- All Posts
- Podcast
When you walk into a death scene and see someone hanging from a tree, it would be easy to assume...
Four people found unconscious inside the same house. Three dead. One survivor. No obvious injuries, no clear explanation, and weeks...
When I first started looking into the death of two-year-old Barrett Walsh, one detail immediately stood out to me: his...
Sometimes a death scene seems to tell you exactly what happened. A child is found submerged in a swimming pool,...
The Lindsay Clancy trial has reached one of its most important moments. The witnesses are finished, both sides have made...
The Lindsay Clancy trial continues, and with each new day of testimony, the questions surrounding this case seem to become...
Last week, I took you through the devastating events of January 24, 2023, the night Lindsay Clancy’s three young children,...
On January 24, 2023, what began as an ordinary evening for a young Massachusetts family ended in an unimaginable tragedy....
When an entire family is lost, it’s easy for the headlines to focus on the person responsible. In this episode,...
When a murder ends in suicide, investigators lose one of the most important pieces of the puzzle—the person who could...
BONUS AUDIO: SHARED WITH PERMISSION FROM ALLIE’S FRIEND BONUS AUDIO: SHARED WITH PERMISSION FROM ALLIE’S FRIEND What happens when a...
What happens when someone disappears… after they’ve already died? In this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, I’m exploring one of...
In this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, I’m examining the heartbreaking murder of 32-year-old Caroline Piña Cairo, a mother of...
In this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, I’m covering the heartbreaking case involving Amy Steadman and the tragic family deaths...
In this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, I’m examining the disturbing case of Shawn Michael Grate, a serial killer whose...
Who am I, and how did I end up investigating death for a living? Originally released as Episode One, I’m...
In last week’s episode, I explored the tragic death of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf and the events that unfolded during a...
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.
