A reader just wrote in to me and I would like to share her comment and my answer with all of you.

Stephanie wrote: I have so many questions after watching this episode… It’s all I can think about… The night she died wouldnt all the home surveillance camera have caught him on tape somewhere ? Something just doesnt add up.. In the last 2 hours I have read everything I could find about this case… I am truly sorry for your loss.

Answer: Stephanie we had 6 home cameras and yes, they did catch things. The problem is none were pointed at the front door or back door – they were always mounted on the house pointing away from the house in order to catch a person coming towards the house.   If they were pointed at the doors it would only have caught the back of them and whenever that happened the sheriffs said they couldn’t make an id. A person could have cut across the lawn and stepped over our short fence in one of the uncovered spots (the cameras could not cover every spot) and then moved along the side of the house in order to get to one of our doors undetected. It was not a good system especially for stalkers that are always there, always watching, and already have been arrested for breaking and entering as Morgan’s stalker had been. Morgan’s stalker repeatedly pushed the numbers on our front door code lock trying to get in after we installed the new front door lock. This was after our front door lock broke unexpectedly after the first couple of weeks of her stalking (coincidence?  I don’t think so). We believe he was in our house many times when we were gone before her murder and yes, that is something that happens in stalking cases, and no there is usually no sign of forced entry. The night Morgan was murdered she had had a wonderful and happy day. Her friend had slept over the night before to protect her, she had gone to the shop with her dad to help pack up, she was happy to see her brother when he showed up and gave him a big kiss, she called me on the phone to say, “You rock!” because I had just made some phone calls and found a connection to a witness for the detective. She came home, showered, talked to me about ordering her puppy a new name tag, went in her room played her music while singing and curling her hair, put on make-up, and told me she was going out to meet a friend. She did meet a friend to take him job hunting, she had helped him get off drugs and now she wanted him to get a job so he wouldn’t have to go back to Denver and be exposed to his same friends that did those drugs. She then tried to sleep over his Aunt’s house (because she was scared to sleep at home without a friend with her) but was told that wasn’t a good night, his Aunt had just come home from work with a migraine. Then she left to come home, stopped at another friend’s house and asked if he could sleep over, but he said no – so she came home alone at 9:04 pm. She was scared. The only other night that week she slept home alone she had to leave for the safety of one of her friend’s grandma’s house in the middle of the night because of her stalker, and yes this was reported to the sheriffs.  They showed up 45 minutes later and yes, it was the same evening our next door neighbors were robbed. People think just because Steve and I were home she felt safe…wrong, not at that time, not after 4 months of terrorization. She had asked Steve for a knife the night before her murder, he bought her one, it was in the bed next to her body when we found her. Our house was a one story large house, our room on the very back and Morgan’s room on the very front, that’s why she had a panic button. She refused to sleep in our closet after the first month, her back hurt too much, she had the knife, pepper spray and her panic button, but stalkers still manage to get into celebrities homes, homes that have armed guards, alarm systems, dogs, all kinds of security and yet people wonder how it could be possible that Morgan’s stalker got into her room. Every single piece of physical evidence, including Morgan’s body, the morning of her murder points to foul play, it points to someone being in her room and yet people desperately want to hold on to the belief that the sheriffs and coroner are correct. In reality the toxicology results and physical evidence contradicts what the coroner said.  They don’t want to see there was a their cover up of a capital crime. It is our job now to help people understand that this does happen. It’s hard to comprehend, it was for us, people want to know if it was because the stalker was a confidential informant, or did he have some ties to the sheriff’s department, was it because the sheriffs department doesn’t want any violent crimes on it’s national statistics because of the tourist industry, is it because of the illegal practices of the coroner’s department that needed to be kept secret, and on and on….there could be multiple reasons, but for us those reasons don’t mean anything, we just know they lied and wrote down false statements, they destroyed evidence, they dug in their heals and refused to let any other law enforcement agency in to review the case.  

If we don’t do our job exposing the truth then how can things ever change? How will there ever be accountability? Morgan loved life – that was the last thing she posted on her Facebook page 2 days before her murder. She loved life so much she would go outside to stand out in the rain smiling. She would stop her car to watch an eagle fly in the sky. She would walk down to the river and sit with her feet in the water. She had to tell me every single day how beautiful “she was” meaning Mount Sopris – the ever changing and beautiful mountain she saw everywhere she went.  She was a photographer and constantly took pictures…seeing her pictures now you can view life through Morgan’s eyes and it is a beautiful life that she saw. Morgan fought her assailant with everything she had, but lost. Her body reflected that fight. It angers me that a small group of women on the Internet started a smear campaign from the very start and have continued on for almost 4 years. Women that know nothing about the case except what they have read from the sheriff and coroner, redacted for their readers and added their own vicious lies into. They care nothing for the truth as I believe there is an ulterior motive behind what they have been doing. Their job is to never allow Morgan’s case to get investigated and who do you think gains from their efforts? We know a lot more about who these few people are and why they are doing this and who they are doing this for. The DOJ knows these people exist and why they do what they do, but engaging them is not to our best interest. We need all our energy and time spent on getting Morgan’s case investigated. No matter how many road blocks the “others” put up we will go around them – I promise you.

Stephanie also wrote: Did you ever at any point ever lay your eyes on him? What about the young adults that she seemed to be having trouble with were they ever questioned?

Answer: Yes, I saw him, our neighbor saw him, and Morgan saw him multiple times and reported it – the sheriffs knew…even put his picture and the picture of his car on a poster for the other officers to see. Morgan wasn’t having trouble with any other young adults, she went to college and to visit friends on an almost daily schedule up until her murder. These were others she did not know, assumedly Brooke’s friends. And there were never any young adults standing together staring at our house I guess that was just part of their dramatization.  After Morgan’s murder 2 of her friends said that Brooke and her friends were jealous of Morgan and hated her and they had heard Brooke say, “that bitch is going to get it.” All Morgan did was not go near Brooke, but Brooke obviously took that as a reason to want to hurt Morgan. Brooke has problems and has been arrested for being violent, Morgan knew that and wanted nothing to do with her.

If you don’t know what you are up against how can you protect yourself?

Research into stalking behavior has led to classifications of the different types of stalkers.  Typology of Morgan’s stalker – Serial predatory stalker

Do your police know how to stop your stalker?

Our sheriff’s department had no clue about how to stop a stalker and it cost Morgan her life. Don’t let this happen to you! The single biggest piece of information we need to share with all other victims is that we knew far too little about stalking at that time, and what we know now we learned far too late for Morgan. So educate yourself with all the information you can find about stalkers and other stalking situations.  There are many good resources for stalking victims on the Internet as well as books, etc.  Another suggestion, if you are a current victim that is being stalked contact your state’s victims rights specialist and ask for advice and help.

We now know Morgan’s stalker was what is called a predatory stalker. This type of stalker has telling signs that were all there in Morgan’s case.

• They hide their identity – In Morgan’s case he chose the cover of darkness, hiding in bushes, on our roof, it was so erie and frightening at the time to look out into darkness and just know he could be right there watching and waiting.
• They want their victim to know they are right there, tapping on windows is a common trait – in Morgan’s case he was able to tap and bang on her windows without detection for months It was years after her death before we had enough clues to know how he might have been able to do this and it is actually quite simple.
• They stalk for a shorter period of time
• The are the most likely to end in violence
• Researchers believe that during the stalking they fantasize about the all important end, plotting and planning exactly what they are going to do and how they are going to do it.

These were all very large red flags that we knew nothing about at the time. Morgan’s felony stalking detective that was assigned to her case told us he had just gone to a seminar on stalking and suggested we read this book they had given to them in his class.  I purchased the book and read it.  I then started asking questions about the connections and suggestions in the book as it pertained to Morgan’s stalking.  The detective then discounted what the book was saying.

We have been told that Morgan’s stalker, and his accomplice both had extensive juvenile criminal records, and we found out after Morgan’s murder that her stalker also had adult criminal records for many things including breaking and entering as well as criminal trespass (another term for stalking?).  Other parents also came to us after Morgan’s murder to inform us that her stalker was a drug dealer and from a gang where he met his accomplice.  All these things were not known to us at the time of Morgan’s stalking, but they were known to the Garfield County Sheriffs, and my question is…how could they have not known Morgan was in extreme danger, and why did they not share this information with us so we could have made sure she fled her stalker?

Morgan’s stalker was an accomplished trophy hunter from a very young age, very skilled in bow hunting which requires the utmost in abilities of concealment for long periods of time to be successful – perfect training for a stalker. He was a trophy hunter traveling the country in search of larger and more challenging prey to stalk and kill. This is yet another red flag. A retired FBI profiler believes that if there is a pool of suspects, and one is a trophy hunter, then he is your top suspect.

Does your stalker have a long history of stalking?

Serial stalkers bring greatly increased danger to their stalking, there was a long history of stalking in our area, only the sheriffs didn’t call it stalking. They wrote in their reports harassment, trespass, minor things like that, but never stalking.  Perhaps this keeps their crime statistics low and they like it like that. In Morgan’s case early on the patrol deputies told us about 5 separate incidents the summer before in the neighborhood across from us.  The same MO of tapping on the windows and a hooded figure dressed all in black staring up at their windows.  They said on the last incident a trash can was knocked over, the young woman visiting from out of town and alone in the house thought maybe it was a bear or some other kind of wildlife so she opened the door to see what it was and was shocked to see a person all dressed in black with a hood over their head.  Startled she ran back in the house, locked the door and called 911.  The hooded figure took off.  Patrol officers were luckily near by at that time and had a tracking dog with them.  They tracked the offender for over a mile and then lost him – most likely because of the water in the irrigation ditches at that time.

But then the felony stalking detective assigned to Morgan’s case said “I looked in to this and discovered it was really a rash of car stereo thefts not stalking at all.”  At least that is what he told me. I had a hard time believing the other 2 sheriff’s patrol officers individually made up the story about the previous summer so I was suspicious, but other people said I should believe the detective, why wouldn’t I?  But it was a lie. And the the truth began to present itself after Morgan’s murder – this was a serial stalker. I learned the truth, first because of the blog … other victims that had been stalked in the neighborhood across the road from us wrote in, one incident had happened just 2 weeks before Morgan returned back from California and her stalking had started.  They said they reported their incidents to the sheriffs and the sheriffs came out to their homes to investigate.  If these people had not written in to me I would never have known that the detective had been lying, something he did whenever he needed, but for what reason?  Was this all to keep the crime statistics low.  Were they worried if the truth came out the tourist industry would be hit?  Do they just not care about women – are girls and young woman in Garfield County not worth their time?  Crimes against women in the Garfield County Colorado area do exist, but you never hear about them.  What is going on?

You need to be your own advocate.  You need to take every precaution necessary to stay safe…you can not count on law enforcement to do that for you.  I love that Discovery ID says, “Finding The Truth Starts With Suspicion.”  It is so true.

We were all born with intuition for a reason.  Be skeptical about what you hear.  Sometimes people make up nonsensical excuses (lies) for things you know are not right.  Your “gut” will tell you when things don’t make sense and if they don’t make sense they are most likely wrong.

Be your own advocate for not only yourself, but your family as well.  Eyes wide open, see the facts for yourself instead of believing what others would like you to believe.  The facts don’t lie…the truth is the truth no matter how hard people try to hide it.