yeah. Yeah. You'd think you'd at least pull the plug. Like at least it's like. Eventually you do. I mean, you have to take the machine out, but, you know, terminating life support on somebody.

1:22:23By the time you're at that stage, they've done brain tests to see if there's any brain activity. And these people don't want to live on a machine. You know, it's not like they're alive and talking to you at that stage. But again, we see all, you know, we we see a lot of trauma. And I've always had this – I've always wanted to see. I wonder what paramedics and police see. I wonder what people look like when they don't make it to the Eeyore. I can remember having a – my brother was in the Iraq War, the first one a long time ago, and he brought back some pictures. And he had some pictures of extremities and things, and I was just fascinated to see that.

1:23:04I don't know why I was born that way. But I was really fascinated to see some of that. And a la carte, huh? Yeah, and so then later in health care and seeing trauma, we don't, you know, for someone that's not in health care, yeah, it's hard to see and imagine. But I don't, you know, I don't necessarily see my eyes or I'm looking at science and anatomy. You know, that's just a femur or that's just a brain. This is parts of the anatomy that, you know, that we've, you know, studied and seen before. Yeah. So it's not like I'm seeing you. You know, I'm not seeing Theo. I'm seeing, you know, just in general, brain and knees and whatever.

1:23:46Yeah, I mean, people say, how can you be a coroner because you see bad stuff? Well, an orthopedic surgeon will take your arm off, and they're dealing with blood and, you know, all kinds of things. And they remove your arm and then put it back on. You know, so it's the same thing, kind of. It's just what we see. Do you ever feel like, so you determine the time of death? Yes. Wow. And how do you know if you get it right or whatever? Like does a buzzer go off or something? Like how do you? That's actually tricky, you know, to the exact time of death. Okay. There are things that can be done. You can do a liver temperature.

1:24:25You can, you know, the stage of decomposure. If there are maggots and bugs on the body, that can give you a window of how long they've been down. You know, flies lay eggs. And then you can even take the maggots and send them to a lab and they can tell you what their age is. And that can help you determine time of death. But that's a bit extreme. There's other ways. When was the last time you spoke to Johnny? When was the last time anybody saw him? What were his complaints when you saw him? When was his last Facebook post? When was his last phone call? So you can kind of get a window into that time of death.

1:25:03even rigor mortis you know it comes on and then it lets go and there are certain time amounts on that so we can figure out you know an approximate time of death you know unless you're working in the er and they stop breathing or the paramedics are there because maybe they're sluggish but they're not completely deceased um you know that's an exact time but other than that it's a it's a it's a guess based on evidence okay um when they call us we issue a time of death it's when they contact us. So we get called on Johnny by a nurse in the ER or a police officer. And I immediately look at my watch and say, okay, time of death is 1015.

1:25:41That's not the exact time they died, but that's when they notified us. So close enough. Yeah. And if you get it right, do you get, you don't get like a notification on your phone? Like nobody, no, there's no reward or anything for getting it right. No, not, no, not at all. Now it does help the attorneys and when there's lawsuits happening or, you know, they need to get as close to the time of death as they can for homicides because then it puts people in different places. You know, where were you at 1050? You know, so it's that, you know, that's why sometimes it's really important to know as close as you can get to that actual time of death.

1:26:18And is there like a toe, you guys do actually, you always hear about toe tags, right? People put a toe tag on a body. Is that true? So we don't put it on the toe, But labeling that body is very important. If I'm going to send you to autopsy, I don't want to mix you up with someone else, or I don't want to send you with nothing. And then they – I always type a report on my death. Everything I see, I have to type and put into a report. So when that pathologist is reading that report, I'm painting a picture for him, and that helps him in his autopsy. In fact, I brought you one. I brought you your own personal toe tag here.

1:26:52I didn't want to hang that on the wall. uh gosh this is uh you can hang it on your toe if you want but if i should i don't know if my mom would be happy if i accept this right now oh to be determined to be determined yeah yeah i have you also put that under sex yeah so well i have you i think i have you in nola that's good yeah that's where i was born at so yeah i could see myself dying over there bro that's a great conversation piece you know yeah it is actually that's not a bad dude i thank you yeah sweet of you bro do you speaking of new orleans did during hurricane katrina did they bring in a lot of coroners to help out what happens when there's a natural disaster like that yeah we can you know did you get called in i didn't go to new orleans um actually i volunteered for lafayette because there was a lot of not coroner but health care in general oh i see so there's still yeah there's a lot of other recurring deaths and even in the outlier areas yeah i'm just thinking of katrina katrina because it was one of the more known hurricanes i think what else was there ida i'm trying to think what else was over by you guys hurricanes yeah ida there was some in texas If there's a big natural disaster, is it like we need all corners to this part of the country?

1:27:56Does that ever happen? Well, we do have protocols. If a plane falls out the sky and there's 100 people, we do have protocols. We can reserve a cooler truck. We can call Walmart and say, hey, one of your big freezer trucks, can we borrow one? There's a whole team of people that were prepared for that, mass shootings and whatnot. it's important to identify who each person is so we can contact their families and and and you know yeah we had a you know i've worked with the ntsb on an airplane we had a little little it wasn't a lot of bodies but and what is ntsb so that's the the that's the when a plane goes down it's the federal agency that investigates plane accidents okay and that one was unique because we had a little small Cessna that fell out the sky.

1:28:45And, you know, those guys come in and do their own autopsy. And it's amazing from just wing damage of the plane. They can tell you exactly where that plane was going and what direction to try to figure out what went wrong with that plane. Have you rolled up on a plane crash before? So I was called to one. Yeah. And what was that? That had to be, from your own perspective, probably interesting because that's not a common thing. Yeah. It was interesting to say the least. It was, you know, two guys and And it was actually a tough experience because somebody was flying over in another plane and had taken a picture of that and posted it.

1:29:21And then they took it down. So when something happens in a small town, everyone starts talking. Hey, I heard there was an airplane accident or a motorcycle accident. Well, everybody thinks of their loved ones. And in this case, family was reaching out to the deceased. and it's hard to watch that phone ring and just stare at it and know that you know this person you know is trying to get a hold of their loved one that one that that can be tough um to see and you know you just know that that mother or father is trying to get a hold of their son so that probably happens often then you're at a crash site and there's a ringing phone right or any yeah any site you know news spreads fast you know i think johnny od'd within johnny's phone just starts blowing up.

1:30:06You know, people are trying to call him. I mean, I lost my best friend and, um, we didn't have phones back then, but trying to contact them. So that's very common that phones will just ring and ring. And you don't, you don't want to make that notification over the phone. You don't know. You want to send an officer out there or sometimes we'll go with them, but you will. Yeah. We, we, we don't have to, but I've done several ride alongs. It's not a, not an easy thing to do. Um, you know, when we, when we go out to a scene, we're often forgot and we're the last responder, right? When we go out and your loved one is deceased, whether it's sudden or natural families are in a different mindset.

1:30:45Uh, they, you know, rarely remember us, you know, from that, that case. And I always give people my personal sale. It's like, look, you're going to have questions later. I'll, you know, call me. I'm going to, So I'll sit with your family and tell you exactly what went on. Have you ever had someone try to call you and just lost and trying to get you to bring their loved one back to life? Have you ever had any? No, but I've had people, maybe you didn't look at this one right or not believe the cause of death. And I can't share all that information. I can't share everything that I see and find with the public.

1:31:23so I'm 100 % right, but some people, maybe it's a suicide, and they don't believe that this person would have done that, and they're, you know, did you investigate it for a homicide, and it's like, well, believe you me, that's the first thing I do, you know, so we do get those calls from time to time. The hardest part, and we were talking about suicides earlier, you know, the blood and guts don't bother me. But for me, anyway, when I read a suicide note, that's what sticks with me. I can remember every one I've read. For some reason, it's personal at that point. Not, hey, I'll be in the barn, come find me in the barn.

1:32:02Maybe a child emails their suicide report note to their family. Can you imagine? And or just a long letter. It makes it more personal, and that sticks with me longer than anything else. And what do those entail a lot of times if you're looking through them notes? What are they putting in there? Well, you know, don't blame yourself kind of thing. I'll always be an angel on your shoulder and just real personal things. You know, I didn't do this because of you. You know, for some reason that sticks in my brain more than the actual scene. And, yeah, it's just hard to deal with sometimes. You know, that changes the mood, if you will.

1:32:46Has there been a debt that was really just blew your mind at how tough it was to deal with? That's something that maybe it attached to something you had personally in your life or an experience that helped you learn about yourself? Yeah, that's the, you know, those are when you'd ask me about personal ones. I guess when I see, you know, I have children. and when maybe like not that long ago, I had a 22-year-old lose his dad. And to watch that 22-year-old walk up to his father in an ER, I could imagine my children coming to see me. And those hurt. Same as with babies. All those things are hard to see.

1:33:25They really take a toll on us. And there is no out for us. We have to deal with it best we can. they're not always easy you know my escape is music i listen to music on the way there and i'll listen to music on the way back and it's on the way home and it's two different types of music depending on what i've seen but we all need that escape yeah like what will you put on like some credence clearwater or what were you like what kind of tunes are you talking about or just something like a like a mozart or what are we yeah no i mean my music my music tastes are all over the map but you know um heading out to scenes i'm i'm jamming to some atlas and chains or some metallica and i'm just getting in the hole.

1:34:04Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to. Yeah. I'm rocking. But, you know, when I'm leaving, I'll go mellow. I'll go I'll go from, you know, maybe some counting crows to some sometimes even black gospel music. I mean, my brain just goes to, you know, depends on the case and and what I see. But yeah, music's an escape for me. You know, it gets me out of that. But, you know, I don't do this full time. We all have other jobs. We're very – we're paid off of the budgets, and we don't have much. I mean, I literally, when I go out and draw blood on the weekends or vitriol fluid, when I get home, I throw it in my fridge at home in the butter dish.

1:34:47You know, my kids know, hey, Dad, I found my little boy. Hey, my dad has dead people's blood in there. Yeah. You know, we work around our jobs. Oh, damn, that's Satan's condiment right there, boy. Damn, that's at last. Wow, that's preserves, bro. We're really on our own. Yeah, my kids are desensitized. Back in the early Windows 98 when you could set your screensaver to just roll through your pictures on your computers, every once in a while one would get away from me, and it would just be this gory picture, and I'd have to take it down. But, you know, at Sierra, discover top workout gear at incredible prices, which might lead to another discovery.

1:35:26Your headphones haven't been connected this whole time. Awkward. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving. I've, you know, yeah, my kids are desensitized to say the least, but they hear me telling stories about what I'm working with. And so they know how dangerous drugs are. Or they know one thing, you know, I wanted to talk about preventable deaths and deaths that we see too often. Yeah, that's a great question. Like if you are a parent, if you are just a human being, you know, you mentioned earlier, like the holidays is kind of a time where you need to be a little bit more cognizant because things happen then, you know.

1:36:04Things happen fast. Yeah, not to take a two-lane highway if you can't a four-lane. It's so funny. After living in a bigger city and you get back to a smaller place, two-lane roads, like highways, seem so dangerous. You're like, it's crazy to think that both of us are going to pass each other safely with all the common accoutrements they have. People having cell phones, whistles, you know, perversion toys or whatever. And two people are going to go by each other at 70 miles an hour safely. Yeah, those people are on fentanyl and heroin and coke and mushrooms and you name it. And they're five inches from you or your children or your family.

1:36:42You know, you really see things. So for me, ATVs and four-wheelers scare me. I've had even seasoned farmers will die on four-wheelers. And it's kind of a thing. Kids love to ride four-wheelers, and they're just so dangerous. If they flip on you, they're going to break your neck. There's a great possibility of that. The same with you hear of Polaris Rangers and other UTVs, a four-wheel golf cart-like four-wheel drive things. People don't consider the flip ratios on those things. And I've had several cases where three or four children die on them. You may go to Tractor Supply and get a cheaper$8 ,000 for a four-by-four, four wheels, and people think, well, that's safer.

1:37:28But the flip ratios are terrible on those cheaper ones. Yeah. And they flip when kids are just riding them in the yard. So that's my big thing as four-wheelers. I'm scared to death. I've always have been to let my kids ride them, uh, just because of what I see. Yeah. Well, I think, look, you're the guy who knows you're the guy who's standing at the finish line and seeing who's crawl, who's finishing early. Yeah. And what the causes of those finishes are. Yeah. And if you say that it's motorcycles, if you say that it's four wheelers, then that's what it is. You know, that that's some of the risk of things.

1:38:02Um, yeah. Don't ride a horse. If you don't know how to ride horses, Mardi Gras is a big deal. a bunch of people in Louisiana, everybody gets drunk and rides horses. Yeah. I mean, horse throws you off, you hit your head, you're done. You're drunk on a trailer, you fall off that trailer, it runs over you, you're gone. I mean, we see Mardi Gras is an interesting time. Yeah. I literally throw a pillow in the back of my car because I might be on the road all night. You know, we see a lot of motor vehicle accidents, you know. Drunk driving? Drunk driving, you know. Hold my beer and watch this kind of deaths, you know, where I've had guys trying to jump other cars and, you know, duallys wrapped in trees 15 feet above the cement that were reduced to the size of a very small car.

1:38:47Yeah, Kia Sophia. Yeah. So, you know, Mardi Gras is an interesting time to say the least. A lot of accidents. You know, obviously you get brought on all kinds of calls and having a certain level of humor, like um trying to be keep things humorous if you can right you know right are there ways you do that at crime scenes are there crimes where you just been like you guys can't help but laugh at the uh just the fact that it even happened the circumstances surrounding yeah um well one i had it wasn't really a coroner's call but i was called out to uh death by a city police officer. So I get there and, you know, when I, again, we're in a parish of 80 ,000.

1:39:28A lot of people know me. They know what I drive. You know, I can't go to a friend's house and have a cup of coffee without my phone ringing. Hey, did so-and-so die? I'm like, no, I'm just hanging out, you know, still alive and well. But I got called one time and the guy was still alive. They were doing CPR and he had a heartbeat. So I walked, as I'm walking up to the house, I see the families, I see their posture change like, oh, shit, the coroner's here. It's not good. And so I walk in, and the paramedic says, we got a heart rate. And I'm like, he's not dead yet? Who called me? So I immediately walk out, and I wave at the family.

1:40:07And that guy's still alive today. And you can imagine them saying, you were so sick. Wow. The coroner came. you know um those are you know we see crazy things uh one lady was told to put jelly she had a really bad infection she was putting jelly um between her legs okay somebody said put some jelly on it well she was right what you mean like uh smuckers or something well that's what she was using okay normally it would be more of a ky jelly or something for that and they her legs were purple And it was like, what's going on here? And her neighbor said, you know, well, she was putting jelly on it.

1:40:46And it's like, wait, what? You were using the smoke? That's the wrong kind of jelly. But, you know, we've seen wedding rings around penises. It's like, man, how'd you even get that on there? Yeah. Wow. That must have been, that's a big promise. Yeah. Yeah. Huge. You know, we see bizarre things like that, that people do. Autoerotic deaths are actually very dangerous. We actually get not a lot, but enough of them. And that's where people are pleasuring themselves and also hang themselves? Yeah, they're starving their body of oxygen. Okay. Doing that, you need a spotter because it's so common for people to die when they're doing that.

1:41:23Well, shit, if you've got a spotter, you don't even need to do it usually. Well, it depends. But yeah, I guess people's into different stuff and people are artistic. Bad things can happen in that regard. Just bizarre, bizarre things. Now, back to that, we were talking about animals. I had a call from police and they weren't sure. They didn't see a gun, but it appeared that someone had, there was foul play based on the face of the decedent. Okay. And that was just rodents, you know, that had gotten into the home. Yeah. So it looked, you know, suspicious of a homicide, you know, so. Let enough rats get in there.

1:42:03That's right. So we can get out there and say, no, no, this is, you know, we'll still send an autopsy to be sure in some cases. But don't make a cheese out of anything. That's right. That post-mortadella. That's right. That's right. I'm fascinated by that cat that took somebody's head off. They'll take somebody's head off, huh? Yeah, completely. Completely. And where do they hide it somewhere? No, they eat it. Oh, my God. I mean, but bone. I mean, they eat bone. There's no skull left. It's gone. It's a wig on the ground next to a body, if you can imagine. and down into the chest. I could see their left main stem from their lung.

1:42:37And it's just amazing how fast a cat can eat you. So, you know, have a dog door, have a cat door. Not a bad investment. Let them leave, huh? You know, they can get in and out the house as needed. Yeah, we had a lady that had a cat. She had a panther live in her house, and she didn't even know this old lady. And it killed someone. Had a panther? Yeah. Like a real panther? Yeah, she didn't know. thought it was like a rescue cat or whatever and it killed someone at a surprise party wow imagine that dogs i've had dog accidents you know i love pit bulls they're gorgeous uh dobermans beautiful animals but i've seen people that they've just reacted and grabbed their neck and killed them you know those animals can be great and they can be dangerous you know what about some unique animal deaths you ever rolled up because louisiana bro you know i'm saying anything um people some people you know now you know that other than you know having a good pet having a pit bull as a pet and it biting the owner and getting them in the right spot you know that no alligators no no alligators not yet now now bodies that have been chewed on by turtles and possums and other animals when they're dumped into the water that's uh that's hard you know That's tough.

1:43:56But, again, that's not a whole lot of animal deaths. Now, riding horses and not knowing how to ride, like I mentioned. Horses can really mess you up if you don't know what you're doing. It's a big animal. Oh, yeah. At Mardi Gras, once I saw two horses making love when the cops were still on their back. Oh, wow. Yeah. Well, we see that. And that's, you know, somebody joins the Mardi Gras ride with a horse that hasn't been fixed, a stud. And they'll climb the back. Oh, yeah. yeah and you know that's oh that's harrowing as a kid seeing your stepdad you know yeah getting overtaken by some animal yeah well yeah that's a that's a thing um and other crazy cases are anal insertions it's like what people and what are people doing it for for pleasure oh okay you know we would see that a lot in the eeyore but i had a case where the guy obviously didn't want to go to the ER.

1:44:51And so he'd had a hammer and was using the backside of a hammer. To put in his buttocks? Right, right. And that can perforate your colon and then you get really septic. Yeah. So, you know, things like that. Damn. That's great. You know, another interesting case would be huffing where people use keyboard cleaner to get high. And those deaths occur in parking lots of stores most frequently you're going to find a huffer in the parking lot at walmart oh because they get out because they yeah and and so i had one guy um actually a veteran and that's how he would stop his nightmares it was the only thing that worked and so law enforcement's on scene and they're like we can't find any drugs but there's air cans everywhere you know and that's dangerous the worst is when you think you're doing like huffing like one of those things and you wake-up call.

1:45:47Oh, yeah, dude. That's the Lord trying to say, hey, look, Bubba. You have time to stop. Yeah, I'm going to rescue you real quick, Daddy, you know? Because that's the worst, man. The synthetic drugs that you see. So next time you're in a gas station, just look around. You know, they sell Kratom. They sell all sorts of stuff. My nephew was on for a while. So Zaza is one. Scourge or something? What the fuck? Look up gas station dope or whatever you can. Gas station heroin. Yeah. He was on. So there's kratom and, you know, there's the worst one that I'm seeing now is, well, that's still for sale is.

1:46:27T-neptine. T-neptine, right. That's Zaza. So what that is, it's an antidepressant. It's actually a tricyclic antidepressant that tags to the MU receptor, which is your opioid receptor. So supposedly, if you take one, it gives you that opioid feeling. but you're taking an antidepressant on and off and in large amounts and that's very dangerous yeah and and once so i mean you can take commonly prescribed lexapro for a week or two and when you try to stop you start having these uh you start detoxing on this medication so people that get on that stuff can't come off it's actually when i was reading on it it's worse than heroin the withdrawals from that stuff.

1:47:11And speaking to gas station owners, they said people come in here every day, they scrounge up 30 bucks to buy a bottle of this stuff. And they do it every day, every day. And kids can buy this kind of stuff. They can go to a gas station and buy some bullshit, you know, that you don't really know what it is. When the synthetic bath salts and the synthetic marijuana came around, at first it was a synthetic marijuana and we didn't really get any, there wasn't anything bad happening, but then they outlawed it, and then it came back, and that's when it got really bad. That's when people, and I'd never seen this, but people were chewing other people's faces off, and it completely changes their psychopathology.

1:47:56They just go crazy on it, and these companies, they keep making them illegal, but they keep adding a different chemical to it so they can sell it again and this was this was really we would you know we bad batches there's never a good batch but we could tell when there were bad batches because of the psych units we would get a lot of people that needed help being committed to bad batches of these fake of these guys uh like weed or those fake yeah fake marijuana or bath salts and we'd get calls where you know jimmy's in his underwear holding a crawfish talking to god in the middle of a street and he was on that stuff i had one guy that was doing 60 miles an hour and jumped out his truck while driving oh and that's what he was on you hear of a red rover with somebody probably yeah when well no i don't know what the voices in his head were telling him but he bailed on that truck um yeah it's dark the things that can happen man and so um is there moments where like so say if you are because you're kind of like you determine if people are dead or not right yeah well yeah they're dead i mean yeah have you ever had somebody and they're not dead yeah that's well in that one regard where they still had a heartbeat but okay but yeah no it's never uh or are they dead i mean even the law enforcement people can tell you know when someone's not breathing you never showed up and be like this guy ain't even this guy ain't dead no okay no not yet not yet if you ever like put somebody in a body bag and you low-key had like some like you didn't like that person and you were like not like you were personally like i'm glad they're dead but there was a little part of you like a because we all have kind of twisted parts of our souls yeah that felt a little bit of joy you think no no i uh i've never had that happen even even the biggest enemies um you know i don't you know they died their family's going to be upset it's uh yeah you know yeah but i hear you i guess the right person hasn't died yet right maybe one day but yeah because i'm a i think of myself as a loving person but i can't you know we all have we're all very complex individuals and and uncomplex and so i think i'm just wondering if part of me if i ever put you know did the put that zipper up on somebody if i'd be like yep you know got him you know or something like that yeah not not yet not yet we We try to be as compassionate as we can.

1:50:19And, you know, there's family and children involved, and it's tough. Do you get invited to a lot of the services and stuff? Do you have to go to that thing? Are you guys required to go to any funerals? No, not really. Only for friends, really friends. And maybe there's a few cases that were just really hard where the family was struggling, and I'll go in there and give them a hug. You know, COVID was a thing, and COVID was really rough. Really? My opinion on COVID, from what I dealt with, when it started, like I said, death is seasonal. And March, April, May, it eases up. That's our slow time.

1:51:01We don't get as many deaths. Now, ODs and suicides and homicides are 24-7 now. I mean, that happens every day. but the the the end of spring early summer is when we don't get as many calls and i can remember training somebody and she would say when am i going to get something good when am i going to get something good and i kept saying just be patient just be patient you know it's like bass fishing you might have just some normal everyday stuff and then boom you get a big one yeah well i used to work fast food too and i remember everybody wants to do the fries or something like the first day you're there right now well it's like dude you can't just do that covid came and you know we had heard rumors that there was this virus and we'd went my wife and I went to Colorado and we were aware but it it wasn't out the box yet and then shortly after we got home we just started getting phone calls and phone calls and phone calls I mean I still have PTSD from talking on the phone you know in health care we didn't know what was going on people were dying left and right.

1:52:07I'm talking, I would have one hospital on the phone and I'd have to say, can you please hold? And I would answer the other one. I'd have three calls coming in every hour and that stayed constant for, you know, three or four months. Just the amount of deaths we had. Now, Louisiana, we have a lot of unhealthy people in general. And when, you know, COVID was the same, same thing every time it was before the nurse would tell me, I'm like, well, wait, let me guess. The patient came into the ER, wasn't breathing. Y 'all put them on a CPAP. Y 'all ventilated them a while. They failed that. Y 'all put them on a ventilator, and the family withdrew care.

1:52:44Am I right? And they were like, yep, you got it. It was the same manner of death every time, and it was rampant. We didn't stop. Some people say, oh, I don't believe COVID, and you're pronouncing these people and blaming it on COVID. Sure, they had diabetes. They were obese. They had all kinds of problems. but the volume of deaths that took off at that time was unbelievable and it was a lot of my it made it awkward for my a lot of people i know my friends i've lost i've lost friends to that um friends parents you know it was just it made it awkward i'd go hang out with my buddy and he knows you know he knew that i pronounced his father and there was a lot of that going on during covid people ever get mad at you for pronouncing their family deceased no no no but But it just kind of makes it awkward.

1:53:34They don't blame it on you, huh? No, but it made it awkward. So when you look back at that time, right, because there's tons of things being said about COVID, right? Right, right. Especially, you know, things like it's not real, right? So you would dispute that totally. Absolutely. There's no doubt something came along. Yeah, I've been up for four days answering the phone. I mean, I went through, I saved them. I went through five subject notebooks in a month. You know, it was overwhelming. Did you think that the manner of treatment, because then there was a lot of rumors like, oh, people put people on ventilators they shouldn't have.

1:54:15That's what killed them. Do you think that there could have been some, and I don't know a lot of this stuff. You may have more insight than I do. Do you think that as the medical professional was figuring out how to best handle people that could have contributed to more deaths? I think we found better ways to treat them and make them manageable. Steroids were the first thing that popped into all of our heads because they couldn't breathe. We need to shrink that soft tissue and give them steroids. Later, they said laying prone or on your stomach made it easier to breathe. Ventilators, coming from respiratory therapy, when the lungs get stiff, you have to go to a pressure ventilation.

1:54:54and it's actually called ARDS, A-R-D-S. And it's an acute respiratory failure in adults where their lungs actually become stiff. So when we're ventilating someone, we're using a volume-based air to open and close their lungs. But when they had COVID, their lungs would stiffen up. And the only way to truly ventilate them to get their CO2 down was to jack up that vent on pressure support, on a pressure ventilation, that is. So you're sending in a pretty high PSI, you mean? Yeah. Yeah, we were ventilating them with air pressure instead of just that volume flow base. And we had to. That was the only way you could get their lungs to open and close.

1:55:38And then eventually they wouldn't. They would stiffen up. So when people were saying COVID's not real and, you know, it was, you know, I knew the treatment and I knew what was going on. And we've never had a stretch where everybody needed pressure ventilation. It was like, what is going on with this? And that's what happened with everybody. We just couldn't ventilate them. Sure, diabetes played a factor. Sure, congestive heart failure played a factor. We didn't get many young, healthy people that died of COVID. But the rate and the amount was overwhelming. So I knew it was real, and it was scary.

1:56:14You got to understand that. again i told you i had a can of off and a badge as as gear well the police departments and and even us we didn't have much ppe at the time so i would be on scene and you know pronouncing someone with covid and i'm looking around and the cops had homemade masks you know yeah talking tampon i mean maxi pads and panties stretch over their ears to block their airway some guys wearing yeah like a Halloween costume. Yeah. And, you know, I can remember one time where on a scene and, you know, when you find a large amount of money on a scene and you're in that moment and you open a duffel bag and there's, you know, $80 ,000, it's just human nature to do, you know, wow.

1:56:58You stare at it a minute. Not that you would take it. It's just interesting. But you deserve 10 % of it. Yeah. I was saying, you fucking got it. You walked over there. Yeah, that's my tip. That's that tariff, bro. But so one time, you know, we, this guy was, He came in. He worked in an offshore or something. And when we're trying to figure out why this 50-year-old guy or 40-year-old guy is dead, we opened his bag. And sometimes we'll find drugs and other things. But in his bag, he had some true 3M masks. And I can remember that. And we were all just salivating over it like, wow. He'd probably taken them from offshore.

1:57:37But we didn't even have that protective gear. And just to see him with a case of those, it would be like, man, I would love a box of those right about now. It was scary, you know, because we didn't know what COVID was and what it could cause. And family and children and getting home, I'd sit outside every night and watch TV and stay away from my family because we were so exposed to that, you know. Vaccinations, that's a whole other story. But, you know, I took one because I was just seeing too many deaths. Yeah, I can imagine from your perspective that had to be crazy. yeah because you're like here's this new thing we don't know what's going on a lot of people are saying that it doesn't exist a lot of people are saying that it's um you know that it's man-made a lot of people are saying these things that like whatever methods we're using to uh treat people or what's killing them you know um yeah there were people on social media friends of ours that were going out of their way to tell people that it was all a bunch of bullshit then you know don't wear a mask and don't do this.

1:58:38And here I'm sitting with compositions in every part of the house with deaths. And I'm thinking, why are you going out your way to tell people this isn't real or it's a political hoax or what, you know, just it was tough. Yeah. Well, I can certainly from your, come follow me around and let me show you how real this is. You know, it was, it was, uh, people had their own opinions about it. So I, I never got involved into the, you know, who said or why it's here yeah i just well i think at first i didn't know if it was real i don't know i've always been super untrustworthy of a lot of stuff so but um but also i never got different people's experiences are different too some people never got sick so they never had any you know and then they never knew anybody that got sick right so then to some people it's like what is even going on you know and that's their reality you know um so and you can't blame them Right.

1:59:32Yeah. That's what I'm saying. You can't blame some people. You can't blame their reality. I think some because that's their truth. How could they know anything else? Right. But then I think there was a lot of uncertainty and also just people not trusting the news anymore. There used to be a time where you trusted the news. Right. Absolutely. You felt like it was genuine. It at least had some semblance of the best interest for humanity. And that was kind of eroding right then. Right. So I think at that point when both those things happen at the same time, you know, a lot of conspiracy theories.

2:00:02or sometimes what can later be seen as truthful. A lot of stuff that was conspiracy then, now people are saying it was correct. So it's just a lot of that's kind of - Absolutely. There's a lot of levels to it. There were alternate ways to treat yourself. Joe Rogan was right about some of the medications and therapies he encouraged, as well as talking about obese versus healthy people. And all that was spot on. Yeah. You know, but it was tough to witness and see and pronounce a lot of friends and I knew it was real right especially right where you are I mean you're standing right there at the finish line dude absolutely do you ever feel like you were like when people died does it feel like they're going somewhere else do you feel like do you think like all right this person's going to heaven or this person's going to hell or do you ever have any little thoughts like that or um yeah I have opinions you know on some people that I that I might know but me too i'll say nothing but me too yeah um no my you know you know they're in a better place um i often think you know god it's going to be hard to to lose my father or or my wife um and then i i witnessed my father-in-law die of cancer and he was struggling there at the end and uh to know that he was no longer struggling and when he finally passed it was a there was a peace, you know, so I think you can, I can accept that in some regards later in life, because, you know, you see, you see the, the, the really bad deaths, and you see people that struggle, and sometimes it's, you know, I'm glad they were, God took them, you know, away from this pain and suffering, so, yeah.

2:01:46Yeah, do you feel like, do you ever feel like people are going, like, do you get any insight, I guess, into just being around death so much, right? Because a lot of us aren't around it. Right. We can't even go, you know, we, people want to find a dead body. They can't, you know, people are, but you get to be around it kind of, do you ever feel like that people are like, do you ever get any insight if people are leaving to a better place or if they're like, do you feel anything like that? Do you think you get any more insight than just the regular person sitting around wondering what the afterlife is like or anything?

2:02:22No. But in those instances, I'm so overwhelmed with evidence and looking at things that I'm not really, again, when I see someone that was suffering or maybe they're 80 pounds and they were once 200 pounds, I'm, you know, somewhat relieved that they're gone. But as far as for the afterlife, you know, I know in my faith that they're going to a better place.

2:02:51But I have, you know, back to your question. I guess I've joked and said, well, this guy's going straight to hell. You know? Ah, bitch. Yeah. Sometimes you got to. But, yeah, he's going straight down. But, again, that's just personal joking and stuff like that. Yeah. You know, so crystal meth came, and that drug is really rough on people. It turns people into monsters. Really? It really does. These people, I mean, they just turn into demons. They do things that most normal people wouldn't do. But it's interesting when I have someone that abuses meth and I go into their home because these people are up all night fidgeting.

2:03:33They can't sit still, right? Yeah, they do electrical. Sometimes they want to – I've had people take electrical wires and try to create things, and they shock themselves. But what's interesting sometimes is the things they make, like drone deflectors. I went into a house once, and they had all these weird things hanging. And I actually went home and built one just as a memorabilia. But they'll take an electrical cord or rope, and then they'll sew or wrap a barbecue spatula on the end of it. It makes no sense. But they would put them in all the corners of their houses. And I'd ask families, like, hey, what's that?

2:04:10What's going on with all this? Like a dream catcher at an Arby's, huh? Yeah, yeah. And it's like, hey, that's what he said deflected the drones. So it's kind of cool. like oh man you know the paranoia would set in and it's interesting you know it's sad and it's terrible and all of the above but it was interesting to see some of that it is some of the creativity there's a lot of like odd creativity in myth you know you can tell when you go into a house when there's calculators taken apart and just things that you know are disassembled everywhere you know that okay this person was was on some type of amphetamine you ever had to go um you ever found somebody hiding somewhere real neat like or somebody died during hide and go seek or something uh yeah well you know there was a guy under a house once you know and uh you know no clothes on i wouldn't like that part yeah naked under a house eating popsicles oh yeah yeah i mean that you know that's uh that's different yeah yeah that's a different way to do it pcp you know That makes you a bit crazy.

2:05:18But, you know, truck drivers, we get truck driver deaths a lot. They're from out of state. Why? Why do you get truck driver deaths a lot? Well, not a lot, but we get them. We have truck stops, and a lot of times they'll pull over. And, look, truck drivers aren't healthy. I mean, they're big guys because they drive all day long. And, you know, sometimes I'll get called out, and I'll be in somebody's truck. I've never been in a truck driver's truck before until I started doing this. And I'm looking at how they live and, you know, they notify their parents by their family by phone. And so, you know, maybe the wife's flying in to get his personal belongings and the truck's full of condoms.

2:05:53And it's like, oh, man, I don't want this wife coming into his truck. So, you know, hey, can we throw this stuff out before the wife gets there? Yeah, give him a little, you know, I don't want the family's last thoughts to, you know. So there are different cases and different positions that we're in for sure. It's an interesting job, and I'm very sympathetic and compassionate. We all get faster as we work. We get faster at things we do. We learn how to do them faster. And every once in a while, I have to stop and remind myself to slow down and to make eye contact with that family and to be really compassionate.

2:06:36Yeah. yeah that's the nature of everything I think once you get in the flow of something too much yeah you do it too fast and you don't stop to maybe spend that extra time with them to reassure them that their family is taken care of things like that yeah I mean it's easy to even joke from being removed from it you know it's easy sometimes to try and make levity of some of the situation you know um what are there things you that you guys have done like in the moment or things ever that happen you try to keep some levity in the situation because yeah the only opposite to such a dark moment is some levity you know yeah we'll tease the officers joke around with the officers on scene not so much the person yeah in there but um you try to pick up their spirits in all sorts of ways.

2:07:33Sometimes you can ask them to hold something, and they think they're actually doing something that needs to be done, and they're just holding a needle. An hour later, they're still standing there holding that needle. It's like, you can let that go now. But yeah, you have to have a bit of humor. Otherwise, it'll eat you up. Yeah. You know, you know, what's sad is for folks like us, you know, we're underfunded. We we use our own cars, you know, the things we do. Wow. We don't have protective gear. So when I go out, we recently just got some. But when I go out to say a homicide, which is we're seeing so many of those now.

2:08:12Yeah. African-American kids are dying by gun violence and Caucasian kids are dying from drug overdoses. and it's overwhelming. But when we get called out to a homicide, a shooting, in one of the cities close to us, they're rated the number one dangerous place to live in Louisiana per capita for the homicides within my parish. And so it might be 3 o 'clock in the morning, and I go out to a shooting, and I'm walking up to that scene. Well, by the time I get there, I'm, again, last responder, right? So I get there. By the time I get there, everybody in the neighborhood and family and friends are all on scene.

2:08:51So I'm parking three blocks, four blocks deep and having to walk through a crowd of people that I don't know that are upset, angry, high, you name it. And I have to go to find that body and the police officers. And it can get hairy. And I'm in scrubs. I'm not dressed in a bulletproof vest or anything. I've been on scene where shots were fired. It was a block away. But, you know, when you're in scrubs and shots are fired, you know, it's pretty tough. Yeah. Yeah, because somebody's already dead. Yeah. I would have started saying that. Hey, you know. Yeah. Well, there was a case in North Louisiana where the guy was shot and the paramedics were working on him.

2:09:33A friend of mine was actually on this scene. And so they're working on him. And a guy walks up and says, hey, man, is he going to make it? And the paramedic said, yeah, I think he's going to pull through. And the guy shoots him right there. Boom, boom, boom. and puts three more rounds in him. So scene control can be tough when there's two officers and 300 people. Yeah. Just recently, and again, my condolences go out to this officer who was just killed in another parish next door to us. I mean, great guy, really good guy. And there wasn't many people there for scene control, and one of my friends was, showed up as a marshal.

2:10:15And the whole crowd was telling them about time when he all died, you know, and just saying things that, you know, y 'all all need to die. And, you know, you have guns, but we have bigger guns. When you're by yourself, you know, at 10 o 'clock at night with 300 people cussing at you. I mean, that's that's that's hard. And that's hard for those officers. Yeah, they don't get paid enough to know. And they don't. They don't at all. They really don't. Nobody would. And a lot of these young officers haven't been through health care. and they see things that I see. We see them more frequently, but still those young officers that are 22, 23, they're looking at things that they've never seen before.

2:10:55Like you mean victims and stuff like that? Yeah, yeah. Well, every death that I see, decomposed bodies, you name it, children and babies. It's tough for those guys. And I have partners in a company where we do psychological evaluations for law enforcement. Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah, so we have a team of psychologists that review. They take them through different tests and instruments and determine if they're suitable for law enforcement. And right now, the only people that are applying for law enforcement are high risk, and that's what makes it tough for city police. You've got to hire somebody who was shoplifting two months ago.

2:11:36right you know so they're not getting a good batch of officers right now and cops in general have been put down uh you know the whole defund the police oh yeah all that stuff's ridiculous so it's it's uh yeah and you have people moving out of cities there's just so much there's so much crime in a lot of cities you know i was just in memphis uh the other day and it's beautiful great city right gets really dangerous you know there's a lot of like there's a lot of shootings a lot of black crime too you know unfortunately like when i was growing up two of my best friends my black friends got killed by other young black men you know i think it's just a bummer some of that happens because it makes it scary to live in certain places very you know and then it's like if you want to move away from places like that people say oh well it's like white flight or you're right or it's a racial issue but it's like it's just fear it's like you just want to be safe it's you know it's i don't know and there's look There's all types of violence, but it's sad to see a lot of that.

2:12:37A lot of these kids are 14 and 15 years old, and they're trading video games. And, hey, I'll buy that game from you. Okay, I'll meet you. And then hand them the video game, and then shoots them. So it's not all drug-related deaths. Some of it's over, you called me out on Facebook, and they kill them. I mean, I don't understand that. They're not scared to go to jail or prison. And they do, when they're 18, they get let go to some degree. But it's an overwhelming amount of young, healthy kids dying on both sides. I mean, again, the drug abuse is rampant and the homicides are rampant. So you're noticing more in white community, it's drug overdose.

2:13:22Absolutely. And in black community, it's more gun violence. Absolutely. Yeah. It's scary to see the disregard for life and the accidental ODs. And I can't stress enough that the synthetic drugs that are being sold in stores are dangerous. It throws these kids into seizures. But they're being sold in stores? Absolutely. You can go. Oh, you mean like at the gas station? Gas station. Like that gas, kratom, crack, gas, crack, all that kind of like. Gas station heroin, yeah. Buzz, Mitch, whatever it's called. Yeah, like a fake Adderall. It's called Adol. And kids go buy this. That might not kill them, but they have seizures.

2:14:04That's what kills them is they'll have a major seizure when they take this stuff. Can't believe we allow that stuff to be sold then. Yeah. They say watch Alabama for some reason. Everything starts in Alabama with that kind of stuff. And then Alabama outlaws it. But as soon as they outlaw it, something else is coming back. yeah you know so it's um it's scary raising kids you know um even on social media you know you can you can get on um instagram or or any of the platforms and order drugs yeah and and you know while we're sitting here i can order a pound of cocaine and have it shipped to my house and it'll be here in three days you know and kids have access to that going home with y 'all man you what i'm saying yeah what do you want no i don't but no you're right though if there's vpns people can you can get like it's the u.s the the the postal service is the biggest distributor of illegal narcotics in the u.s you know it's it's it's scary raising kids with gun violence and you know just all these different things that can yeah yeah it almost seems like it's just becoming like another country that i think that it seemed like when i was growing up you know Yeah, drugs didn't kill you back then.

2:15:20No. Nobody shot you. It's different. Yeah. But there are still positive things that I can help people with. One area I did want to mention is babies. My godchild just had a baby. I like babies. Yeah. I see we work babies. We have not a large amount, but babies die, newborn babies. some of the things you can do is you know when we raised our children they all slept in the bed with us we put them right there in bed with us and luckily we never lost a kid but if you have a baby i've never pronounced a baby in a baby bed or a pack and play one of those little small cribs you know what happens is parents will put babies in in the middle of a king-sized bed because they're so small they can't even roll yet and they put them in that bed and they'll they'll basically suffocate we all used to say it was sids but it's truly positional asphyxia so that airways like a straw and if that straw kinks but as long as you're using baby products you know like a baby bed i've never pronounced the baby unless unless of course they were using like an adult blanket in a baby bed so there's things you can do in that regard you know to that's things i can teach people so not have your baby in bed with you don't put your baby in bed with you don't put them on the couch sleeping while you wash dishes they'll roll off they'll roll off they'll get wedged or their the the pillow is so soft that they can't adjust their uh head and neck you know so there's things i can teach people that you know how preventable deaths and babies is one of them something that i can you know share with with with new parents and yeah now it's super important yeah so you know there bad shit can happen when you do everything right you know so you just got to be careful and every day is a gift you know do you think there was a reason you got into that line of work then do you think there was like something that like you had this like you know this dark side that led you into it it seems like you came a little bit more through like the medical profession um or through the insurance like just was it the what were you guys selling you said or what uh products were you working with before you got into well i was in respiratory you know so i but i've always had a uh i've always leaned towards health care um i've always worked in the trauma area of health care um so you there's something fascinating about it a little bit yeah i've always just had it i was just born to do this kind of stuff you know i don't i don't do the coroner's office for money it's not a you know i saved my best thing my best friend's life and i look back on that and you know it was a blessing to have that yeah that ability amen to be able to just be there and be a part yeah if you hadn't been there who knows yeah so real gift you know but yeah i don't know what what shifted me into it um it's kind of like i was always set up to do this kind of stuff.

2:18:26Yeah. You know? And you can handle it. Absolutely. And to your retired police officer, he was like, man, those guys can eat. Yeah, we can eat. You know? That doesn't bother me. I can eat a meatball sub or a boudin crackling's in an autopsy break room. Damn. You know? When you're hungry, you're hungry. I guess, brother. Damn, boy. I don't know. I wouldn't have a French dip, though. That seems a bit much. Yeah. If you're... It's pretty good. I like French dip. I would do that at home, I think. Yeah. Now, we don't eat standing over a body. You got to stand off to the side. Yeah. Yeah. Just a little break room.

2:19:00You can go hit it and quit it, you know? And plus, down in southeast Louisiana, bro, or if you're down in southwest, a lot of the bodies down there could be caused by Dustin Poirier, too, dude. Yeah, that's right. If you're down in southwest Louisiana, bro. Yeah. If you got a good ass whooping. I'm not saying he's a serial killer, but I definitely know. Right. Right. I bet if you, you know. And, you know, fighting, we had a young guy die. He was punched once. And it was a hard enough hit, and he collapsed and hit the cement. And that's really unfortunate. But, again, it doesn't take much, you know.

2:19:37Life's pretty fragile. Does it seem like that? It really is. It really is. Every day is a gift, man. Some of the things we get frustrated with, with our family and friends, are not worth the frustration because they may not be here tomorrow or you won't be here tomorrow. And I learned that. Yeah, have you learned that? Has that had a big effect on you? That's really fascinating. Yeah, you're like, this is not a big deal. Yeah, it's really not. You could be pumping gas and a tire flies off a car and takes you out. I've had single trees fall on cars, just the most bizarre things. But when God's ready for you, he's going to take you.

2:20:15And so, yeah, it makes you aware of your surroundings. things but you can help people uh you can you know back to the preventable deaths you can tell people what not to do and uh you know it helps you through life you ever do you ever worry about your own ego like i would be like oh i'm like you know like i have some special gift or something does that ever no man i'm real laid back um what you see is what you get i'm cajun you know yeah i just kind of roll with the flow i'm not special you know i don't get speeding tickets that's a plus that's fair it's nice knowing the police yeah um i i keep a blood vial with uh i don't even know what i have in it maybe coffee i keep it in my glove box in all our cars so if i'm going to houston and i get pulled over ever since ebola man cops don't like body fluids oh so if i get pulled over you know i'll whip out that biohazard bag with some coffee in And, hey, I'm transporting this to whichever direction I'm going.

2:21:18I'm bringing this to Methodist. Oh, it's body fluid. You can go. They don't even want to shake my hand on scene. Oh, man. They give me a little fist bump or an elbow. Sometimes my hands are dirty. And intentionally, I'll say, hey, can I borrow your ink pen? And they're like, no, bro. Can I hold your flashlight? I need to look at this. And they're like, no, bro. So, you know. Do your hands get dirty on the scene? Yeah. I mean, but I'm wearing gloves, right? So there was a case. I have to put my hands in it, the worst of the worst, worst of the worst.

2:21:55Pedestrians is something I didn't talk about, man. Pedestrians are dying. And what is pedestrians? Pedestrians, people walking. Oh, God. Man, so you had mentioned going out and maybe having a beer or two. Well, you go out and have a couple of drinks, one drink at a dinner meeting, then you eat dessert and have a cup of coffee, and you're driving back on that dark two-lane road at 11 o 'clock at night. There's going to be somebody walking in black clothes on the street, and you're going to run over them. I mean, it happens. And as soon as you do that, they're drawing you blood. But pedestrians are dropping like flies.

2:22:29And we're so distracted. Because people are on their phones. Yeah. I mean, look, I text and drive. I'll be the first one to admit it. And sometimes I'm driving, I hear that rough sound when you venture off the road. And I'm like, oh. you know oh yeah that's the fucking lord's braille right there that's right and look man that that that could have been somebody standing right there it happened it used to be walk walk with traffic now i tell people man walk against traffic so you can see who's coming because everybody's distracted oh that's such a great point yeah that that's totally changed absolutely walk towards traffic so you know yeah you you have to be the one who's alert now they're not alert unfortunately people are walking towards traffic looking at their phones so even they swerve out you know bike riding man we were raised on bikes you know oh the team murray mafia you know and we don't let our kids when they were younger i don't let them ride bikes in town anymore because people aren't paying attention adults on bikes get mowed over you know it's it's adults on bikes is weird also i think yeah you don't need to be wearing them tight pants anyway and that helmet But if you do decide to do that, do it in a track.

2:23:41Yeah. Because, man, we've had friends that have gotten hit on highways, and they're not dead, but, you know, they've taken really bad, had really bad accidents, you know. So, yeah, we see, I forgot where I was going prior to that, but we do see a lot of pedestrians. No, I think you're just talking about preventative things, you know, what that, you know, like things to look out for. You just want to cover everything, too. I know that you wanted to, you know, just be able to share a lot of information as to, like, I think we've learned a lot about all the different areas your job kind of encompasses, the different types of things that you can see that come in, the different responsibilities of the coroner's office that we didn't know about, and then it's your affiliation to it, that you're not some kind of dark lord or anything.

2:24:27Yeah. That you are just— I don't have any Adams family tats. Yeah. You know? You're just a man that can handle it. I'm a little different. You know, I'm definitely not right, but, you know, we have a, we, so we have a Willie Nelson mannequin in my house. He's a full-size mannequin. People are always like, man, what's that? You know, my kids even when they were, they were scared of them, but I had a crazy aunt who had mannequins as company and she was living in New Orleans, Covington, if not, if I'm not mistaken. And when we moved her back, she had all these mannequins and I was a young kid. And every time we would go to her retirement home, they were in different positions, wearing different clothes and that was her company she was really had some psyche issues yeah so when we had kids i'm like you know what i need to carry that family tradition we need a mannequin in here so uh we had one we took it to on uh arkansas vacation with us and the the camp next to us just wasn't quite sure about us yeah because i pointed face in their cabin right and then uh i found a willie nelson mannequin in a place that the guy sold it to me and it's just a lot of fun it's different it's weird yeah it's cool uh we took him to new orleans in a wheelchair and pushed him around but most people didn't even notice him you know yeah but i would set him somewhere and just watch people walk by and say excuse me you know so uh yeah we're different people we you know but well yeah if you play in a man if you're taking mannequins around in wheelchairs i think that that is a i understand i think it all makes perfect sense now but yeah i think you got to have some fun louisiana's always been like that absolutely people always having fun my mother loved willie nelson um i'm trying to think we grew up near a prosthetic place that was making process over at this joint and they'd throw a lot of them out the ones that didn't come out good oh wow so we're always beating the shit out of each other with fucking legs yeah just ambidextrous legs and all kind of shit that's awesome yeah it wasn't really legit you know right so kind of adjust your perspective on things absolutely you know louisiana's always had a decent you know i think it's it's not a place where there's a lot going on but you know there's not a lot of big businesses i don't think there's any fortune 500 companies in louisiana except maybe entergy and i feel like they probably i think that they moved out but so it's a lot it's just about people and having fun yeah that's louisiana have a good time yeah it really is man and i think you got to make the best time you can no matter what you're doing and you guys are in you guys police officers it's just a position where you know it's not very rewarding and you catch a lot of people on their worst day absolutely the worst days yeah nobody calls like hey corner yeah having a great time right right like i said i can't go have a cup of coffee with a friend without them thinking that that you know they did bad news small town you know yeah dude you're almost like that plink like that uh like a uh like a roulette ball you know yeah you just drive around the neighborhood and then you stop wherever you want especially during covid you know you could park anywhere and somebody's dead i just stayed home I mean, it was like Monty Python, you know, bring out your dad, you know, but I'm not dead yet.

2:27:28That's what it was. You know, it, uh, yeah, no, it's an, it's an interesting, it's an interesting field for sure. Well, look, man, I just, yeah. Well, I appreciate you coming in, man. I appreciate you spending time and, um, yeah, it's really nice of you, dude. This has been cool to learn about, you know, I think we like to just learn, uh, from different occupations and stuff. And so now I know a lot more about what a corner does. Yeah, it's always interesting, and somebody has to do it. And, you know, we try to get the job done as compassionately as we can, you know. So really appreciate you having me on.

2:28:06Yeah, man. You're the guy that does it, man. Toby Savoy. That's right. Thank you, bro. Louisiana. I appreciate it. Yeah, dude. I love to come down there, bro, and catch a body. Y 'all do ride-alongs or not? No, we can. Yeah? You have to throw on some scrubs or a lab jacket. But yeah, we'll bring you. I'll do that. Yeah, it'd be cool, man. I would love to come down, man. We could get Discovery to do a rural coroner's office. Yeah. Watch me check the fridge and call out groceries. I like that, bro. Yeah, that'd be a cool game show. You call out the groceries, then we guess who's dead or whatever.

2:28:38Yeah, yeah. Or why. Yeah, exactly. Well, it'll pretty much be heart disease, but yeah. Yeah, that's true, bro. The number one killer, man. That's right. That's the things we live on. Yeah. Toby, I appreciate you so much for your time. Thank you guys for coming out. It's been a great opportunity to come out here and talk. And I hope this podcast even saves a few lives. People may hear what not to do, you know, or be more aware of their surroundings. And that's pretty righteous. I was thinking about that, especially during the holidays, especially about times when you're like, well, is it worth it to take this road for a couple minutes faster to get home?

2:29:15and what's really the safest possibility for myself or my family. Because, yeah, there's a lot of dangerous turns out there these days, and it's up to the individual, really, in the end, you know, to try and put themselves in the best situation, especially when our country or our laws and stuff like that aren't even going to do that anymore for us. Right. Absolutely. Toby Savoy, thank you so much, brother. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. You bet. Now I'm just floating on the breeze And I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be cornerstone Oh, but when I reach that ground I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones But it's gonna take...

2:30:04ABC Wednesday. Shifting Gears is back. He has a risen. Tim Allen and Kat Dennings return in television's number one new comedy. What, what? With a star-studded premiere including Jenna Elfman, Nancy Travis and... Hey, buddy! A big home improvement reunion. Welcome. Oh, boy. That guy's a tool. Shifting Gears. Season premiere Wednesday, 8, 7 central on ABC and stream on Hulu.