LOVE – Morgan and Wylah together

♥♥♥♥

The story of the glitter bombs…Morgan’s older sister, since she was very young, used to alway put huge amounts of glitter into every envelope, inside a card for birthdays, father’s day, mother’s day, any occasion so when you opened it then boom!  You would end up with glitter everywhere and you would have to laugh…and then start to clean it all up.  And that was the start of the glitter bombs.  Morgan used that same method to cheer people up, catch them by surprise, etc. and for Steve and I at the end of this week we just felt like a huge glitter bomb had been set off and Morgan’s case was finally getting the traction it needed.  We will never give up until she does get justice and others are saved, but we have come to realize that during the process you do have to have some celebrations when good things happen.  Thanks to all you unsung heros out there helping Morgan…I can’t name names but you all know who you are and we love you!

Another stalking victim shared this from the RAINN Newsletter: She said she just had to share her Newsletter from the e-mail. This is good news!

Dear Friend,

The U.S. House of Representatives today followed the Senate in voting to renew the Violence Against Women Act and pass the SAFER Act, sending the legislation to the president to be signed into law. VAWA, which has helped reduce the level of sexual violence in the US, expired more than a year ago.

“Today’s vote to renew VAWA is a big victory for victims of sexual violence. This bill extends successful programs that have helped reduce rape in the US, while adding new protections for victims. It also incorporates the SAFER Act, which will help eliminate the backlog of untested DNA evidence from unsolved rape cases and take countless rapists off the streets,” said Scott Berkowitz, RAINN’s president and founder.

The bipartisan SAFER Act was led by Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Reps. Ted Poe (R-TX) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY). It reallocates existing spending to ensure that more goes directly to testing cases. It also requires that states and cities that receive SAFER funds audit and publicly disclose their backlog for the first time.

VAWA, introduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID), passed the Senate earlier this month. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) was lead sponsor of the House bill. It renews dozens of anti-sexual violence and domestic violence programs, including funding for local services and training for law enforcement.

This is a huge step forward in the fight to end sexual violence, and has been the top priority for RAINN’s public policy staff for the last several years. Thank you for your support, which helped achieve today’s victories.

Morgan with her family

What if there could just be a joint effort to solve crime?  Everyone involved working toward a common goal – the truth.  Remember the truth, it doesn’t change, stands the test of time, is certainly beyond a shadow of a doubt, will always remain convincing, and to be a preponderance of the evidence, is easy for the truth.  I did not start Morgan’s blog to convince someone of MY truth. I wanted to share what I knew to be true, what I had been told by doctors and every expert that Steve and I have been referred to, good and bad its all in here somewhere.  Except of course for the few smoking guns I’ve been advised to withhold for the time being.

Wouldn’t it be nice if I were sharing all this with the Sheriff and the Coroner to clear up all the questions of Morgan’s case.  I would have like that, but instead I have received nothing but antagonistic responses the Sheriff  and Coroner the instant I had an opinion that differed from theirs.  I know better now, but I still think about how it would have been so so nice if the Sheriff and the Coroner had been actually interested in solving the death of Morgan, catching her stalker before he just does it again?  Bad guys behind bars, the valley a safer place. I have discovered the hard way that questioning anything they have concluded just causes an immediate and very serious case of ruffled feathers.  And why is that?  Wouldn’t it be nice if we were working together on a crime, I really thought it was happening at first and then all of a sudden it became an argument about who is right, and how nothing should ever be questioned, and that was on a good day.

I’m sure I have said this before but, always remember, it is not me and my opinion, it is an opinion of someone who should know that we have sought for their expertise.   An opinion I double check, and triple check and in the beginning I was so naïve I would just tell our Detective thinking he would welcome the truth with open arms.  I thought the contracted forensic pathologist would be open to medical expertise far more specialized with far more assets at their disposal to be called upon, but no, not in my experience.  Especially since Dr. Kurtzman (the forensic pathologist that did the autopsy) said on the first PER (where he put her manner of death as natural), “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 pertinent information becomes available.”  So we went about writing, calling and emailing Morgan’s doctor’s and experts in different medical fields to correspond with the forensic pathologist with their findings.  First there was the discussions about how his interpretation that the amitriptyline levels on the first toxicology results were ‘insignificant’  and completely dismissed as he concluded, “the absence of significant toxicology findings”.  Steve and I had so many experts write, try to call, try to email him that it was not insignificant, quite the opposite, and that their should be an investigation opened into her manner of death. He wanted the input at first, but I guess he feels he does not have to listen,  and he was not about to…no matter what he wrote on the first PER.  Now on the second PER (almost 9 months later) he wrote her manner of death as suicide, but stated in the report that, “if objective information is produced indication that the decedent was somehow forced against her will to consume an amitriptyline overdose and observed until incapacitated the manner of death may be reclassified as homicide.”  Well we now have objective information that will show that she did not inject herself with a lethal dose of Amitriptyline (enough to kill a horse) and was unable to give herself the other drugs that were in her gastric fluid when checked on the second PER because she would have been unable to that at that time…does that mean there would still have to be someone in the room watching this sick predator watch Morgan until she died in order for this to ever become a homicide in Dr. Kurtzman’s opinion?  We have come to wonder what is is he really is thinking.

I think everyone will agree, well almost all of us, that there are differences between the abilities of one person, and the abilities of another.  Say the crime lab in Garfield County and the FBI lab in Quantico.  I have never seen either one, but just based on what I hear and what seems logical the FBI lab in Quantico might be a little better, in fact I’m confident it is a lot better.  No slight on Garfield, just the way it is.  What about investigations?  Could there be a law enforcement unit with more expertise and resources than Garfield County?  Once again no slight on GarCo, just the way it is.  What if this law enforcement agency was not a federal agency in another state, but right here in Colorado?  They are called the CBI (Colorado Bureau of Investigation) and capable of a microscopic investigation of the crime scene instead of what Morgan had.  If all it took was a phone call, why would Garfield County Coroner’s or Sheriffs have not called in the CBI the morning that Morgan’s body was found?  Did they not care about my daughter?  Were they worried that if they collected real evidence like her sheets, pillow cases, used better equipment to scan, do a more thorough job that there would have been a different result?  My guess is there would have been a drastically different result. Not my opinion, but the opinion of those that do death scenes every day.  Now why didn’t they call them in?

Then I have one more burning question.  If one of these other’s Steve and I have involved with more resources and expertise wishes to point out a mistake, what is the problem with that?  On a conference call with the Forensic Pathologist he freely admitted not being very knowledgeable when it came to AIP a certain area of medical knowledgea  forensic pathologist really does not have much use for.  He said he rarely, if ever comes across it, in fact this was the first time.  He even suggested out on the coast in the bigger hospitals they might have a better understanding of AIP than he.  And was he ever right.  UCLA medical center has thousands of doctors all specializing and all sharing their knowledge to help.  What a concept.  Of course when they wanted to talk with Dr. Kurtzman about it, all of a sudden he is the expert, he is arguing with them.  How in the world does that help Morgan or anyone else get justice?  His ego is more important than the crime being solved?  And if the crime is not solved who loses out besides Morgan and her family?  The rest of Garfield County where there is still a predator at large.

When I hear about how things could have been conducted, or should have been conducted.  About how agencies right here in Colorado are equipped to do a better job, but were not even allowed.  It breaks my heart, every victim deserves the best we can give them.  And that is not what happens right now.

I read very recently that a group has been formed to explore ways the image of Colorado can be protected in the wake of all the National attention grabbing violence that has gone on in our state over the last year.  To me this is really one of those times when treating the cause and not the effect has never been more true.  Poor tactics, and an ego that could not accept help from others who did know, doomed my daughter.  Once a stalker and a person capable of murder entered her life the way they did, Morgan’s life was forever changed.  And sure we had choices that we did not implement, but the sad truth is until you do it and live out your life, you really don’t know if it worked or not.

The single most repeated piece of advice I have received about Morgan’s case is that she herself or all of us together should have moved out of the area.  And it really doesn’t bother me to be second guessed, it’s a good thing.  Only by exploring all the options will there be new solutions.  And I direct all of you who have not seen it to the stalking page of Morgan’s website.

Right above the picture of Wylah comfortably riding on Morgan’s shoulder is a three part story from Lifetime about a woman who was stalked for years through different states before she was finally gunned down by her stalker.  When that man came into her life, it was forever changed.  There is a very sad reason, a cause for her death, and we need a better way to treat it, because left to deal with the effect or ignoring the cause changes even more lives forever.  When it does not have to be like that.

Morgan wasn’t a public figure, although she was very special to most of the people that knew her, but her stalker did live and work right by our house, so I have copied a piece of the study that discusses Type II category stalkers, which includes the Type 1 offenders.  Unbeknownst to me Morgan’s stalker worked at City Market in El Jebel, where we would send Morgan by herself to pick up groceries when she had just gotten her license and was a new driver.  The little five minute drive included parking in a lot and two stoplights. Or she could take the frontage roads and have an eight minute drive with no lights.  Great practice for a new driver venturing out on her own for the first times.

We know the obsession with Morgan started long before we knew there was a problem, and we believe it was at that grocery store that he first saw Morgan, and began his deadly obsession.  We also know, since many readers of the blog have come forward over the last year and shared their stories that the same M.O. has been happening in the subdivisions right across from ours.  In our very limited way we have established that for at least 4 years before Morgan’s stalking this has been going on.  There are reported incidents the summer before, and one even 2 weeks before, while Morgan was out of town.  All of these more recent incidents were called in to the Garfield County Sheriff’s office.  With that knowledge, the Sheriff’s office should have had a protocol that would have enabled them to assess Morgan’s situation.  In view of a continued pattern in the immediate neighborhood they should have dealt with it in a completely different way than they did.  This is just one thing that HAS to change or others will keep falling to the same fate as Morgan in this County.  Meanwhile all I can tell you is there is an undeniable effort on the Counties part to try and cover it all up, pretend it is not happening or never happened.  This blind eye approach can’t last forever.  The word is out – and more people who spread the word, will raise awareness and they will make all the difference in the world, more victims will be protected, and they will demand that their law enforcement agencies do what is right.

Along these lines I would like to share a little bit of knowledge I have gleaned from a paper that was written about that typology…

Behavioral Sciences and the Law Behav. Sci. Law (2011) Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/bsl.975

Predictors of Recidivism by Stalkers: A Nine-year Follow-up of Police Contacts

Angela W. Eke, Ph.D.*, N. Zoe Hilton, Ph.D.y, J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D.z, Kris Mohandie, Ph.D.x and Jennette Williams, R.Dipl.$

To summarize the paper reports that in a study done on 78 offenders, 77% reoffended within an average follow-up of 106 months (8.8 years).  Over half were charged for new stalking related offenses and 33% for violent recidivism.  The existing literature predicted this violent reoffending, including sexual offenses, because of the known risk factors: first conviction at a younger age, prior release failures, and criminal history.

With Morgan’s stalker we now know that all of these things fit his profile.

Quoted from the Paper: Type II categories include Public Figure (targeting a victim whom they identified from their public or media appearances) and Private Stranger (pursuing a victim not previously known to ‘‘the stalker’’ but who lives or works within the stalker’s environment) stalkers who had no prior relationship with their targets. Overall, Type I offenders committed more threats and violence and, proportionally, included more males stalking females. 

My hope is in the future a public outcry to law enforcement to change the “small town mentality” and stop using it as an excuse will bring about change.  There is a suggested national protocol for law enforcement agencies that they can use and learn from to stop untold emotional trauma to stalking victims and also save lives. The figures vary widely but victims of violent stalkers lose their lives 9% to 18% of the time.  If going to the grocery store netted you a 9-18% chance of being killed I bet you’d just go out to dinner.

But I want to question those number severely.  Morgan was stalked and murdered.  A forensic toxicologist is quite certain from all of her labs.  A forensic Psychologist sees lethal danger every step of the way, and we really don’t have to wonder if he is right because Morgan is dead.  The Sheriff announces he will never investigate, and the contracted pathologist for Garfield County (that did Morgan’s autopsy) calculates what all the numbers mean for Morgan and his math has a PhD of biological engineering from MIT shaking her head in disbelief.  And then the pathologist points at the non investigation into her stalker as good rational that the stalker was not involved in her death.

There are some extremely good stalking laws that are also on the books, but are not being enforced – WHY NOT?  The protection of our families from criminals should be a top priority – more so then writing speeding tickets or staking out bars.  More laws are needed for victims, but I feel like the first thing we have to do is demand that the laws we already have in our state are upheld – and trust me they are not being upheld!  Morgan’s murder was premeditated by a person with a criminal history that is a con man and a sociopath so there are people that try to protect him, do alibis for him, that are too afraid of him to come forward and give up the information that they have on him…but don’t worry because some people have been brave enough to come forward, and I feel like there are more that will be coming forward very soon now.  The truth will not stay covered up for long.

January 3, 2012 (over a year ago) was a quiet day.  Morgan’s older sister and her husband left and Steve and I were finally all alone in the house.  We drove over to the college to drop off another picture of Morgan that Gary in the Theatre Department wanted to use in their glass case along with the information about the scholarship program that we had set up in Morgan’s name.  So many more things are to be realized in the next few months, but on this day we have no way of knowing this.  I have a strong feeling, not coming from my mind, but instead it is emanating from my soul…that at this time it is for me and me alone to follow the path I have been shown, I know my soulmate Steve will join me sometime down that path, but for right now I need to start following the path by myself, because he is suffering so much over Morgan that he can not focus.  I can feel what Morgan needs me to do for her, and that is exactly what I will do.  I need to get away from this house, and this horrible neighborhood so I can think and feel again…from that thinking, and talking to close friends and relatives, will come a much clearer path – this much I do know.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012 – nothing notable happened – it was extremely, and deathly quiet today.

Thursday, January 05, 2012 – I spoke with Dr. Tracy Simms today, Morgan’s OB/GYN.  This is the first time I have actually spoken with Dr. Simms since Morgan died.  Morgan and I both went to see Dr. Simms for our Annual exams on Wednesday, November 30^th in Grand Junction (she was the last doctor to see Morgan 36 hours before she was killed on Thursday night, December 1st, she died sometime before 6:00 am Friday morning, December 2^nd when I found her).  I saw Dr. Simms before Morgan, for my appointment and asked that she might take a look at Morgan, because Morgan looked so exhausted and pale.  Toni explained to Tracy about the stalker, and everything that had happened over the last 4 months, and she said she would talk to Morgan.

Tracy said she did talk to Morgan on Wednesday, November 30^th that same day, and suggested that maybe she could give her a prescription for an anti-depressant to help her feel better, or possibly something to help her sleep.  Tracy said Morgan told her that she was not depressed at all, she was just very stressed out over the stalker, and medication wouldn’t help, and she did not need or want a prescription.  She also said Morgan expressed that she felt like things were moving in a positive direction (as far as the investigation), and was upbeat and hopeful things would be getting better.

Today, the day I am writing this blog is Wednesday, February 27, 2013.  It has been such a long road that Steve and I have traveled since Morgan left this world.  We have met so many wonderful people along the way that want to help get Morgan’s case opened…and all the experts have assured us that it will be opened if we never give up.  And please be assured, we will NEVER give up.

But I do have to keep reminding myself of this quote…in order to keep calm, and not worry about how long this is taking.

“Don’t expect everyone to understand your journey.  Especially if they’ve never had to walk your path!”