Morgan came home in the morning, and we filled her in on everything that happened the night before. She tells us that she is determined not to let this person terrorize her anymore. She is going to cover her upper windows, and sleep in her own room. We are very worried about her safety, and she proceeds to cut up some thick flannel sheets and tack them to her wall, just above her upper bedroom windows, and they cover not only those windows, but the windows below that already have blinds over them.
Steve decides that after all of the intensity of the last nights events we need to get away for the day. Morgan, Steve and I take a road trip to Silverthorne, shopping at the Factory stores there. Once again we try not to talk about the stalking, but it is on our minds and in our conversations all day. I am trying to be positive, and look at recent developments as movement toward the end of this nightmare.
Then our neighbor Elliott calls me about a most interesting phone call that he has received. First he wants to know if Morgan has disappeared, or gone missing. I tell him at that very moment she was right there with us, and ask him what is going on now! Elliott explains that Brooke’s mom (Christina Harris) had called him. Brooke’s mom, and Brooke’s dad originally lived together in a house on Corral Drive, and I assumed they were still married, even though Brooke’s dad had moved a few houses down, and lived now in a rental house with his daughter Brooke, and her boyfriend Keenan, but I really don’t know for sure if Christina and James Harris are still married. He said Christina asked Brooke why the sheriffs had come to her door last night. According to what Elliott had been told, Brooke explained to her mother that since she is an old friend of Morgan’s (she had never been a friend of Morgan’s, Morgan just knew of her through other friends) they wanted to ask her if she knew where Morgan was, because Morgan has gone missing the night before. What a lie Brooke was now telling her parents…she knew Morgan was not missing and she knew the sheriffs had been trying to speak with Keenan, but she refused to let them in the house.
This became a disturbing pattern throughout the stalking. So many times after the sheriff’s left our house Brooke’s mom had a story about what was going on, and it was quite different from what was really going on. Much later when a detective was assigned to this case, it became a felony stalking, and we had a case number, the detective interviewed Brooke’s mom, and Christina about these false rumors, and he told me that Brooke had told him she heard these “rumors” from her mother, and Brooke’s mom Christina told him that she heard it from her daughter, Brooke. And he laughed as he told me the story and said, “Boy, you think they could at least get their story straight.” I did not think this was a laughing matter!
Do all investigators just leave it at that ???
That night we had a few motion detector beeps and motion lights tripped, but we did not respond at all. It was obvious to me that the stalker was enjoying all the attention. The more we called the sheriffs, and the more we came running from the house with bigger, and bigger flashlights, the more the stalker escalated his behavior.
On Labor Day (the 5th) Steve was cutting back bushes and trees around the house and I was dragging branches to a pile out front. We talked about just clear cutting everything all the way around the house, and in the yard. Leave nothing, but grass, but we decided not to do that.
Morgan was going to visit friends, and left with her puppy in the car. She was smiling and happy, Steve and I talked about what a brave young woman she was, how she was holding her head high, and proudly taking her life back. We went inside the house for water before returning to cutting everything back. As I was walking out the front door the motion alarm on the side yard (on Ken’s side) was chirping, Steve was down the hall behind me at the time. I looked out the front door, and a young man was running really fast up our driveway between the cars. I think it could be Keenan, but I am not sure, I have never met him in person before. He sees me, and immediately turns and takes off running for Rhonda’s house next door. But she is cleaning out her garage, so he has to turn up our other side yard, and head for the berm. I yell to Steve that he is coming up the side yard just as the motion detector for that side starts to beep.
Steve immediately went to the window, saw nothing and ran out the back door and still saw nothing. He wasn’t sure which way to give chase, and decided on Brooke’s dad’s house, so he ran down there and didn’t find anyone outside so he doubled back out front and we spent the next fifteen minutes talking on our phones, while searching the neighborhood for him. I finally say to Steve, crazy as this sounds we are going to ignore him, giving him attention is exactly what he wants us to do, and we are not doing it.
On the way back home a neighbor came up to me, and said that something very strange had just been witnessed. Brooke, and Keenan had raced up the street in his new car. Then it looked like they were arguing, then they pulled into her driveway, then more arguing, then with tires chirping, they pulled out of the driveway, then this went on a few more times before, doors slamming, they went in their house. I was perplexed by the story in view of what had just happened, and went to tell Steve. I called Morgan on the way, and told her the story, then Morgan told me what had happened earlier that made sense of it all…
Morgan said she had driven by Brooke, and Keenan on the way out of the subdivision, and Keenan had slowed down as they passed. So she stared right at them and smiled, she wanted him to know she was not taking it anymore. Morgan said Keenan looked down as he drove by, and would not make eye contact with her. But Brooke defiantly stared back at Morgan. Morgan guesses that she touched off a little tiff.
I called the sheriff’s department and told a patrol deputy what had happened, but that he didn’t need to come over. I told him about our new plan to ignore, but he had to return a jump drive to us anyway, so he would stop by to take the report.
Steve has a new thermal imaging scope on loan from a very good friend in law enforcement. That evening he goes outside and spends a lot of time with it, getting accustomed to how it works. It is otherwise a quiet night.
Click here to read about the 36th day of Morgan’s stalking https://morgansstalking.com/?p=1020
Today it is also Labor Day, but it is now 2012, Keenan’s parents write me over, and over to say Keenan has been fingerprinted, had his tennis shoes fingerprinted (not sure how you do that, but okay) and been proven innocent. But I know from the detective that none of that is true. They are very passionate in defending their son, and I suspect they have been doing so for a long time – probably his whole life. A reporter who’s had his ego a little bruised is calling everyone in my family for an interview, they are a little reluctant after they saw how badly he had twisted my words in a story just the other day. And a budding young Psychologist back east has shared with me that she is writing her thesis paper for her doctorate about what happened to Morgan and wants to interview me, and has made many calls to the Garfield Sheriffs, and was told each time, a prepared statement about how I am just a grieving mother who can’t let go of her daughter’s death.
So please. Perhaps I am not telling the story with enough emphasis, but this is Morgan’s blog, it is about Morgan’s stalking, and I write it because she is not here to write it herself. Everything is the truth. It is meant to empower people who are being stalked. She was such a brave young woman, who was forced to go through incredible, horrific fear, and stress for the last four months of her life. This is why when her death was found to be natural causes Steve said to call her doctor at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, and see if she can meet with us, we wanted her opinion. She did schedule a meeting with us, and we had a long talk with the pathologist here before we went, we went with open minds, not knowing what to expect. Nobody was more surprised than me when she told us she had gone back through all of Morgan’s records, and reviewed her Postmortem Examination Report and was convinced, with no doubt in her mind, that the Coroner here has it all wrong! She said this is a homicide, it needs to be investigated, there needs to be more tests run. They are not testing for the right things. She offers to call him for us, doctor to doctor and straighten this out. She feels we have been through enough already. She adds that If it’s a funding problem, she will contact the Governor of Colorado, this needs to be corrected.
Do you see the truth here? She was volunteering her own time, and believe me she is a very, very, busy woman. A true hero. She was volunteering her time to help correct a situation where people were killed by their stalker, then were found to have died of natural causes, their killers never brought to justice. Well, Garfield County’s best slammed the door right in her face. So she talked to one of the foremost authorities on heart arrhythmia, a professor, scientist and doctor at UC San Francisco Children’s hospital, he volunteered to come here and testify if need be, but yes you certainly can be “scared to death” and he said a few tests will indicate if that could have happened to Morgan, and they need to be done. Our pathologist here would not talk to him. He’s suddenly not willing to talk to any more of “our doctors,” we are wasting his time, and he sent Steve an email that death by arrhythmia is not possible without an underlying cause. We are told this is just not true. Just in the last few months you may have read about an arsonist in California that was successfully prosecuted for the murder of 5 people who died of heart attacks due to the stress of the fire he set on their life. Google it if you haven’t heard of this case, or even try the phrase “Homicide by Fright”. Don’t just take the word of a grieving mother who can not let go, search out the truth yourself, I have.
Our pathologist here told me he would only talk to another pathologist. So we talked to one. He’s been a little busy dealing with the Aurora Batman Theatre murders that are so absolutely heartbreaking. But his findings on Morgan’s case not only greatly differ from “Natural Causes” he also found something else. She had a very, very large amount of a prescription drug Amitriptyline, many times the amount needed to kill her. Our pathologist here has been telling us all along the amount she had was “insignificant” and it’s been a sticking point because she didn’t even take Amitriptyline. She did long in the past, a small dose as a prophylaxis for headaches, NOT FOR DEPRESSION. Morgan worked hard to not need pills in her life – that is the truth.
Our pathologist here was on the phone with me after our trip to Los Angeles, and honestly said, Morgan was taking Amitriptyline for her Porphyria, and it builds up in your system, that is why her numbers were so high. I was shocked! I asked him if he was sure he was talking about Morgan. She didn’t have Porphyria, she did not take Amitriptyline, she did not have a prescription, and we have all of her pharmacy records for the last three years. We have been over all of this, why is it still an issue?
Why are people always trying to cover up the truth about things? Why can’t people help each other find the truth instead? Don’t they realize that true evil can only exist when good people do nothing about it? Sorry I just went on a rant, but we are talking about true evil to stalk, terrorize, and take someone’s life…it’s no joke, it’s extremely serious. If this stalker had only stalked, and terrorized our daughter, and our family for four months, and she had just died in her bed from her heart giving out because of fright (which didn’t happen, but could have, and certainly could have been a component in her death), or like in other cases I have heard about in the news, if she had taken her life, because she couldn’t take it anymore (which didn’t happen, but I’m sure certain people would like to believe that) then the law still reads, and has been held up in court that the person responsible for terrorizing that person to death is responsible for murder. I don’t think most people understand that point of law, I didn’t. And all those who now try to cover up and protect this person are also responsible under the law. But don’t take the word of a grieving mother who can’t let go, read this article and then decide for yourself. Our pathologist here maintains it is not possible.
Click here to read about the 36th day of Morgan’s stalking https://morgansstalking.com/?p=1020
Homicide by fright: the intersection of cardiology and criminal law.
Authors
Flannery FT, et al. Show all
Am J Cardiol. 2010 Jan 1;105(1):136-8. Epub 2009 Nov 14.
Affiliation
Department of Legal Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Silver Spring, MD, USA. [email protected]
Abstract
The prevailing lay wisdom associates emotional stress with sudden death, and recent medical reports have linked massive catecholamine surges with demonstrable cardiac dysfunction that can be either reversible or fatal. This association does not strictly prove causality, and the question remains open for additional scientific investigation. From the legal viewpoint, however, the issue has been resolved, and case law clearly holds that sudden emotional stress can cause death. More significantly, case law also holds that if the sudden emotional stress is caused by criminal conduct, the resulting death of a victim of the criminal conduct can be prosecuted as homicide. Cardiologists are often called to testify in such circumstances. In the present study, we have reviewed 8 legal cases that are the basis of current opinions in these matters. These legal principles can be summarized as follows: emotional stress is sufficient, and physical abuse is not required for conviction; a time-lapse between the induction of emotional stress and death does not necessarily mitigate the charge of homicide; the criminal act must be the proximate cause of the victim’s death; however, the accused does not always need to be physically present to commit the crime. In conclusion, although the pathophysiology of sudden death associated with massive emotional stress has not been fully elucidated from a scientific viewpoint, in the legal system, the association can be causative and can be the basis for a criminal prosecution. Cardiologists may be called on to provide expert opinions in the prosecution of these cases.
PMID 20102906 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]
