Fat Sam and Cadillac Joe

Fat Sam and Cadillac Joe There was a mobster named Fat Sam and his partners; “Funky Don” Parsons, Howard “Big Bill Bass and Pat Willey had spotted a right ulna of a human arm. After a couple of hours of digging Bill Bass and other men had found two thoracic vertebrae, fifteen teeth, four fragments of an They had decided to kidnap a man named Monty Hudson and his wife Liz Hudson.

Not only did he kidnap them, but Monty Hudson was killed. Monty Hudson and his wife Liz Hudson, who was six months pregnant at the time, were kidnapped in broad daylight at gun point at the hotel, Holiday Inn by three men. They left in two different cars. One car Liz wastaken in and the other car, which just so happened to be his own car, Monty was taken in. Liz was released a couple days later in Nashville. Liz Hudson was very uncooperative, hoping that if she would not say anything that they would not kill Monty.

Liz had told the FBI that the kidnapping had been a simple misunderstanding and that Monty had left on a business trip. She could not tell them when he would be back or where he was at. About five months or so went by and investigators got a tip about Monty. According to an informant, Monty was in a shallow grave some seventy-five miles south of Nashville, on a farm near the Alabama border in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. By 1980, Fat Sam already had a bad record for counterfeiting , money laundering, marijuana farming, drug distribution, and trafficking in stolen property.

When Fat Sam got indicted for counterfeiting, his partners knew they were not far behind. Earl Carroll, figuring he would be the first to snitch, would get the best deal. Carroll offered to tell about Fat Sam’s crimes, including the kidnapping and murder of Monty Hudson. Carroll went on to tell about how Monty Hudson was a con man whose nickname was, Cadilllac Joe, because he had a thing for stealing Cadillacs. It all started because Hudson had offered to sell him more than thirty pure silver bars.

Each bar was a good foot and a half long and six inches wide. The bars werenearly a hundred dollars a piece. Silver at this time was selling for fifty dollars an ounce. Just one of the bars could be worth $80,000 a piece. Monty was willing to sell Fat Sam all of them for $20,000. Fat Sam did not trust Monty so he had his partner, Funky Don, check it out because he had some expierence with special metals. Fat Sam had it resampled after he had bought what he had thought was pure silver was really zinc.

Which was not even worth $200. At this point Fat Sam was furious. Monty had made a comment in the back of the car that just ticked off either Sam or his partner who was sitting in the front seat. Now here is where things started going wrong. Sam did not have the heart to kill Liz and her unborn baby so he called one of his friends to get the job done. Unfortunately, Sam’s friend had said, “No matter what kind of a sorry son of a bitch I am, I can’t kill no pregnant women. ” After that they had released her.

Sam had ordered his partners to dig two graves one for Monty and one for his Cadillac right outside Laweranceburg, said Carroll. Bill Bass and Pat Willey had spotted a right ulna of a human arm. After a couple of hours of digging Bill Bass and other men had found two thoracic vertebrae, fifteen teeth, four fragments of an occipital, five fingers, toe bones, fragment of a long bone, human hair, empty pupal casings, tatters of cloth, and a bullet, which i had learned about where all these bones were located in anatomy. Dr.

Bass had to determine the Big Four: sex, age, race, and stature. Most the time it is easier to determine the sex by the pubic bone, hip bone, or face. In this case they had determined the sex by how massive the ulna was and how pronounced and bore heavy muscle markings were of the occipital bone, which was charecteristics of a man’s neck muscles. The age was hard to judge since the only thing they had was the ulna, finger, toe bones, and the thoracic vertebrae that showed the first stage of osteoarthritic lipping, which showed he was in between 30-50 years old.

Without a face or cranial vault theycould not figure out his race. The stature was a little bit easier for them to figure out they had; one long bone, ulna, and the distal. After measuring everything out they figured out that the man had to be around six feet one to six feet two. Monty was finally discovered by the x-rays of his teeth. I knew what every bone Dr. Bill Bass was talking about and where it was located. I remember learning in class that x-rays of teeth is a great way to help identify who a person is if they have records at a dentist facility.

What also helped Dr. Bass identify Monty was by knowing that it was a male. We had learned in class the differences in the hipbone and the pelvic bone of a female and a male’s. In my opinion after reading through the book anthropoligists never know what they are going to be dealt. Every death has its own meaning behind it weather it is caused naturally or on purpose. It is amazing how you can discover gender, race, and age just by bones and teeth and a lot of times anthropoligists do not have much to work with.