Crime Time Office Hours
This is a podcast that cuts through the noise to make crime and justice clear, one issue at a time. I’m Kevin Buckler, PhD in Criminal Justice, and a professor at a four-year public university. I plan to bring you sharp, unfiltered conversations and content about the issues shaping our legal system, our communities, and the academic world.
Crime Time Office Hours
S 1 E 3 Houston Serial Killer Panic: Medical Examiners' Reports and Undetermined Cases
In this episode, death investigations expert Elizabeth Gilmore takes us inside the medical examiner’s office to explain how cause and manner of death are determined—a process that is far more complex and far more critical than most people realize. She breaks down the five official manners of death, what each classification really means, and how those determinations shape everything from criminal investigations to prosecutorial decisions to charge. She also helps us understand the challenges and gray areas that forensic pathologists confront, especially in cases where evidence is limited or circumstances are ambiguous. Her insight brings much-needed clarity to a system that often sits at the center of public controversy and, in the case of the Houston serial-killer panic, played a pivotal role in how the story unfolded.
In criminal justice, the overwhelming majority of our professionals will work with people that are experiencing or touched by death in some way. And it it could be criminal. So it could be like homicide victims, but it can also be, you know, accidental deaths or suicides or, you know, or they're working in a facility where someone dies and they need to know what the appropriate response is and what they should be looking for. And because we don't talk about it very much, oftentimes when those sorts of things happen, like it's really difficult to assure that the investigation is, you know, really sound.
Kevin Buckler (Host):I'm Kevin Buckler, your host, and this is Crime Time Office Hours. This podcast explores crime and justice topics by cutting through the noise to make crime and justice clear, one issue at a time. Here, we examine social, cultural, and political forces that shape America's crime and justice narratives. We endeavor to give you the straight information on what's going on in the world of crime and justice and why. Crime Time Office Hours has been examining the Houston serial killer controversy over several episodes. In this episode, we're looking at one of the most discussed, yet least understood, aspects of the controversy. The unusually high number of deaths classified as undetermined by the medical examiner's office. Traditional media coverage has raised a lot of questions, but offered very little explanation of what those classifications actually mean. So today, we're stepping back to understand the bigger picture, how death investigations are conducted, what factors influence a manner of death determination, and why these determinations matter far beyond any single case. To help us unpack that, I'm joined by Dr. Elizabeth Gilmore. She holds a PhD in juvenile justice from Prairie View AM University. She is also a death investigations expert and former autopsy assistant with the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office. She also recently participated in a volunteer-based remains recovery and identification effort in Kerr County, Texas, after severe flooding occurred there. And she teaches a university-level death investigations course that she developed. In this conversation, I give Dr. Gilmore wide space to really walk us through her background in death investigations and the processes, challenges, and importance of death investigation work. Beyond the current death investigations controversy, I think the content will be interesting to listeners. But yes, at the end we'll tie it all to the serial killer controversy.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):And not that it's a bad job, but it wasn't something that I thought I would have. That's what they say about like uh porn and things of that nature, you know, right? It wasn't my goal, but I ended up here somehow. So I started off my career kind of early in criminal justice because I could work full-time and have health insurance. That's kind of how that happened. And I worked in a jail for a while and got a degree in crime scene. And this is not to like date myself, but this was pre-CSI. I worked in uh
Kevin Buckler (Host):So you were doing it before it was cool.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):I I was, but then it got cool and it got super competitive, like right around that time. So that was really hard because the university I went to went went from having like, you know, 30 students a semester to like 400 like overnight because everybody wanted to be like it was on TV and it was and then the competition for jobs got crazy too. So it was wild. And so I worked at the jail for a few years, and then I got my degree in crime scene and worked in child abuse investigations for a few years. And I had finally landed like my dream spot in forensics, and I had a family member get sick who was living in the Houston area. So I packed up everything. I was in Florida at the time, I packed up everything and moved to Houston. And I really thought when I moved here, which is it's always funny when I think about it now, that I thought that I would have these this abundance of job opportunities because I had all this experience and this fancy crime scene degree. And come to find out that most of the jobs that I did as a civilian in Florida were done by law enforcement in the Houston area. And it's no offense to law enforcement, but I didn't want to be a police officer. So I found myself in a bit of a pickle trying to find a job. And just so happened that Harris County was hiring at the medical examiner's office, what they were called at the time. Now they're the Institute of Forensic Science. But the time I worked there, they were called the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office. And they they had a job opening and I applied for it. And because I had previous experience working scenes involving death, I I got the job. And I was very grateful for it because again, I I was really kind of bouncing all around the place trying to find a job for a few months and I was getting panicky. And so I did that for for a few years. And the the job that I did then doesn't exist anymore because it's actually in the the building I worked in doesn't exist anymore. Now it's a parking lot. Have I told you that? Yeah. Parking was always a problem. So it's probably a good thing. But they have a brand new fancy building that is so much nicer than anything I ever worked in, has training facilities and you know, sunlight gets into it. It's lovely. I worked in the one that has used to be a is now a parking lot. The job that I did though was kind of different. It it required me to uh kind of alternate between like going out to different scenes and doing the scene investigation with the retrieval of the decedent to bring the deceased person or persons back to the medical examiner's office and working in tandem with the pathologist when they were performing the autopsy. So we'd work as autopsy assistants where you assist the uh forensic pathologist with the evisceration of the human body.
Kevin Buckler (Host):And by evisceration you mean like cut and chop, right?
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Well, I don't know. There's is there chopping? There's um there's sawing. If that's uh if it yeah, yeah. So in in Harris County, which is this is always the part that like when I start talking about my previous career history, people are like, oh, and they don't really have much to say. But in Harris County, the rule was that the pathologist had to be present in the room with you as the assistant, and they had to make the initial Y incision on the decedent. So that goes like from shoulder to shoulder, lines up as like kind of like the tip of a triangle, right in the middle of kind of like in between the ribcage where the rib cage kind of meets, like in the sternum area, and then straight down past the navel, like usually around the belly button and down into like where the bladder is, but it's very superficial. They only have to kind of just barely draw it. And in fact, many of the doctors would come into the room, they'd stand there and they'd put on a single glove, right? With their one scalpel, they'd make the incision very superficially, and then go, okay, go while they were gowning up, right? Because they wanted you to do everything else. So the reflection of all the skin, and then the removal of like the rib cage, and then you know, you start doing organ eviscerations of heart and lungs and small intestine, large intestines, stomach, pancreas, and liver and kidneys, and bladder and reproductive organs as presenting, depending on the decedent. So, yeah, so I know how to eviscerate a human body. So it's fascinating work. And so we would be working alongside of them in the autopsy suites while they were then dissecting, because the pathologists take each organ, they weigh it, and then they dissect it and they take samples from it, histological samples. So you're kind of moving at getting the organs out of the place as well as the bodily fluids. So we would take things like vitreous fluid, which is from the eyes and urine and different types of blood samples and things like that for the pathologists, and then they're doing the dissection and taking samples. You're making observations in real time. Sometimes you have a case where you think it's, you know, the doctor's like, oh, this was a probably natural, right? You got the information from the initial scene investigation and they make the Y incision and you start doing it, and as you're reflecting the skin back, like all this blood comes out of the abdominal cavity. You're like, whoa, that's not supposed to be there, right? So you just stop and you're like, hey, doc, look at the I stopped. Look at the so you have to be relatively, you know, trained to observe things, right, as you're uh doing the evisceration.
Kevin Buckler (Host):So I imagine you learned a lot about the human body and how it works just through. I mean, did the ME like talk while while they're doing it? And you know, in terms of a recorder, you see that on show. I don't even know if that's accurate or not.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Yeah, a lot of them did their dictation in the autopsy suites with you. So, and there was all these different personalities there when I worked there. I remember some of those pathologists like so fondly. Some of them really liked to show you things that they thought were really neat and unique. And some of them had like no ability to find anything gross. So, like their gross threshold was much more higher than even mine was, which mine was a lot. We just to be there, your your threshold is high. And so, so but I remember like one doctor was really interested in stomach contents and he'd try to be like, I think this is pizza. What do you think this is? And like this is something because I mean they're trying to figure stuff out, right? But meanwhile, I was just like, I don't know, just send that to a lab, or they're like, I don't want to look at it, you know, and stuff like that. But some of them were really into like teaching us stuff, and if you wanted to learn, they would, if you ask them questions, they would tell you. I I remember two physicians quite fondly. One previously worked in a medical school, so he had previously like taught people how to be doctors. He was fascinating because he talked so fast. He would dictate in the room with a he had a foot pedal that he would push with his foot and it would record him. And so he'd say really fast, this is case number blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is case number. Okay, the decedent is blah, blah, blah, blah, this weight, this weight, this height, this, that. You talk really fast. But if you made any noise while he was dictating, any noise at all, you would get like the side eye. But if he wasn't dictating and you asked him, like, well, what's that? What's that thing right there? And he'd go, Oh, this is a blah blah, and he'd just ri tell you all about it. He's really excited. And then there was another one who had a really calm demeanor to him, who would had a very similar uh way about him in terms of that. And so, yeah, so you get you get to learn a lot and you get to you get to see it's interesting because you get to see the fragility and the resilience of the human body all at once. I picked up a lot of medical terminals, you pick it up really fast. I mean, because at least to my knowledge, even now, there's no training in how to how to eviscerate humans. I mean, pathologists go to training, but even that, even them. So we would rotate fellows through the program there at Harris County. And so they would come in, having done all of their, you know, specific studies. So they, you know, they become medical doctors and they do all the stuff they need to do to check all those boxes, and then they go into specialization. And so they would, but they would come to us, our fellows. So these folks are typically about a year away from taking their boards to become certified forensic pathologists, and they don't know how to cut cases at all. So they but they would put fellows with us that like were like, Well, do you want us to do this? And they're like, Oh no, you know, so they'd have to call over the doctor that was supervising them, right? Who's in the room with them? Right. But so I learned everything that I was like, I had never held a scalpel before I got hired, like you know, and done any of those things. I'd never seen a body with a headblock underneath it or known how to use a bone saw. You just kind of you just kind of pick it up. There was not a specific way that you learn that stuff and you kind of get trained on the job. And that was also really interesting. But yeah, you you see a lot and you learn a lot. I'm grateful I had the experience because it really gives you a perspective on a lot of the ways that these cases are investigated and the different stuff that goes on in those cases, I guess, if that makes sense.
Kevin Buckler (Host):And that experience probably led to a lot of other experiences. Like I was fascinated to learn that you went to help out and volunteer in Kerr County after the floods happened in terms of trying to retrieve bodies from flooded waters. That's that's gotta be tough.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):You know, it's interesting. I think in all the different professions I've worked, with maybe the exception of this one right now, people are like, How did you do was there no other jobs? Like, could you not like could you not work somewhere else? Like, so you're in a jail, you're working with child of these victims, you gotta work. Like, is there no other options for you? So I think that like there's different ways. I think if you're not around death investigations a lot, then you see it totally differently. Like you see it as like, oh, those are deceased people, and that's traumatic and it's not not traumatic, but on the other hand, I'm kind of like, well, there's a tragedy. I have a skill set, I can help, and I know I'm actually really good at this. So like it happened, I can't prevent it from happening. I wish I could, but there's nothing I can do to prevent it from happening. But they need people to help, and I can do that. So for people that don't know what happened, there was a really like a once in, I think like once in every hundred years, they say about catastrophic flood in uh several counties in Texas over the summer. So it was over the July 4th weekend, and there was I I wasn't familiar with this, but there's a bunch of camps that particularly younger girls go to for a period of time during the summer. And they were actually like, I think in their last week, which makes it even more sad. But there was quite a few camps that their their different um campsites are located right along this Guadalupe River. And in the middle of the night, and it was like in the middle of the night, there was this, they had warned about it during the day. But I'll tell you, when I was there, we we got flood warnings just pervasively on our phones. So I can imagine how you start to see those and go like, okay, right? I'm used to this now. But they had gotten flood warnings and it was the middle of the night, and this torrential, very strong flood came through off of that river, and those some of those cabins that were situated alongside the river were just completely taken away. And so you had a lot of media focus on this because it was kind of twofold. You had these young girls that were at this camp that were missing, and then you had a bunch of people who were there for the holiday weekend that were there, like in RV parks, recreationally with our families and stuff like that, that were also missing. And for a really long period of time, the counts weren't accurate, like how many people are missing. Like the campers were the counts were a little more accurate almost immediately, but the the other folks were like, they have no idea. And so a lot of those counties in that area are relatively rural and they don't have a ton of resources. And so I was initially contacted by someone that I know that works doing some anthropology stuff, and then was put in contact with an investigator from the Texas Ranger, actually a captain, I think a captain or a lieutenant, it just sounds cool, from the Texas Rangers who was like, Can you please come help us? Because we have people here and we're searching, but there's a lot of mix-up here. So you have to imagine like the forest of the flooding was really intense. So it buried cars under the river, like it uprooted trees that were hundreds of years old and huge. It took, you know, homes right off of foundations, like just took them away and then destroyed them. So you can imagine what that would do to a body, right? Like you can imagine, and then with all the debris, like imagine, you know, how we think about like with a tornado when things like turn around and there's all this stuff in there and it's banging inside each other. So that's I'm sure what that was like, right? I'm not a I don't know what they call those folks that study rivers, but I'm not one of those people. But I imagine it was really bad, right? And so just from what I saw. So you have all this debris and rubble mixed in with pre-existing animals that may have been deceased in the river, and then animals that were killed during the flooding, like deer and stuff like that, people, right? The seed and you know, and and then take into account that you have cases that involve a lot of juveniles, so juvenile bones look a little bit different, kid bones look different than adult bones because they're growing, so their bones look different and they can look different, you know, just in terms of remains. So they were like, we have people out here that are searching, we have canine teams, we have uh, but we were having a really hard time making appropriate differentiations. And even you had because you had a lot of people that were camping, like in RVs and stuff, you also had like a lot of like things that people were using to grill and cook with that were like mixed into the debris, right? So like dogs were hitting on people's uncooked food, right? Because it was giving off indicators of like decomposition, but it was in fact like you know, briskets or because people were planning on grilling, right? And so you had we had a lot of those where I was like, that's grocery stuff, but you can't get when it's covered in dirt and it, you know, you can't. So the first chunk of time that I was out there, I was, you know, kind of working alongside teams in the field, and then they realized it would be a better idea to put me in more of a central location. So they had set up a makeshift area by a funeral home that gave them space and all this stuff. The community was really supportive of all the investigators and responders out there that was very humbling to kind of be around. And I would kind of stay there and then people would bring stuff in or send imagery in and do that. And so, and then towards the tail end, I worked some more with a canine unit that was doing some additional searching because they unfortunately they still haven't found everything or everyone. I don't know if they ever will, but yeah. So I just there was a need for people to come out there and help. And, you know, I thought I could be useful. I mean, it does, it's not to say that it wasn't, it was really sad. And it really gives you a perspective too when you think about identification with juveniles and things like that. But but I think the effort was very well coordinated. I think the community was really receptive to trying to help as much as they could, but it was it wasn't it wasn't easy. And we would work from the time the sun came up until almost every night until after the sun went down. And as you can imagine, like Houston in July, or like you know, it was hot. It was just as hot there as it is here, and it was like high temperatures and lots of bugs and with all the water. Yeah, like it that's where and that's where like insect activity is like the most I saw bugs there that I have never seen in my life. Like I was so scared, I got bit by things a few times where I was like, what is that? Like I've never even seen bugs like that. And it was such a surreal environment because there was like you know, wildlife and you know, and then you know, there was times when it was so like serene and beautiful and still, and then there was times that's so traumatic, and you could hear, you know, people screaming and crying, and it was very odd. It was very, but again, if I could help, I was willing to help. So especially in those times of mass disaster, because you have so many people that are looking and they just really need people to put eyes on things. So yeah.
Kevin Buckler (Host):So you teach a death investigations course for a university. I would imagine that a lot of these practical experiences that you've had working in the medical examiner's office, doing volunteer work in in Kerr County really helps inform what you do in the classroom. Or traumatizes students. Or traumatizes students, right?
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):It's a little bit of both, probably. Yeah, I mean, I definitely I think that it's really important. And I don't, in fact, you know, I get a lot of feedback that the class is really hard. It is really hard, not just emotionally, right? But the content is really tasking. But I think that there is we don't think a lot about the importance of death investigations until we have to, like until somebody we love is dead. That's when we care, right? And that's bad, that's a tough spot to be in. And in criminal justice, the overwhelming majority of our professionals will work with people that are experiencing or touched by death in some way. And it it could be criminal, so it could be like homicide victims, but it can also be, you know, accidental deaths or suicides, or, you know, or they're working in a facility where someone dies and they need to know what the appropriate response is and what they should be looking for. And because we don't talk about it very much, oftentimes when those sorts of things happen, like it's really difficult to assure that the investigation is, you know, really sound. And especially, you know, when you think about first responders, like how many times do police officers get calls of things like, oh, I just need to do a welfare check because, you know, Jimmy didn't come to work today and they get to the front door and it's open, they walk inside and like Jimmy's deceased on the floor, right? That's that happens. So being aware of the different types of death and how those deaths are investigated, I think is a core skill. I think it's important for everybody in criminal justice from not just law enforcement, but correctional people, people that work in with justice-involved populations, people that work with juveniles, understanding like the prevalence of certain types of things, knowing how to interpret autopsy findings, attorneys, attorneys should know that, defense and prosecuting attorneys should know. Like, I can't tell you how many times you know these prosecutors and defense attorneys be sitting down in the lobby, like waiting hours and hours to talk to pathologists because they can't make heads or tails out of an autopsy report. Like you should, I don't expect you to have the proficiency level that a doctor has, obviously, but you should be able to know if they say this is a medial or this is a lateral or this is distal, the sedent was supine, this scenum was, you know, so knowing kind of that information is really important. So I like teaching the course, although, you know, sometimes I think I get some feedback that it's a little intense, but I would assume that one would know if they took a class called Death Investigations 2.
Kevin Buckler (Host):It's kind of built right into the title, isn't it?
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):I mean, what are you expecting, right? It's gonna be intense, right? So in fact, I just got some feedback from students that were completing an exam and they were like, did you really have to show that many avulsions of tissue and have us identify? I'm like, yes, yes, I did. You know what you were signing up for. So, but I think it's really important. And if you understand it and it's not an unknown and you can do the work, you are really doing a service to a family because that person can't speak for themselves anymore because they're deceased. So knowing that information is important and it can be the difference between a family getting closure or not.
Kevin Buckler (Host):Thank you very much for that really informative overview about the importance of death investigations work. But I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about an issue that's at the heart of the current controversy relating to serial killers in Houston or a serial killer and whether one is operating in Houston. At the heart of this is I think Harris County is a medical examiner model system, whereas a lot of the other counties, particularly the smaller counties in Texas, utilize justices of the peace to make death determinations. Can you tell us a little bit about the distinctions there between the two?
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Yeah, so so Texas has, I don't even know the number off the top of my head, but uh but over 230 counties. But in order to qualify to have a medical examiner system, you have to have, I mean, there's there's other parts of it, but the major component of it is you have to have over a million people living in your county. So most counties, the overwhelming majority of counties in Texas, do not have a medical examiner system. And what that means is that when someone dies in one of those counties that does not have a medical examiner system, that has a just of the peace system, which can be equated with a coroner system, if you if you're familiar with that term, if where the listeners live, that there's a coroner system in their in their location. It's very similar. The Justice the Peace here is an elected official. And what they do is when a when a death happens in their jurisdiction and a doctor who is like the primary care person for that individual is like, I don't know what happened. I'm not signing a death certificate. Because like a primary care doctor can sign a death certificate, right? They can say, This is what killed you. But they have to have a really good idea of they know what happened, right? So, for example, if you're someone who has, you know, stage four metastatic cancer and you're at home on hospice care and you die suddenly, there's a really good chance the doctor's gonna sign your PCP or your oncologist or whomever is overseeing your primary care is gonna sign your death certificate. But if you're someone who is otherwise healthy and you're found deceased in your home, your doctor's gonna be like, signing that. Like, I don't know what happened, right? So in those cases, in a Justice of the Peace system, the Justice of the Peace will come in and they will look at the scene or they'll get information from law enforcement on the phone and they'll make a determination as to whether or not subsequent investigation needs to happen. And particularly what they make a determination on is like whether or not an autopsy needs to be performed on the decedent. So just as the peace are like corners, they're elected. The criteria would probably I don't know if the word is surprise or terrify a lot of people on what they they they need in terms of criteria, but oftentimes it's relatively minimal training, 40-hour class. And they are then equipped according to sanctioning to make the determination as to whether or not subsequent investigation needs to be made. So, and that's not to say that there aren't just the piece that are fantastic, there are some that are so good. Same thing with coroners, but you're leaving up that determination to someone who isn't traditionally is not a doctor, maybe doesn't have a ton of experience. And then in the more rural areas where you have less of those cases, right?
Kevin Buckler (Host):Like they don't see a lot of cases, so they may not even be exposed to yeah, the practical knowledge base doesn't build very quickly, right?
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Right. Right. So they're like, well, I mean, probably a heart attack, you know? And so they don't have the back, but they don't have the baseline to because they're not seeing it with high frequency. So in those systems, and again, I'm not pointing fingers, but in those systems, there's a higher likelihood that something could get potentially overlooked. And they also don't have a ton of funding. So that's also like really important. Like those systems oftentimes don't have a ton of money. So when they're sending decedents and cases like to be autopsied, someone's paying for those, right? And so they're deciding like, what are we gonna do in this case? How much, just like a police department is like how much funding are we gonna allocate? It's expensive to store a body. If you're if you're just the piece or a corner who doesn't have a built-in system for where you keep a body, uh bodies decompose kind of fast, especially in Texas. So uh even just refrigerating a body for 24, 48 hours, right? Like that is a resource, right? And then, like I said, having a pathologist who's then going to not only perform the autopsy, but also take samples and run toxicology and all that, that all costs money. So they're making a determination based on various factors as to whether or not subsequent investigation is warranted, or they're like, no, we're good. It's this, I think it's this, right? And again, that's not to say that to put them in the light of suspicion, but it's just a system that can potentially lend itself to more error and oversight than an ME system. So a medical examiner system is one in which when a primary care doctor doesn't make a decision as to what the cause and manner of death is, that they then, you know, conduct an investigation. So if a doctor's not going to sign a death certificate, that body's coming to the medical examiner's office. Right. Now, whether or not a full autopsy is performed or just what we used to, I don't know if this is still the term, but we used to call it an external exam where the decedent is kind of looked over from head to toe and toxicology is taken from them. And they're like, okay, yeah, I think that it's likely this thing, but we don't see anything suspicious. We're gonna get the toxicology and then we're gonna release the body. That happens infrequently, but it does happen, but they still come to the medical examiner's office, right? If they don't have a physician that's going to sign the death certificate, they're coming to the medical examiner's office, which in the justice of the piece or the coroner system, the decision is like, do we really, should we really be sending them, right? Do we really and that decision is being made by someone who is an elected official, oftentimes with pretty minimal training. So there's a big distinction in terms of the subjectivity there, right? And yeah.
Kevin Buckler (Host):So it seems like we're sort of in this push and pull where the medical examiner system is more bureaucratic and precise, but takes longer and potentially leads to greater frustrations on the part of family members who want to know answers relative to what happens in coroner or justice of the peace counties, where you can get a quick determination, but the likelihood that there's error probably goes up.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Right. So I think it's it's like twofold, right? Yeah. So definitely in a medical examiner system, if especially if they're waiting on toxicology results or things like that, it's going to take quite a bit longer to get answers. And then sometimes because of the precision that they're using, they may not come to a definitive conclusion. They may say, well, we ran every test and we did everything we could, but we're not really sure. But then, you know, compare that to a Just of the Peace system, where you could have a decedent come in and coroner or just as the peace is very quick to say, oh, well, they have a history of heart disease and it looks like they had a heart attack. I'm sure they had a heart attack. And I mean, I guess that's an answer. But for example, if the family's like, no, no, no, no, no. They, they, they're on Lipitor and they take medicine regularly, and they just saw their cardiologist and he said that their heart was improving and and they didn't complain of any chest pain. They just like suddenly collapsed. And and we don't think they had a heart attack, right? Or whatever, right? And they're just the piece is like, well, but that's what I think. Then that family can be left wondering, well, is that really what happened? Like, is that actually what happened? And so then they can be faced with the situation where they're like, Do I want to have, do I want to accept this conclusion or do I want to have an independent assessment done? Which one do I want to do? Right. And so I think that there is room for both to potentially be concerning for family, but in different because of different factors.
Kevin Buckler (Host):Right, right. And the reason I bring this up is it's it's sort of fascinating when something like this happens in Harris County with the serial killer, you know, scare going on or the concerns going on and all the media coverage. One of the interesting things that's a sidebar in the coverage is you're getting a lot of people expressing frustration with the system where there's not answers yet, and uh you have determinations that are that are being called undetermined and things of that nature. A lot of pending cases. So there's a frustration, underlying frustration, I think, with the bureaucracy of it, but you sacrifice that's a sacrifice for the precision.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Right. Right. Absolutely. Yeah, it's definitely, and I I completely understand why it's frustrating and upsetting. But I think if people had a better understanding of the system as a whole, maybe it wouldn't be as as upsetting or as frustrating to them. They would actually maybe potentially see it as a service, right?
Kevin Buckler (Host):Right. So let's let's try to let's try to give people that who are who are willing to listen.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):You've been brave this far, right? So just stay, just stay.
Kevin Buckler (Host):Exactly. So one of the things that you've referenced is this idea of cause of death versus manner of death. So can you talk a little bit about the differences there and what the process looks like in arriving at the cause of death versus the manner of death?
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Yeah. So every death certificate that is issued by a physician here has two different categories in terms of information. Well, I mean, death certificates have a lot of information, but in terms of this cause and manner, both of those appear and there's differentiation. And it's important to know kind of what that means. So cause of death is the actual disease or artifact or thing basically that caused the death. Okay. And I I know that this sounds like ultra simplistic when I say that, but I'll give some examples and that will probably help. But that is the cause of death. The manner of death is a classification that's limited to like six potential categories, one of which is only temporary. So the manner of death can be natural, which means that the person died of disease or malfunction of their body that was related to nothing else. Okay, so like cancer, like cancer. Okay, so um, like metastatic cancer. No, but like let me give you like a like a sidebar to this. So, like let's say you have an individual who has epilepsy, they're an epileptic, and they are prone to having grandma seizures and they are because they're always trying to like mess around with people's seizure medication, right? So like let's say their seizures are under control and they're cleared to drive, but they're driving and suddenly they experience a seizure and they crash into a tree. And when they they die because of blunt force trauma from the car accident, even though the seizure caused them to drive off the road, that would not be a natural death because it was actually the trauma from the car accident that like helped implicate the death, not solely itself. So it has to be by itself to be natural disease, natural manner of death. So, but if that same person, for example, was not driving and they had their seizure in a classroom and people did everything they could, but they couldn't save them and they then died as a result of having this grandma's seizure that they couldn't recover from, that would be natural. So there can't be any other like factors that complicate the natural of death, right? So natural is just a standalone. Right, standalone, right? So things like, like I said, like cancer, metastatic cancer, strokes, heart attacks. We see a lot of like heart-related deaths in the United States, right? So things like that. So that's natural. Accidental is as one would think, it is a death that it is accidental in nature. So things like car accidents, most drownings, cases involving like a choking, right? Where, you know, a child or whoever whoever like gets uh airway obstruction and they can't breathe. And so that causes them not to be able to breathe. So that's accidental, falls from things, you know, all those sorts of things that you would attribute to being an accident in nature, right? Not an intentional an accident in nature. And then you have homicides, which is when one person um kills another person. That's homicides.
Kevin Buckler (Host):Before you go to suicide, can you talk a little bit about the distinction between homicide and murder versus, you know, non-negligent manslaughter and things of that nature? Because it seems like homicide is a broadly encompassing concept with and within that concept, there's several different subclassifications to a certain extent.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Right. Yeah. So, so you have to remember that the people that are investigating the forensic pathologists that are investigating death, they're separate entities from law enforcement, right? So they should have really no, they should not have any vested interest in like the outcome of the prosecution of the case or the investigation of the case. Like they're just there to report on what they think happened to this decedent. How do they die? What happened, right? Now they'll get information from law enforcement, but they're not there to be biased by them, right? So here's the thing like when one person is intentional in killing another person, that is a homicide. But that does not mean that there is like criminal charges pending or that it's murder or that it's non-negligent mantle. Like those are the things that the attorneys piece out, right? Like when the district attorney's office is trying to decide how are we going to charge this or are we going to charge this, they're not concerned with the manner of the death, right? I mean, they they look at the autopsy report, but they're not thinking about, well, this is a homicide. So this is automatically a murder. This is a homicide, so I'm automatically going to charge this, right? So, so for example, let's imagine a case where a person is sitting in their vehicle at a red light and an armed carjacker comes up to them and shoves a gun in their face and says, like, slide over to your car, and they, you know, slide into the driver's seat and they hold the person at gunpoint and they're driving through traffic really erratically, and they're telling them, like, I'm gonna kill you, and this and that, right? And at some point there's a struggle, and the passenger who was once the driver of the vehicle, right, manages to fight the gun away from the perpetrator and shoots them, right? And then later on, and you know, 911 is called and the driver who was engaging in the armed carjacking is taken to the hospital and they subsequently die. That death is a homicide. I would have gotten that right. You gotta get it right. Yeah, it's uh it's funny because you know the media will be like, oh, this case is a homicide. And I'm like, well, no kidding. Of course it's a homicide. Like, what else? It's not an accident, right? Like the person who was being carjacked was clearly like, you were going to kill me, so I shot you, right? So now, of course, this varies on jurisdiction and what the laws are locally. And you know, you have some states that are like stand your ground states and some states that are not. But in a lot of those cases, particularly if someone is faced with imminent bodily harm and you know, end of life, right? And they defend themselves, even though it's a homicide, there's not criminal charges, right, that are that are pursued by the district attorney's office. They're like, oh, this person was just trying to save themselves. But it still doesn't negate the fact that the case is a homicide. The case is a homicide. So I think it's really important for like people to understand that just because that that's what happens, that that doesn't necessarily mean that there's going to be like pending criminal charges.
Kevin Buckler (Host):So homicide just by by because doctors have to pick it basically means someone took someone else's life, right?
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Correct. Like someone intentionally took someone else's life.
Kevin Buckler (Host):Okay.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Right. And so, like I said, like you can have uh you can have homicides of all sorts of guys, especially as things that are self-defense that are not, but there's no other way to rule them. They're they are obviously homicides, but I think because we hear about like homicide detectives, and we don't call them murder detectives, right? But really and truly they're more like murder detective or whatever, first degree murder, like whatever it would be in your state, right? They're more like murder detective, not really. They do see all the homicides, but you know, they're they're far more interested in the ones that have a criminal component to them. That's what they're investigating, right? Now they may rule out some cases, right? They may tell the DA, like, we looked into this, this is what we found, this is whatever, but that's what those how those cases are ruled. So that those are homicides. And then suicides are uh when a person ends their own life and they do it with the intent that they want to do that. So has to be really clear that that that individual wanted to die. So those are suicides. And then you have the temporary assignment appending. So when we're waiting on results for something, so this can be a couple of different things. Like sometimes doctors will take toxic, well, they usually always take toxicology at autopsy, but sometimes they'll take special samples, like they'll want someone to look at the retinas of the eye, or they'll want someone from brain who's a brain specialist who specializes in neurological defects and things like that, to come in and look at the decedent's brain and you know, do the cross-sections with them, or or they're waiting on histology, like they think something looks cancerous, but they're not sure. So they look it under microscope, or they think this person may have a bacterial infection, they're not sure. They'll put it as pending, but that will change once they have their answers. So that's only a temporary manner. And then the the last one, which is the the catch-all that we're getting to, is the is undetermined. So when a manner of death is is written as undetermined, that means that the pathologist has kind of exhausted every potential avenue that they can, but they still don't know what happened. And in a lot of these cases that we're seeing in Houston, we're seeing that manner of death being assigned. And I think that that can be really confusing to people if they don't understand that the choices, there's specific choices, right? It can so if they don't know for sure that it's natural causes, and they don't know for sure that it's an accident, and they don't know for sure that it's a suicide, and they don't know for sure that it's a homicide, it has to be an indetermined.
Kevin Buckler (Host):I also think that sometimes the lay person outside the criminal justice system uh automatically assumes that the medical examiner determination is linked somehow to what police can or can't do, or what prosecutors can or can't do. So can you sort of speak to that in in terms of that difference? How an ME finding of in terms of one of those six categories or five categories if you take away pending, sort of plays into police behavior and prosecutor behavior in terms of filing and pursuing cases or charges.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Okay, yeah, that's a really good point. So so I can kind of do like two examples that are I think are really relevant and maybe will help people understand. So because this always like harps on me and I I always like really nail this down into my students, right? So the medical examiner, the forensic pathologist that's conducting the autopsy should be doing an independent assessment from the police. Like they are not, they don't work for the police, they are not there to, you know, help the police, you know, get their bad guy or not get their bad guy or whatever, right? They're just there to do their investigation. Now, they do get information from the police on scene, but their evaluation is completely independent. And that's really important because it adds validity to the process as a whole, right? So, and also because they're wagering their expertise. Like these are medical doctors. So they went to they went to school to be doctors, right? They're they're board-certified medical doctors. So that's important. So let me give you a more of an interesting example to understand, and then I'll give you more of like a mainstream media one. So so for example, so let's say that you have someone who's working, we have a lot of like plants and stuff here in the Houston area, like particularly in Pasadena and Deer Park area, and they work with like oil and gas, and they can be really dangerous places to work, right? And so let's say that you have an incident where like a decedent falls from a high area because they're working at one of those plants and they fall and they die. They die because they fall from a high height and they impact onto concrete, for example. The cause and manner of death would likely be classified as, you know, multiple blunt force injuries, probably, right? They put multiple broken bones and multiple traumas to their body. And then that would be classified as an accidental death because they fell, right? But that does not mean that there won't be criminal charges and investigation. For example, like let's say the company recently made cutbacks and they're like, oh, we don't need those safety harnesses, right? Like, oh, fooing on those. Like those are extended, those are $200 a person and they got to be custom fitted or whatever, right? There may be a subsequent investigation, right, that proves that there was some liability, right? And there might be a criminal investigation, right? Because maybe, for example, they find out like, oh, someone was intentionally withholding them or you know, someone, whatever, someone didn't hook, they said the harness was hooked up, but it wasn't, and whatever, right? So there you have an accidental death and you could have criminal or civil liability there. And then in the flip side, sometimes you'll see the media take off with this. This this always just greats on me. So I'll use it as the example because it just drives you crazy. You all have a I know, right? I know because I see this in class and I usually have to like keep myself from cursing because I'm like, no kidding, you know, but I don't say kidding, right? But it just drives me nuts, right? You'll have a case, for example, where a group of individuals breaks into a house and they they break into the house in the middle of the night and they engage in a home invasion, right? So they're breaking into the house and they're tie up and bind all the people that are in the house, right? And they're trying to get money out of them or whatever, like they're trying to get goods or information out of their house. And at some point, one of the victims of the home invasion like breaks free and shoots the home invader, right? Who's or one of the home invaders, right? And the rest of them take off running, right? And the media will come out and be like, the medical examiner's office ruled the the the cause and manner does homicide for the person who was shot. Like, no kidding. I mean, it's just like it's not accidental. Like they didn't die naturally, they were shot, right? And they were shot by someone else. So obviously it's a homicide. Now, I can't speak to like every case, and obviously that's a that's a jurisdictional and case-by-case thing. But in a lot of those cases, right, where there's self-defense involved or things like that, right? You're not going to have criminal charges pursued, even though the death is classified as a homicide because the person was defending their family or they were, they were, you know, in a situation that was like a life and death situation, and they were, they were being faced with deadly force, and so they responded with deadly force within the boundaries of their home or whatever, right? In police shootings, right, you see this where like someone will shoot at the police and the police will return fire and they will hit the person who's shooting at them, and that is ruled a homicide. There is no, there's nothing else to rule that. But if someone's shooting at the police and the police return fire, there's a relatively high chance. And again, this depends on the case and the circumstances, right? And the prosecutors, the DA's office, they're going to look at those cases case by case. So we don't just make a blanket assumption. But you can have homicides where there's no criminal offense, right? Where they decide, like, no, that's a self-defense case or whatever that is. But that doesn't change the classification. But media will often use the terms homicide and murder interchangeably. And they're not the same at all, right? Murder is something that's more related to how a state decides to charge or not charge a case and look at criminal intent, premeditation, all those things that the attorney folk look at that I wasn't a part of, right? But if someone killed another person, there's no other way to describe it. You know, you're in those sorts of circumstances, that's going to be a homicide. So important information to know.
Kevin Buckler (Host):Basically, the underlying point is that even though these cases in terms of the bayou bodies are classified as undetermined, that doesn't preclude later on if additional evidence comes out that there's been a murder, that they can charge someone later on, even though it's an undetermined classification.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Correct. And also the doctors have the ability to change their determination. So the forensic pathologists do have the purview to so you see this sometimes with cases where, you know, like maybe an assumption was made potentially, and they thought, oh, that's natural or it's an accidental, even in an undetermined case. And then they'll like exhibit remains or because they'll see something suspicious in another case, and they'll be like, oh, this is tied to this other person. These are all the same. And they'll exhume a body and then they'll change it and they'll say, Oh, now I'm gonna change this to this. So you can have cases as well where even the pathologist, because of new information, if they get new information in, they're not they're not bound because they made that initial determination to always stay by that if they get more information in.
Kevin Buckler (Host):And is it fair to say that the passage of time increases the likelihood that's that there will be an undetermined determination made? Undetermined determination.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Yeah, I almost said that earlier. It's sick because I was like, they're gonna determine it undetermined. Do you mean like passage of time from when they find the body?
Kevin Buckler (Host):The passage of time between the time of death and the discovery of the body. Um that is going to increase pretty exp exponentially the likelihood that an undetermined, an undetermined, determined I like the phrase.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):I'm just going with it. Undeterminor, how about that? Undetermined manner? Yeah. So yeah, uh, so for sure, in warm environments.
Kevin Buckler (Host):So it's not warm in Houston, is it?
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Satan doesn't come here in the summer. Like it just so it is so hot in Texas. Wait, and it is getting hotter, isn't it? Isn't it?
Kevin Buckler (Host):It seems to be.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Maybe I'm just getting old. You know, they say that the music gets
Kevin Buckler (Host):Yeah, we're in October and we just hit a really good stretch of pleasant weather, and I'm just so short-lived. It was.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):It's like in the high 80s today.
Kevin Buckler (Host):And I had a colleague the other day, he said to me, Yo, it's 75 out and you're wearing like hoodies and stuff. And I'm like, the weather changed. I pulled out the hoodies and I refuse to go back.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):It's funny you said I was telling the students in my class, I'm like, it's cute boot season, but only for like three weeks. So hurry up, hurry up, get your cute shoes out because otherwise you're gonna be in flip-flops. Um, yeah, so it's it's hot here. And um, everything that's related to what we call postmortem interval, which is fat things that happen to the body after a person is deceased that are indicators of maybe when they died speed up with temperature. So just like if you leave raw meat out on a countertop that where it's warm, right, versus if you leave it out in a home or like outside when it's snowing out, right? The rate at which that meat will go bad, right, is much faster in the warmer environment than it is in the cold. Right. So so all of these things related to post mortem interval are sped up when it's hot.
Kevin Buckler (Host):That's why we call it a hot mess and not a cold mess, right?
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):That's a dumpster fire.
Kevin Buckler (Host):A dumpster fire. There you go. Okay. Sorry to interrupt.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):T No, you're fine. No, so so those things are sped up. And and so, especially decomposition. And in Houston, we're by the water, so it's also humid, really humid here. So that also creates an environment where decomposition happens faster. And so here in a lot of the months that we have in Houston, you're gonna have decompositional changes happen really fast. I remember working cases where like we would get a call from law enforcement that someone was pronounced like mowing their lawn, like they were mowing their lawn, they suddenly collapsed. And we would get out there within 30 minutes of the person being being pronounced, and we would already start to see like a greenish discoloration of the abdomen. And by the time we got them back to the medical examiner's office, even though we had air conditioning in our transport vehicles, we'd start to see some bloating and stuff. So I mean that's really fast. But it was in direct sunlight, right? In the middle of summer. So heat speeds that up. So the time that goes by in between when we make the when we visually see the decedent, and then we, you know, know that they've become deceased, like in hot temperatures, that is exponentially increased, right? And so then when you're talking about bodies and water, that's a whole nother, that's a whole nother can of worms.
Kevin Buckler (Host):Okay, well, tell me about bodies and water because that's where we're finding these bodies in in Houston.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Um, so traditionally, when a body is placed into water, initially what happens usually, and there's some factors that can impact this, but generally speaking, a body will sink and then it will then stay there for a little bit of time until we start to see some decompositional changes, predominantly related to uh the bacteria, it's in like the gut, the intestinal stuff. All the stuff they tell you like eat your yogurt, right for your gut, right? You should have bacteria there. So that's normal, right? But when we're no longer alive, that bacteria kind of wakes up and it starts to do certain things inside our body, including creating a bunch of kind of gas and tension in our abdomen. And that usually is what causes the body to surface. Now, that's not always the case, but that's usually what causes the body to surface. And so by the time you have a body being visually observed in water, there's been some changes that have happened that have really changed the appearance of the body. And then when you think about water, um, you also have to think that like it's not just water, there's a whole bunch of animals that live in water, right? So there's like in here, I can only imagine what's in the can you imagine what's in the bayou? Like, I mean, they I don't want to imagine. Oh, right. I mean it's not we're not talking pristine crystal clear spring water. Like they they don't even smell good. Yeah, they don't even I'm always surprised at the amount of people that I see like hiking and walking around those because I just no, I'm not gonna do it. Not just not for concern over safety, it's just it doesn't, it's not pleasant. They the water is dark and discolored, and I can't see. Can you see stuff? I can't see stuff in there. No, it's it's abysmal, right? Yeah, so so I don't know what's living in there, but there is things that live in there. I mean, I've seen just you know, close by, I've seen alligator activity and all sorts of stuff in our bodies that are close by. So, you know, things like fish and crustaceans and turtles and all that stuff, as a decedent, you know, passes by, will they will, you know, for lack of a better word, they'll, you know, bite and nibble on deceased remains. So that can also alter the appearance of the decedent and then make it a little bit more difficult. And as as time passes and decomposition progresses, it is more difficult to make observations on soft tissue for soft tissue injuries. Now, things like broken bones or gunshot wounds, things like that, those should still be relatively observable. But if it's something like, you know, this is a case of, you know, a suspected manual strangulation where it wasn't, you know, there wasn't a ton of force where you don't see like hyoid fractures and things like that, you might see it, you might not, right? And so there's things that the doctors can't rule out happening, but can't definitely say happened. And so when they're in those types of situations, they will make the the final manner of death undetermined because they can't say for sure. And that's what that means. And I think that that's really important to understand, because see, especially when you talk about bodies in water, because there was a proclivity this was decades ago, but for a forensic pathologist to say, Oh, we found a body in water, well, that's an accidental drowning, obviously, right? It sounds silly when we hear it now, right? Because we're like, What why would I mean, but think about if, you know, when I lived in Florida, that was really common. We had a lot of like pools and waterways and things like that, and you would see someone found in water, and we would just make the assumption, like, well, it must be- I would just make the assumption it was the Dan Gators, to be honest. Oh, but the alligators in Florida are insane, they get people.
Kevin Buckler (Host):Alligators in Florida. They get dogs, they get people.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):They get they do get especially people going in after their dogs. It's like really sad because it's always like some an elderly person, it's just like always so sad. Um, alligators are terrifying. Florida itself is terrifying, though. So, like Florida was a different Florida's like Jumanji. But in real life, you know, my friend who lives there still calls it Jurassic Florida.
Kevin Buckler (Host):Jurassic Florida, that kind of Jurassic Florida.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Because like they had like they had a hurricane come through, and then like alligators were just swimming in the streets. Right. And they were like, it's their streets now. Like we were just gonna stay inside. And I was like, okay, that makes sense. But you know, the the animal activity can be pervasive. But I'll tell you this though. This is like probably one of the things that people don't like talking about, but it's true, you know. Animal activity is not exclusive to uh water, right? So as humans, we think we've domesticated animals and people die at home.
Kevin Buckler (Host):You gotta watch those fucking cats.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Cats will eat you. It's a it'll take a long time before your dog will eat you. Your cat'll eat your face off in almost no time flying.
Kevin Buckler (Host):Like that. I know.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):They're like, oh, you're dead. I mean, sometimes I wonder if like the ones that are being snuggly are just really checking for a pulse, those cats.
Kevin Buckler (Host):It could very well be.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):They will. I've seen it happen. So, so you know, all of those things when we can't, when we don't have enough information to make a determination whether it's that there's no soft tissue. You see this too in cases with skeletal remains. Like if we have a case where we can recover every bone of the body, but not have an idea what happened to that person, like, because there's no damage to this to the skeletal remains. If we had the soft tissue, we might be able to see contusions or abrasions or lacerations or maybe sharp force injuries that didn't penetrate a bone, you know, those sorts of things. But because we don't have that, we're like, we don't know what happened. It could be this person came out here and had a heart attack. It could be this person came out here and overdosed. It could be this person came out here and, you know, fell somewhere, but didn't didn't hurt themselves in any way, but became unable to move or get to, you know, you know what I'm saying? Like there's all these different things, right? Or they got lost or they got turned around, they died from starvation. Or whatever, right? So you don't know. And so it's really important not to make assumptions. And kind of going back to waterways, it was very common when we would find bodies in water to assume that it was drowning.
Kevin Buckler (Host):Right.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):But it's it's we don't know. And if we don't know, because we can't absorb no no one saw this person get, you know, dive into the bayou, right? And we can't observe anything that makes us definitively assured that it's a drowning at autopsy, then undetermined is while frustrating, it's the proper manner of death determination.
Kevin Buckler (Host):Right. So it seems like the perfect storm. We have a public that is fascinated with the idea of a serial killer. We have all these pop culture shows, streaming services, we have true crime sleuths working, the internet, social media. And we're in Houston where we have heat, we have water, right? And we have a very bureaucratic, for good reason, medical examiner system.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):And we have a lot of people.
Kevin Buckler (Host):And we have a lot of people.
Elizabeth Gilmore (Guest):Yeah, it really is a situation where you have a lot going on, and there's a lot of factors that can contribute to speculation.
Kevin Buckler (Host):Before we close, I want to bring in some perspective from Dr. Gilmore, a death investigations expert who helped clarify what's actually happening behind the numbers. Much of the public frustration about the Bayou cases, the uncertainty, the lack of clear answers, stems from how deaths are classified, and that process is far more complex and far more cautious than most people realize. Dr. Gilmore explained that Houston operates under a medical examiner system, not a Justice of the Peace system. That distinction matters. The medical examiner model is more bureaucratic, yes, more layers of paperwork, procedures, and scientific review, but it's also more precise. Each finding must meet evidentiary standards that can withstand both scientific and legal scrutiny. That precision, she notes, can make the process feel slow or opaque to the public, but it's designed to ensure accuracy rather than satisfy immediacy. She also emphasized that medical examiners use just five official categories for classifying manner of death homicide, suicide, natural, accidental, undetermined, and sometimes pending while additional evidence is gathered. Unless the evidence strongly supports one of the first four, the correct and ethical decision is to classify the case as undetermined. It's not a failure or a cover up. It's an acknowledgement of uncertainty. In forensic science, undetermined means not enough to conclude, not that nothing happened. Another key point she may is that a medical examiner's ruling is independent of police and prosecutorial decisions. The medical examiner does not determine guilt or decide whether a case becomes a criminal investigation. They determine what the body shows. Law enforcement may pursue charges even if a case is classified differently, and conversely, a homicide finding doesn't guarantee prosecution. These systems operate in parallel, not in hierarchy. Dr. Gilmore also noted that findings can be revised when new evidence comes to light. Advances in forensic technology, like improved DNA testing, toxicology, or witness reports, can lead to reclassification years after a case is first closed. This flexibility is built into the system for a reason. Death investigation is a living process meant to evolve as the known facts and the science does. And finally, she offered an explanation that hits close to home for Houstonians. Given Houston's climate, the heat, humidity, and the environmental challenges of the bayou system, it's not surprising that a large proportion of recovered bodies remain undetermined. Decomposition in warm, wet environments can obscure critical evidence. Clothing, tissue, and trace materials degrade faster. When a body is recovered from water, even with today's forensic tools, cause and manner can be extremely difficult to establish. Dr. Gilmore's insight reframes what might look like bureaucratic failure as something more scientific, and in a way, more human. The uncertainty isn't a sign that the system isn't working, it's a sign that people inside it are unwilling to rush toward easy answers. As Houston debates what's happening in and around its bayous, it's worth remembering that Dr. Gilmore reminded us, undetermined doesn't mean unknown forever. It means the truth hasn't surfaced yet. And sometimes in a city built on waterways and heat, that's the hardest truth of all. I hope you subscribe and meet me back here for the next episode. It will be the final in the Houston Serial Killer series and will focus on understanding the real cultural anxieties operating beneath the surface of the serial killer scare. Issues such as the uncertainties of safety in urban spaces, trust in government institutions, and funding and resources for public services. If you learned something or laughed, even if it was nervously, go ahead and give that like button some love. Believe me, it's a lot easier than my course exams and writing assignments. I hope you return for additional episodes of Crime Time Office Hours, the podcast where we cut through the noise to make crime and justice clear, one issue at a time.