Detective Rob called in the early evening and asked if I had seen the autopsy report.  I had not, and told him that.  He was surprised the Coroner had not called to tell us about it, but he did have a copy on his computer, and was going to send it over as soon as he warned me about something that was on it first.

Naturally I went numb.  It was some horrific detail of her death that had been found, and I was thinking of every one I knew as he gathered himself to tell me.  Rob started by saying he was not sure why they had worded it so strongly, because it really wasn’t like how it came out on the report. I couldn’t take the waiting, and asked him to just tell me.  He was obviously flummoxed by this, but finally told me that it said Morgan was an occasional cocaine user.  Compared to everything I had just been thinking this was at first not so bad, but immediately I reversed and thought no this is really bad, because it’s not true – it’s actually laughable.

I asked Rob why it said that, where is this coming from?  Rob said it was from his notes.  He was the only one doing interviews, and he had talked to two people, and they had both said that she had tried cocaine once or twice.  He added that even the most straight-laced officer at the Sheriff’s Department had probably tried cocaine at least once.  He repeated that he was surprised with how it had been worded, knowing the reality, and just wanted me to know that before I saw it.

I dropped that point for the moment and started to ask about what else the PER said, how did she die, what had they found?  He didn’t say much preferring that I read the actual report, but he did say that basically they didn’t find anything, only a sign of second hand cigarette smoke, but no alcohol, and no illegal drugs.  He said he would send it over right now, and if we had questions we could just call the Coroner.

Well – it came as two attachments, first one was 7 pages and titled Postmortem Examination Report.  The first page was about Morgan and from what position WE had found her body in, to what SHE had been doing the last few weeks to what WE thought when she came home the night before it was all wrong, all totally wrong.  We were the only people with first hand knowledge of all of this, and we had been asked very few things and the answers were not what we said – they were completely wrong.   I wondered then, and I would only wonder more in the future, where all of this incorrect information came from.

I read on and stopped dead when I found that her manner of death was natural and from a  condition she never had.  We had some work ahead of us.  Steve was reading in silence over my shoulder, and strangely found hope in the last sentence which read:

“Due to an active stalking investigation at the time of this report, and the potential influence of stress, the manner of death may be reclassified if additional information becomes available.”

Steve hung on that sentence.  To him it may have been stress that killed Morgan, and naturally the stress now present in her life that had never been there before was her stalker.  This was something that had to be ruled out completely, it was in his DNA to do this, and he would.  It wasn’t going to be fast enough for me, but I was confident as I could be that it would happen.

Morgan did not deserve to be stalked the last four months of her life and then die of the stress of her stalking – nobody does.   This had to be taken seriously.

Today is February 2, 2013 –  now of course we know Morgan did not die from the stress of the stalker, we have learned a lot in the last year.  You can bet over the past year I have seen the two witnesses that detective Rob spoke of that night, actually there were three, and why he condensed it to two is just another of those things I am going to have to wait to find out.

I look at this particular fact and see it as a microcosm of Morgan’s investigation.  One of the witnesses was not even in the country, he was relaying something he had heard and believes he was very clear about that fact.  The second witness was there at the time in question, but did not actually see it, only assumed it.  The third witness said something like absolutely not, she spends days helping people get off drugs, why would she do drugs?  His was the statement that was discounted completely.

Why do I care – you wonder?  People try drugs, people experiment with drugs, it happens and I agree completely that it was possible.  But Morgan wasn’t one of those people that cared about drugs.  She had seen up close over her life the harm they can do, and chose not to.

When you are stalked for four months and then found dead what kind of question is that anyway?  Did she drink or do drugs?  A question or two about her stalker might have been more fitting, given the situation.  They ran a tox screen for the drugs of abuse and the results came back zero.  Did they run a sexual assault panel – no!  Then write a one pager to sum up her life, and say occasional cocaine user.  Based on what?  A person chosen to be ignored, a person not in the country, a person who assumed it.  How nice for Morgan.

It’s not like she spent eighteen months of her life in drug rehab.  She spent zero.  It sort of got under my skin that she spent her life doing one thing, actually became known for it, and was summarized as doing the opposite – this was not fair to Morgan, and that is why I am so upset about it.  Morgan never even stole a piece of gum in her lifetime – anything she had she would gladly, and many times did, give to others that needed it more at the time.   I am not trying to make Morgan out to be an angel – but I am telling the truth about her – she was extremely caring, and as close to an earth angel as I have ever seen.  How can these people that are sworn to protect victims like Morgan try to trash her instead.  We now know that even though she was a victim of stalking there was no rape kit administered.  We know that no evidence was taken at the death scene except for her electronics, one old diary (not the most recent one), and our stainless pill holder that I kept in my car with 3 emergency pills.  Her death scene seemed to be treated as though she never had been stalked for 4 months – even though Steve and I were victims of the stalking – I saw the stalker – our cameras caught the stalker – we all heard the noises made by the stalker – this was a felony stalking case.  Am I missing something?  If you die in Garfield County, after being a stalking victim, do you basically get thrown under the bus? – God forbid someone realizes there was a murder committed!