Joey – Morgan’s brother’s old watchdog – we borrowed him for a week during the stalking – unfortunately Joey was just too old and slept…we couldn’t wake him up when something happened – he loved Morgan and used to sleep in her room when we would babysit him, but since she now had a puppy he could no longer sleep in her room so guarding her was not easy for him.

Thursday, April 26^th

This morning the two of us discussed what our friend, the former Federal Investigator thinks we should do in order to move the case along.  We all have our jobs, and he will get back in touch with us.  He left this afternoon late to go back to Colorado Springs.

Sunday, April 29^th

Our old next door neighbor called back tonight to give us some good information about Morgan’s case.

Monday, April 30^th 

Tonight at 7:38 pm I was lying on the couch in living room all by myself.  I was trying not to, I wanted to be the strong mama lion, but I just started crying my eyes out over the loss of Morgan, when my cell phone rang.  A good friend just had a feeling to call me, and we talked about Morgan for the longest time.  Steve, for some reason was still having a hard time fully accepting Morgan was a homicide, because it meant someone, and maybe more then one person was in her room that night.  As a father that wants to protect his children, can you just imagine how awful that idea felt to him?  It’s amazing what you can accept at different times, and how obvious the situation was becoming for seasoned professional investigators.  We talked about how crazy it was that local law enforcement and the contracted pathologist were so willing to accept anything, and question nothing.  And changing laws too, it was what I thought back then, laws needed to be changed!  Now as I research the subjects more and more, all I see are laws that are not being enforced, these laws were ignored as if they did not exist, as though they were not even laws of the State of Colorado…but they are!  What happens when our own law enforcement and Coroners do not follow State law?

Tuesday, May 1^st

I called the Garfield County Coroner, Trey Holt’s office to set up a meeting, but the person who answered told me that I will have to call back next Monday as he is out of town till then, and she can’t make appointments for him. I made a note to myself that I was thinking it sure seems like he is out of town a lot.  In fact I have never called the Coroner’s office and had anyone there tell me that Trey Holt was in town!  We have still never been able to meet with him to this day.

Wednesday, May 2^nd

Based on a suggestion, more like hounding, I forced myself to sit and review the tapes from the security cameras.  It was so hard to see anything  from back then, and as I looked at the tapes I saw the unmistakable figure of a human, it was not identifiable, but it was the stalker, or one of his accomplices.  It has been 5 months since Morgan died.  Now I had another image of a person in our yard in the middle of the night.  It was unfortunately of far worse quality than the ones the Sheriff’s had previously dismissed as, “not clear enough”.  It raised my hopes that there were certainly many more shadowy figures throughout the tapes.  I will continue to review the tapes – but it’s so very emotional.  To this day I still don’t understand why the Sheriff’s said most of our tapes are not clear enough, because when I see videos or camera shots on the Internet from other law enforcement agencies across the US that are trying to track someone down they seem to be the same resolution as ours, and they seem to get results…

Friday, May 4^th

Steve was mowing the lawn when two of Morgan’s friends showed up unexpectedly.  They all came in the house and  we talked about Morgan and  shared ideas about how we could change things in the future.  It was a great afternoon.

Saturday, May 5^th

Today I looked at our tapes some more.  In the afternoon I spoke with an artist who gave Morgan and Steve painting classes, I told him about what happened to Morgan and he had a suggestion about a person I should call.

The Post Independent had an article called, “Women worried about reports of naked man”.  It spoke of reports dating back to 2008 all around Carbondale, Red Hill Mushroom Rock trail north of Hwy 82, and the trail by Blue Creek Subdivision, the Rio Grand Trail, and Lorax trail.  The trail by Blue Creek Subdivision was the neighborhood across the two lane County Road from ours.  It seemed like a lot of crime in such a small area, by population it was tiny, but all the crimes had one glaring similarity – they were all unsolved.  Was our little corner of the County just ignored?  Or was the entire county infested with unsolved crime?

Today Steve and I decided on a date for the memorial to spread Morgan’s ashes, and I started checking with Morgan’s friends about the date to see when they would be back from college, etc.  So many of her friends were away at college when we had the first celebration of her life four days after she was murdered, and they were so upset that they couldn’t attend.

Later that afternoon I talked to the security person Valerie at City Market in Carbondale about what tapes she had saved from the night Morgan was killed, then Steve and I looked at our tapes some more.  There were so many cameras, so many different views (and yes Morgan’s bedroom windows were always covered by a camera), so many hours of footage, and when the real stalker, peeping tom, voyeur, sociopath or whatever I should call him would show up on one of the cameras it would be very quick, so your eyes had to stay glued to that screen at all times, and it was extremely hard from an eye strain point of view, and emotionally it was next to impossible.  But there are a lot of things about what happened to Morgan, and what has gone on afterwards that feel were impossible – but they are not…they are real, Morgan was stalked, hunted down and killed as though she were prey, and we know we can, and will do whatever it takes, no matter how long it takes, to get this case opened, and see the guilty party/parties sent to jail.  Morgan needs justice – the people in this County need justice – this world needs justice, and pretending this didn’t happen, and will not ever happen to someone else is just nonsense, it’s like putting your head in the sand.  So many people in this valley, state, nation and world support our efforts and I just want you all to know it won’t be in vain, things will change for the better and we will not stop until they do.

Today in Denver a historic even is
taking place, honoring Colorado’s Victims and Victim Advocates
celebrating the 20th anniversary of Colorado’s Victims’ Rights Act.
Which begins with the promise that all victims should be
treated with fairness, respect and
dignity. This was a community event
highlighting Fairness, Respect, and Dignity… 20 Years of Victim’s
Rights and celebrating the new Victims Rights Act. This
celebration was sponsored by: Colorado Division of Criminal
Justice: Office for Victims Programs, COVA, Denver District
Attorneys Office, Denver City Attorneys Office, Denver Police
Department, Victim Assistance Unit, Mothers Against Drunk Driving,
Voices of Victims, and Parents of Murdered Children.

With all the laws that have been passed, and all the passionate advocates of victims rights what happens when law enforcement in your community just

doesn’t get the memo and follow those laws? What are people
supposed to do? Are they supposed to write certified letter
after certified letter asking kindly that the Sheriff and Coroner
do their job? Should victims of crime make endless phone
calls to try sdto set up meetings with elected officials that never
take place? Do they try to raise awareness, and get the
community involved? Do they start a blog to chronicle the
truth about a horrific event that took place in their life, day by
grueling day, because the Sheriff, and the Coroner’s office did not
do their job? Is there really an answer to reconcile such a
chasm?

Today,
ironically on the day to honor Victims Rights – Garfield Counties
finest chose to roll out their tank and have combat drills.
So what about all the victims they have chosen to run over in
their preparedness? The last thing Steve and I would do
now is call the Garfield Sheriff’s office for protection, they
instill fear, not fairness. And as for Respect, if you
have to ask, you have not read the blog. And what about
Dignity? Not one single drop, not
for Morgan, not for Steve, and not for I.

I’m not so sure what you would do here
if you had a stalker, or a peeping tom, or a murderer. Where
there are not answers, we must find solutions. Steve and I
have chosen to do anything, and everything within our power to get
the state of Colorado to wake up to some atrocities that lie
lurking. Nothing so massive as to need the battering ram of
an enormous tank, rather the education and awareness to take crimes
against the person more seriously. It would be nice to think
we can find officials to open our daughter’s investigation, not
only to get justice for Morgan, but to also get a dangerous
predator off the streets so this will not happen to another
family.

I know what
it’s like to feel like nothing bad will ever happen to “our”
family…it’s just something you read about in the newspaper or see
in a flash online. Especially in our beautiful Roaring Fork
Valley – in the 70’s we never even locked our doors, except when
Ted Bundy was running loose. Well haven’t things changed,
evil has arrived and our lives will forever be different. Has
law enforcement kept pace with the task? Perhaps not.
Honor and respect victims or have a drill with your tank, and
if priorities told the story maybe a new protocol is in order here,
soon.

We lost our
precious daughter, the world lost an amazing young woman that would
have certainly helped to better the world. And I know in my
heart that we are doing the right thing. Some days are harder
than others to keep going, but we have no choice…this is now our
purpose in life, and I know we will live up to it.

There are so many out there that just
need all of us – a community to watch out for each other, speak
out, ask questions, be involved. Take stalking seriously,
Colorado has the laws. Take Invasion of privacy for sexual
gratification seriously, Colorado also has those laws. The
rain gutter over Morgan’s window was split in two where he
obviously laid and leaned over to ogle and terrorize our daughter
and the detective would not even come see it, photograph it, write
a report about it. How much safer is that neighborhood
now?

It is up to us to
demand and take a few moments for the safety of all. Just 5
minutes out of your day and you might see something suspicious, and
by your actions a small child may be saved from what would have
been an abduction, or a young girl could be saved from her murder.
Don’t live in fear, live with awareness. If you hear
something that you know in your gut doesn’t sound right – tell
someone. It doesn’t matter who you tell, just know it has
gone from two eyes to four, then eight, then sixteen.

There have been some horrible
things happening lately in this country, but I believe the people
in this country are strong, they want to protect it’s people, and I
believe we are all waking up to the same understanding that it is
up to all of us if we want to be a strong Country again and protect
it’s citizens.

Morgan cooking in the kitchen, wearing her great-grandmother’s apron – she loved to bake.

Monday, April 23, 2012

I received a call back today from Dr. Dobersen, who had been referred to me by Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons (FOHVAMP) to give a second opinion of Morgan’s death, if it turned out that we needed one.

Just to be absolutely clear here, at this point in time I had not sent Dr. Dobersen Morgan’s PER or Toxicology results yet, I was just asking him some general questions earlier in the day.  I still felt very protective about Morgan, and was not at all willing to just start handing out all her information.

Surprisingly Dr. Dobersen had been able to tell me quite a lot with very little information.  He assured me that Dr. Kurtzman (the forensic pathologist that did Morgan’s autopsy) could not put Porphyria down as a cause of death if Morgan had never been diagnosed with it by a medical doctor in her lifetime, it was required, and of course she was had not been diagnosed with it.  After finding out that the cost of genetic testing would easily be over $12,000, the day had been very upsetting up until that very moment.

I have never, to this day, gotten an answer to the question of why Porphyria was a cause of death for Morgan.  Her doctors and referred specialists at UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles were shocked to hear that it was on her PER, because she never had it.  And her doctors here in Colorado also disagreed completely.  Once again it was Kurtzman vs. the medical community of the country, and nobody was agreeing with his opinion.

The next really great news was that if an arrhythmia was suspected, Dr. Kurtzman should have taken a frozen slide of her heart.  The actual simple question of did you, or did you not take histilogical samples has never been answered by Dr. Kurtzman.  I have been told it is a requirement of Colorado Statutes, but can I assume this was done, doubtful.  Anyway there was a research study underway at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester – and they would test Morgan’s histological samples at no charge as part of their ongoing study to improve knowledge.  Dr. Dobersen had offered to handle the transfer of Morgan’s samples to the Mayo Clinic for study in case Dr. Kurtzman was not familiar with the process.

Then Dr. Dobersen told me that based upon what little I had told him, Morgan’s death should have been listed as “ undetermined”, at the very least, until an investigation had determined what had killed Morgan, especially with the ongoing stalking, and terror situation that she was living in.  Believe me, I was pinching myself at the moment to make sure this was not a dream.

Dr. Dobersen was a Board Certified Forensic Pathologist, Coroner/Medical Examiner for Arapahoe County, Colorado, and past president of the Colorado Coroners Association.

He was polite, answered every question, and made sense.  He is well respected within the state of Colorado, and I can tell you from personal experience, he is also well respected across the country.  It was such a great gift that I will never question when I was referred to him for a “few questions.”  Dr. Dobersen has been called the physician for the victim, he has helped tell the story for so many victims that can no longer speak for themselves – he makes sure he gets ALL the facts straight when he does a complete autopsy.

My attitude about Morgan’s investigation or should I say lack of an investigation started to change.  I felt she deserved more than she had gotten, and I believed asking and pointing out deficiencies would be the way to approach it.  I felt that our law and order wanted the best for its citizens, they just needed help.  And I had found a few sources.

Then, out of the blue, I asked Steve why were Morgan’s down comforter sheet, and 2 pillow cases not collected?  Or the knife she had just asked Steve to buy her the night before, when she was so scared (it was lying in bed by her side when I found her) – why wasn’t it taken to be tested for finger prints?  Where are the pajamas Morgan was wearing when Steve said good night to her?  We haven’t found them and nobody cares.  Can the clothes she was found in still be tested for fluids?  What about testing for the dye from the massive dose of Amitriptyline found in her body verses the old pills that she still had in a bottle in our room?  Was this even possible?  Did the sheriff’s find any container or syringe in her room when they went through it? The first responders and the sheriffs told us they did not find anything like that – and we did not either.  There was suddenly hope, there was a scientific path to Morgan’s death, there were questions that could be answered.

And then Steve looked at me and said, “I’m sure the sheriff’s have thought of all these things, and have done them”…unfortunately, right at that second, I believe Steve was wrong.  I believed that he was guilty of that same thing I had been guilty up until that second, believing the authorities 100% and not questioning.  I asked him to think that statement through again, slowly…

Now, today, in 2013 we believe that the sheriff’s, and the coroner’s office did not want to look for anything suspicious, they did not want a homicide, no, no, not in Garfield County – why couldn’t we just believe them and go away like good little parents who have lost their healthy 20-year-old daughter, who was being stalked, and had suddenly died?  Are they serious?  Did they really think we would succumb to our deep, tremendous grief, and become ghosts ourselves?  There is absolutely,  NO WAY!  Our family is not like that, Morgan never gave up, we never give up…it is not in our DNA!  And when I say family I mean family…this has by far been the biggest challenge our family has ever faced, but we face it together.  We may all deal with it differently, but just like our oldest daughter, and our son have both said over and over again, “We trust you and support you Mom & Dad, and don’t ever give up on this, Morgan was far too special.”

Their encouragement, along with Steve’s family, my family, Morgan’s friends, and all of our friends, have kept us going this whole time, even on days that were so hard we could barely get out of bed knowing we had to keep reliving the loss of Morgan over and over again in order to tell her story.  This has become so multi-layered, and so complex now as we have come to find out more, and more things about this case about our daughter being murdered, and its relationship to other cases of parents that have lost their children to murder, and where the investigation was completely dropped.

I don’t care if the excuse is lack of funds, lack of manpower, lack of training, lack of interest, trying to keep the stats low, whatever the excuse is, we are talking about someone that was extremely loved, that has now been taken from this world – there should be no excuse for lack of an investigation.  If any of you were ever killed you would assume that your death would deserve a complete and thorough investigation.  You would expect and deserve the complete opposite of what Morgan was given, every human being is worth it.  Because without that simple expectation being true, law and order is but a farce.  And if there is still a murderer out there, can anyone guarantee you that it will not happen again to someone else, and their family, nobody!

We intend to never stop seeking justice for Morgan through legal channels, in order to show others a road map to follow in the future – we have made so many mistakes in during her stalking, and in our attempts to seek justice, but if we are transparent about our mistakes, I hope it will help others from making the same mistakes, just like any successes we make along the way, if shared, will show others what may work for them.

Wednesday, April 25^th

Our good friend and retired Federal Investigator came over today.  Being a former Federal Investigator when he went out on a case, every case was resolved…it was expected.  He met with Detective Rob Glassmire @ 6:30 pm in Glenwood to verbally review all the evidence and discuss what they were doing now, then came back to our house, had dinner, and discussed the case with us.  We stayed up for hours and went through it with him very thoroughly.  He asked us questions as though he were doing a Federal case, including all the questions they would ask if there were any chance it could be a suicide.  He knew Morgan for years, and did not think it could be a suicide, but he said if he didn’t know her, and this was his case that would always be one of the first things he would need to rule out.  Now remember at this the forensic pathologist had determined she died of natural causes, but because he was a top investigator in his time he asked all the questions he would ask in a case where he did not know the victim.  We answered truthfully every question he asked.  Now why were we never asked these questions from our detective?  It was now determined by our friend that she did not commit suicide, that the death scene was bungled, and it was extremely easy to gain access to our home undetected.  We were extremely upset, but not surprised.  He gave us a road map of what he considered we should do to try to find more answers, and move the case along.  And our journey continues…for the love of our daughter and other daughters as well.