Law and Order, or is the Beginning of the End of #Stalkers Running Free too Tall an Order?

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Expressions of Morgan

Expressions of Morgan

‘Law and Order’ is such a simple phrase, that means so very much when you find yourself a victim.  Law is the premise, the nucleus, that brings order.  Law is dynamic, very dynamic I’m finding this as I read the Colorado Revised Statutes with all of the year specific repeals, and additions.  Keeping pace with the ever altering landscape that is our lives is graphically displayed.  How one single word changes everything is just as amazing to me.

In Morgan’s case I am troubled to no end, because laws existed, but were not enforced, or maybe brought into play is a better way to think of it.  For example part of a Colorado Revised Statute (or C.R.S.) says:

The general assembly hereby recognizes the seriousness posed by stalking and adopts the provisions of this part 6 with the goal of encouraging and authorizing effective intervention before stalking can escalate into behavior that has even more serious consequences.

Then we had a Sheriff, under whom’s direction, his department assigns a Detective on day 58 of Morgan’s Stalking.  Effective Intervention?  58 days?  What do you think?  And remember Deputies did respond during the 58 days before, but, no sirens, no blinking lights, they can’t collect fingerprints, cast shoe prints or effectively collect evidence, the case has no case number, because it has not opened yet, and as I’m also finding, record keeping is completely shaky at the very best.  The responding Deputies also told me that this was Colorado Law,  I haven’t been able to find the law they talked about, but as you can see the one I did find is quite the opposite.  And that the stalking did in fact “escalate into behavior that had even more serious consequences”, is without question.

And it was not just the nearly 60 days or two months of living hell before there was a Detective, and a case number, along with the hope of a forthcoming plan to catch the stalker(s), and bring about an end to the ensuing nightmare.  It was also that once assigned, our detective had to justify the amount of time he spent on Morgan’s case.  “Higher ups” within the Sheriff’s department saw fit to allow an hour or two here or there.  Was he assigned to Morgan’s case only to have his hands tied?

Our felony stalking detective was angling for an extra hour or two to work her case, and now Morgan is dead, killed by her stalker.  Doesn’t seem right to me in any way, shape or manner, and I suppose it never will.  How could it?  In the name of Morgan having every dream she ever had yet to realize taken from her, the stalking case deserved the number of hours it took to solve it.  Not the best that can be done in an hour or two a week.  And if that is not enough, “oh well”, that’s the best we could do.  We all know how that worked out for Morgan.

Another section of the same law on stalking that I found to be right to the point, especially in Morgan’s case is:

Because stalking involves highly inappropriate intensity, persistence, and possessiveness, it entails great unpredictability and creates great stress and fear for the victim

Morgan was stressed, and she was in fear.  She also had little hope for the simple pleasures in life, like a “good nights sleep”.  The Colorado General Assembly, which drafted and passed the laws on stalking obviously got it.  If you want you can read the entire text of the C.R.S. that was law during Morgan’s stalking here it is, STALKING LAW.

The General Assembly deserves kudos for understanding the evil serpent so well, and drafting an effective response.  I don’t believe the Sheriff got it… at all.  The response that is spelled out in the Colorado Revised Statutes for stalking never arrived for Morgan.  For the sake of all the victims of stalking,  I sincerely hope that changes in the future.  Morgan’s stalker(s) are still running free.

And often I have spoken of another Colorado organization – the CBI, or Colorado Bureau or Investigation.  The big guns of law enforcement here in this state.  Many have pointed to the need for a “microscopic” investigation of an unattended death under suspicious circumstances as Morgan’s was.  The CBI could have been and should have been called in the morning we found Morgan dead, but it would have been the Sheriff’s call and they did not make it.  That would have given Morgan a proper investigation instead of the, “so thoroughly botched,” investigation that unfortunately Morgan did have.

I bring this up because, just recently right here in the Roaring Fork Valley, the body of a man was found in an irrigation ditch, deceased.  Only he was not found in Garfield County, he was found in Pitkin County.  Different County, different Sheriff, and fact is that the protocol there for an unattended death under suspicious circumstances was to immediately call in the CBI, that’s why we have the CBI is my understanding, not just for deaths, but any investigation that is beyond that capabilities of a smaller Sheriff’s department.  The CBI responded, was there within a few hours, and evidently evidence was actually found quite a distance from the death scene, and collected, to be processed.

There is a difference between that, and reading Morgan’s texts, and a old journal from her room.  But her PJ’s she wore to bed the night before, completely missing, her panic button gone from its mount, her body posed, redressed, none of that mattered.  Who were they investigating, really?  How was that going to ID or catch the intruder?  A crime scene such as Morgan’s is to be considered a homicide until proven otherwise.  What gives here, really?

Complete answers to the possible crime just committed sits at the root of prevention of crime, and isn’t that the goal of law enforcement?  To Protect and To Serve?  If a person, usually a woman, is the victim of stalking, doesn’t she deserve adequate protection?  Or is that too much to ask?

And though the following was in response to a different post there is a comment I want to share again with you, this is too perfect a place for it not to – Guardian Angels.

Is there sense in it all?

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Just what is going on

Just a Jumble? Or does it all come together?

You just never know.  Everyone tells you, and you hear it in so many ways your entire life – you just never really know.  Is it all just a jumble, or can it really be unraveled to make perfect sense?  Time will tell, because the truth never changes.

I think about the things that have happened, good and bad, and sometimes I see them in a new light.  For instance there was a night that Fall of 2011 when the Deputies, led by Patrol Officer Grzegorz, decided enough was enough, and they headed to Keenan’s house for a little chat with the suspect in Morgan’s staking.  Nothing wrong with a Sheriff’s Deputy coming by to ask a question or two – if you haven’t done anything wrong, is there?

In fact, as I ponder the choices, if your concern is for the safety of the neighborhood you lived in, you neighbors, and upholding the law then you would be very helpful, accommodating, welcome him in, and tell him whatever he needs to know I would think.  Aid in the investigation, right?

Deputy Grzegorz is very observant, he also moves very quickly, and noticed things on his way to the door.  His reports show just how serious he is.  After a short wait Brooke Harris answered the door.  Her father James was gone, and she was home with just the person Deputy Grzegorz wanted to speak with, Keenan Vanginkel.  But Brooke told him Keenan was asleep!  Could not be woken up?

Then comes the part that makes me go, huh?  Deputy Grzegorz reports hearing a commotion behind Brooke in the house, and he asks her about it.  Brooke does not let him in or go herself to see what the commotion is.  They had no pets, and only Brooke and Keenan were at home so what was the commotion in the house?  And not inviting the Deputy in would mean?  And the alcoholic beverage found when only two minors are present would mean?  Well I’m just thinking now, what was the problem with letting the Deputy in the house?  I have heard lots of explanations, but none of them make any sense to me.

And there was the time when Brooke was out with her friends, and we asked them, her friends, not Brooke, if they had heard about the stalking, and what they thought about it.  Brooke immediately claimed to not know anything, but her friends corrected her and reminded her about what she was just saying about the stalking.  Then she cut them off and ordered, not asked, ordered them to just shut up.  What was the problem there?  And why did she want them to just shut up.  What was she afraid of?

After all there was an ongoing investigation into the felony stalking case, Detectives were assigned, they had a suspect, she actually was his girlfriend.  In the interest of solving the crime Brooke could have asked her friends to help out the Sheriffs department in their felony stalking investigation, and tell them everything they know.  But that didn’t happen.  No one said anything about the stalking, except to say that they knew there was one.

So today I wonder, if you knew there was a stalking, and you were not Morgan, or you were not Steve or I, how did you know?  She had claimed that her boyfriend was exonerated from the stalking.

Finally there was a hearing, Steve and I were there.  The judge was there with his aide.  Jonathan Shamis, a lawyer from Alpine Legal Services was representing Brooke, her mother Christina and father James, they said they were frightened of us, but we stood five feet apart.  Jonathan Shamis wanted the judge to lift the temporary restraining order they had asked for so they could appear on a television show with us.  Quite odd because they didn’t seem frightened, actually I would call their demeanor as more like combative, if I were asked to pick a term.

The shocking part was when they said they needed their attorney Jonathan Shamis to go with them, to be right there off camera to protect them from criminal implications.  I turned to our counselor and asked him if Steve and I needed him to come, and protect us too, but he explained we had no criminal exposure so there was no need for him to come.

Then we get to Los Angeles and find out that Keenan’s lawyer won’t even let him come, because it’s far too risky.  Obviously his lawyer didn’t tell us.  She told the producers of the show, they knew.  So even if his lawyer is ten feet away to jump in it’s still too dangerous.  But Steve and I didn’t even need a lawyer at all!  What does that tell you?

If I’m trying to unravel the jumble, I am at the point where you ask – is this what happens when the Sheriff’s department has so thoroughly botched the crime scene, and then the suspects need lawyers to talk because of criminal implications, and actually the #1 suspect can’t even talk at all, and an officer of the court can insult the victims, on national television?  But did the #1 suspect forget that he had an ongoing six month private facebook conversation?  Must have, doubt his lawyer would have approved of that.

Just what kind of crime scene is this?

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Morgan and a painting over her bed, blurred

Morgan and a painting over her bed, blurred

There was nothing about that morning on December 2, 2011 that was like any morning in my life.  Today is different.   I had so many questions struggling, and swirling between thought, and emotion that finding a lucid place to start was a problem.  Now I’m far more fixated on the answers that have never been very forthcoming, if they have come at all.  They are for the most part simple answers, but even a simple yes or no has developed a degree of impossibility.  And one small group of questions that must have answers, but do not, is what about the items that disappeared from her room on the night she was killed.  Each is uniquely different, each with its own story and importance.

I’ve written about her PJ’s that were never to be found…ever, and if you missed that post it’s here – what happened to her PJ’s .  Her valuable jewelry that disappeared also has been touched on in this post – Morgan’s  missing jewelry , but that full story is right around the corner as the search of cash for gold stores is wrapped up.  There were other items that turned out to be missing as well, but this blog is going to specifically talk about a small card that also went missing the night Morgan was killed.

It was a driver’ license, obviously Morgan’s license, she would misplace it along with her purse every so often, but she was always very quick to find it when that happened.  It was one of her habits that she would not drive if she knew she did not have it, so to leave it missing was not an option for her.  Her license was always in her wallet, which was always in her purse.  She also kept her previous license right behind her current one.  The previous one was in her wallet after her death, as always, but the current one was not.

This little fact, that Morgan’s license that she always kept in her wallet was gone, and was never to be seen again after the night she was killed is so important to a proper investigation.  Her wallet was right in her room, in her purse, just minus her current driver’s license. We assumed the investigator’s took it, but much later found out they did not.  And we know Morgan did not take it, so that leaves only someone else.  Another of the many pieces of evidence pointing to an intruder.  This fact that we finally discovered gives me the “creeps”.

It is considered a common attribute of serial killers, and other criminals, to be “trophy collectors”.  Just as trophies are meant as rewards for an accomplishment in the real world, off in the sick and twisted hemispheres of some criminals, a trophy from their victim is thought to mean the same thing to them.  And a driver’s license is a very often collected “trophy” to be kept after a victim has been violated, and stripped of all that ever mattered in this world…their life.

A Dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Boston, Dr. James A. Fox, co-authored a book in 1985 titled “Mass Murder: America’s Growing Menace.”  Talking about mass murders, he says that, “In all of their lives, they’ve never distinguished themselves, they’re ordinary at school, ordinary at their jobs, ordinary with their friends, but at murder, they’re extraordinary.”

The FBI considers a murderer to be a serial killer after 3 murders, with a cooling off period between each.  Profiling and categorizing serial killers is a voluminous subject with the FBI as they tend to be the only agency with the manpower, and expertise to uncover and prosecute the true depth, and breadth of criminals that have been arrested, and found to have killed again, and then again…. largely discovered by accident.

Not every killer is a serial killer, but why would a proper crime scene investigation of a young woman who was found dead under suspicious circumstances not determine if common “trophies” had been taken?  Starting with Morgan’s license for instance, even her PJ’s, the last clothes she had been seen wearing would be a natural to check out, undergarments are another choice, and as Morgan was redressed, we know only the undergarments she was wearing after she was found to be dead, not what she was wearing when she went to sleep the night before.  Those could have been taken as well, but we do not know.

In today’s world there is always the possibility of DNA on any of these items, and it would make sense for a criminal not wanting to get caught to take them with him rather than chance leaving some identifiable trace evidence linking him to the crime.  But a search was never even made for any of them.

Despite the fact that Morgan’s death was considered to be under “suspicious circumstances” the morning she was found, and despite the fact that investigators were told that when Steve had said goodnight to her the previous evening she was dressed in PJ’s.  There was no effort to locate the last item of clothing she had been seen in, and subsequently her PJ’s that were missing went from a red flag to a nothing.  See how easy it is to thoroughly botch a crime scene?  Same as with her Driver’s license, a simple check of her wallet, and an obvious red flag jumps out, but instead it was a nothing.

Besides the evidentiary value that her license holds, Morgan was an organ donor.  A status deemed safe, because she had never tested positive for any disease that would preclude her from being one.  Morgan had the concern, and foresight to check with her doctor before declaring herself as an organ donor.

Her organ donor status was never checked following her death.  When she was “officially”, found to have died of natural causes.  It was yet another slap in the face for Morgan, and her last wishes were denied by the Coroner’s office of Garfield County, and the contracted forensic pathologist the Coroner leaves to run his office.  When in reality we now know that Morgan’s blood contained a massive dose of Amitriptyline, which could have easily rendered her organs as unsuitable for donation, but no one knew it at that time.  I do know that since it was her wish they should have made an attempt to honor it, or at least discuss with us the reasons why they were not going to honor her wish.  Then again maybe in this one instance it was a good thing that someone “dropped the ball”.  With a dose so many times over the lethal amount for her body weight, to ever term it “insignificant”, as the contracted pathologist tried, should have red flags waving everywhere,  perhaps transplanting her organs would have killed the recipients too.

Wouldn’t that have been a twisted way to find out how massive a dose of Amitriptyline our daughter had been given?  I am so very relieved that nothing like this came to pass.  Justice will come for Morgan.  It will take time, and be very tedious.  That much is abundantly obvious to us, but we will never give up our quest for justice and we will never give up our efforts to raise awareness and promote change.

 

A mission against #stalking – I feel like the first thing to do is to take it seriously, because as far as I can see not everyone really did in Morgan’s case

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moonbox

Mogwai guarding a box of his mom’s evidence

At a time when sheer frustration surrounded everything that was related to Morgan’s stalking, and death, I made a decision.  As soon as my waves of shock had passed, it dawned on me that I needed to do something about this in Morgan’s name.  I needed to tell Morgan’s story, with as many details as I could, so others could become aware of this multi-layered problem that was confronting Steve and I in trying to have her stalker still pursued, and her death investigated (because it never really was at all!).  It also quickly evolved into raising awareness of stalking, not only here in Garfield County, Colorado, but all around the world.

In response to the story of Morgan’s Stalking so many other victims over the last year have asked for advice, or told me about their own story, and unfortunately the same things ring true – law enforcement in their city or county did not, and will not take the danger seriously, and the victims are left to fend for themselves, scared for their lives!  This has to change.  Stalking is wrought with dangers, and needs to be dealt with effectively and swiftly, because it so easily blows out of control, even escalating to murder.

I could not allow this to happen to another girl, another family, and I wondered, what are the right answers to this multi-pronged dilemma?  Morgan had been stalked, and terrorized for four months, and then we found her dead in her bed, nothing about the crime scene looked normal, she looked like she had been posed, so many things were not right, but we were in shock, and were not asked any pertinent questions that we should have been asked in a murder investigation!  And here was a felony stalking victim, our daughter, dead.  And we had this horrible feeling that her death was being treated as if it had nothing to do with her stalking.  We tried to ignore this feeling, because the situation we had ended up in had us questioning everything.

A year and a half later it is far more apparent that Morgan’s sudden death, under suspicious circumstances, had been treated as if it had no relation to her stalking at all.  Does this make any sense at all?  The morning they took Morgan’s body away and informed us there would be an autopsy, we were told it was because she died under “suspicious circumstances, and they were treating everything as if it were a crime scene”, and I believed them at that time, I trusted them.  But as the smoke still cleared I can see that was really not the case at all.

In the weeks that passed after her death  we waited for the pathologist’s examination report and nothing was investigated except to look at pictures on her phone, read her texts, and read what she was writing on her computer.  They were investigating Morgan – not how she died.  Then the pathologist classified Morgan’s manner of death as natural causes, and the “brakes” were hit even harder.  For the next eight months that passed the Sheriff’s department had no reason to investigate natural causes, and as for her stalking case it seemed as if they did not need to do any more investigating, with no stalking victim left alive, there was no more stalking, leads dry up quickly and all too soon there was nothing to investigate – right?

Nothing “felt right” about Morgan’s death, and we had questions for many of reasons, apart from one of the main reasons – he wrote that her “natural death” was caused by a disease she never had, we also felt a strong need to know exactly what killed her, if this truly was a natural death, and if it could affect someone else in the family, young or old.  When Morgan’s long time Doctor at UCLA, a person we have great respect for, shocked us with her opinion that nothing was wrong with Morgan that would cause her sudden death, and then declare this was a homicide!  We were floored.

We naturally began to research this very seriously, and it was not long before we were told by a highly respected Forensic Pathologist that the level of one drug in her blood was not “insignificant” as the pathologist was claiming, but it was the cause of Morgan’s death.  And she did not even take this drug!

I kept asking more questions of more experts because the finding of Morgan’s death as natural was not only wrong there was absolutely no investigation going on except our own.  Which was raising questions for which there were no answers, and the pathologist did not like me questioning him, his findings, or asking him to talk to some of the experts that were assisting us, doctor to doctor, about his findings.  He then threatened me (I am a victim of the felony stalking as well as Morgan, so he was threatening a victim at the time) that he might have to take another look at her manner of death, as the blood levels were quite high, and the only reason he did not call it an accidental overdose, or suicide was that there were absolutely no pills or pill fragments in her stomach.

This concerned me deeply, except I was being told by others that I should not be worried, because there were no grounds that the pathologist could find for suicide, and he really should have put down “Undetermined” or “Homicide” and an investigation should have been opened.

An investigation – really?  Like law enforcement actually reviewing our camera footage the night of the murder, they took it, and booked it into evidence, but it was not reviewed – I guarantee you that, because later when we reviewed it we saw images from those cameras that same night.  Or like an investigation that takes evidence from the crime scene, like sheets, and pillows, and tests the substance found on her chest, and writes up a report.  And when told about items missing from her room the information becomes a report?  No, that never happened either.  I began to tell our felony stalking detective about the missing items within a few days of the crime, after the crime scene tape came off her bedroom door, and we were allowed back into her room – but no report was made.

Then seven months after her death, the pathologist had her gastric fluid tested without telling us.  The pathologist knew if anymore tests were to be run the other doctors assisting us would like to weigh in on what kind of tests could be added.  But this request was ignored, which is a problem because there were not a lot of samples left to test, and this particular test exhausted what was left.  To use up those samples without allowing other doctors to request certain tests to be done at the same time was not only wrong, but egregious.

Those test results, of which the pathologist based his claim of suicide, instead actually proves that she could not have committed suicide – that piece of knowledge that I now have can never change.  Not one soul in Garfield County government cared that the pathologist had threatened me – I know because of all the certified, return receipt letters that Steve, and I wrote to them that were not only ignored, they were never answered.

So what does a family in this situation do?  It looks, and feels to me like one of those stories about the “big blue wall”, right here in Garfield County.  Their approach to the problem is obviously to not answer us or do anything, in the hope that we just go away, and drop it.  Would you?  Honestly if this were your daughter would you just drop it and go away?  Emotionally it would probably be much easier.  What about the stalker/murderer?  Do you think he will just stop, and never do it again, and never hurt another girl?  He terrorized Morgan emotionally and psychologically for four months.  There have also been many revelations of similar instances going back many years.  So I don’t believe he will stop – they very rarely do, and I for one, in my heart, could never live with just walking away and not pursuing this.  It hurts, it makes me sick to my stomach at times, it makes Steve, and I both want to scream sometimes, but thanks to the huge support group we have we continue to pull each other up, and continue on with this quest.

My hope is that people all around the world listen, and believe other stalking victims, they need to be heard, and desperately want to be taken seriously.  If more people understand, and decide to take a stance to help as much as they can, we will be on the way to having fewer victims in the future.  When I hear about so many similar crimes being committed I can’t help but think that maybe there are not so many criminals, I think just one can do so very many crimes, if they are never caught, or never prosecuted.  So please, individually and collectively, let’s get even just one criminal off the street, and see how many lives can be spared in doing just that one act.

An idea or two about how to catch your #stalker…

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Blue field

Experience, when it comes to stalking I know I have more experience now than I did at one time in the past, and I am not sure how to explain it simply.  So I checked Wikipedia for a definition, and it goes like this – “We gained knowledge or skill through involvement or exposure to a thing or event.”  While the range of degrees of experience is quite large, I like this abbreviated definition, it seems to serve the purpose.

We (Steve and I) have been through a stalking, that ended with the murder of our youngest daughter.  We experienced it from beginning to end.

Throughout this horrifying experience we thought we were being proactive.  Many times one of the Sheriff’s Deputies or Detectives would comment on how they thought we were going overboard in what we were doing, in comparison with anything they had seen before.  In our reality what we were doing was our very best to catch this person.  The fact that it ended in failure should give us all pause.  No parent wants to be in our position, and fail.  No parent wants their child to suffer as Morgan did.  They need to protect their child, they need help from others, and just how much, and when is completely unknown.

It is one thing to imagine a peeping tom, who is so transfixed at a young woman’s bathroom window, that the peeping tom does not know that the father of the young woman he is so horribly violating, is coming ever closer, and growing more livid with every step, until it is too late for this peeping tom – he is caught red-handed in the act.

A very old friend of Steve’s had a picture of a man who was caught, by the father of a victim of a peeping tom that was looking in the window at his daughter, and this peeping tom had obviously received a vigorous beating before he was cuffed, and brought in for his mug shot.  A little instant justice, never enough until forgiveness can join in, but perhaps enough for the moment.

It is an entirely different matter when you know it’s happening and you run out an instant too late to find only air.  Oh, there may be clues, shoe prints in the soil, freshly watered soil for just this reason, images on wildlife cameras, grainy video of a real live person, a glimpse of a dark figure rounding the neighbor’s house, foot trails worn into berms behind your house that can be seen from outer space on Google maps, showing trails that were never there before.  Of course let’s not forget the scratching, knocking, and banging on the windows, or punching in numbers on the front door key code pad.

In our case a glimpse or physical evidence of Morgan’s stalker was rare, maybe one in every tenth instance, and never even coming close to her stalker being caught.  We were left with just the knowledge that he was just there.  Proof that your experience tells you – this was from her stalker.  He was right there, not too long ago.  And if you call in law enforcement and nothing improves, and it becomes basically the same thing, except instead of the two of us, there were now one, or two deputies alongside of us, standing there, right where he was, not too long ago.  What are the chances you are going to catch him?  When this is what happens every time, the chances are very slim.

There are jewelry thieves that can scale a building to a balcony, and gain entrance without a noise.  They can defeat the elaborate security system, break into the safe, and exit with the goods, leaving only a safe door half-open, and not any other sign that they were there.

And there are those that will trip, and crash to the ground over paint cans in the garage, causing an intense clatter, knocking themselves unconscious in the process.  There are all levels of skills in stalking, and stalkers, and be realistic about yours – really realistic.  There is the stalker’s skill level vs. your skill level.  And there also is your law enforcement’s skill level vs. the stalker’s.  Not to be insulting or condescending, just take the time to be aware, it matters.

Sadly over the last year, and a half there have been few methods that I’ve seen succeed very often.  Easily the most successful is an array of wildlife cameras, 4 or more, usually six.  They can be wi-fi enabled or not.  Be aware that the time to first exposure varies with brands and models.  Five seconds may be the best you can find, but it is a long amount of time.  Our oldest grandson could pretty much cover our lot from back to front in five seconds.  You can compensate for the slow first image times by using more cameras.  We never had more than two cameras up at one time, four if you count the Sheriff’s two.  It was not enough.  We had two images in three months, and the Sheriffs had none.

The wildlife camera images will not be the best, not prom night pictures by any stretch of he imagination.  The images will have to be circulated to as many people as you can get to see them.  It sounds amazing to me, but if you look at instances where an almost blurry picture is circulated openly, someone recognizes who it is in the image.  A police department in a large city back east claims they have a 75% success rate with video surveillance images openly circulated to everyone.

Next is more of an idea, because we never tried it, but it seems logical.  Where our video surveillance cameras were all mounted on our house, and aimed to cover an area along the house, Steve believes that it would have been better if we had gotten permission, and mounted every camera on a neighbor’s house, trained on one side, at most, of our house, ground to top of roof, 24/7.

Morgan’s stalker was a highly skilled hunter.  Absolutely nothing wrong with hunting, but a highly skilled hunter possesses a skill set of concealment, stealth and knowledge that is formidable to counter.  There is a famous FBI profiler that is of the opinion that if he had a set of suspects for a serial killing, and one was a trophy hunter, that would be his first suspect.  This might also be because the serial killer he brought to justice lived in Alaska and had developed the pattern, or signature, of taking a women into the woods, releasing her, and then hunting her down like an animal.  The theme of many horror movies and TV shows about crime – certainly not representative of the hunters in the world, far from it, just one man using a finely tuned skill set, and knowledge for all the wrong reasons.

On the day Morgan’s body was found it was declared a mystery by law enforcement.  Rule number one of death scene investigation is that you must assume it is a homicide until proven otherwise.  One and a half years later there are twenty unexplainable facts that point to an intruder in her room that night.  Yet the Sheriff’s Department found no sign of forced entry on day one, and were completely satisfied with that. Why?

On the day Morgan died we did not realize there was much of anything wrong with her room.  It was, quite simply, the last thing on our minds.  Very obvious unexplainable facts came readily, within days after the crime scene tape was down.  Others took an evening, with a really sharp investigator, who was experienced with putting together all the facts of a particular case.  Steve and I were never asked a single question about Morgan’s room on day one of her investigation, as it turned out the only day of the investigation, so of course there was not much information assembled about her death.

And these twenty pieces are just the crime scene evidence.  There are also eight pieces of forensic facts relating to Morgan’s case, which are completely backward from what is known by the scientific community, also pointing to an intruder.  When they are testified to and cross-examined, I feel very strongly as to what the outcome will be.  And it is so hard, because as the wheels of justice turn their slow turn, I am very anxious for that moment to come sooner rather than later.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, catching your stalker is the focus here.  There is one thing stalkers almost can’t stop themselves from doing, they stalk and they will return to the same place over, and over again.  Carrying with them an odd, almost unexplainable certainty they will not be caught.  And guess what?  Far too many times they are right about that, about not being caught.

An excellent expert on stalking correctly points out that “you know the place where the crime will be committed,” “you know who the crime will be committed against,” “Once you have a suspect, you must act, quickly.”

Depending on whose numbers you take, in one out of five stalkings there will be violence against the victim, and in one out of ten there will be injuries.  Fatal injuries are next up.  But why?  When there is a suspect, and you know where, and you know who, it does not make sense that anything fatal should happen, except very rarely.  But that is not how it works out.  Extremely sad, but also true.

It is our reality, and the reality for so many stalking victims that they live an end that should not have had to happen, but they are not given the choice.  Can awareness alone improve the odds?  Of course, but I have an idea that three things are needed…awareness, plus protocol, plus full employment of the law.  Stalking needs to be taken seriously – by everyone, especially law enforcement.

Experience tells me that catching the stalker is so important.  Otherwise the end is a wound that may suddenly reopen someday.  Be aware of this.  Morgan chose not to run, because her stalker could just as easily have followed her, and then she would be forever looking over her shoulder in fear.  Morgan decided to stay, that was not the problem.  A lack of awareness, protocol, and full employment of the law was the problem.  Both before her death, and after.

This started out as an idea or two on how to catch your stalker, and I have only given you one or two really good ideas on how to do that – there are many more.  What I want to also give you is the awareness that your stalker must be caught, and preferably not by you.  Stalkers rarely stop stalking.  In Morgan’s memory I want people to more aware of the true dangers of stalking.  I want to turn the tables on stalkers with protocols that have proven to be effective against stalkers, and all of the laws enacted to prevent these tragedies used to their fullest.  How else do we expect to catch your stalker?