Staged Crime Scenes…

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It is not unlikely, and has happened many times before, that someone who wanted to kill has “Staged-the-Scene” to make a death appear to be a suicide, in order to cover up the murder. https://www.forensicmag.com/article/2016/12/staged-crime-scenes-suicide-murder-or-disappearance

This is what happened in our 20-year-old daughter Morgan’s case.  I also believe it has happened in another case out of Colorado – the Holly Moore case. Holly would have been a 22-year-old young woman this year, but her life, like Morgan’s, was cut short.  https://www.facebook.com/InvestigationDiscovery/videos/10154627057814902/?pnref=story

There are many experts in this country that not only understand “staged crime scenes,” and they also train coroners, as well as law enforcement, to know what to look for.  Unfortunately most officers on a crime scene do not know what to look for, BUT there is a protocol to follow, and there are experts that can help with the investigation. Morgan had “abrasions” on her body noted on her autopsy body diagram – she fought back against her attacker. She had 3 broken nails, and multiple abrasions on her hands and upper extremities (all defensive wounds) + much more that show she was attacked.  Her body was moved postmortem – confirmed by the crime scene photos and yet, no investigation…  Why?

So what if the “protocol” is not followed?  Then, as in Morgan & Holly’s cases, murderers will remain on our streets.  The key here is that a suspicious death scene protocol should always be followed – and that is not always the case.  In Colorado the forensic pathologist is RESPONSIBLE for the investigation, but in both Morgan’s case and the Holly Moore case, I know that is not what happened.  The contracted forensic pathologists did not investigate, and did not review or consider all the facts.  They did not do all the testing that should have been done to determine the true manner of death, and when other forensic experts and medical examiners contacted these two pathologists, they refused to listen to the facts.  And this my friend, is exactly how you get away with murder in Colorado…when the officials we trust break the law, and there are no checks and balances, no oversight committees, no one to take another look at what went wrong with their conclusions, there can ultimately be no justice.

I am outraged!  We should all be outraged…as this is not an isolated situation.  The number of unsolved murders in this country is huge, but I know that number, in reality, is much higher, if the TRUE murder rate was revealed and not “swept under the rug.”

Too many murders are staged to look like accidental or suicide, and too many coroners are all too happy to never investigate or change a ruling when new evidence is presented.  This is absolutely NOT what our citizens want…we want to trust that these officials really care about following the law, doing their job and getting to the truth.  Sadly that is not always the case.

People deserve the due process of the law.  It appears in our Constitution twice.  It states that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” … The Fifth & Fourteenth Amendments promise that all persons in the United States shall enjoy the “equal protection of the laws.” It is a legal concept, in effect, to ensure that our government follows the rule of law. When a governmental entity disregards someone’s rights to that due process then the power of that law is supposed to come into play.

When US citizens, like Morgan and Holly, are murdered, and their lives have violently been taken from them, then they have been deprived of their life and liberty.  And when the coroner and/or the police or sheriffs refuse to really investigate a possible murder, then again they are, as are their families, deprived of their due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment.

Colorado State Law: If a victim in Colorado (like Morgan) is deceased, their victim’s rights can still be exercised by the victim’s spouse, parent, child, sibling, grandparent, grandchild, significant other, or other lawful representative. They have the right to be heard – so when Garfield County, as well as officials in the State of Colorado, refuse to listen to the co-victims they are going against their own state law. https://cdpsdocs.state.co.us/ovp/VRA/Crime_Victims_Rights_English22016.pdf 

Let me know your thoughts about this subject…

The Broken Coroner’s System in Colorado…

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FACTS:

  • To be a coroner, one merely needs to be 18, a U.S. citizen, a resident of the county he or she will serve and cannot have a felony conviction.
  • In a survey of Colorado coroners across the state, only a handful are forensic pathologists.
  • Colorado’s 63 county coroners are mostly elected and aren’t required to have a medical degree.
  • Colorado coroners are ELECTED and as such they do not have to answer to the DA, to law enforcement, to defense lawyers, to the hospital establishment, or to the medical establishment.
  • When the coroner is not a pathologist (as in Morgan’s case) they contract with an independent pathologist (Pathologist Dr. Robert Kurtzman did Morgan’s autopsy) who does the autopsy for a fee.  The more autopsies a pathologist can do ‘quickly’ the more money they make, an obvious conflict of interest.
  • The coroner in Morgan’s case, Trey Holt, NEVER spoke to us, NEVER got on the phone with us, NEVER would speak with us when we showed up at his office (they always said he was NEVER there), NEVER would allow a meeting to be scheduled with us, NEVER answered out letters, NEVER even would speak with the FBI agent that was trying to facilitate a meeting between us all so we could show him the evidence that his contracted pathologist would not look at.
  • Colorado has counties with deputy coroners with no training in death. investigations, as in Garfield County, CO – exactly like the deputy coroner that came to Morgan’s crime scene – the coroner NEVER came to the crime scene.
  • Colorado is one of 14 states that still relies on a civilian coroner system, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – the other states have gone to centralized medical examiner systems, where doctors, not civilians, are in charge.
  • Many times it comes down to whether or not the coroner wants to spend money out of their budget, to investigate – investigations are expensive, and testing is expensive, but here we are, citizens/co-victims who think the coroner is going to investigate and tell them if their loved one was really murdered…but that is not what is happening – many cases are not listed correctly, and the murder is overlooked, evidence swept under the rug.
  • Colorado’s coroner system needs to change, and that would require new legislation.  It is not impossible for that to happen and it is needed ASAP if justice is important!
  • What if your loved one was the victim of murder, and the coroner turned a blind eye, swept it under the rug with a ruling of Natural Causes, Suicide or Accidental death?  Sadly that is exactly what has happened in many, many cases across Colorado because of their archaic coroner’s system.
  • Families should not have to fight against the coroner to get justice for their loved ones…it’s just not right – it only leads to re-victimization of the victims.
  • http://www.9news.com/article/news/local/investigations/coroners-in-colorado-have-an-important-job-with-few-requirements-to-get-it/73-502853238
  • https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2014/01/23/3339/

Drip Drip Drip Pattern of Escalation in Stalking

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Do you know what that is like?  Have you ever experienced the slow terror of being the target of a stalker?

Laura Richards, BSc, MSc, Asc. IA-IP, MBPsS.  Laura is a renowned international expert on domestic violence, stalking, sexual violence and risk assessment. https://www.laurarichards.co.uk

Laura Richards said, “It is the ‘drip drip drip’ of direct and indirect stalking behaviours over time that makes it so insidious and damaging – psychologically and physically.” https://www.laurarichards.co.uk/news/stalking-murder-in-slow-motion/

She also said, “We know through research that one in two of domestic stalkers, if they make a threat will act on it.”

If your local police or law enforcement do not make stalking a priority, when it comes to their protocol or policing plan – they will continue to fail the victims of stalking.  There needs to be a National Protocol that is accepted and practiced in all agencies.  Law enforcement needs to have the proper education and tools to deal with stalking situations.  Victims need to be believed and assisted in any way possible.  Please use your voice to help raise awareness and make these changes.

 

Before Darkness Entered Our Neighborhood…

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Here is a picture of our two beautiful babies, sitting on the lawn in front of our house.  This picture was taken a few years before the stalking started.  Back then our neighborhood was bright and peaceful – it felt safe.  We all spent as much time as we could outside.  Morgan used to walk down to the river, and ride her bike all the way into town to visit friends. Sometime she hung out by herself, under the trees, doing her oil paintings and playing with Tessi, our dog.  I was a quiet gentler time.  We all slept well, in the quiet neighborhood that we lived in.  We never had to look over our shoulder back then, and the sun always streamed in through the windows of our house…we didn’t need heavy window coverings to block out the predatory eyes of a stalker.

Then in August of 2011 all that changed…and for four months we lived in fear, first wondering who could be doing this, and then wondering how we could keep Morgan safe, until we could move, or arrests could be made.  Then Friday morning, December 2, 2011, we found Morgan, our 20-year-old daughter, dead in her bed.  We were too late, and our lives were forever changed from that moment on.

To see it the 4-part series that Crime Watch Daily filmed, first you could go to the Crime Watch Daily website. They have the story and links to all four videos here: Crime Watch Daily.com website

Why Didn’t Morgan Yell or Scream?

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I have to address this one outrageous idea, that victim blamers keep repeating about Morgan’s murder, “Why didn’t Morgan’s parents hear her being attacked, if indeed she was attacked?”

Try to put yourself in Morgan’s shoes for just one moment – it won’t be easy if you have never been the target of a stalker.  But just try for a moment.  You are exhausted from four months of stalking, you are frightened and on-guard every moment of every day, just waiting for for the next attack to happen, you are hyper-vigilant, and all of a sudden you wake up and your stalker is in your room!  He is probably armed with a gun. And imagine, as we believe, he is not alone. You glance towards your panic button, but it’s not there! (the stalker has removed it), your brain races as you think of how you are going to escape.  You are looking at a weapon, more than one person, and process a verbal threat to be quiet or else… you freeze!

Victims DO report this happening to them, and that is just the ones that survive the attack.  Morgan did not survive, so we are forced to draw possibilities from the facts.  The sheriff’s investigators wrongly believed there was no intruder in her room, because we didn’t hear her scream, yet victims not resisting their attacker is a very well studied and documented FACT.  That very morning, within minutes of arriving, the sheriffs told us her death had NOTHING to do with her stalker.  They did this by ignoring the fact of a victim not resisting, and made matters worse by not treating the crime scene as a crime scene.  The same reason, for so many years, that law enforcement and the courts did not believe or pursue a rape case, if the victim of a rape did not scream or fight back at the time of an attack.  Now of course we know some victims suffered in silence for years before gathering the courage to tell of their attack.  In the case of rape and improper sexual advances, understanding and laws have changed.  Unfortunately in the case of a victim of stalking, who is found murdered in her own home, that type of archaic thinking has not changed at all.

In Morgan’s case, we don’t really know if she was even conscious at all – to not resist her attackers. There is ample evidence she never had a chance to scream out, just as there is ample evidence of intruders in her room that night.  Yet the sheriffs did not tell the pathologist to collect evidence in a rape kit, or test for chemicals that could have subdued her.  The pathologist told us that unless he is directed by the sheriffs to do these things he does not.  So NO simple blood test for any type of chloroform or substance that could have been put over her face, while she was sleeping, to subdue her, was ever made.  NO evidence was collected for a rape kit.  No fingernail scraping were taken to look for DNA, even though 3 nails were broken and there were abrasions on the top and bottom of that same hand.  None of this was done because the sheriffs told the pathologist that it was not necessary…how is that an investigation?

As a little side note to this – did we have a lead that a substance like this was used?  Yes, we did – when the first responders arrived and realized Morgan was already dead, they started to ask questions.  One of their questions was about Carbon Monoxide detectors in our home.  Steve showed them our detectors, and the one plugged into the the wall, above the counter, in the laundry room, had a one-time super high reading that night – Steve was shocked.  The sheriffs were not interested in this one-time super high reading, because it didn’t fit their “no intruder” theory, so they ignored it.  Months later, after other doctors looking at Morgan’s case were convinced it was a homicide, Steve looked up the data on our exact Carbon Monoxide detector and found, to his shock, that it is plausible for chloroform fumes to cause a one-time super high reading without triggering the alarm.  Based on that we surmise that an intruder could have poured chloroform over a cloth on the laundry room counter, before entering Morgan’s room.  We told the pathologist, as well as the sheriff of this discovery, as well as many more facts that absolutely establish the presence of at least one intruder that night, but our FACTS have always fallen on deaf ears – they did not care.  They proved this by there actions.  When too much evidence piled up showing there had to be at least one intruder, they closed her stalking case, claiming there were no more leads to follow up on. That shows they don’t care.

Now some scientific facts, showing why victims may not scream or fight back, by experts in the field…

Freezing in the context of an attack seems counterintuitive. However, tonic immobility may be the best option when the animal perceives little immediate chance of escaping or winning a fight (; ).

Why So Many Rape Victims Don’t Simply ‘Fight Back’

A new study shows it’s common for women to experience involuntary paralysis during sexual assault.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/women-involuntary-paralysis-freeze-rape-fight-back_us_5936f8e7e4b0099e7faff1dc

The following is a Washington Post article about, “Why Many Rape Victims Don’t Fight or Yell”

Quote from the article: “Countless victims of sexual assault describe just such responses. Too often police officers, college administrators, even friends and family think to themselves – and say out loud – “Why didn’t you run out of the room?” “Why didn’t you scream?”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/06/23/why-many-rape-victims-dont-fight-or-yell/?utm_term=.9b6570fd54b6