Medicolegal Systems in America with Joseph Scott Morgan
December 2, 2021
LIVE EVENT
Wednesday night's guest for our crimeHQ CrimeConversation was Joseph Scott Morgan. You're probably familiar with him for any of his many projects, including his "Body Bags" podcast, which is a satellite podcast within the Crime Online network. He contributes to Nancy Grace's "Crime Stories" pod a few times a week, and you've also seen him on Oxygen's "Murdered and Missing in Montana." In addition to these and other shows, he's the author of the memoir, "Blood Beneath My Feet: The Journey of a Southern Death Investigator." And then there's his day job, as Distinguished Scholar of Applied Forensics at Jacksonville State University in Alabama, which he's held since 2014. And on top of that, he also instructs at the local police academy — in his spare time.
Morgan shared that he's looking forward to a human anatomy lab opening where he teaches so that he can expose his young students to what might be the first dead body they've ever seen. He explained that it's not uncommon that when a rookie cop encounters a dead body on the job, that it's the first one they've ever seen. Morgan wants to help his students "divest themselves of the mystery of death."
Our host Kelly McLear asked Morgan to share a bit more about his background and work experience. He revealed that his interest in death investigation can probably be traced back to a high school course he took on thanatology, in which he was introduced to many death-related subjects including the coroner system.
He started out working in the field as a young man in New Orleans, where he worked in a morgue and performed hundreds of autopsies a year. He said, "The best classroom I was ever in was the morgue, because I learned form and function," and he likened it to a mechanic spending time hanging around a garage.
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