When Death Awaits | Episode #14 | Never Touch A Dead Body

We’re back! After a hiatus, When Death Awaits returns with a shocking true crime case from Lancaster, CA. Detective Rich Ramirez takes us inside an investigation that left even seasoned homicide detectives stunned. What started as an overdose case turned into something far more bizarre—complete with unexpected twists, unsettling revelations, and a lesson every investigator should know: never touch a dead body.

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Transcript

Detective Rich Ramirez: 0:00

One of the things that has consistently I've seen over my years of experience as a practicing homicide investigator and as a teacher of homicide investigation always remind myself and those that I teach that you never touch a dead body, ever. Just want to start off talking about this one case that I had in the summer of 2007. I had to respond to a death investigation. If, in fact, there is a case that does not involve follow-up investigation non-criminal cases such as suicides, overdose, maybe suspicious circumstances that you want to conceivably look at before you decide to delve into an investigation Things of that nature that don't necessarily require a follow-up They'll send a one-man person, as they refer to, as a response.

Detective Rich Ramirez: 0:57

You get there and you assess whether or not this is going to require a homicide investigation and, that said, there's a conceivability that there is going to be a suspect on this particular case is about about 12 o'clock at night and Tim Miley is working the desk. Now, when you're assigned the desk, you occasionally answer phones, but you'll also be dispatched to the various non-criminal cases, as I just defined. In this case, he was dispatched to a death of a female in Lancaster. He drives up there and it's a two-story single-family home. The deputies that were there a female and a male deputy that were at the location they direct him upstairs to the master bedroom wherein he encounters a deceased female Caucasian and at that point he notices that the room completely out of sorts, items on the ground was disheveled. He notices that the female her pants are down below her knees, she's completely naked from the waist down and her bra had been lifted and she was exposing her breasts. Tim saw this and he immediately thought to himself, based on the fact that we have a female who is in fact deceased, who is in fact, clothes are removed, or not completely removed, but removed to the extent that it raised some concern. And then, on top of that, it appeared that there was a struggle of some nature, based on the chaotic nature of the room. So at that juncture he calls the office and me and my partner, rich Garcia, happen to be on call for murders Calls us and says you guys are going to need to go up there.

Detective Rich Ramirez: 2:48

By the time we got there, tim was already gone. We were directed to the room upstairs and as I'm going up the stairs there's about 13 steps. As I go up the steps I noticed that there was an adjacent bedroom, but the door was closed. Didn't really concern me at that point, I kind of just looked away at it. And then I went over to the master bedroom where I see this deceased female in a supine position. Again, as described, she was probably about 33, 34 years old. It strikes me as odd that somebody who's that young would conceivably die suddenly of natural causes. 99% of the time, at least in my experience, that never happens. As we're trying to determine where we were going to start in this investigation, the female deputy comes up the steps and we hear her coming up and normally we would not pay any attention, other than maybe she wants to have some kind of a learning experience in terms of what we do pay any attention, other than maybe she wants to have some kind of a

Detective Rich Ramirez: 3:44

learning experience in terms of what we do. Instead, she interrupts our initial investigation. She asks us what are you guys thinking? And caught us a little odd in terms of that question, because I never had that happen and first responders generally will not ask us what we're thinking. They're more inclined to want to learn. You know, if they're going to ask a question, I'll be more than happy to answer, but generally speaking, they never ask. Well, first.

Detective Rich Ramirez: 4:15

My initial reaction to her was well, we want to know what happened. And her response was oh sorry, sirs. I pulled her pants down and pulled her blouse up and I then did a vaginal swipe and I we both my partner and I our jaws dropped. We're like what? But I didn't say anything. I was more like just stunned. I'd never heard that, I'd never seen that, never, ever want to hear about that.

Detective Rich Ramirez: 4:53

And by this time my lieutenant had showed up. He's our field supervisor and we told him what this young female deputy had done. He turns to me. By this time she goes downstairs, he says you need to talk to her and I go. Okay, I will. And again, my primary purpose was just to make sure that you do not touch dead body. Very nicely, I said, what I need you to do is document what you did, because if I can document it, I can at least, if there's some consequences, I can at least have her justify which there was no justification for it. But at least she'll have a truthful explanation. We could look at this from 20 different ways in terms of what motivated her to do this.

Detective Rich Ramirez: 5:47

And I asked the deputies is there anybody else here in the house? I should have done that first, but at this point everybody's kind of directing us to the room, both by way of Tim Miley and these deputies. And lo and behold, the male deputy that was there. He tells me, sir, there is somebody in that adjacent room upstairs. And I'm like, oh, this is not good.

Detective Rich Ramirez: 6:13

I mean, I understand we got a situation with this female, but what does this male have to do with anything? If it's conceivable a potential sexual assault, and if there's a male in that other room, I want to know who he is. So I tell them can you get him for me please? This person should have been downstairs already. This should not have been a situation where I'm asking them why is this witness? But so he goes upstairs, knocks on the door and, as the door slowly opens, I come to the realization as to why he was not brought down the steps. This man, as he exited his bedroom door, weighed in excess of about 500 to 550 pounds. And as I look up the stairs, he cannot come down the stairs unless he got on his knees and, like a walrus moving about a beach, he'd have to come face first down these 13 steps.

Detective Rich Ramirez: 7:29

And I'm like, okay, I could probably safely say that this man could be eliminated as a potential sexual assault suspect in light of the fact that this woman probably get away from him pretty quick. But I talked to him anyways. He said he did not hear anything or see anything. He was in his room and then he just later on heard the sound of a female, or the deputies, coming into the house. Coroner officer arrives, a gal by the name of Betsy Magdaleno. She's one of our more aggressive, thorough coroner investigators and I had to disclose what this female deputy had done. And Betsy is not one to hold back and I see her walk directly to that deputy and began to literally just lay into her, as far as what she had done, that she allegedly had committed a misdemeanor crime that you're not supposed to touch, the dead body that you, in fact I am considering, you know, filing with the district attorney's office. I mean just a litany of things that she was telling this female deputy sheriff.

Detective Rich Ramirez: 8:40

Just to give you a little sum up of what ultimately happened, this victim was taken to the coroner's office and they did a toxicology where they basically examined the blood and ultimately they determined that she had overdosed on sleeping pills. The primary reason why the room was in such disarray was because apparently she kept it that way. But more than that, one of the things I found fascinating is that when somebody's about to die, you just generally do not know what they're going to do. She may have been falling about the room, bringing things down and so forth and so on, but the coroner's office ultimately determined that it was in fact a an overdose. As far as the female deputy was concerned, we did document or she, I should say documented what she had done. There was no criminal charges that were pursued against her, but it was troubling, to say the least. Hopefully she walked away with. Some level of understanding comes along with touching a dead body. What motivated her to do that is beyond me.

Chris: 9:51

And that's a wrap on special episode number 14. When Death Awaits is back and we've got three more stories coming your way soon. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow, share and drop a comment on our YouTube or social media pages @WhenDeathAwaits. Thanks for listening. Stay safe. See you next time.