Bodies in the Bog

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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson.

I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime.

And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them.

Each week, I I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.

And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens.

Some are solved, and some are cold.

Very cold.

This is Buried Bones.

Hey, Paul.

Hey, Kate.

How are you doing?

I'm doing well.

You're very perky and your skin is glowing.

What's the secret?

Oh, good God.

Well, I don't know if this is contributing to whatever you're seeing or not, you know, but I have I'm trying a

new diet.

And

I'm sure a lot of the listeners would cringe, but I'm going very low carb.

Okay.

What is your old diet?

I kind of see you as meat and potatoes, but I'm sure I'm wrong about that.

I know sugar.

You're repelled by sugar.

Yeah.

You know, well, years ago, I think in my early 40s to not mid-40s, I had done a physical and a blood test.

And

the doc or the results came back and says, you're not there yet, but you are trending towards pre-diabetes.

And that's what really, I, at that point in time, I really went low carb, eliminated anything with simple sugar in it.

And quite frankly, I saw a dramatic improvement in my body composition as a result.

It was sort of like, oh, I wasn't expecting that.

And then over time, you know, I've always been very protein-centric, you know, because I'm.

I lift.

I kind of want to maintain a level of muscle mass, especially as I get older.

But then as I've been kind of diving into the nutrition aspect

and listening to some of these high-end researchers at universities, they really are focusing in on controlling insulin and insulin resistance because we take a look at what's been trending across the world, the recommendations that came out that was very carb-centric and low-fat type of diet.

And yet we've seen diabetes and and obesity increase over time.

And so I'm now listening to some of these professors and their research.

You know, I'm a biochem major, but that was, good God, I got that degree back in 1990, you know, and so much knowledge has changed since I had my education that I was just blown away.

And I thought, you know what?

Controlling my insulin levels seems to make sense.

And so I've decided I'm going to try that.

And so I'm back on, you know, a low carb, high protein, and quite frankly, a high-saturated fat diet now.

So I have incorporated red meat back into my diet because I used to avoid it, you know.

Okay.

Yeah.

So we'll see how it goes.

I'm going to do this for a while and get some blood work done.

And, you know, also just see how I feel and how, you know, from a physical performance standpoint, like the lifting or the mountain biking, you know, am I able to continue to perform at a, at the same, if not better level on a lower carb diet and a higher fat diet than than what I was doing before.

So we'll see.

That's been sort of something I've been experimenting with.

So what does your wife say about all this?

Does she do a lot of the cooking?

Does she have to change anything?

She does all the cooking.

So she has an opinion, I'm assuming.

Is she like, Paul, I just bought you all these shredded miniweeds.

No, but you know, that is,

she's cognizant, but it's more the way that I would, like if she's cooking a higher carb meal, then I would moderate on my end.

I'm not expecting any change for the family's meals at all.

I learned to cook for me a long time ago.

And, you know, at this point, the kids are almost 15, and I offer them tons of food, different, really healthy foods to eat.

And sometimes they want to order something in with their own money, and sometimes they'll want to eat with me.

But if I tried to cater to their needs all the time, you know, I would be up a creek.

I just wouldn't be able to do it.

So I cook what I want to cook, what tastes good to me, what's healthy, and what I enjoy.

I'm really into lots of vegetables, lots of fruit, stuff like that.

And I'm not vegan, but I'm pretty close to it.

So, you know, I'm kind of at the opposite end of it.

So we would never be able to be married.

It would be, it would be horrible for both of us, I don't think.

Yeah, you're like right here within arm's reach.

I got my zero sugar beef jerky.

This is my snack now.

And I have an herbal tea.

Okay, there you go.

See?

And I know that you say there are some episodes that I present to you that drive you to drink.

So we'll see if this is going to be one of those episodes.

Okay.

Well, I am all ears.

Well, this is a different kind of true crime story.

And I don't know if it's solvable, but it is really interesting.

So let's go ahead and set the scene.

We are in England, which I love.

I love it when we go to England.

I feel like we're in Australia and England the most as far as like overseas countries.

But, you know, I would like to expand, go worldwide at some point.

But we are in England, I feel like, quite a bit.

Some of our best stories, I think, come out of England.

Yeah, well, both of us, you know, have connections to England or London, and we spent a fair amount of time in London together.

Yep.

Okay, so let me tell you this about me that you probably already know.

I am an atmosphere girl.

If I could have a gas lamp in every room in our house flickering at night with all the lights on and a fog machine pumping fog throughout the hallways, I would.

I love creepy macabre.

I mean, just like I love the constant Halloween vibe, which says a lot considering what I talk about almost every single day of my life, true crime.

I like creepy stuff, and we are in a bog, a for real bog, England bog for this story.

Are you an atmosphere kind of guy too?

Do you like kind of certain books that evoke things or certain movies or anything that evoke certain kinds of atmosphere for you?

You know, I don't go out of my way to set up any particular atmosphere, but I do gravitate towards, you know, like what you're talking about a little bit, not necessarily creepy, but more of that, that dark type of environment.

You know, like my man cave here is all dark wood.

I kind of keep it dark.

It's in the basement.

But, you know, the kind of the creepy side, you know, I could, I could go there to a point.

It just, you know, I don't want it to go to where now all I'm seeing are dead bodies all the time because I deal with that enough as is.

Well, you're not going to like this story then because we are dealing with dead bodies in a bog.

Oh, okay.

So this is Cheshire, England, and we are talking about the Lindo Moss, which is a very large peat bog in Cheshire.

So, do you know much about bogs?

I only really kind of know Sherlock Holmes, kind of creepy bogs.

I don't know if I've ever been to a bog before.

With how you're describing it, you know, the kind of the peat moss, I just start thinking Scotch.

Okay.

You know, from that perspective.

But I would say with the bog, from, I think, more from an archaeological standpoint, how, you know, you have various animals as well as humans that have been preserved

within this bog environment.

Yeah.

Well, this is, you're right, a great way to preserve a body.

It's spongy, marshy wetland that is hydrated most of the time, much of the time, by like rain and snow instead of groundwater.

Precipitation has less nutrients than groundwater, so the bogs are pretty nutrient-poor as a result.

And, you know, this one, the lindo moss, formed over 10,000 years ago after the last ice age.

Yeah, so it's interesting.

Dump sites, murder scenes have a history.

This one has a particularly very old deep history.

1,500 acres, that's big.

Now it's a fraction of its original size, but it's still a substantial bog.

The decaying material in lindo moss transforms into a soil called peat.

I don't know a lot about peat.

Peat can be cut from the bog bog and dried and used as a fuel source.

And people have been extracting peat from this moss area, this bog, since the Middle Ages.

And it was at first harvested by hand, but as the time went past, the process became mechanized.

So I don't know a lot about peat.

Is that what your connection is with whiskey?

Is that part of it, is the peat?

With the scotch, you know, they describe scotch as having the kind of the peaty flavor.

And my understanding is that somehow peat is utilized in manufacture of the scotch.

So that's really the extent of my knowledge.

When you say peat and moss, my immediate thought goes towards the scotch manufacturing.

This October, we're doing something very different.

We'll be recording Buried Bones live at sea.

That's right.

Kate and I will both be part of the first ever True Crime Podcast Voyage, hosted by Virgin Voyages and iHeart Podcasts.

This is five nights of mystery, luxury, and Halloween fun, sailing to the Dominican Republic and Bimini Bahamas, adults only.

No kids, no stress.

Expect a live podcast recording of buried bones, crime-themed trivia, behind-the-scenes sessions with iHeart hosts, and yes, plenty of surprises.

And it's all wrapped in the full Virgin Voyages experience.

20-plus eateries, Michelin star chef curated menus, lux staterooms, Wi-Fi, and entertainment included.

It's not just a cruise.

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And we want you to join us.

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Well, let's move away from the history of this bog and let's talk about what happens in 1983.

So, there are two workers named Andy Mould and Stephen Dooley, and they're operating some machinery in the Lindo Moss.

And they are trying to get the very valuable peat out.

So, they notice when they are kind of excavating in this area what looks like a black soccer ball in the bog.

And they pull it up and they inspect it.

And there's a magazine called Distillations Magazine, and they wrote a story about this.

And so, you know, the magazine says that when Stephen and Andy wash the object, they discover that it is a human skull, that it's missing its jaw, but still has some skin and some hair and an eyeball that stared back at them.

And the men, of course, freak out, turn this skull this head over to the police and the police say we know exactly who this is there's been a woman who's been missing for the last 20 years and she lived right off of this bog and this is her and this begins a really fascinating murder investigation so i often think about the bog the swamp you know the ocean these very huge wide areas when i go in when i'm in northern california on the 101 and driving to my favorite pub, and I look over, and we're in like the headlands, and I think this is a great place to bury a body.

I think, what if there is not an Andy and a Steven out there digging around in this place, and they happen upon a body?

Gosh, how many bodies are out there that will just never be found because it's not stumbled upon?

That happens all the time.

There are so many cases, you know, in which we've got missing persons and they met foul play.

And their bodies have been hidden so well that in all likelihood they will never be found.

And there's so many cases, you know, where you think, well, you know who killed the person.

The killer is sitting in prison, but has never revealed where he's put the murdered victim's body, which for me is very frustrating.

You know, that person, you know, has the knowledge if there is only a way to be able to get that person to talk.

You know, it's interesting.

You talk about, if it wasn't for Andy and Stephen, in my jurisdiction, some of the most common reasons some of these hidden bodies are found was due to bottle hunters.

Oh, okay.

This is this little historical thing: is that you have people who collect old bottles.

And where do they find these bottles?

Often in creeks.

And so they're out there in these remote locations looking for bottles that are on, you know, in the creekbed.

And of course, these creeks are typically in a ravine next to a road and this is where offenders will drive up pull a body out and throw it down into the creek and then drive off wow so i've got multiple cases in which bottle collectors bottle hunters are the ones that found these victims i don't know if i've mentioned this to you before but i have a very close friend who is a really great like nationally ranked rower

and she would row very early in the morning on Lady Bird Lake, which is a lake here in Austin.

And sometimes they would find the bodies of people who had either taken their own lives or something had happened to them.

They were the ones who discovered them because they were out so early in the morning, you know, and they were there.

So, this story about the bog really makes me think about that.

If we had not had these two men out there in this area had happened to struck upon this and they found this skull, the police would not have said we know who this probably is.

So this happened in 83, so just keep that in mind.

They go to the police.

The investigators say, okay, we think this is this woman and her name is Malika de Fernandez.

And she had been missing for 20 years.

She went missing in the 60s.

She was married to a local man named Peter Rainbart.

They always thought that Peter had something to do with her disappearance.

She just vanished off of the face of the earth.

He said, I don't have anything to do with this.

I don't know where she is.

And police had never been able to find her body.

They weren't able to trace anything.

There's no cell phones, no CCTV, anything like that.

And they're in a remote area along this bog.

The most damning police say piece of circumstantial evidence they have against Peter is that Malika was last seen in his cottage, which is right on the edge of the moss.

They didn't live together at the cottage, but they were separated at this point.

So when these peat peat moss workers trying to excavate this stuff find the human head, Peter's gone.

He doesn't live at the cottage anymore.

But the head is found about 300 meters from his old home, which is where, you know, Malika was last seen alive.

Already we're thinking he's probably gotten away with murder.

He's thinking I can dump her body into the bog and it will disappear and never be preserved.

And little does he know.

I guess with all of the circumstances that happen in this bog, the lack of organisms, I guess, that stuff gets preserved really easily.

Aaron Ross Powell, yeah, that's my understanding.

You know, you've got these animals that have been preserved for very long periods of time.

You know, you got what sounds like an anaerobic environment, poor nutrients in the PD stuff.

So you don't have the typical bacteria that will cause the animals, including humans, to decompose in the same way.

And so oftentimes these animals, they look like they died relatively recently, but they are very old.

They've been dead there and preserved for a very long time.

Well, while police are trying to track down Peter, the forensic experts take a look at this head and they say this is a woman and she is somewhere between 30 and 50 years old.

So Malika was in her early 30s when she went missing.

How do they know that?

How are they able to look at this skull?

I know the eyeball was preserved and, you know, but she's missing part of a jaw and I can show you a photo of what they had.

How would they be able to figure out her age?

Is it based on teeth or something?

Teeth are used, but when you start talking about the anthropological assessment of a human skull, you know, there's a variety of characteristics that anthropologists will look at.

You know, in terms of gender, women tend to have what they call more gracile type of bony structure.

You know, men have more prominent brows and more prominent, you know, so they look at, is this a robust skull?

Is this a more gracile skull?

In terms of age, you know, you start taking a look at the sutures in the skull.

You know, when you're young, the various bones that make up your cranium, they have these sutures.

Everybody can visualize the skull.

And these sutures are, you know, when a baby is born, you know, the head has to be able to compress to pass through the vaginal cavity to come out.

And these sutures are what allow the baby skull to do that.

And then as the human grows, these sutures start to fuse together.

And so the older you get, the more these sutures are fused.

And so an anthropologist can say, well, based on the state of the sutures, this is the general age range that the skull is.

And there's many other things, you know, most of them, I'm probably forgetting a whole bunch at this point, but that's generally how, you know, the anthropologist is able to make some opinions.

Now, in this day and age, we have, you know, DNA aspects in which we can be much more accurate with gender determination, as an example.

And of course, be able to identify somebody based off the DNA we can recover from the bones.

And we've seen where anthropologists will say this is a female skull, and it turns out, well, it's not a female skull, it's a male skull, or vice versa.

This October, we're doing something very different.

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Kate and I will both be part of the first ever true crime podcast voyage, hosted by Virgin Voyages and iHeart Podcasts.

This is five nights of mystery, luxury, and Halloween fun, sailing to the Dominican Republic, Ambimini, Bahamas, adults only.

No kids, no stress.

Expect a live podcast recording of buried bones, crime-themed trivia, behind-the-scenes sessions with iHeart hosts, and yes, plenty of surprises.

And it's all wrapped in the full Virgin Voyages experience.

20-plus eateries, Michelin star chef-curated menus, lux staterooms, Wi-Fi, and entertainment included.

It's not just a cruise, it's a celebration of thoughtful true crime storytelling, and we want you to join us.

Book your cabin now at virginvoyages.com/slash true crime.

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Moving forward, they feel confident this is a female skull.

Because this is so close to where Peter's cottage was, they feel like this has to be Malika.

This has never been a closed case for the police out there.

They have always been looking for her.

When they determine that this skull is somewhere in the right age range, they go to find Peter, and he's not hard to find because he had just been released for prison after serving time for sex crimes against children.

And when they go to him about the bog, he starts talking in a way, really disclosing as much as he can to try to get himself out of trouble.

So Peter and Malika were married just four days after they met each other.

So this was not a marriage out of love, he says.

He had an executive level job at a British airline, and he needed to be married because he was gay.

And in the 60s, early 60s, it was illegal to be gay in Britain.

In 1967, they passed the Sexual Offenses Act, which decriminalized private homosexual acts between men who were over 21.

But this was in the early 60s, so it was still illegal.

Malika, for her part, because I was thinking, why is she agreeing to this, would be given the opportunity to take nearly free flights because she's married to an airline employee.

So both of them went into this marriage, according to him, with no romance.

It was all, you know, business and all of that.

That's why she wasn't living with him.

It's setting up what the relationship is.

Now, how does Peter benefit if he kills Malika?

That's my first question.

If he's responsible for her going missing and it's a homicide, how does Peter benefit?

If we believe him, he turns Malika into the bad guy.

So what he says is that, you know, within a couple of months, Malika is pressing him for more money.

And again, you know, she's not around, so we don't know.

Apparently, she tried to blackmail him because he wanted to move in with his boyfriend, with his male partner.

And, you know, he put his foot down and said, no, it escalated to violence.

And then the police pressed him, pressed him more.

And he says, she freaked out.

She attacked me, and I killed her.

He admits this.

He admits this.

When he finds out that this skull belongs to a woman in her 30s to 50s, whatever that age rage was, and they show him the photo.

He goes, Okay, this is what really happened.

This is not the end of the story, I promise Paul.

No, he's like, This is a really quick episode.

My wheels are spinning a little bit because you've set the scene in this bog, and we've talked about this bog,

how many bodies are potentially out in this Lindo moss area

with what they've done relatively, you know, back in we were talking 1983, an anthropological assessment, which in this day and age I know can be a little bit inaccurate.

I now start questioning, is this skull really Malika's?

Sounds like they just solved her case, but do they have Malika's body or do they have somebody else's body?

I think, as my mother would say, You're smelling what I'm cooking.

I don't know if my mom says that.

Somebody's mother says that though.

You're on the right track.

So he says, I dismembered her body.

I tossed her into the bog.

I tried to burn her body parts first.

And the detective inspector, who's a guy, a smart guy named George Abbott in 83, says, that's weird.

We don't see any signs of burning on the head.

And we can't find any of the other body parts, which they thought would be preserved because this is not moving water.

You know, it's still water.

And so we get to find all about radiocarbon dating.

Okay, so now you will know what they knew how to do in 1983.

George Abbott sends the head off to Oxford University for another opinion.

And this is not the head of Malika de Fernandez.

This is the skull of a woman.

And the skull is dated back 17 centuries,

Roman Britain.

And then we figure out there is another murder mystery happening, but it is 17 centuries old.

The oldest case ever we're out to solve, Paul.

And it's not this woman.

It's somebody else in the bog.

They are really looking at this bog now.

So it is too late.

Peter finds this out.

Dumbass.

He confesses.

He didn't have to.

He tries to recant, and it's too late.

And he spends the rest of his life in prison.

And just as a really sad note, they, as far as I can tell, have never found Malika DeFernandez's body.

Oh, Oh, so they didn't get Peter to take them out and show where he put her body?

He said it was right where you found the head.

So Malika is still out there somewhere.

She is, but there are two other bodies that are 17 centuries old that we have to deal with.

So first, let me show you the head that they thought was Malika's.

If you're interested in that, or do you want to learn a little bit more about what they found with the carbon dating?

What do you want to do?

No, let me see the head.

Okay, let me see the head.

It's not something we say often.

Let me see the head.

So Yes, so I'm looking at a picture of the skull.

As you described, the lower mandible is gone.

It looks like the ruler in front, I can't tell if it's blocking, you know, like the upper part of the mouth, but I can see the two orbits and the cranium.

As I was describing, you know, I'm not seeing prominent brow ridges on this skull.

I can see some of the sutures.

And there is is what appears to be some tissue adhering to this skull, both inside the orbits.

I'm not sure if that's part of the peat adhering to the skull, but it appears that there is some tissue there.

And you had described that one of the eyes was still present.

So I can see where this skull being found in such a condition, to me, it's like, yes, this is not a historic.

body.

This is a body that obviously been deceased for a while, but would be contemporary.

You know, it would be something that would be pursued as, yeah, we've got a body of somebody that died probably within the last few years.

Not so much.

No.

This is very old.

And we have a lot of information about her.

And there is a companion who has a very interesting history.

And I'll tell you about that in a second.

All the other pictures have to do with the man who is found.

in this bog very close by.

So carbon dating.

Now we get into the science-y bit of this.

I didn't know very much about carbon dating.

So, the little summary I have is it measures the level of carbon-14 isotope in human remains.

Do you want to geek out?

and give us an explanation, or do you want me to go with our official little explanation here?

It's up to you.

Well, you know, I am familiar with carbon dating to a point in terms of looking at the ratio of the carbon-14 to carbon-13 isotopes, if I remember correctly.

And it's interesting because there's a variety of different types of isotopic analysis that can be done, not just carbon, which can help geologically place, you know, where, let's say, a body had been during life, because what we're doing is we're constantly absorbing from the environment that we're living in.

And different locations on the planet or even within a particular country or state have different ratios of these isotopes.

And so, our bodies assimilate those isotopes in that same ratio.

And so, scientists can do this isotopic analysis and say, hey, it looks like this person whose body is found over in Florida has

various isotope ratios that's more consistent with coming out of the Pacific Northwest, as an example.

And I'm doing a very crude explanation relative to what experts would be able to describe.

But the carbon aspect, it's also how after death, your body is no longer in this assimilation mode.

And now the carbon ratio changes over time.

I'm probably not doing justice in terms of from the science standpoint, but fundamentally, they're able to age based on that carbon-14, carbon-13 ratio out of the bones or whatever tissue.

I think that's a good explanation.

I'm not sure I would add too much to it.

I will say that upon further inspection, they at Oxford University said part of her brain is in here too.

So, this like magic bog has preserved this woman for you know almost 2,000 years.

The water source is interesting.

Preserving bodies in bogs, you have to have very specific conditions.

And we talk about that with decomposition all the time, how the weather is so important to an outdoor crime scene, how quickly decomposition can happen.

The climate needs to be be cool and temperate.

It can't get too hot.

At the same time, the bog temperature ideally is below 39 degrees when the body enters the bog.

And so the average annual temperature, you know, needs to be about below 50 degrees.

And apparently, that's the condition that we're talking about with the Lindo Moss bog.

It's that perfect condition to preserve.

So, I mean, you know,

I see why they're able to then soon make another discovery that is so well preserved that I have pictures that are, to me, just stunning.

You know, and this is where, in essence, these bodies are refrigerated due to the temperature and the ground temperature that they're in.

The bacterial aspect is minimized, you know, since there isn't a lot of that going on.

There's not a lot of nutrients in this peaty moss.

Yep.

But also

there's a protection from the surface with these bodies that are under, I don't know if you want to call it ground, but

now it's the insects can't access the bodies.

And insects are huge when it comes to part of the, you know, the decay of surface deposits of bodies.

But also predators aren't accessing these bodies.

Perfect conditions.

And not to get too geeky about this, but there's also a specific type of moss.

It's not just any old moss that creates these perfect conditions.

This moss that's in the Lindau Lindau bog is called sphagnum moss, which I had never heard of before.

This specific moss alters the water chemistry.

It makes it very highly acidic and low in oxygen.

So, when you combine the acidic water with the lack of oxygen and the low nutrient levels, you're right.

It just stops bacteria and fungi in their tracks.

And it really helps stop the decomposition of the body.

Distillation magazine says it's not a decay anymore.

They tan like leather almost.

So the skin turns brown, the hair goes red, and the objects in and around the body dissolve away, as does most of the clothing.

So you're left with the actual body.

Gosh, that's so interesting.

No, and having recovered skeletal remains and digging up bodies, you know, it is, it's fascinating to see how various objects age.

You know, and you start talking about like the clothing, you know, this is where, you know, digging up a body that's been buried for a long time, you see how the different fabrics will deteriorate over time,

whereas, you know, some fabrics don't.

Articles of clothing will change color, you know, as they age in the ground.

You know, so it's all just, it's really kind of a surreal different look when evaluating evidence and bodies and the passage of time.

It's not what you would normally ever experience, you know, but now you're looking at,

I've had evidence in storage.

It's been packaged properly, stored properly, but just due to age, you know, there's been dramatic changes in the appearance of the evidence, the clothing, for example.

Poor Andy Mold, the guy who, you know, made the initial discovery of who we thought was Malika, and it turned out to be the Lindo woman, a year later, he finds more remains around the same spot.

This time it's a human foot.

This time the police go, this must be Malika.

It is not.

They search and search and excavate, and they find an incredibly well-preserved skeletal remains from the bog, which is an upper torso and a full head.

So this is not the Lindo woman because there's a head.

This is about a thousand years old.

So more contemporary than the Lindo woman.

The Lindo woman was 1700.

This is a thousand years.

And he is called the Lindo Man, and he's from the Iron Age.

He's the one we wonder if was murdered.

And I'll tell you why, because there's so much preserved on him.

It's incredible.

Yeah, it's like, how many bodies are out here?

A lot.

Right.

And it's interesting because if you're a contemporary killer, boy, would you want to read up on this and think, this is not the bog for me.

I probably need to dump somewhere else where they will, not to have Gallows humor about this, but where they will decompose because this is obviously, they're so well preserved.

Okay.

So let me tell you about the lindo man so he is five foot six he's in his mid to late 20s when he died he had a trimmed beard and manicured nails these were all preserved

so they did not think that he was engaged in intensive labor because you know he he was very well kept he was well built and well fed he is found naked except for an armband so listen to this and then we can talk about all the weird things that happen happen with preserving bodies.

He's totally naked.

So we know that, you know, the clothing can be dissolved away.

Except there's an armband made of fox fur around his arm.

So the fox fur would not, I guess not, because why would that not go away?

You know, I don't have any knowledge as to why the fox fur wouldn't deteriorate, but obviously it didn't.

You know, but like what I've seen, just modern clothing, you know, the cotton versus synthetic fibers, the elastic bands, you know, the various things that are within clothing items, such as like when you start dealing like with bras and the underwire to a bra

or the snaps, you know, on a jacket, you know, this is what I've seen these different types of fabrics and different types of objects and clothing.

They deteriorate at different rates and some don't deteriorate at all.

You know, so it's not surprising.

You're talking about this, this Lindo man.

Was he nude when he was deposited there?

That's a possibility, but it's also entirely possible the clothing that he had on just happened to deteriorate in this environment and it's gone.

You know, but that fox fur band is what remains.

Yeah.

Well, let me show you this.

Get ready for a little show and tell.

I mean, way do you see this?

What they found.

This man,

Andy, had to find this.

There's the foot.

Oh, wow.

I know.

I have most of his body.

And go ahead and describe what you see.

Yeah, no, I'm looking at a photograph of, it's not just a foot.

It's really the lower leg with what appears to be, you know, most of the tissue and skin present, though there's, you know, weird disruptions to the skin over the entirety of the surface of this lower leg.

But the foot itself, at least in the, where I'm seeing the toes, it almost appears like the toenails are are still present.

This looks,

from my perspective, if I ran across this, I would say, okay,

I've got a relatively recently killed person.

I would not be able to draw a conclusion as to the disruption to the skin.

In many ways, it almost looks like a leg that's been run over.

It's been evulsed.

The tissue has been evulsed a little bit by a tire going over it, but I know that's not what's happening here.

It's just that, you know, if I were to look at this, I'd go, yeah, this is a

recently deceased body and some crushing force

had been applied to the lower leg.

I was just thinking, if you're the police chief or whomever in charge in this area, you would have to know that this is a body that has the potential to be very, very old.

You would have to know your area so well and the history of it.

Can you imagine this just being preserved kind of in a normal way?

And, you know, it becomes a John Doe case or something.

And then you've got this piece of history.

Now, hold on to your hat.

Look at this.

That is him.

So yeah, this is the basically

it looks the Lindo man.

It's, it's not just his upper torso.

He's got both his arms, his head.

In many ways, it looks like somebody who has been dismembered through the abdomen.

You know, the lower body is gone, but the skin, the facial features are

present.

There is abnormalities that stand out.

Having looked at a lot of dead bodies, this doesn't look normal.

That would be a clue, but most certainly it's shocking on how well preserved the Lindo man is, considering he died a thousand years ago.

There's another version of him here.

I don't know if this is any more helpful.

I think it's through a case.

Actually, you could probably see the discoloration a little bit better on this one.

It's sort of red, even more leathery in some ways.

Yeah, you know, so this photograph, which it is hard, it's more zoomed in on his head and

shoulder area, chest, maybe chest area.

You know, that type of discoloration to his skin, which they said is like a tanning, you know, that's not all that atypical from what I've seen on dead bodies that end up desiccating they mummify the surface deposit exposed to the sun the skin kind of turns an orangish color kind of will go leathery if it desiccates real fast so this is what is often seen in the uh very arid environments when bodies are dumped out there let's say in the arizona desert uh or hikers you know die and then you know they they dehydrate so fast and are exposed to the sun it's like this this brown brownish-orange leather type of look that the skin takes as the body is decaying.

Well, we're going to come back to these photos.

I have a couple of additional ones to share with you because this is not a simple, hey, Paul, tell me about how bodies are preserved kind of story.

This turned into a big mystery because

whoever the Lindo man was,

he really suffered before he died.

And we see his injuries.

So let me tell you more about him.

So I told you about the armband made of foxfur.

I told you he had, now you know why they know he had manicured nails, nice nails, because everything was preserved.

He's in good physical health aside from osteoarthritis and a case of intestinal parasites.

How would they know that?

Really?

Intestinal parasites?

You know, obviously his intestines must have been preserved and these parasites must have been found.

I don't know if these are microscopic parasites or it'd be like a tapeworm.

Wow.

Oh, gosh.

There's an archaeologist named Anne Ross.

She thinks that he was, based on a lot of this, that he was either a Celtic priest or like druid or some kind of king because he had no calluses on his hands.

His body had not been previously injured.

until he died.

And he was definitely not a laborer, definitely not a warrior.

There's a lot we don't know about him,

but there's a, I think it's a TV show called Discover Lindo is reporting that he had eaten a slightly burned barley-based meal, either like a griddle cake or a thick porridge, along with fragments of hazelnuts and some traces of meat shortly before his death.

I mean, good lord, for you to be able to know that from a thousand years ago is incredible.

Incredible.

Yeah.

Well, it just really underscores that it's not just the external aspects of these bodies that are being preserved, but it's the entirety of the bodies, including the stomach contents.

Aaron Ross Powell, right.

And so they look at his stomach also.

So we know the stomach contents.

We know what he ate.

They found traces of mistletoe in his stomach, which might have been used medicinally or he might have just eaten it accidentally, but it is toxic to humans.

That's not what killed him, for sure.

It could have been used medicinally.

He was dated between 2 BC and 119 AD, 119 AD.

So you want to hear about about how he did not die, it sounds like, in the most

peaceful way you would think for a king or a druid or whoever he was?

Well, we know these, you want to call them these ancient cultures, they often did horrific things to each other.

Absolutely.

So let's talk about the brutal death.

It's suggested, based on his body, that there were multiple tactics used to kill him.

I thought this was interesting.

Using the phrase overkill when you're talking about, you know, bodies from a thousand years ago, but that phrase has been associated with a lot of European bog bodies.

In places like Ireland and Denmark, bodies found in bogs have shown signs of being, I'm going to use this phrase one day, triple killed.

Have you ever used that phrase before?

Triple killed.

That's interesting.

Okay.

They say triple killed.

Some of them have been strangled, bashed in the head, and disemboweled, just like you said, all at once in what are believed to be ritualistic sacrifices to gods or goddesses.

And each injury is dedicated to a specific god or goddess.

Isn't that interesting?

I'm glad I live today.

You know what?

You could still be triple-killed.

I hope not, but yes.

So these bogs were important to ancient Europeans.

You know, there's an archaeologist and an author named Melanie Giles, and she told the BBC: We see bogs as empty places, but that's not how the people in the Iron Age, which is where Lindo Mann was,

that's not how people in the Iron Age saw them.

They were taking fuel from the bog, they were cutting turf, they were taking iron ore, they were making weapons.

You know, there's a lot coming out of it, and they were hunting the bird life.

So the bogs were very productive, rich places for people in the Iron Age.

Let me go through Lindo Mann's specific injuries.

We have a lot of archaeologists who want to know why did this happen to him?

And we have photos of some of the stuff.

Were these ritualistic sacrifices?

So first, we have experts addressing the mistletoe.

So mistletoe is toxic.

Do you have any idea?

I mean, what are the consequences of eating mistletoe?

I think it's fascinating for my kids, and they're pretty berries and everything.

That would just make you very sick, I'm assuming.

I have no knowledge whatsoever about the toxicity of mistletoe.

I mean, mistletoe to me is, you know, the...

What is it?

Is it a fungus?

It grows on trees.

You know, and of course,

the tradition is,

if you stand underneath the mistletoe, you owe the other person a kiss or something along those lines.

Yep, there you go.

So, as I had said before, mistletoe probably had some medicinal uses, and one was to calm down nervous disorders.

people with nervous disorders.

And so they think that maybe before he died, the Lindo man was given mistletoe to calm him down.

It sounds like he knew what was coming.

The skin on his torso had higher levels of copper than elsewhere on his body.

So they think he was painted with a copper pigment, which might have been some ritual element to his death.

So a copper pigment?

Is that paint?

Is that what that would be?

Well, that's what it sounds like.

Wow.

You know, I know different paints use different metals, you know, in order to get a certain color.

So typically copper either has that kind of that goldish color, or if it's oxidized, now you have that greenish hue to it.

So maybe one of those two colors.

Mm-hmm.

So, I mean, you get closer and closer to this could have been some sort of ritualistic sacrifice.

So he had a cord made of animal sinew tied around his neck, along with it looks like ligature marks.

One of the things that's interesting is that you've got two neck vertebrae that were broken.

It says his neck was gashed.

And there are archaeologists who said that he was probably strangled from behind before having his throat slashed.

I have no idea how you would figure out what that order would be, but he also had broken ribs and a stab wound to his chest, all happening, it sounds like,

at the same time, all at once.

Yeah, a homicide victim.

Oh my gosh.

His skull was fractured by something heavy that left a V-shaped gash, like an axe maybe.

And they did a CT scan on him.

It showed that his head swelled and bruised, indicating that the injury did not result in immediate death.

And so he had been alive long enough for the wound to begin healing.

Is that what swelled and bruised means, that it was starting to heal and that's how they can kind of tell that he was alive longer?

Well, it's showing that the body is responding to the injury.

When I hear the term heal or healing, that's indicating, okay, now the tissue is starting to repair itself.

And I'm not sure that that's what they are saying.

What I'm hearing is, is that, okay, the tissue responded to the injury.

It's swelling.

You have the bruising.

So there's still blood flowing at the time that that injury occurred.

But this isn't necessarily something you can say is a result of an injury that happened anti-mortem.

All you can say it's perimortem.

Because even if the person is technically technically dead, the tissues will still respond in a way that they've received an injury.

So that's where I would probably say this, in all likelihood, this blow to the head, is occurring contemporaneous to these other acts of violence against him.

Well, and then on top of that, so hold on.

He's had broken ribs.

They think that somebody like something like a human knee struck him in the back, which broke one of his ribs.

He's got a wound to his chest.

There's a kind of rope thing around his neck with ligature marks.

Two of his neck vertebrae are broken.

His neck was slashed.

And his skull was fractured.

And then on top of that, they find water in his lungs.

So they think that he, they left him face down in the bog.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I mean, gosh.

Obviously, very awful into his life, but all of these injuries could have occurred very rapidly to him.

You know, you could have multiple offenders that are inflicting different injuries.

He's being stomped.

You know, in some ways,

you know, I'm struggling outside of this, maybe the finding of the copper, you know, where they're saying that that might be indicative of ritualistic,

you know, his injuries very much are a line up with he's a homicide victim and there's multiple modalities of violence being used against him.

Now, that could be done by one person.

That could be done by a group, you know?

So it's hard to truly reconstruct, you know, the why

he's killed in the manner that he's killed.

When I initially hear ritual, I'm looking for something that has a certain...

It's like a set of rules, basically, right?

Where you can identify them and say, oh, yeah, I've seen this before.

This is the way they do this, right?

That's exactly kind of what I was thinking is ritualistic.

It's something, a ritual is something that is done time and time again in a certain order.

That's the point of it.

Exactly.

So that's where I would think, okay, there was evidence that let's say he's, you know, drawn and quartered, you know, something along those lines versus what appears to be a just a mass attack of violence against him.

Yeah.

And I think one of the things that

I don't know about the ritualistic aspect of it.

They do talk about the injuries a little bit saying, now, let's keep in mind, he's a thousand years old and he's been for a thousand years under very heavy layers of peat.

And they're wondering, experts do wonder how much of these injuries could be wear and tear, basically, from being, you know, in this area for so long.

Let me show you.

This is what they think he looked like.

You know, good looking guy.

And this is his skull where I think they're pointing to, this is an infrared photo showing not only the injury on top, but also the splitting of the skull at the back.

I don't know if this is going to tell you anything.

I don't know if peat would cause this.

I don't, who knows?

Yeah, I'm really unable to make out this photograph.

They say it's an infrared photograph.

And so oftentimes that different wavelengths of light are absorbed or fluoresce.

from different substances.

Infrared, of course, also can be utilized to show different temperatures

in various objects.

Here, this just looks like a blob to me.

This is where, yeah, there has to be an expert that is evaluating what this infrared photograph is showing.

Now, when they start saying that some of his injuries that you described to me are possibly from, you know, let's say mechanical stresses of being buried in this bog and this peat, I mean, the only thing that I could maybe

wonder about is, you know, like, let's say the broken ribs,

something along those lines.

Some of the mechanical forces on the surface of his body, compression of his body.

But when you start talking about depressed skull fractures,

incisions to his neck,

sinew wrapped around his neck, you know,

obviously

probably most of what is being observed on his body was, you know, at the hands of another, as they say.

Yeah, and I think, so I was going to show you, this is a top view.

Can you see this of the head wound thought to be done with an axe on his head?

Yeah, I'm looking at a photograph which shows his head.

His head's turned to the right.

He looks in this photograph to be completely bald or devoid of head hair, but there is towards the base of the head.

It's technically the top of his head, but towards the bottom of this photograph, I'm just going to describe it from a technical term.

This looks like a laceration from a very significant blow.

This is where

the skin has, due to the

crushing action of a blunt object, has split apart, but

it's irregular.

This is a typical laceration from, it's a broader type of object.

And though I can't...

you know, have to rely on the fact that others are saying that he had a depressed skull fracture, I would say that that looks like there's likely a depressed skull fracture underneath that significant laceration.

Yeah, they have a, this is a close-up of the head wound.

I don't know if that's helpful either.

But I mean, regardless, I'm not sure heavy concentrations of peat would cause this.

I did, Paul, for a moment, wonder how many other excavators came in and nicked him?

Or something?

I mean, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, we've talked about the machinery could cause some stuff too.

Yeah, you know, and this is where, you know, with contemporary contemporary bodies, you know, looking for evidence that these injuries occurred anti-mortem, you know, during life versus being paramortem.

So let's say like the fractured ribs, you know, anthropologists, you know, if you have a skeletal remains and you have, let's say, the body's buried and an excavator comes along and digs the body up, you can tell if those bones were fractured as a result of, you know, the kind of the finding of the body versus they were fractured as a result of, let's say, the homicide when the victim was still alive, because fresh bones fracture differently than desiccated bones.

Well, it's the same, it's going to be the same thing in taking it, evaluating his injuries.

I just don't know how much variance from what we experience with contemporary bodies.

Would they still be able to see, let's say, hemorrhaging in the wound margins, you know, in such a preserved body that's thousands of years old?

Or would that have leached out and you can't see that?

You know, and that's, that's just part of the, I think, the complexity of evaluating his injuries as to when did they exactly occur?

Because it's not like we have studies, you know, in terms of showing, okay, this is how this type of injury would appear

after 2,000 years to determine whether or not it's something an expert would be able to say, yes, that was something that occurred and was a cause of death.

Well, you know, to conclude this this very strange true crime story, you know, there are people who are trying to figure out still, was he robbed?

Was this a sacrifice?

Who knows?

I mean, was he drawn out there?

My notes talk about this is a remote area, which is, you know, I don't know what it was like a thousand years ago in the Iron Age.

Maybe this wasn't remote.

Maybe this is where a lot of people set up shop and this wasn't a remote place, you know.

We don't know.

But two more bodies were found, all kind of dating dating to the same time frame.

It sounds like about Iron Age timeframe.

And, you know, they're studying all of them.

And it's pretty amazing.

70 pieces in 1987, 70 pieces or more of human bone and tissue were recovered.

And these are just, you know, more and more, and they're pulling them out.

So the preservation of murder sites, most likely, is important, but particularly important when you have victims and when you have an area like England that has just been inhabited for thousands of years.

So I love stories like these.

So I'm going to make a prediction, Kate.

Okay.

I think you're going to buy some little cottage out there in that bog and set up your atmosphere in this dark, creepy way.

And then in the middle of the night, you're going to be out there looking for human skulls.

How's that?

Yes, probably.

That's awful.

Well, listen, never did I think a story of murder from a thousand years ago would teach me so much about present-day crime.

But I'm always interested in learning about how bodies are preserved and what you can find and time of death.

And so I think it's interesting.

I think I learned a new interview tactic.

You did.

If I have a suspect whose

wife has gone missing, I'm going to walk into the interview room with a skull in hand, put it down on the table and say, we found her.

We found her.

She's been triple triple-killed.

Triple-killed.

Okay, well, next week, we will have a much more contemporary case.

It could be from the 1500s, but we'll say it'll be more contemporary

than this one.

Thank you for joining me on this trip way far back than we've ever been.

No, it's still fascinating, though.

I loved it.

Thanks.

Thank you.

This has been an Exactly Right Production.

For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com/slash buried bones sources.

Our senior producer is Alexis Emerosi.

Research by Maren McClashin, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel.

Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones Pod.

Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, A Gilded Age Story of Murder and the Race to Deco the Criminal Mind, is available now.

And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.

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