I was contacted again by another mother that wanted to share her story of horror.  This story had a better ending then ours and I am so happy their daughter was saved.  It is so important to share your stories in order to educate others about the realities of true crime. Some armchair sleuths seem to think it is impossible for someone to come into your house and do unspeakable things without the family hearing – unfortunately that is not reality…it really does happen.

About 16 years ago at 4:30 am, my husband and I were  awakened by our daughter’s scream.  “Daddy, there’s a boy in my room.”  My husband grabbed his Billie stick and raced down the stairs.  The man had fled.  While my husband looked for the man, I called the police.  When the police came, I asked if it could have been a dream.  The detective knew there had been an intruder. Footprints were left in the dew-covered grass and 10 cigarette butts had been left in a pile behind our house in the garden.  We had accidentally left the garage door open giving the man easy access into our home.  The man walked through our house, opened a liquor cabinet, and walked by our open bedroom door to gain entry into our daughter’s bedroom.  We never heard him and in September, our house was light, not dark.  Whenever I hear police question parents about noise an intruder makes, I become enraged.  No one in our family of five heard anything until our daughter screamed.  Later we learned, the man had tried to stick something in our daughter’s mouth.  I’ve always wondered if if was a substance to make her pass out.

Two weeks later this man was caught.  He had repeated the same crime, following the same pattern in a house three blocks from our home.  It was a neighbor I had never met.  He lived behind us through a short patch of woods.  His rap sheet at 19 was longer than my arm…and he was charged mostly as a juvenile delinquent for earlier crimes.  I never told our three kids that “he” lived behind our house.  They had a difficult time adjusting after the break-in.  He was convicted of the two break-ins and served a sentence of 18 months in jail.  By the time he was out of jail, his parents had moved.  My son still sleeps with a knife under his pillow and my daughter has a protective dog.

I am relaying my story because our daughter had been stalked.  This person knew which bedroom was hers.  He entered our home without anyone hearing him.  Our detectives were wonderful.  They were most bothered by the fact that adults were in the house when he entered both houses..  The detectives worried that this person would become even more brazen if he were not caught.

I urge you to continue to push for the reopening of the case.  In my experience, my faith in the detectives resulted in a resolution and capture.  Although your life is shattered, your goal is to find the killer(s).  Keep the spirit of your daughter in your heart and save your anger for the perpetrator(s).

I wish you and your husband peace of mind.  I wish I had known Morgan.  God bless you and keep up the fight.