We all know stalking is serious.  We all know stalking doesn’t just happen in the U.S. – it happens all over the world, and it is serious wherever it happens.  Now that this blog has been visited over 5 million times, and has been read in over 115 countries, I would like to share with you another interesting fact…of course the U.S. has had the largest number of people that have read this blog, but those numbers have been followed up by the UK, and then Australia in turn.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when I was asked to fly to London to speak about Morgan’s stalking, and suspicious death.  So last week I flew to London in order to raise awareness, as well as to help the cause.  While in London my heart was filled with all the wonderful and positive energy that all of you have shared with me during my quest to find justice for Morgan.  I wanted to include you all in this, as I felt like I was taking all of you with me in spirit – and I believe this was another step forward in Morgan’s case.  The product of this trip will end up being a very affective and powerful tool when it comes to the changes we all want to see made in this world.  When the truth is let loose there is no need to defend it…it will defend itself.

The very first thing I noticed about London were the people…they seemed so happy.  I’m sure they probably have all the same type of crimes that we have, but they all seemed so warm and positive, happy and kind.  Especially the folks that I came there to speak with, they were all of the above plus driven to make a difference in this world.  So basically they were the kind of people I felt very honored to spend time with.  I am so very grateful to have had this opportunity, and I just wanted to share this with all of you.

Please do not ever give up hope that Morgan will get justice someday – I will never give up, our whole family will never give up, and I know it will happen.  There have been people over the past few years that have tried extremely hard (and are still trying) to keep Morgan’s murder from ever being a case that gets investigated, I don’t have to wonder why that is – it’s because if you have something to hide you don’t want the truth coming out.  Unfortunately for all of them the truth is surfacing, and can not be hidden forever…it is emerging.  Morgan’s case is a cold case.  A cold case that is not yet even a case because local law enforcement in Garfield County did not want it to ever be a case.  This is not only outrageous, but absurd!

Our families story is a cautionary tale.  You can not always trust that everyone has your best interests at heart.  Sometimes the people that are supposed to be the “good guys” are really not.  After all our family has been through since Morgan’s murder, I have realized that If you are faced with a situation where law enforcement will not investigate an obvious crime, a crime that has happened to someone you care about, then you need to become your own lead detective, your own investigator.  It’s not easy, but it can be done.  Be suspicious, ask questions, if they will not give you any answers keep asking, don’t give up.

In the face of tragedy I have seen the resilience in other families as they continue to fight for justice, and I must admit it is quite humbling.  They stand up for what is right and true, they do not hide and pretend everything is fine, because they know…it is not.  It is not okay – none of this is okay.

If local law enforcement can slam the door closed on an obvious capital crime and there is no remedy, no checks and balances that would allow, or even require another agency to come in and investigate then you have a really big problem!  If that happens, and it is in Colorado, you should be very frightened, this really means you have no protection under the law, only the protection that local law enforcement decides you should have, grants to you, and if that local law enforcement decides to protect the rights of the criminal and not the victim (living or not) then local law enforcement is thumbing their noses at the laws that have been put in place to protect the citizens of the United States of America.  This is not only morally unacceptable, but this is exactly why today there is such widespread and growing mistrust of the police.  And it is not all of law enforcement, it is the actions of very few that are casting a pall over all of law enforcement.

We were told over and over again that the sheriffs department did not have the “resources,” or could not get the approval to spend very much time on Morgan’s case. Oh they could send patrol officers to our house when we called in an incident, they could allow a detective to come meet with Morgan once a week for about a 1/2 hour, but that’s all she got.  Not enough money or manpower to really investigate any lead, in her stalking or her death, and there were plenty of leads that were completely ignored.  I learned many months after her death that they never even knew where the prime suspect lived after he had moved out of our neighborhood.  He had given them an address that did not exist, and they never followed up past that.  The man suspected of a felony gives the sheriffs an address that does not exist and they drop it right there.  That’s investigating the crime?  I don’t think so.  There was not enough in the budget to send images in to the FBI for analysis in order try and get a positive connection, perhaps solve the crime before it ended in violence?  I kept hearing they were going to bring the tracking dog in, but for whatever reason they never did.  When the suspect lives three houses down the street from us!  But then the Garfield County Sheriffs department does have a tank.  Morgan’s case never deserved tracking dogs to follow her stalker, for footprints the stalker left outside her window to be cast, or photographic evidence sent off to labs for further analysis.  Even for fresh new batteries in their wildlife cameras once a month.  But the sheriffs deserve a tank.  Why?  Does this tank protect stalking victims, rape victims, brutalized children, victims of domestic violence?  We have all of those in Garfield County and Morgan’s case was, and is not an isolated case.  There were many, just in our neighborhood in the past years, most never became actual reports, as if they never happened.  It’s a trade off I don’t understand unless it’s because the victims of these crimes are almost entirely women, and the County doesn’t care about protecting women?

When is this tank more important than batteries for your wildlife cameras, or a few trips out with the tracking dogs.  New Yorker reporter Sarah Stillman wrote, “thousands of police departments nationwide have recently acquired stun grenades, armored tanks, counterattack vehicles, and other paramilitary equipment, much of it purchased with asset-forfeiture funds.”  So SWAT teams have an incentive to conduct raids where they seize property and cash that then goes into their budgets for more weapons.

Dubious informants are used for raids. As New Yorker reporter Sarah Stillman wrote in another piece, informants are “the foot soldiers in the government’s war on drugs. By some estimates, up to eighty percent of all drug cases in America involve them.” Given SWAT teams’ focus on finding drugs, it’s no surprise that informants are used to gather information that lead to military-style police raids.

So does this mean drug informants get, “hands off” treatment and if their, “handler” loses track of them and they do something “heinous” then it needs to be hushed up?  The possibility is certainly there, and many documented cases do exist.  You decide for yourself, but if you do still live in Garfield County please, please, please be aware that there is a dark side there, and only if we the people expose what is really happening there then what happened to our youngest daughter can happen to anyone at anytime and there will be nothing you can do about it.

“The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.” (Lois McMaster Bujold)