Monthly Archives: August 2012

Last summer Monday, August 15, 2011 – the 14th day of Morgan’s stalking

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Today was a quiet day.  Morgan texted me at 6:57 pm and said, “Hey.  My phone’s broken again.  I am leaving right now so I’ll be a tick late.  Sorry.”

This afternoon we ordered thick, lined, velvet curtains for the back of our house, for both back sliding glass doors, so the stalker cannot see into our house from behind.  All of our windows have had window treatments on them except for the two big sliding glass doors on the back of the house.  We had never before worried about those glass doors, as no one should be behind our house, it’s just our yard, and a grass berm with trees on it.  No other houses to look in from, no one would have any reason to walk through our yard to pass by them.  But now we feel like those doors create a fishbowl effect – a stalker could see in from the back of our house from this very angle.

This evening Steve went outside, dressed all in black and sat in a bush on the berm behind our house that divided us from the Aspen Equestrian Ranch, where our horse is boarded. He wanted to think like the stalker, and observe our house for hours – he told me that he felt like a peeping tom, like he was violating our neighbors privacy, and from the berm, behind our house in the dark, he was able to see directly into the back of our house, living room, kitchen and all the way down the hall to the front door.  But, if I were in our house at night, and someone (like the stalker) was standing on the berm watching, I would never notice him.  He was right, I looked out, knowing right where he was out there on the berm, and couldn’t see him.  I hope we get the curtains delivered ASAP! I start to get that creepy tingling feeling again that shoots up my spine, and crawls over my scalp – here goes my intuition again…my internal gut feeling that danger is just outside our home.

When Steve came back in, well after midnight, we discussed what he saw while out on the berm, he said between our house and our next door neighbor Rhonda’s house he had observed a little red pinpoint light, at about head height that had moved to the left out of sight.  So I went into my office in the front of the house, with the lights off, and tried to peek from behind the curtain to across the street, it was pitch black out, so I couldn’t really see much of anything.  At the same time Steve went out the back door of our house to see, if he walks from the back of the house to the front of the house, starting on the left side of our house, if he can flush out the source of the red light.  As he did this I did saw a little pin point of a red light, directly across the street (at head height) move to the right, disappear, then reappear further to the right again in front of another house, and then disappear again.  It was as though it had seen Steve coming up the side of our house and was backing slowly away, it was so creepy to know this was probably him (the stalker), right there, I was filled with anger at him. I wanted to run outside and run this guy down…but this is just what he wanted.  (He was taunting us, and knew he could run faster and not get caught.  If we had been able to see him, and tried to chase him, he would have been even more excited).  No one in our neighborhood had fences that divided the houses – there was nothing to impede anyones access to come and go between or around any of the houses. The subdivision lacked enough street lights, so it was a dark neighborhood.  When Steve came back in the house we discussed the light and looked up night vision glasses/googles on the Internet, and sure enough, this light that we saw could have matched that, or it he could have been aiming laser sight from a gun.  Either way we were now hopeful that we are getting closer to figuring this out, we probably needed more people, but the stalker came at different times, 11:00 pm, 2 am, 4 am whatever time he wanted. Would we all stay up all night, for as many days as it took?  At least we are learning where our weak points are while trying to protect our daughter, but at this point it seems like we are learning those weak points a little too slowly.  There is someone I know that does security in Aspen, and I will call him in the morning to see if he has any suggestions for us.  We can’t afford to hire him to do surveillance for us, so anything like that we will have to do ourselves, or ask assistance from family or friends, I would just like to have some great suggestions on how to handle this situation.

Now in the present, August 15, 2012 – this is one of the big things we would like to see changed in the future – we would like to see safe houses across the United States for girls, for anyone that may find themselves in this situation.  Most likely they can not afford to just disappear for a while, especially if they have animals/pets, so if we could have something like that set up, then at least in our case, Morgan might have been able to go there with her puppy, and be safe for a while, until her stalker had been identified and arrested.  These stalkers will harm or kill their victim’s animals, just to get back at their victims, so these safe houses must accommodate the animals, as well as the victim.  This suggestion came to me through another woman who had been a victim years ago, and had to move all her animals, some of them horses, and herself to a safe place immediately one fateful night.  Fortunately she was able to do it, and was safe herself, unfortunately her animals were scattered all over Colorado for quite a while until she could get them back with her.  She is trying to get involved now in setting up a safe house in this part of Colorado that can accommodate a victim and their animals.  She is an amazing example of resilience!

Click here to read about the 15th day of Morgan’s stalking & her 20th birthday 🙁 https://morgansstalking.com/?p=599

Sunday, August 14, 2011 – The 13th Day of Morgan’s Stalking

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We did a power wash outside of our house to make sure the dirt under the windows would catch more footprints, the sheriff’s deputies had suggested we try this.  Someone even suggested to me that putting fresh soil around the whole house, directly under the windows, would yield even better shoe prints, but at this point, even though we are utilizing some of these suggestions, we feel that with all the motion detector lights, and motion alarms that we have been putting up, that the stalker should not be able to stand right up against our house and peer in the windows. And for some reason this gives us a measure of comfort…it should not have, because in these first beginning days of Morgan’s stalking, none of us really knew how bad it would get.  We didn’t know that everything we used to keep him/her (the stalker) out, just made it more of a challenge for him.  We didn’t realize that the more often the sheriffs had a presence here, the more excited it made him.  This was becoming a bigger and bigger challenge for him.  Morgan is still sleeping on the closet floor, and thankfully was not startled awake in her sleep tonight…we were all very happy.

Click here to read about the 14th day of Morgan’s stalking https://morgansstalking.com/?p=593

Today August 14, 2012 my thoughts and feelings about stalking are so much more evolved than from a year ago. It seems simple to me that law enforcement should be able to differentiate between the different “typology” of stalkers, if they had had that training it would have made all the difference in the world.  Morgan’s stalker was never seen (but that is typical about most stalkers, especially in the beginning – they stalk and they surveil in the shadows), Morgan’s stalker seemed to “get off” on the sheriffs showing up at our house. What if they had been able to employ different degrees of urgency in catching a stalker, one that could become more lethal, and better warn the victims?  The stalkers who progress to become serial killers or murderers – shouldn’t law enforcement have a type of profile to make this determination? The next serial killer could be lurking outside your window. It’s the first thing we tell people now when they ask us for advice – to look up the “typology.” Criminals are constantly improving their protection under the law, while as for the victims, it has stayed the same – almost no rights. Remember that we are supposed to be guaranteed the most basic rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Morgan and the rest of us had very little of that during the time of her stalking. Yet even if the stalker had been caught in the beginning, the worst he would have faced was misdemeanor trespassing, right up there with jay walking, as one officer compared it to. Not much of a deterrent is it? The sheriff’s patrol officers really wanted to catch the stalker, but because of the protocol they employed of “catch him in the act”, they never stood a chance, and neither did we.  As long as he could outrun, or hide from everyone, and not get collared near the house, what would happen to him? Nothing. This was, as Mike Proctor puts it,  “tombstone mentality” and Morgan paid the price for that mentality with her life. The stalker had more basic rights then we did, Morgan, and even our family were scrutinized far more closely then the stalker ever was – remember how the system used to allow the rape victim to be psychologically raped all over again when she reported the rape, and then again when the case finally went to trial?  Here we go again, maybe that is why stalking is the most under reported crime at this time.  The Constitution was written to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare – none of this existed for Morgan once she had a stalker.  After a effort by the Garfield County Sheriff’s office to try to catch the stalker, using a protocol that doesn’t work, (how many times have they actually caught a stalker in this county without the stalker just confessing?), the coroner’s office never ordered an investigation to find out why or how our daughter died, and then the felony stalking investigation was officially closed 5 month after her murder.  This approach will not protect you, you are not safe.  If it’s our government’s job to ensure its people these rights, then they failed miserably.  Not only for ourselves, but for our community, as we believe this stalker has done this before, and will do it again.  I have received emails from other women that live in the neighbor right across from us that tell of similar incidents, incidents that were reported to the Garfield Sheriffs, one only 2 weeks before Morgan’s stalking started, one that even had a sheriff’s canine track the suspect, before losing him down the county road.  We had the first 2 patrol officers tell us about approximately 7 incidents similar to Morgan’s that happened in that subdivision the previous summer before Morgan’s.

What would you do if your daughter, husband and yourself were being stalked and your child was murdered, but law enforcement didn’t care to investigate?

We are so very blessed, and thankful that we have so many hundreds, and now almost thousands of people that want to help.  Now we need our county to step up and admit, like all of us have done at one time or another, that mistakes were made, that they will now fix them and go after the person or persons responsible for our daughter’s death.  We want to do this out of love.  Love for other children, daughters, sisters, young women, and anyone that may be in danger right now, or in the future, from a sick obsessed stalker that is still out there and will most likely to do it again, and again.  To us – this is not acceptable, and things have to change.