Morgan on her birthday hammock … she loved hammocks – it was the last birthday present we ever bought her, and she never got to use it because the stalkers presence started 14 days before her 20th birthday.  She was all smiles though – maybe thinking about the next summer (that was never to be) when she could use her hammock and lie under the stars at night.

In the early days of Morgan’s stalking there were few clues, but they all pointed to one thing when we look back.  Footprints at the windows, and a Deputy that identified human “scuff marks” made by two feet at her bedroom window, indicating he had been there a long time.  At the two bathroom windows, Morgan’s and then the bathroom she switched to after finding the first foots prints outside her bathroom window there were singular footprints, pictures of which Steve took, but castings, no, not for a misdemeanor crime .

Three specific windows that held something in common that are one of those things you just don’t want to think about, but then eventually you have to.  Morgan was very likely to be caught bathing or changing clothes from the vantage points chosen. One of the worst invasions of privacy for a woman.

But then when I back up, it gets far worse.  The summer before in the subdivision across the county road there were five incidents of tapping on windows.  I don’t know which windows, but that does not sound like a stalker to me.  A stalker by definition focuses his hugely unwanted attention on one victim.  Very often has a fantasy filled with an imaginary, sickly twisted, relationship with one victim.

Not the same as when the culprit is tapping on the windows of five different houses, quite a different type of sick twisted beast then.  A peeping tom, a pervert, a criminal who crosses a line never meant to be crossed.  Colorado updated laws a little over a year before Morgan’s stalking began, plenty of time for local law to come up to speed.

A family had been on vacation in the state and staying at a hotel.  A pervert peeping tom had a video set up in the next room and was watching them.  They don’t say how, but he was caught, and to the shock and dismay of the violated family, the best that could be done was charge to charge the pervert with a misdemeanor crime.  Kind of like the first 58 days of Morgan’s Stalking when the best they could do was to charge her stalker with a misdemeanor crime when hey caught him so this somehow justified for lax rules to be in place, when Morgan’s terror started it was merely a misdemeanor, no big deal.  And her tormentor was just a petty criminal, but you see that is not all he was, and I do not mean that in the positive sense, in any possible way.

So when the law was brought up to date back in 2010, Invasion of Privacy for Sexual Gratification, either by directly seeing or recording by camera of any kind went to a felony, as it well should be.  And when the perpetrator is checking out five different houses, that is not a confused stalker who forgot the address of the next victim to fixate on, that was invading privacy for sexual gratification, period!  And when Morgan’s pervert showed up at the three places you were most likely to catch her bathing or changing, this piece of work was doing the same exact thing.

MISTAKE – let Law Enforcement tell you the laws being broken, NO.  Find out every law being broken and insist on the perpetrator being investigated and actively pursued for every crime being committed, every single one.

The crime of Invasion of Privacy for Sexual Gratification was never leveled at Morgan’s perpetrator.  Never even brought up as a possibility actually.  Yet it should have, because there is little other explanation for his actions.  The true sexual nature of the crimes being perpetrated against Morgan became less clear and more muddied as he moved to “testing the defenses”, showing her and her parents that he could come and go whenever he wanted, and showing how fearless he was of law enforcement.  No fear at all, quite the opposite actually, I often told the Deputies how embolden he became after they had come and tried to “catch” him.  To call what we actually did to catch this creep any more than a leisurely stroll around the house with a flashlight is generous.  That according to reports they sometimes patrolled outward into neighboring areas in hopes of catching someone really has me shaking my head.

Detective Robert Glassmire told me that if we were to find a piece of Morgan’s missing jewelry in K.V.G.’s room he could just say someone gave it to him, so it meant nothing.  Or if we found a unique blade on the ground that was used by the grocery store he worked at, we don’t know when it ended up there, so it means nothing.  And if someone lies to the Detective Morgan is counting on to save her, there is nothing the detective can do about it.

Then why in the world patrol outlying neighborhoods, when, even if you did see someone, and, even if you chased down that someone, and even if you caught them, they could just say, naaa I was never by the Ingram’s, Morgan who? And then… there would be nothing that could done about it.

Sort of makes you feel unprotected doesn’t it?  Like for all their trucks and lights and guns and tasers, they really can’t do anything, can they?  Somehow I don’t think that is true.  If Morgan were here right now, I would not know how to explain to her how horribly Steve and I and the Sheriff’s failed her.  But I don’t think that is how it really is supposed to work.  Not for one second!

I miss my child so much – some people can’t understand what she was like, because they never knew her – others that knew her know all too well that she truly was, one-of-a kind.  I don’t believe she was the only 20 year old in the world that was so loving and so caring, so many others are too – it’s just not something you go around talking about.  I don’t think she was the only 20 year old that loved doing “road trips” with her parents, many times she would bring her friends along, almost just to prove how much fun her parents were, and they would laugh and say how much fun they had, and what a “crack up” Steve and I were.  Actually the secret is that we enjoyed all of them just as much as they professed to have enjoyed us.

Morgan used to tell me I was her best friend (which to me was rather shocking), but now I have had emails from other 20 year olds that tell me they feel the same way about their mom, and they have the same kind of relationship, and they actually feel sorry for others that do not.  Isn’t that great news for the world!  Morgan loved to sit on the couch and watch the Gilmore Girls with me – don’t know if you have ever seen it but it’s really cute, it’s about a single mom and her daughter and they are best friends.  But here is the thing, if your family is not like that then I guess you just tend to think families that are that close are just fooling…well guess what, they are not, we are not, and that’s why it hurts so much every single day that we know we will never see Morgan again in this world.  I should be angry, I have every single right to be angry, and I am.  I should be full of hate, but that, I am not, because you see, Morgan taught me many things over her short lifetime and that was one of the bigger lessons this daughter taught her mom.  Yes, I want to get justice for Morgan, yes I want to get this sick predator off the streets so this can’t happen to another innocent girl, and her family.  But at the same time I have learned I can do this through love, and faith, and that is what Morgan would want most out of me… and that, is exactly what she is getting.