Episode 31: Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies, I'm your host Julie Mattson. On today's episode, we're exploring the often-overlooked aspect of death investigation involving animal predation. I delve into real-life cases where animals have consumed human remains and the challenges faced as a death investigator in dealing with these complex and gruesome cases. So, whether you're a true crime aficionado, a forensic science enthusiast, or simply curious about the intersection of nature and death, this episode is sure to captivate and inform you. Ready? Let's go...
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0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson. Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:30 Hey guys, this week we are going to talk about animals and many of us love animals.
0:38 I have a lot of friends who love dogs and love cats and have a few of each and I know that on a lot of crime scenes we find animals in the houses of deceased people.
0:53 In many cases the animals are deceased as well.
0:57 I know that we've had cases of carbon monoxide poisoning where the owners and the animals are all deceased in the residents and that's usually one of the first signs that we look for in carbon monoxide related deaths because the animals would not survive either.
1:20 Of course we would find the deceased individuals and the animals without any kind of trauma.
1:26 And the very first thing that we would notice besides the cherry red lividity that you see many times in carbon monoxide poisonings are that the animals are deceased as well.
1:38 But I know that there are also cases and we see this more often recently where the animals will actually start to nibble on the owners.
1:55 Unfortunately, it doesn't matter how good you are to them and how often or how much you feed them pet them or bathe them.
2:02 It could get to the point eventually where they are going to have to do something to get some sort of nourishment and if nothing else is available in the house, the owner may just be dinner now a lot of times when an animal becomes distressed or knows that something is wrong with the owner.
2:22 It can attempt to arouse, not arouse boy, that would be bad.
2:28 It can attempt to arouse the owner by nudging the body and it may begin to kind of slightly nibble if it doesn't get a response.
2:38 Now, sometimes if there's blood present, they may actually start to eat just because of their instinct, but if they become frantic, they can't get the owner's attention and they start to realize something is wrong.
2:53 They may actually start to bite in an attempt to wake them up and at that point they may continue to eat the person if there's no other food available in the house.
3:06 There have also been cases, believe it or not where a dog will actually begin to eat its owner who is not deceased but is simply passed out and drunk.
3:18 So tried to actually rouse them, it doesn't work and they start nibbling and the person may not be actually deceased.
3:30 I haven't seen this personally, but I have heard of cases where somebody may have diabetic neuropathy and their animal will actually eat a portion of their foot and the person doesn't even know it because they can't feel it.
3:47 They're diabetic and they actually don't even know that their own animal has taken a bite out of their toe.
3:55 We do see this again a lot on our crime scenes.
3:59 I know that years ago when I worked in Houston, I had a case in my apartment complex where a gentleman was a retired sheriff's deputy.
4:10 He lived alone and he lived in an apartment actually two buildings from me and I got the call, go over there.
4:18 He had been deceased for a couple of weeks.
4:22 Over time he had some ceiling fans on and the heater on and so parts of the bodies start to dry his dog, who was a German Shepherd actually had access to the back patio.
4:34 He lived on the first floor and the patio door was open.
4:38 The dog was going in and out the back patio trying to bark, trying to get people's attention.
4:43 He was actually also a retired canine with the sheriff's office and so he was going outside on the patio trying to get people's attention, trying to let someone know that something's wrong with his owner and of course no one came to visit him and eventually he did not pay the rent and management went in to check on him and found him deceased.
5:07 In these cases, the dog actually can't go outside to go to the bathroom either, so the house is gonna be full of urine and feces and even cats don't always go in the litter box in situations like this, but we're gonna find a lot of animal urine and feces in the residence in many cases because the owners deceased, the animal is going to actually start tearing up furniture.
5:36 We may see the innards of a lot of couches because the animal has actually gone haywire and decided to have a good time since no one's telling him not to and rip the shreds out of all the couch cushions.
5:51 And so many times by the time we get there, it not only looks like it snowed, but there is feces and urine everywhere.
5:59 So you can imagine in cases like this, we're gonna wear protection for our shoes and cover our clothes with Tyvek and all those kinds of things to just try to prevent getting it on our regular clothes.
6:12 I know that we've seen many cases recently where someone has been deceased for several weeks in the house and there is not only evidence that their dog has been nibbling, but also maybe rats that have been in the residents that have had access to the inside.
6:34 We've had cases where we even can't find limbs are unable to find someone's arm because the dog has chewed it or carried it off or rats have done the same.
6:47 So we do see that many times.
6:51 I know that years ago, I had someone who actually fostered several animals and they actually all ate him.
6:59 And so by the time I got there, there was only his torso, the face was gone and the limbs basically he looked like a stick figure.
7:08 We do see that a lot and I think it's part of our job that a lot of people don't realize we're exposed to the things that we see.
7:15 We do see dead animals in the residents.
7:18 We of course the police have animal control come and get the animals before we get there.
7:24 We always kind of thought that they were euthanized, which we hated to hear.
7:28 But then we have heard recently of some cases where the animal has been re adopted.
7:34 Now, cats seem to show preference to soft tissue and if they are going to get to the point where they're desperate enough to eat their owner, they're going to specifically concentrate on shoulders and arms and also soft areas of the face, like the nose and lips so many times if we go into a scene and parts of the face are missing, we suspect a cat just because that's usually the first part of the body that they go for.
8:03 And I know a lot of this may seem super morbid and gross to a lot of people but it is a part of our job and I like to share with y'all what we do so that you know the reality of it.
8:14 Again, it's not always high heels and white pants like you see on tv sometimes and you know even wild animals crocodiles there, man hunters, they eat human flesh faster than any other animal.
8:29 We have heard stories of crocodiles in Louisiana and during hurricanes actually pulling people underwater, flipping them around and actually eating them or dragging people who are passed out off of stairs and later being found and parts of human remains are found inside of them when they're dissected even lions.
8:55 You know, they eat anything that moves and then after they kill they drag their kill so that they can share it with the rest of their pack, or "friends". Bears are not known for killing people, but if they're provoked and they have a cub, you know there's a good chance that you could end up being attacked.
9:14 Wolves are normally shy run humans but they will hunt and eat anything they can catch when they're hungry.
9:20 So there are reports of wolves killing people if there's not enough food for them during the winter months when they're unable to hunt.
9:28 Like normal tigers aren't normally man eaters, but in India there have been several tiger attacks in the past year.
9:37 I think they set up to six.
9:39 There was a review done in 2015 where they said that it actually took dogs less than a day to start knowing on the owner, even when they have access to normal food that they could have eaten.
9:55 Just because you take good care of your animal doesn't necessarily mean that you're off the hook.
10:03 The best way is to prevent this from happening would be to make sure that you have friends who will stop by and check on you if they haven't heard from you. Again, going back to, I guess the wild animal story, we've all heard stories where people have pet gorillas and all these different pets, pythons that they don't think will hurt them because they've taken good care of them and raised them from babies and they just believe that they love them like a person would love them and that they would never hurt them.
10:36 But we all know that this is not true.
10:39 We've heard multiple stories of people who have been killed by animals that they've raised from tiny infants.
10:47 I can remember when my daughter was in the Peace Corps and I went to Africa to visit her.
10:53 We were in a small wooden boat and the men were moving the boat with long wooden sticks in the river.
11:01 I think we were in Nairobi or no, maybe we were in Zimbabwe, but they were telling us stories about how hippos would eat Children when they came up to the water to actually get water.
11:12 And so it's horrifying.
11:14 We've all heard stories about hippos and how they kill people, but I can remember there were hippos in the water with us and there was a bad storm rolling in and of course in my job, I don't always think the worst, but I do think ahead, what's the worst thing that can happen.
11:31And I asked them, I was like, what if the storm blows in and it gets windy and our boat tips over And his response was, oh, we're here all the time, These hippos know us.
11:43 And I thought to myself, seriously, you think you would not be lunch if this boat tipped over?
11:48 What are you gonna do be like, hey, I've known you for a long time, don't eat me.
11:53 It was ridiculous.
11:54 I kind of thought these guys really think that these hippos are their friends, it's gonna be a buffet in the water if this boat turns over, luckily that did not happen.
12:03 But anyway, again, there's a story with the wild animal, but people that shoot themselves and there's blood in the residents, it's likely that their animal will start gnawing or chewing on them sooner than if not even in case of an overdose, if someone overdoses and then their pet actually eats on them.
12:32 There have been cases where the pet has also died of poisoning.
12:36 We have a lot of cases where there are hamsters or rodents.
12:43Again, not the most glamorous part of our job, but hamsters are even worse.
12:48 So, and even rodents, they will take skin fat and muscle and actually make a burrow to keep themselves warm.
12:57 Now, rodents can nest inside the body, particularly the chest and we've seen this before on cases where bodies have been dumped and are found outside, they will gnaw on bones even to get a calcium source and grind down their teeth.
13:15 And so there have been cases where people have had hamsters and the hamsters will definitely go where the food is.
13:26 Once there's no other source.
13:28 My daughter had a hamster, I can remember my oldest, she had to, I can't remember their names.
13:35 Maybe Mork and Mindy, Laverne and Shirley, I can't remember.
13:40 It was something like that.
13:41 But anyway, she had two hamsters in a cage in her room and I can remember when she was younger, I think she was around 10. I went into her room to wake her up for school and I glanced into the hamster cage because I was checking to make sure she was feeding them and there were bones in it.
14:00 And so I kind of not even realizing what had happened or that there was only one live hamster left in there.
14:07 I said Sarah, why did you feed your hamster chicken bones?
14:11 She's like, she's like mom, I didn't what do you have no idea what you're talking about.
14:15 And so I looked in there and one of the hamsters had actually eaten the other ones so if they're gonna get their best friend, they're not gonna hesitate to gnaw on you too.
14:26 So anyway, she no longer wanted that hamster, I think we gave it to one of her friends but we left out the part about him eating his buddy because we thought that might deter her from wanting the hamster.
14:38 But anyway, we do see these cases a lot in most of the cases, the house is in disarray because the animal has been left unattended for several weeks and eventually someone checks on them because they haven't shown up for work or they're not getting their mail or they haven't paid their rent.
15:04 Different things like that.
15:05 So eventually someone will check on them and the house is in disarray because the animals not so much cats, but dogs, especially the larger dogs, we see Germán Shepherds a lot in these cases and the larger dogs are gonna tear up the house, eventually run out of food.
15:24 You know, sometimes we see the dog food bags actually open and you can tell that the animal has ripped them open and there's nothing left in there and so they get to the point where they have to survive and so they do what they have to do.
15:41 I've seen animals eat someone's upper torso down to the ribs.
15:48 I've seen so much.
15:50 You can only imagine bodies that have been dumped, eaten by coyotes, which is terrible to think.
15:57 I mean it's really sad to think that someone's dumped and then an animal is gonna eat them like that, but it happens and it happens a lot.
16:06 And again, it's probably something that people who aren't in our field don't really think about, we're not really exposed to the dangers of the animals because in places like out in the woods, if somebody's been dumped, the more people that are out there, the less likely the animals are to come around.
16:24 Although I have seen coyotes in the middle of the city here in Texas crossing the street on a busy street.
16:32 It happens sometimes they will come around, they're normally not gonna attack a person in situations like that.
16:37 But we have seen where they do tend to nibble on dumped bodies in certain areas and you know what, even if insects and animals don't eat you, the human body eats itself.
16:53 So think about that bacteria actually consumes us from the inside so our own bodies bacteria after someone dies and begins to decompose that bacteria is gonna consume you from the inside. And the cells actually undergo autolysis so they self digest and then the enzymes destroy the cells.
17:17 You know we can't win for losing.
17:20 Just something to think about trying not to gross too many people out.
17:25 But it is again, something that we deal with all the time.
17:29 I know we've been doing series a lot lately and I kind of thought maybe I'd veer away from that a little bit and maybe give you a little bits and pieces of maybe some things that I've seen recently and things that we do deal with that you just don't really see on tv, or they don't really discuss because it's not actually for the weak to hear.
17:50 But again, something that we do see every day.
17:54 So make sure that your friends check on you frequently.
18:00 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies, if you like this podcast and would like to share with others.
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