Morgan had routines in her life and she was pretty amazing at following them.  On days when there promised to be photographic opportunities the next morning everything would be set the night before.  Camera batteries all charged, memory chips cleared of files, tripod with the backpack, everything ready to go.  A great picture did not wait, did not come find you, and had to be planned and sought out, and Morgan knew all that very well.  She would even go to bed early, just to be up in time for the particular shot she was after.

Of course I am just a biased mom, but I really think her photos show how much effort she put into them, a lot of little things you never see.  A reader of the Morgan’s Stalking blog wrote in to tell me that if you Google “clouds” and go to the images of clouds a few in the first batch you get are Morgan’s, she was a gifted photographer.  And speaking of Google and Morgan, I don’t know how Steve found this, but the evening before Mother’s Day he showed me that if you Google “Mother’s Day oil painting” the first image was a painting Morgan made for me – for Mother’s Day!.  Seeing it was such a gift, the hair stood up on my arms.  Now I think you have to click on images first, but it is still there, just amazing how this all works!

Well another of Morgan’s routines was her room.  Every Friday she straightened and cleaned, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot, but always some level of attention was given, she liked how it started her weekend off.

If she was going to be traveling, as she had plans that weekend to go babysitting for Military couples on retreats, she did extra wash during the week to make sure everything she would need for the trip was ready to pack.  The last week of November, 2011 was no exception.  She had a few extra piles of laundry ready to go by Thursday evening, folded and stacked in her room and waiting for Friday, to be packed for the trip or put away.  A few of the routines Morgan developed and lived by.

In the weeks following her sudden and tragic death Steve and I, with help from family and friends really packed away everything the Morgan never had a chance to on her normal Friday clean up day.  I tried to move quickly, it helped to blur the difficult thoughts, and as I’m sure you can imagine that emotions don’t get much higher than they were…

I came across something that froze me for an instant, then I called out to Steve, (actually yelled out to him, as he was not in the room right then), I wanted him to see exactly what I thought I was seeing.  I picked it up and placed it carefully on the top of her hutch.  Steve walked in and started to say, “I wish you had not done…” but stopped.

I don’t mind saying we were especially raw that fist month, it was as if we were re-learning life and even how to live together after 35 years of marriage.  There was obviously a lot of things we did wrong as we went through the process we had been thrust into.

Months before, in one of our attempts to blunt the terror of the stalking, invasion of privacy – and let’s not forget the Garfield Sheriffs Department’s notion that all this was misdemeanor trespassing for far, far too long.  So in one of our attempts to possibly make Morgan feel safer Steve thought of a simple wireless door bell.  It consisted of a normal looking door bell button meant to be placed at your door and a “receiver” that plugged in and chimed whenever the button was pressed.  The button was attached to Morgan’s nightstand, the side she always slept on naturally.  And the receiver that chimed was in our room, right by our bed.

More than once Morgan had pressed the panic button that sent Steve running for her room.  Morgan really did not like to ever feel like she was giving in to her tormentor, that he was dictating her life in any way.  Morgan was completely against moving and even now, knowing more of the pros and cons, I’m not sure what the right thing to do is.  But that button that summoned daddy was quietly accepted, and Steve felt it did help her feel safe, even though we all know she was not, really.

There it was now, right on top of the hutch, just picked up off the floor by me, found in a rather unique place, far from where it had been mounted, and under a few pieces of clothing – her panic button.  I don’t even remember a thought coming at the instant I found it.  Later, much later, I was certain that whoever was in her room that fateful night, had torn it from her nightstand, and hid it where I found it.  When I think back on it now, that instant was like your mind denying to realize certain things that it should, sort of akin to aspects of shock.

An excellent investigator, (not a Garfield County Sheriff’s officer), who slowly had me recall events once, suggested that it could also have been done earlier, perhaps that day, or even the day before.  One thing is quite sure – Morgan is not the person who removed that button from her nightstand.

In a perfect world, the investigators would have found it during the “investigation” of Morgan’s death scene (how I hate that phrase), they would have been wearing gloves of course, and booties to prevent contamination of the scene. It would have been carefully placed in an evidence bag and Steve and I would have seen it sometime later, when we were not in complete shock, and finally able to think clearly.  I would have said, “that look’s like Morgan’s panic button, was that on her nightstand?” Or something like that, and the fact that her panic button had been torn from her nightstand would be established as a… clue.

But Steve and I do not live in a perfect world, far from it.  It was instead found in a unique place, under a few pieces of clothing.  It was found by me, and the facts passed along to the Detectives, the answer, other than to completely discount the event as having any importance, I don’t remember exactly.  Just like the crack completely down one side of the rain gutter centered right over Morgan’s window.  Or the blade from the animal skin scrapping blade company found out in the yard, at the base of the tree that would have been used to climb down from the roof.  Those were of no importance either.

Actually, why hold back, the entire stalking by Keenan VanGinkel, 100% certain of his identity at one point, had nothing to do with her death either, no connection at all.

As for her death scene, in the world in which we lived, it’s safe to say a few things that seemed important to me.  Items and events that I have a very hard time explaining as anything but proof positive the someone or even more than one were in Morgan’s room the night she died.  Clues.  Were not viewed with the same importance as Steve and I found in them.  Today, I feel that the investigation that day was completely lacking at the very best and most generous I can be.  Perhaps that is why the Honorable DA terms Morgan’s death scene investigation as “So Thoroughly  Botched,” by the Garfield Sheriff’s Department.

I could maybe understand this if there were items and events that were clues to me, and Steve, who are not investigators, but then every other investigator agreed with the Garfield Sheriff’s office… maybe then I would understand.  But in a chilling replay for me, every person who is a qualified investigator in their own right has been completely shocked at facets of the investigation that did take place and evidence they feel had to be “investigated to the very end”, that was instead completely dismissed at first blush.  But over a year and a half later that is how it has shaped up, over and over again.  Until the Sheriff himself stood on the evening news and declared he would never open this investigation.

I wish there was a way to look up in the sky and explain this all to my daughter, but there is not.  At least not any that I have been able to find.  I know she wants me to help other victims of stalking prevail over their tormentors, and I want justice for my daughter, and this is just another reason that will help to drive me on forever.

I hope people understand what I meant during the first year after Morgan’s murder when I said, I don’t know exactly how she was murdered, but things do not add up for me.”  And now I know they didn’t add up for quite a lot of people besides me.  Now after all this time Steve and I have been able to find the missing pieces that I didn’t know in the beginning but have become very clear now.  We know Morgan was murdered, we know who did it, and we will continue our quest for justice until the day it happens for Morgan.  All we want is to have a law enforcement agency open her case, do a thorough investigation, as in find out where their prime suspect lives and visit him there, at least once.  I do not think Morgan ever did anything to warrant being swept under the rug as she has been.  An investigation into her sudden, unexplained death after four months of stalking…not much to ask.