October 6, 2026 - Pushing Up Lillies

Dani After Dark: Julie Mattson Guest Appearance

Pushing Up Lilies

Dissect the science behind some of the most spine-tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true crime stories with Julie Mattson, a seasoned Forensic Nurse Death Investigator in this gripping weekly podcast.

Julie’s unique approach to investigations is informed by her background in nursing, which allows her to provide an in-depth analysis of the medical intricacies and physiological aspects of each case.

With her compassionate storytelling and unwavering dedication to uncovering the truth, Julie takes you on a thrilling journey into the world of forensic science, shining a light on the intersection of medicine, justice and criminal investigation.

In “Pushing Up Lilies,” Julie’s expert medical analysis will captivate your imagination and challenge your understanding of the human body’s role in solving the most complex and enigmatic criminal case.

When you walk into a death scene and see someone hanging from a tree, it would be easy to assume you already know what happened. But as a death investigator, that’s exactly what you cannot do.

In this episode, I’m talking about the death of 29-year-old Tasia Fortune, a mother of four who was found hanging from a tree behind a vacant home in Jackson, Mississippi. Investigators now believe Tasia was already dead before her body was suspended and that the scene was staged. Her death has been classified as a homicide, although her exact medical cause of death had not been publicly released when I recorded this episode.

I’m going to walk you through this scene the way I would have approached it as a forensic nurse death investigator. What would I photograph? What would I look for around the tree and on the ground? Does the ligature make sense? Could she have reached the suspension point? What can lividity tell us about where her body was positioned after death? Are there injuries that don’t fit the scene? Could her clothing, shoes, DNA, phone records or surveillance footage tell us that she had been somewhere else?

And this case demonstrates something I learned very quickly doing this work: your job isn’t to decide what the scene looks like. Your job is to determine whether the physical evidence supports what it looks like.

Sometimes one piece of evidence that doesn’t fit is the piece you need to pay the most attention to.

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Dani After Dark: Julie Mattson Guest Appearance

Recent Episodes

Dani After Dark: Julie Mattson Guest Appearance

Tasia Fortune: The Hanging That Wasn’t The Cause of Death

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