Today is New Year’s Day – our loss is so profound there are no words to describe it.  What we will be doing for the next year is not known to us on this day, but we do know that we have a path to follow that we have never been on before.  A path that will be very painful.  A path that we know we need to follow – our hearts tell us this.

This is our first New Year without Morgan – we cried a lot today. Detective Rob & Megan were supposed to come over today, but didn’t make it.

This year is now 2013 and today is February 23rd.  First let me say Steve and I are not professional Law Enforcement agents, nor are we Private Investigators, but we have been blessed with the determination that all parents that love their children have…to follow this through to the end for our daughter Morgan, and all the many others that need us to fight for them – to fight for change.

I wonder if anyone really thinks about what is going on in their neighborhood, I for the most part did not.  I mean do you really know what is going on in your neighborhood?  Wouldn’t you assume that if something was up you should be told about it?  Think about this, have you ever been warned about crimes going on right in your own neighborhood, so you can take appropriate precautions to protect your family?  Have you ever had the police or Sheriffs pass out flyers, or go door to door to warn people to be on the look-out for something?  Have you ever caught someone clearly in your yard, looking in your house, at you, at night, or heard tapping or banging on your window?

Have you ever thought you might be being stalked or actually had someone stalk you?  Wouldn’t you think you should let people know about these dangers?  We were specifically told in Morgan’s case not to tell anyone.  And we really did listen to that request.  But in the real world, to varying degrees, people want to know what is up when the Deputies always show at your house, usually at night.  They wonder if there is something going on they should know about.  In Morgan’s case did it really help to try and keep everyone in the dark?  I honestly don’t see how.

Please, write in to me as a comment to this blog, or using the contact button on this website, you can tell the world about your experiences, if you want you can be anonymous – please don’t suffer in silence anymore.  Let people know how horrible this really is.  By telling your story it helps raise awareness.  I have had many people write in to me about their experiences, and I will start telling the readers about those very soon now.  We can all learn from other people’s experiences, in order to protect ourselves.  Law enforcement across the world can learn things, and have already learned from stories on this blog, I know because they write to me and tell me what they learned.  All that needs to happen is to want to get better, be able to admit you can improve, and you will.  Close that door, and you will stay the same, for better, or more likely, for worse, forever.

I have been warned so many times, since the beginning of Morgan’s stalking, that we have to temper what to expect out of Law Enforcement.  They only have so much time and I was told about the man behind the curtain that controls how much is allocated to what crime.  Morgan’s Detectives worked four days a week and out of those four there was usually a one hour slot allocated for an interview or something else on Morgan’s case.  I no longer accept that because we don’t even have to guess if that was enough, it wasn’t, and how much would have been? We will never know.  Does this mean that we are not really protected? Or are we partially protected, and if your felon happens to have more time than the Sheriff’s department, then what?  I guess you are in for bad news, just be sure to not tell any of the neighbors, am I missing something?

We did always have the Deputies to call on 24/7.  But there was one minor glitch – the response times. 15 minutes was unusually quick, 25 to 45 was more the norm.  So try this experiment, imagine that your daughter just screamed because she saw someone looking in her bedroom window.  She pulls the drapes, you run outside, circle the house, completely caught by surprise, you are unarmed, and even if you were armed would you shoot into the dark when there are houses with innocent people in them close by?  But it does not matter because you don’t see anyone.  You then pretend to call the Sheriff’s department.  Then you sit down and wait 25 minutes and a Deputy arrives.  And together you circle the house again stopping many times as the Deputy shines his powerful light at something nearby.  Do you think it is any more likely you are going to see him this time?   Imagine the guy next to you, on the minuscule chance you did see anything, do you think the two of you could run the perpetrator down on foot, or would you lose him somewhere out in the brush?  I wonder if they keep stats, showing they responded to an intruder call, but didn’t see anything – check this box, or damn if he wasn’t still standing right there at the window – check this box.

When they played that clip on television and the Sheriff Lou Vallario said they were out to our house over fifty times and never saw anyone that is was about the most ridiculous thing he could have said.  Notice there was no mention of the series of wildlife cam photos.  Here is a link in case you have not, https://morgansstalking.com/?p=845.  One Deputy, two Deputies, and then “him”, since they never saw a stalker should we call “him” an Intruder?  And then there he is, the Intruder, trying to knock down the camera.  Deputies come flying back after we see these for the first time, boy are they pissed, he was right there, practically watching them leave.  Could he have been in the back of the truck?  Where was he hiding?  Who is he? Definitely not Morgan’s stalker, because our sheriff in the news clip on TV said they never saw one.

Time for a change in tactics perhaps?  No way, look how close we were that time.  A print out in the patrol vehicles in case he’s spotted somewhere else?  No way, it’s not clear enough to really tell.  But I do not blame the Sheriffs, Steve and I have no one to blame but ourselves.  By the time we figured out that this was entirely up to us to stop – it was too late for Morgan.  Do not make the mistake we did.

We were not alone in our experience; so far, all other victims that have written in to me about their individual experiences with stalkers have said that law enforcement never saw their stalker either.  But then in Morgan’s case, to never use the dogs to track the suspect, especially when they told us they believed he was in our neighborhood, especially after telling us they would bring in a tracking dog next time, but never did, well this is wrong with a capital W.

I now know from others who have written to me that this same peeking in and tapping on the windows happens more often than it is spoken of, It is more an invasion of privacy for sexual gratification than a misdemeanor trespass, and it has been going on in our little area of the valley for at least 4 years.  I truly believe we are dealing with a serial stalker/murderer.   I have had contact from girls and women that live not far away at all, and yes, these incidents were all called in to the Sheriff’s Department.  Did the Sheriff’s ever see the Intruder any of those times that these women were alone in their houses and called up to report the crime?  No!  One time, and one time only, I was told that they actually put the tracking dog onto the scent, even though the responding deputies never saw the intruder, but they lost him.  I also know that two of these times the woman did get a good visual sighting, and gave officers a very good description – would our Sheriff’s now have to say that, like Morgan’s stalker, all those incidents were a figment of their imagination? – That just because they (the Deputies) never saw the stalker he just didn’t exist? The Sheriff’s hired dogs tracked him, all the way to the Carbondale Mini Storage I was told, for a total of about 1 mile before the dog lost his scent.  They had gotten good descriptions of what the guy looked like – just like Morgan gave them a description, and a name, and a car, but no arrests were ever made, and no residents were ever warned.  I saw this because one of the incidents was two weeks before Morgan’s started, same description same M.O.

I am on the Garco warning system and I get a text about highway closures. Would you mind if you received a text that an intruder, unidentified was reported in a certain area?  If you have daughters wouldn’t you want to know?

I would think in every one of these incidents if the officers had warned the neighborhoods close by then there would have been more eyes, and ears to assist in bringing it to an end.  I would think the officers would appreciate the help, since chances are slight they could never make it there in time to actually “see” the perpetrator.  Maybe this little change in tactics would have resulted in an arrest; maybe this would have saved Morgan’s life.  We will never know, but going forward I think this is something to consider…very seriously.  Another thing I just remembered…the felony stalking detective assigned to Morgan’s case printed up a flyer that he passed out one morning to all the Garfield County Patrol Officers as well as the Carbondale Police with the picture of the  “suspects” car, the “suspects picture”, Morgan’s picture, a map of our neighborhood, and other details so they could all be on watch and up to speed on what was happening – now how in the world could this have been distributed, and then after Morgan is murdered the Sheriff’s Department states that they never had a “suspect”?  Once again, am I missing something here?

I also do not believe because you live in a small town and your Coroner needs to hire a subcontracted forensic pathologist that you should just accept a substandard job that gives out a manner of death that no other doctor in this state, or in this country has agreed with, and this lets a criminal walk free to continue to perfect their trade.  We now know, thanks to the many readers of this blog, which include 2 forensic toxicologists, many retired Medical Examiners, another prominent forensic pathologist, many medical specialists, and even pharmaceutical scientists, who have all weighed in on just Morgan’s toxicology results, and explained to us what the findings really represent.  And guess what?  Everyone agrees that it was a lethal dose – extremely lethal dose, and they either do not see how he could have ignored it, or that he should have known it or that he should questioned it, and most all do not see why an investigation was not launched right then and there.

If our “small” town cannot do the right thing with the crime scene or with the forensic findings then they should differ to those who can, and just call in the Colorado Bureau of Investigation – that’s what they are there for…they have the professional equipment, they would have been there that same morning.  The morning Morgan’s body was found (our Sheriff and Coroner state it was under suspicious circumstances, and that is why they had crime scene tape around our house, and took her body for an autopsy – they state she was a victim of felony stalking, so why not call in the CBI?  I still do not have an answer to that question.  Did Morgan not deserve it?  Was it not in “the budget”?  Is there something that can be done differently next time?

I also want the answer to the question of why did Dr. Kurtzman, the forensic pathologist, change Morgan’s manner of death from natural causes (which was incorrect since she had obviously been poisoned with a massive dose of Amitriptyline) to suicide 8 months later after running a different test that actually showed the presence of a concoction of date rape drugs that is conveniently never mentioned in the second report?

I believe this was a murder and the evidence pointing to that fact continues to grow, even in the absence of any investigation, strictly through the efforts of people around the country helping us to seek justice for Morgan.  People can say all these experts are all wrong, or I am making them up, or this is not the conclusions they are coming too, but I know better.  The truth will come out and I keep asking myself how will they try to spin it then?  When the real question should be how can any decent person put a family like us through this kind of pain, because of their incompetence and then blame us,  thinking if we only went away and dropped this everything would go back to normal, and all would be good?  Trust me folks not only does that not work, but it will never work.

Today was Saturday and it was quiet, very quiet.  No one out in the street, no noise in the air.  It was still as could be, almost like the Universe was holding its breath.

Tonight Morgan’s sister, and husband are taking us out to dinner to get us out of the house.  They want to try to get us to talk about something other than the tragedy that we have all endured.  They made a dinner reservation at the Redstone Inn, and we went there not thinking that we would see anyone we knew, but we did (that’s this valley for you)…an old friend with her new boyfriend.  She had known Morgan since Morgan was 11 years old, and was so sorry about what had happened to her.  So no matter what people think, as parents in this type of situation you can totally stop thinking about it even for an evening…something or someone will come up to you and it’s like that old saying about the elephant in the room.  So if you are to survive you have to put on your armor and realize you have to push forward, and fight – do the right thing – be the person that has to relive this horrible thing over, and over again with other people until the right authorities are willing to take up the fight with you.

And that became my prayer for the New Year 2012.  We all know now that Morgan’s case did not get opened in 2012, BUT what not many do not know is that in 2012 so many amazing people, and specialists jumped on board our ship to help us get to a point where law enforcement can take up the torch (if they are willing), and bring the guilty parties to court.  It doesn’t matter to me how many people related to, or that are friends of the guilty party, they may try to distract, misdirect, or whatever the new trick of the day might be.  This is a generational thing in my family – it has been going on for many 100’s of years…we never, ever give up.  It is passed down from every mother to every child, and continues today.  It really doesn’t matter how much our local County is trying to cover for itself…the truth will come out, as it always does – eventually if you never give up, and we will NEVER give up – the truth will come out – we will go all the way to DC if we have to, and thank God there is never any time limit put on murder.

A picture that was shared on my facebook and I wanted to share with you.

Morgan loved to write, it was without doubt her first passion.  Photography was climbing quickly, but was still a distant second.  When the detectives told me things right after Morgan’s death I might have not have fully absorbed what they were telling me.  I have been assured many times since then that this is normal.  But when a time came a few weeks after her death that I was told everything had been returned except her diary, that I remember.

The two individual pieces of information did not come together for a while, but as I was packing up Morgan’s room I came across her last diary, and even the one before that.  The last diary she was writing in I will never forget, because instead of keeping it to herself she had been sharing it with me.  It was her future plans, they were as bold and filled with love as Morgan was.  I clearly remembering how proud I was of her as she went over the latest diary entry with me.  What I would not give to see her be able to live out her plans, but no one can do that now. Only right the wrongs, for her and for so many others.

But there I was between Christmas and New Years remembering so vividly her last diary, and suddenly putting it together with the statement that they still had her diary.  What diary did they have?  It was not her last for sure, not even the one before.  I wondered if it was even Morgan’s at all.  She had been involved in a very personal situation with a close friend that had come to involve a diary that did not belong to Morgan, but she was entrusted with and I feared that it was this diary they were referring to.

I wished so much then that there had been more communication with the Coroner or the Sheriffs, but there had not been.  Nobody wanted to talk to us about anything!  They had not talked to any of her doctors, none of her teachers, close friends, and definitely not Steve or I.  There were things that simply could not be just guessed at and as a month had nearly passed since her death I was openly questioning where information about Morgan was coming from, because it was not from any source that would actually know.

And now to think that a diary that was not even Morgan’s could have been mistakenly taken as hers was upsetting to say the least.  The person who’s diary Morgan had was having personal issues.  I asked for the diary, was told they would get it to me, but was never given it back.  If it wasn’t one of Morgan’s I am sure once it is compared to her other diaries they will see the difference in the writing, but then again when will that happen  This is just one more thing that is still outstanding in this case from over a year ago.  On this day Steve and I went to see our grief  counselor again, she couldn’t understand why the communication from Garfield County had been so bad and she said to keep insisting that we get the diary back so we could see if it was hers or not.  We are still to this day trying to get it back.

Today, February 21, 2013 – I just opened up a drawer and came across another card that Morgan had made for me…after I stopped crying I smiled and decided I should share it with all of you.

The back of a Mother’s day card Morgan made for Toni

Today involved the Sheriffs department, but it was a different kind of a day as far as investigations go.  Today did not involve detectives, but the Volunteer Programs Coordinator instead.

He met with Steve and I at the house and gave us a book, we may have already had one, but you could never have too many.  It was a book about what to do now that a loved one is dead, starting with all the practical steps that need to be taken.  I guess as a month after a sudden death approaches it’s time for the survivors to get on with the process of life.

Back then and so many times since I have openly wondered how is it that during the stalking there was nothing.  No real direction, no real plan, certainly not a change in tactics that were yielding nothing.  But after she was dead, there was a book for that.

I didn’t know why or how, but at the time I had feelings that her stalking was directly related to her death.  Nobody on her case seemed to think so. For all of those others who had tried to somehow protect Morgan there seemed to be no doubt that her stalking and her death were in no way related.  While for me I always had a strong feeling that without the stalking Morgan would have never died.  Steve felt the same, we just did not have medical conclusions to back it up…yet.

So we were focused on completing everything that needed completing for Morgan, and it was not easy.

Our program coordinator was also very concerned that we be aware and understanding of our detectives, and possibly even others involved in Morgan’s case.  There was a fear that sometimes officers get too close to the victim, and react badly if they die.  This can really affect their performance in future cases, and can even lead to demotions, and become career ending.

The needed to give our detectives space, and be sure to expect less from them now was discussed.  At the time we had been told Morgan had died from natural causes so it wasn’t really making a lot of sense to me, but I did take the advice to heart.  The situation was bad enough already, and I did not wish in any way for it to become worse.

It was really a deflating, saddening, meeting.  I do not envy the job that he evidently volunteers for.  Positive moments are certainly few and far between.  I had wanted to follow up with the still lingering points of Morgan’s case that I really thought should be brought to a conclusion, but in view of this new advice I decided to put it off until the new year.  It was right around the corner anyway.

Then I could get back to finding out what had happened to Morgan’s missing jewelry, and how the interview went with the friend or a friend who had heard J.H., talking about the stalker, and utter that “now the police know it’s my daughter’s ex-boyfriend.  What exactly did he mean by that?  I had yet to come up with any other explanation than he meant the Sheriffs know that it is K.V.G. just as the detective had told me.

After all of the emotional impact he had on Morgan’s last four months of life – I wanted this to be brought to an end.  But I could wait…thinking it would not be very long.

That was over a year ago.

There was an engaging conversation back in the beginning of November 2011.  If you wish to refresh your memory, Tuesday, November 1st, a person was walking around our house, at night, getting caught on the cameras, and I came to think of it as quite an obvious alibi set up for a number of reasons.  And on top of that a chain of events was set off that night that still resonates today.

We found out right away from E.F. that Keenan VanGinkel was out of town, hunting with his grandfather in Texas to complete the rumor.  Maybe a day or two later we were stopped along a subdivision drive and having a very rare talk with Brooke Harris who, between telling her gathered friends to “shut up” about what they had heard about the stalker, was quick to point out to that she had heard there was now video evidence that exonerated her boyfriend Keenan.  She never really specified exactly what he was “exonerated” from, her word not mine, and even today I have to wonder if that was a big Freudian slip on her part, because in order to be exonerated, I’m pretty sure you have to be convicted first.

We had a brief snowstorm that night, heavy wet snow that accumulated into an inch or two.  Very surprising considering how little time it actually snowed for.  If you look back at the cameras and see what time it starts to snow and then what time the “young woman” walks around the house, and then when it stops snowing, you can’t help but think that the arrival of snow was just about perfect to catch the trail with all the footprints she left in the snow.  The sudden little storm had to have caught them by complete surprise, which is probably why she stopped over on the back side of the berm to text with someone right in the middle of her walk.  May have been to give an update about the weather, and see if they should abort the mission.  But they carried the carefully planned deception through to completion anyway.

Remember the map Steve had handed the deputy?  I’m looking at it right now and the trail of prints in the snow starts right at Brooke Harris’ back door.  I always thought that was a pretty big clue.

And the engaging conversation?  It was one of those Facebook conversations that you can have over days or months, and won’t show up on your “wall’ making it private, until you decide to share it with someone else.  First Morgan’s felony stalking detectives had it, and then late December I got a copy.  Most of the language used wouldn’t be allowed on this blog without heavy redacting, but there were luckily three clips that can be printed as is.

The first one is this:

November 3, 2011

2:06pm

Keenan James Vanginkel

So I just found out way ur talking about. Dude that was like 5 months ago and the cops excluded me out of that cuz I work all night everynight and I’m in Texas right now and at that time I was dating brooke. If I had to guessing would say it was Wiley cuz that started like 3 days after he moved in.

Seems Keenan VanGinkel always had someone else to accuse, even Brooke Harris, wonder if she knows what she’s supposed to have done?  Then a day later, after some real “longshoreman’s talk” he reinforces everything from the first clip and adds some directions so we can find the, “real,” suspect, in Keenan’s never ending misdirection.

November 4, 2011

8:13pm

Keenan James Vanginkel

Idk I heard something happened on Tuesday. I was on my way to Texas Tuesday. There is a teen named Wiley that lives in the middle house at the end of the street that’s the only person I could guess.

And the last clip he wants to be sure that, make no doubt, there are plenty of alibis and plenty of witnesses all lined up already.  But if you didn’t do anything, why do you need plenty of alibis and lots of witnesses?  And why in the world would you need to go all the way to Texas to be exonerated by video evidence?

November 6, 2011

9:26am

Keenan James Vanginkel

Idk why you are giving me so much trouble cuz I have done nothing wrong. For everything u are accusing me of I will have a story for and multiple people to prove that I wasn’t there. But if u don’t stop right now I will press charges against you.

Now Keenan VanGinkel could not have known back then, because I assume he had not seen the wildlife cam photos taken in the driveway, but Wiley is absolutely not the person in front of Steve’s truck, sorry Wiley, but I didn’t want to change a word of the conversation clips.  And Wiley had not moved in to the neighborhood until way after the stalking and terrorization had been going on.

And Keenan VanGinkel also could not have known back then that I would start a blog about Morgan’s stalking and murder.  I didn’t even know, I thought it was just a matter of time and law enforcement would do what they needed to do, and I started this blog to raise awareness.  So I’m very sure he didn’t know.  And he didn’t know either that Morgan’s Stalking Blog would go over 4 million views in over 115 countries – not because I am such a good writer, but because stalking is such an enormous problem, and Morgan’s story hits on a very big chord that runs all the way around the world.

So Keenan VanGinkel had no way of knowing that with all this attention, his mother’s very good friend rumored to be out on the west coast, and his Godmother of all things, would be forced to assume multiple identities on the Internet, and troll every website that mentions Morgan, and the truth about her stalking and murder culled from wildlife cam pictures, video clips, eye witness testimony, forensic evidence, emails, text messages, phone records, Facebook comments, television show appearances, interviews, and even some Sheriff’s evidence – she defends Keenan VanGinkel any way she could.  And as her lies grew bigger, and bigger she would even have to come to claim there was not even a stalking – she says it never happened!

You can see the rather obvious problem when the young man she is so blindly defending admitted he knew all about the stalking a long time ago, he just forgot to tell her he had.  Or maybe in all her excitement, she never asked.  Reminds me of the time Detective Glassmire came back from his interviews of the Harris’.  When Christina Harris claimed that her daughter Brooke Harris was spreading all the false rumors about the stalking, and letting no good deed go unpunished, then Brooke Harris claimed that her mother Christina Harris was spreading all the false rumors about the stalking.  Detective Glassmire found humor in their attempts to cover for themselves, or for each other, and said that, “you’d think they could at least get their lies straight.”

This was one day in Morgan’s Stalking – one day, a few conversations, and a few interviews.  I have to ask, is it just me, or how did Justice for Morgan so cleanly slip from “we are really close to making an arrest” to “we don’t even have a suspect, in fact we never had a suspect?”  Where did Morgan’s rights go?  Because there are a lot of other victims out there, and we better start asking – who’s looking out for their rights?