The Autopsy 34:29

Make this new school year an opportunity for your kids to learn important life skills with Greenlight. Greenlight is a debit card and money app for families where kids learn how to save, invest, and spend wisely while parents keep an eye on kids' money habits. Greenlight also helps families get into their fall routine with a chores feature that lets parents assign chores and pay kids allowance when they check them off. Get your first month free at greenlight.com slash spotify. greenlight.com slash spotify.

This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Whether you're selling a little or a lot, Shopify helps you do your thing however you cha-ching. From the launch your online shop stage all the way to the we just hit a million orders stage. No matter what stage you're in, Shopify's there to help you grow. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash special offer all lowercase. That's shopify.com slash special offer.

My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friend's still laughing me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn.com slash results.

LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. Welcome back to another episode of Mayfair Watchers Society. If you like the show and you like what we're doing, there are a few ways to support us. The first is by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Reviews are the best way to get our shows into the ears of new listeners. Or you can download the Apollo Podcast app and get early and ad-free access to our episodes. We air new episodes on Apollo two weeks in advance so you can listen before anyone else. You can learn more at ApolloPods.com.

And now, this week's episode. We are the Watchers.

Observers of the strange, paranormal, occult, unwelcome, unspiritual, horrifying, mystical, secret, transcendent, repulsive, captivating, unwelcome, appalling, gruesome, unseen, magic, weird, revolting, horrifying, unseen.

Welcome to Mayfair Watchers Society. Conducting this autopsy is myself, Reyes County Coroner. I'm assisted by Sam Foreman, a medical technician. Hi. Knock it off, Sam. I want to get this done before we have to pick up the kids from soccer practice. Sorry, boss. The deceased is Harold Derwent, male, age 61. He was found dead this morning by police on a welfare check. Do you have the exact time? 1040 a.m.

The body is consistent with the deceased's age. Caucasian, a little overweight. Tattoo on the upper right arm reads "Savages MC". Dude was an old biker. It's so faded it's gone green. Get a picture of it. Hair brown and graying, eyes brown. Levidity is present on the shoulder, left side of the torso, and the left buttock and thigh, indicating the deceased had been lying on that side for some time before discovery.

Rigor is no longer present. There are scars on the right shin and calf, and on the left calf. I would say they are perimortem. They're not incised. Are they burns? They might be. The pattern's very unusual, though. Looks kind of like one of those parasitic worms. You know, they burrow in through your feet. That's a guinea worm. Unless Mr. Derwin has spent any time recently in northeast Africa, I think we can rule that out. Yeah, but that's what it looks like.

The scars are in the form of thin ribbon-like patterns on the skin. The surface of the scars are slightly blistered, indicating they happened around the time of death, probably shortly before. Make sure you get pictures. On it. His arms too. Similar scars are on the right hand and left forearm, but they are healed and happened substantially before death.

Some very old scars on the left knuckles here. Feels like some of the hand bones have broken and healed. Our biker must have wrecked a few bars back in the day. Not for a long time, though. Aside from the scars on the lower legs, there are perimortem scratches on the elbows and knees consistent with the fall. There is dried blood in the hair, suggesting there is an injury under there. Nose is clear. Mouth, too, so the airways are clean. Right ear is clear. The left has dried blood inside.

Oh, I can feel it. Big goose egg on the back of the head here. On the left temporal bone. That's a definite contusion. Three centimeters behind the left ear. Five centimeters in diameter. Cause of death? You know better than that, Sam. We have to look inside. Shave the area and get a picture before that. Fingernails? Clean. Nothing under them. Neither hand. Do you have the scene photos? Here. They found him at the bottom of the stairs in his house.

Looks like he fell down the stairs, hit his head, knocked himself unconscious, and bled into his brain. It's consistent. That doesn't mean it's right. I know, I know. But there's no need to make it complicated if there's no reason. We crossed the T's, sure. But it's pretty obvious that's what happened. I don't like those scars. There's nothing in the police notes about a fire in the house, right? Nope. Nothing out of place. Maybe it's a corrosive substance. Cleaning products, maybe.

It can't be from a workplace because he's been retired for eight years. Retired in his fifties? Can people still do that? I'll have to ask the police if they found something like that in the house. I doubt they looked too hard. Like I said, it's pretty obvious how the guy bought it. But those acid burns, or whatever they are... I don't like leaving a question mark by that when I tell them the COD. You think it was foul play? Someone threw something corrosive on him? I don't know.

The circumstances suggest not, but that doesn't rule anything out. Mayfair PD certainly thinks this is just a regular old person accident. Mayfair? Yeah. They're the ones who brought him in. Is that weird? It's in our county. Have you seen many cases from Mayfair? Couldn't say. Probably a few. I don't pay too much attention to what town they come in from. I just hold the forceps and take the picks.

This is a very Mayfair kind of body. Something weird about the place? Kind of. Kind of? Let's say, one in a hundred cases that come through this morgue are out of the ordinary. There's something about them that doesn't fit, or a question we're never able to answer. When the cases are from Mayfair, it's more like one in ten. Nothing you can put your finger on, just a pattern you see after you've been doing this long enough. You ever been there? No. Me neither. No?

Maybe it's like Finland. Finland? You know, people say, "Have you ever been to Finland or know anyone from Finland?" Then how do you know Finland exists? I had a college roommate from Finland. Okay, sure. But do you know anyone from Mayfair? Yes. Harold Derwin. I mean, anyone alive. What's your point? I don't know. Just that maybe Mayfair is one of those places. We're going long already. Come on, let's open him up.

The Dermot case is still bothering me. We finished up, took out the organs, weighed them, checked stomach contents, the usual. The heart was normal, arteries a little furred up, hot dogs in the stomach an hour or so before death. We saw what we expected in the head. There was a depressed fracture on the left temporal bone with an accompanying subdural hematoma that built up pressure on the brain. That's the cause of death. The other minor injuries to the elbows and knees are consistent with a fall down the stairs, with the main impact being to the skull.

We'll have the bloods back in the morning, but Sam was right. The actual COD is pretty simple. He fell, fractured his skull, and never regained consciousness. That's not what I'm worried about. Mayfair PD sent me the details they have on Derwent. He had a criminal record, but it's all from 40 years ago. General hell-raising stuff. After that, he got an engineering qualification and moved to Mayfair in the 70s. He was at the Jansen plant and made manager before it closed down. He was married. His wife died six years ago.

His daughter lives out of state. He lived alone, which explains why he fell down the stairs and nobody found him for a few days. A neighbor asked for the welfare check when they hadn't seen him for the whole weekend and no one answered the door. It's not like I haven't seen all of that a hundred times, but that burns. New scars on the legs, old ones on the arms. I went through the scene photos a lot longer than normal. I thought maybe I'd see a bleach spillage on the carpet or a jug of something corrosive sitting around.

there wasn't anything like that of course but there was something i could just see in the kitchen through the doorway from the hall where he died it was a pair of dog bowls one for food one for water by the back door a couple tennis balls beside it and a toy stuffed rabbit that looked like it had gone through the ringer all repurposed as dog toys but no one mentioned a dog the cops didn't have to call animal control to take it away

The neighbor hadn't mentioned a dog was barking or hadn't been fed, like in half the neighbor calls the cops get. If there had been a dog there for two and a half days, it would be obvious. The cops would definitely have made a note of it. But there was no dog in the house. Maybe Mr. Derwent used to have a dog. If it had died or if he'd given it away, would he still have the bowls and toys there? I wish the police had noticed it and asked the neighbor.

Weird that it's stuck in my mind, especially because there's no doubt about the cause of death. Anything beyond the COD is someone else's job. I'm not supposed to come up with the whole story. Just the physical processes that killed him. My part begins and ends with acute subdural hematoma being written on the form. But the burns, the dog, and the fact that he was from Mayfair. One of the other kid's parents picked up the girls and got them home. They haven't said anything, but they've done it a few too many times now.

I'll bake them something to say thanks. And sorry. Hey, talk to me. Sam? It's Marina. I got your message. Okay, great. Mark this one in your calendar. It's the day Sam knew something that Dr. Reyes didn't. Make this good, Sam. I'm supposed to be on my way to date night. You and Dan still do date night?

That's adorable. Clock's ticking, Sam. Okay, okay. You know those scars on Mr. Derwent? Sure, the burns. That's what I thought, too. I hit up the library and went through some of the gross-out books. The ones with the medical photography. The students troll each other with them all the time. I looked through a bunch of chemical burns, but I didn't find anything with that pattern.

Didn't think I would, because it's not like the guy had buckets of acid lying around, right? Right. So I thought, what would Marina do? And I said to myself, Dr. Reyes would be thorough. She'd go through all possibilities just to be able to say she'd done it. Would she call her colleague and spend half an hour getting to the point? No, I figured she'd put it in a PowerPoint or something. Anyhow, I looked at infections and all that stuff, nothing there.

Then I thought, let's get spooky. So, I looked up animal attacks. Oh, God. What? Don't tell me it was a dog. A dog? Oh, God, no. Take a guess. Come on, Sam. Just one. One guess. Then I'll tell you. Fine. I guess...

Snake. Try jellyfish. A jellyfish. Only thing that matched. Same patterns, same blistering. Even the same old scars. Harold Derwin was stung by a jellyfish that lived at the top of his stairs. We don't have to work out the why, right? Isn't that what you tell me? We just focus on the what.

And what it was, was a jellyfish. Most likely, a Portuguese man of war. Something with long tendrils of stinging cells. They're what made those long ribbon shapes. I appreciate the hustle, Sam. But Harold Derwin didn't run into a Portuguese man of war. I can't bring that back to Mayfair PD, and they can't bring it back to his daughter. So, what are you going to put down in the paperwork? Skin inflammation of unknown origin. Is that it? It's the truth. Are we really fine with that?

Science isn't always an exact science, Sam. Sometimes we have to admit we don't know. There isn't always enough information remaining to say for certain, and we know the cause of death. Sometimes we can't even give them that. So, are we done? We're done. Damn. Did all that learning for nothing. Where's date night? Bowling. You are kidding me. Bowling? It was our first date! When we can't decide where to eat, we go bowling. Well, enjoy.

You need me to finish anything up? Just drop a message to Mayfair PD that I filled in all the paperwork on Derwent and no jellyfish. Yes, ma'am. No jellyfish. Trevor Henderson here with an ad break. If you'd like to get early and ad-free access to Mayfair Watchers Society, consider supporting us on the Apollo Podcast app. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Whether you're selling a little or a lot...

Shopify helps you do your thing, however you cha-ching. From the launch your online shop stage, all the way to the we just hit a million orders stage. No matter what stage you're in, Shopify's there to help you grow. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash special offer, all lowercase. That's shopify.com slash special offer. And now, back to our show. So is this, you know, permanent? Like, do I get assessed on it?

When my manager goes through my KPIs, is this going to be... No? Okay. Just have to be careful about what we say, you know? Me? For the recording? Yeah. My name is Doug Bullard. I'm a security team member at the hospital here. I'm on the midnight to 8 a.m. shift. That's what I was doing this morning. I was on my shift. I keep tabs on the ground floor and the stairways to the basement. Lots of storage for drugs and chemicals and stuff down there, so they have one of us watching the stairways and helping out at the front entrance if they need it.

Yeah, the morgue's down there too. This was about four in the morning. The night was real quiet. I was sitting in my usual spot by the stairwell, reading. Uh, I read a lot when it's quiet. I can keep an ear out and not get crazy bored. Plus, me and Manny on the front door are on the radio, coming up with all-time teams. You know, the best left-handed team, the best guys that never won a World Series, that kind of thing. He really knows his stuff. We were talking about who the best red-headed shortstop was when I hear something moving down the corridor.

I say to Manny, hold on and go look. It was kind of scrabbling on the ground. I thought it was something one of the cleaners was doing, but there wasn't anyone down there. It was past the pharmacy where they used to have the vending machine that was always broken. There was some kind of slime on the ground. Of course, in the hospital, you see all kinds of gross stuff on the floor, so I didn't think too much of it. Then I hear the scrabbling again and kind of a snuffling sound. I called out to see if there was anyone there because that part of the ground floor shut up at night.

I heard the breathing again and switched on the light to see if someone was hiding in there. It ran right past me. I didn't have time to see it properly. It was big. The size of a person if they were running on all fours. Long body, shaped kind of like a greyhound. It was the color of raw chicken. It had these long bits of hair that whipped around it. I caught one on my ankle, threw my sock. Hurt like a bastard. Must have cut the skin like a whip. Still hurts. It's all blistered up.

I shouted something and ran after it, but it was fast, and I just saw it going down the stairs. I called for Manny and drew my gun. No, I'd never used my gun before, not outside the range. A lot of security guards are ex-cops or military, but I was just a construction guy. I can shoot it, but I'd never pointed it at anyone. I ran down the stairs and I saw that whatever it was. It was leaving that slime behind so I could tell which way it went. It was going towards the morgue.

I guess I thought it was a dog. A big one, sure, and sick, maybe. So my first thought was, oh Jesus, don't let that thing get into the morgue, because if it starts eating stuff, we'll never hear the end of it. Imagine the headlines, Hospital Apologizes After Dog Eats Family's Dead Loved One. That's a hell of a lawsuit. I shouted if there was anyone down there and the morgue lady came out and asked me what was going on. I think she was scared when she saw the gun. I said to go back into her office and shut the door.

I go through the door with the slime outside and realize I'm in the morgue room. The one with the big table where they do the body stuff. Those drawers for storing bodies in the walls? I had never been in there before. I knew it would be spooky, but they don't tell you about the smell. It's all the disinfectant and cleaning stuff they use. I guess it's better than the smells it's covering up, but damn. I nearly blew chunks right there. This thing is sniffing around one of the drawers. I saw it from behind. I realized I was wrong.

It was way bigger than a dog. The body was real skinny and its legs were way, way too long. It reared up and its head touched the ceiling. Its front paws were scratching at one of the drawers. It was pink and raw, like maybe it had once had fur but that had all gone. And the skin with it, so I was looking at the gristle and tendons underneath it. It had that hair down its sides, but it's not hair. It's all wriggling, like long thin worms.

It hears me, I guess, because it turns around. I see the face. It had a mouth like a Cheshire cat, all wide and full of teeth, way wider than a person's mouth, like someone had cut a slit across a basketball. This big grin. Above that it has not eyes, two pits in its face, like someone had stuck their thumbs into the flesh and left two indentations. No eyes in those sockets, but I know it's looking at me.

It sniffs the ground and walks towards me. It has claws on its feet and they click on the tiles. It makes this noise like laughing. It's laughing at me. Its mouth doesn't open, but these holes on the sides of its neck open and shut. It starts shaking and the worm thing stand on ends like spines on a porcupine. What do I do then? I shoot the freaking thing.

Conducting the autopsy is myself, Marina Reyes, County Coroner. Assisting me is Samuel Foreman. This procedure will not follow the normal pattern for an autopsy. You don't say. I don't know where this information will be recorded or who will have access to it, but whoever you are, I'll do my best to help you understand what I'm looking at. There aren't any rules or checklists for doing this, so I'm making it up as I go along. You okay, Marina? I think so. You? Not really. You want out?

Might as well see it through. It's not like I can unsee this thing. The subject is a quadruped, approximately two and a half meters in length and 1.5 meters tall at the shoulder. The skin is white to pale pink in color, translucent and hairless. There appears to be no outer dermal layer. Tendon and muscular structures are visible. The extremities have three digits, each of which has three or four joints. Are they fingers or toes?

Can't even tell if this thing goes on all fours. It has claws here, maybe they're like nails or just extensions of the bone. Get a picture. I'm getting pictures of everything. There aren't many chances to see one up close. I don't know anyone else who has. You ever see them from your car? From the train sometimes, far away. Usually in the woods where you can't really see past the trees. Same.

One time, I think I nearly ran something over that might have been a deer, but sure didn't look like one for the half second I saw it. I never told anyone about it. Of course not. It was just a hiker or a coyote. Or you imagined it. Yep, there's always, you imagined it, and who wants to hear that? Dan said it must have been a deer. I didn't see much point in arguing.

People are a lot better at convincing themselves than you realize. That's another thing you'll learn on this job. Give it long enough and you'll hear the loved ones who say their kid or brother or parent couldn't possibly have choked themselves for a good time and they must have been murdered. The alcohol level in a car crash victim must be a mistake because they'd never drive drunk.

Even cops do it. You take what's in front of your eyes and bury it deep because it doesn't fit with what you want to believe. You, uh, want to continue? The torso narrows from the shoulders to an extremely thin waist. It looks emaciated. The structure of a spine is visible. There is no tail. No. No holes either. No evidence of a digestive system on the outside. The head is roughly spherical with a wide mouth with rows of upper and lower teeth.

Forty-six on top, forty-eight on the bottom. I counted. Two depressions analogous to eye sockets just above the mouth. Vestigial eyes, maybe. Four slit-like openings along each side of the neck. Think they're gills? Or sensory organs. Like the pits on a snake. Two rows of thread-like growths along the torso. I've sealed them in plastic bags in case they sting. You saw the scar on the security guy? Looked exactly like the ones on Derwent. It sure as hell not a jellyfish, but... well...

That was kinda close. The function seems analogous to stingers on jellyfish. I'm not gonna try to confirm that either way. I'd rather not touch them, gloves or not. The torso has three entry wounds and two exit wounds consistent with gunshots. There are two bullets in the door of Mr. Derwin's drawer, too. At least we don't have to work to find the cause of death. Not that there's a form to fill in on this one. I'm going to start opening it up. Where do you even begin?

Making an educated guess, I'd say a Y-incision on the underside of the torso. Help me turn it on its back. There's no blood. No blood vessels, even. No cavity. Doesn't look like there's any organs. It's just this stuff all the way through. Like slimy cauliflower. Even the skeleton is more like cartilage, barely differentiated from the surrounding tissue.

There's the bullet channel. Or the one that wasn't the through and through. And there's our bullet. What did it even hit? Something it couldn't do without. The mouth leads to either an esophagus or a trachea, which just ends about 60 centimeters in. Teeth like a human's, just more of them. What's the odds there's a brain? What's wrong? Marina? It went to Derwent's drawer.

That's what the security guard said. Sure, that's the one with the bullets in the door. The things in the photos from the scene. The dog bowls, the toys. This isn't a dog, Marina. I know, but I had an aunt. Me too. Jesus, Sam, just listen.

She fell off the porch and landed badly. She broke her neck and had to use a wheelchair. It happened when I was six, seven. And? She tripped over her cat. This isn't a cat, either. That's not the point. There were dog bowls in the kitchen. Mr. Derwent had old scars on his arm, too. The same kind of scars, but from a while before. So if this thing inflicted them, that means it was in contact with him long before he died. You think this was his pet? His wife died.

His daughter lived in another state. He was lonely. This thing shows up, maybe it's playful. Maybe it likes him. And he doesn't run a mile? He probably did at first. But it hangs around and he learns to tolerate it. Then accept it. Finally, they're keeping each other company. It stings him by accident, but they both learn how to avoid it. Then one day, he's at the top of the stairs and it wants to play or he doesn't see it. And he trips over it.

His leg gets tangled up in its stingers and he falls down the stairs. You really think that's what happened? No. It could have gone one of a million ways. But that's a scenario that fits all the evidence. So why is it here? Did you ever see a picture of a dog sitting by its master's grave? Maybe it wanted to say goodbye. Are we going to carry on? There's nothing more to find. How do you autopsy something that should never have been alive?

This is just another one in a hundred case that doesn't have an explanation. We clean them up and move on. So we act like we never saw this? I didn't say that. I'll append something to the paperwork. I'll say the scars on Derwent are consistent with interaction with local wildlife, potentially an invasive species. Will Mayfair PD understand what happened from that? I'm not trying to tell them what happened. Just give them the facts and tell the truth.

I haven't said anything that's untrue or left out anything that's relevant. I'm just doing my job. Let's pack this up. I have to chaperone at a ten-year-old's birthday party in an hour. That's the whole of it. Along with the photographs of Harold Derwent's body and the... whatever it was. These audio files are the complete story. We never found out where the creature was from or whether Derwent really had kept it as a pet. Marina's scenario sounded way too out there to me, but...

It makes more sense than any of the others I could come up with, so maybe she was right. I wheeled the thing to the incinerator and turned it into ash. As far as I know, Doug the security guy never talked and neither did Marina. I sure as hell didn't. The police took the paperwork on Derwent and never mentioned the scars of unknown origin or anything else about the guy ever again. As I slid the dog thing into the incinerator, I wondered if Derwent ever gave it a name.

Did he talk to it like some people do to their pets? What did he feed it? Did it even eat? Did he take it for walks and throw the tennis ball for it to fetch? Marina seems intent on forgetting about the whole thing. We haven't spoken about it since the incinerator finished with it. I don't know if she's managed to scrub it out of her head, but I haven't. I just imagine this thing galloping around Derwin's house, snuffling and laughing.

waving its stinger things the way a dog wags its tail. I haven't seen one from the train in a while. Nothing with a shape and size that doesn't match a person or an animal. Not one that should exist, anyway. I find myself looking, just to confirm the thing we cut up on the table doesn't exist only in my imagination. Funny thing, after so long pretending we don't see them, now I'm hoping I see one, just to prove to myself I'm not going crazy. Not in a hurry to see one up close again, though.

I got a feeling that the friendly ones, the ones you'd keep as a pet, those are the exception. And when Mr. Derwent found one, it still didn't work out too well. Thank you for listening, neighbor. Mayfair Watchers Society is based on the works of Trevor Henderson. The autopsy was written by Ben Counter. Marina was played by Melissa Lusk. Sam was played by Nate DeFort. And Doug was played by Damon Alums. Our sound designer was Brad Colbrook.

Our music was by Matt Roy Berger. Our showrunner is Pacific S. Obadiah. And I'm your creative director, Trevor Henderson. Our producers are Tom Owen and Brad Miska. And it's a Bloody FM show.