From just after midnight the motion light on the corner of the garage (by Morgan’s windows) is almost constantly on. Once it is triggered it stays on for one minute and then goes off unless it is triggered again. Heat and motion in combination are the triggers. It is re-triggered every minute and blinking off for just an instant. Steve thinks it is malfunctioning at first when he watches the replay of the morning. Except at 12:47 AM a deputy in his truck is patrolling, not our neighborhood, not even really our house, but specifically Morgan’s side of the house. He drives up the street and stops right between our house and our neighbor Rhonda’s house. There he uses a searchlight to comb the side yard right outside Morgan’s window.
The truck drives on and a minute later returns from the end of the street toward Brooke Harris’ father and Brooke’s mother’s houses and returns to our house, then stops again. The searchlight is on again and it is quite clearly not aimed at the house or the ground as usual, but it is aimed higher, at the roof – why? Steve assumes that the light has about a 20’ spread after it covers the distance from the Deputies truck to the house and the lower edge of the light is just hitting the wood trim above Morgan’s window. From that point to the roof is about 4’ and as the roof climbs from the edge Steve assumes that the center of the light is trained about two feet above the roof. It does not travel up or down from this elevation, but goes from side to side. It is immediately obvious to Steve that whoever is aiming that light is looking for something on the roof, and once he points out what he is observing to me I am certain he is correct. We roll back days watching for anything like this and find nothing similar. What is going on this particular night that we are not privy to?
The neighborhood is quiet until 1:41 AM when another Deputies truck follows almost the same pattern with one big difference, there is no searchlight turned on this time. Once the truck passes our driveway on the way out of our street it speeds up.
At 2:31 AM it is almost the exact pattern of the Deputy at 12:47 AM right down to the searchlight. On replay of the tapes starting with the first deputy, and continuing until a while after this patrol, the motion light on the corner of the garage, which was being triggered constantly had now remained off.
Mark, also our next door neighbor came home at 4:21 AM, he was keeping a close eye on our house whenever he left or came home, and we were very thankful for that. Our transformer had gone out one night in the middle of all this and was quite a cause for concern. Mark stopped as he saw something going on just to make sure all was well – friends looking out for other friends is quite priceless at times like this. Mark left this morning shortly after he came home.
Morning was lighting up as a neighbor left at 7:12 AM and a small flow of neighborhood cars came and went as sunlight took away the last traces of darkness. Morgan sent a text to Calder at 8:11 AM wondering if he was in school yet. She ran out to the car in her big fluffy pink robe to grab her ballet things from the back seat and brought them in for a load of wash I was starting.
Morgan and Nathan left at 8:56 AM and she made a deposit at the bank in Carbondale for Steve at 9:08 AM. She texted her friend with an excuse that she would not be at ballet as she sat in line at the bank. Steve was beginning to pack everything for the move and Morgan somehow thought it was her fault and insisted on helping him. I told her she could not think like that and he would have lots of help packing up, but she was after all a Leo and very stubborn. And it meant a lot to her to help Steve get the move under way. She had walked out looking like she was ready for a job in the coal mines. but then had a great time talking with her brother at the shop.
Nathan was there to help and was catching up with his friends on Morgan’s phone at the same time. It’s hard to believe we used to turn the big dial with our fingers on phones that were screwed to the wall growing up, but I had given up long ago trying to explain what that was like to Morgan and her friends.
At 10:36 AM I sent Detective Glassmire a text explaining that, “Calder told Morgan in the morning that he is not comfortable giving her Gracie’s number until he speaks with Gracie tomorrow.” I made a few calls to find Gracie myself, after all Carbondale is not that big, and for some reason Detective Glassmire also jumped right into this issue of Keenan and a mystery girlfriend named Morgan.
By noon I had a call back from Gracie’s mom and told Morgan. She was headed home for lunch with Nathan and Steve and seemed very happy to be able to send a text to her friend Calder that problem was solved and he shouldn’t worry about it another second. They were all home at 12:18 PM and Morgan made lunch for us all.
Click here to read the continuation of December 1, 2011 the 122nd day of Morgan’s stalking https://morgansstalking.com/?p=2497
Today it is December 1, 2012 – That day, 12.1.2011, was just like every other in so many ways. I found Gracie’s mom and when I called Morgan to tell her that I looked in the phone book, found her and called and spoke with Gracie’s mom and got the number for Gracie, I can still hear Morgan telling me that, ” You rock.” and I can still remember how excited Morgan was that I had gotten a hold of Gracie’s Mom. That is how Morgan was, always, so happy and so excited over the simplest things. This day a year ago ‘I rocked’ because I found a name in a phone book, and she spent hours helping her father, because she thought she was inconveniencing us, because we were moving, due to her stalking. Knowing Morgan as I did makes what happened to her all the more painful. Not that anyone should ever deserve what has been done to her, and her memory, but of all the people in the world . . .not Morgan.
