Fired Fort Collins cop gets prison for stalking
Jarett Branson was sentenced to four years in prison for stalking a woman while on duty.
Check out this story on coloradoan.com: http://noconow.co/1z2Q6Cx
Tag Archives: creepy stalker
THIS IS HUGE! Obstruction of Justice & Official Misconduct…More news coming soon!
Criminal investigation of Weld County Sheriff’s Office employees starting over Ashley Fallis case. Article by Justin Joeseph of Fox News
Weld County DA Michael Rourke confirmed Wednesday night his office would ask for an impartial and independent criminal investigation into the Weld County Sheriff’s Office and its four deputies who are accused of failing to cooperate with the Evans Police Department during the investigation of Ashley Fallis’ death in 2012.
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After only 3 days Ashley Fallis was determined to be a suicide, but she was really murdered. Her parents fought for the truth to come out and after a grand jury convened for only 3 days her murderer was extradited back to Colorado and is going to stand trial. Now the officers that tried to cover-up the murder are on the hot seat. Cross your fingers that indictments are made.
A Mother’s Day Wish & A Picture From Morgan
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY TO ALL THE WONDERFUL MOTHERS OUT THERE
Being a mother is the most fulfilling and gratifying thing in the world. For me there have been so many wonderful moments, along with some really awful moments, but I would always choose being a mother. The overwhelming love you receive when you look into your child’s eyes can never be duplicated by any other means. And that love can never be taken away… not by anyone.
Yesterday was a hard day for me. It was a day of tears. I told myself it was okay to hurt. Then while I was out and about, trying to move forward I looked over at a woman with a baby stroller. My eyes immediately looked into the stroller and this adorable baby was beaming up at it’s mother, with a big smile on her face. Her eyes were sparkling with an immense amount of love – you could just see it from where I was standing. My heart filled with love remembering that look. It was a BIG reminder of how special it is to be a mother and a reminder that my heart does still feel, and see, all the true love I have been blessed to be surrounded with.
A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.
I miss Morgan every single day… she was my baby, my best friend, and she grounded me. Morgan would always jokingly lament how Steve and I were both water signs, while she was a fire sign. She would go on to explain all our frailities by being water signs, and she was usually right on. Morgan would then laugh and tell us we were lucky because all 3 of our children were not water signs so they gave us some very needed grounding.
Morgan took this picture. She was always my little ballerina. On her first birthday she took off walking on her own, and it was straight up on her tippy toes. Most of the time when I saw her walking anywhere she usually started out on her toes. In this picture there is a little “coupon” that she made for me one Mother’s Day. She actually made 6 coupons and gave them to me as a Mother’s Day present. Morgan almost always took the time to make every gift she gave, making every one so extra special! She always gave from her heart. Every one of these “coupons” she gave me was for something she wanted do for me… she wanted me to “redeem” them for a dinner cooked by her, or a day together down at the ranch, just little things like that, but all the things she knew would make my day just that much brighter. That was Morgan and I still have some of these coupons to look at – I never got a chance to redeem them all. Now I can hold them in my hands and remember all the love she constantly gave.
Life without Morgan has been indescribable. The pain can be so very deep, yet at the same time my memories of her are so wonderful that they fill my heart with joy. It can all be very bittersweet. I’m sure this will sound strange to most of you that have never lost a child, but up until recently I could not even bring myself to buy any of Morgan’s favorite items at the grocery store. It has been over 3 years and while we shared so many favorites, even looking at them in the grocery store caused me to cry, so there was no way I could actually buy them. Over the holidays it was pomegranates…her fav, but I couldn’t even look at them. Recently I finally broke down and bought raspberry Noosa yogurt, another one of her favorites. I sat outside and ate it very slowly, while looking at the ocean. I savored every bite while thinking about Morgan and I was actually able to smile remembering how much she liked eating that yogurt. I also knew she was happy that I was looking at the ocean while eating the yogurt and thinking about her. That probably sounds strange too, but even though Morgan was only 20 years old she told me her dream was to get her law degree from Stanford, and after a career in law she wanted to retire in northern California overlooking the ocean. So while I was looking at the ocean I could “feel” Morgan right next to me and it felt peaceful and joyful.
Today I feel blessed not only to have such love from my 2 older children, as well as my 2 grandchildren, but I am also so grateful that I can still feel immense amounts of love from Morgan. Yes, I still cry every single day wishing my youngest daughter was still sitting next to me, but I don’t cry for very long – I always get a “blast” of warm love that curses through my body and fills me with so much love that I have no choice but to stop crying every single time I feel it. This is another hard thing to try and verbalize to others, but I just wanted to try to express what happens to me, and how I know Morgan is still close by. Mothers always remain connected to their children, the greatest gift there could ever be…
Part 3 – Misconceptions? NO – Just Misdirection & Lies…
How could the sheriff’s never see the stalker?
Morgan’s stalking started with a clear pattern, the stalker would come, terrorize, and then leave, all unseen. We were never fast enough out the door to catch more than a glimpse, because he was outside hunting Morgan and then watching our response – provoking, then observing and measuring – predatory stalkers do this, it’s well documented. It was almost the same pattern almost every time and it became maddening, exhausting, and extremely upsetting for us all. There was no warning for Morgan that it was coming, then it would just happen.
The Sheriff’s also had a very similar pattern…
The typical Garfield County Sheriff response to a call about the stalker tapping or banging on her windows again.
This night it was a call to the sheriffs about how relentless the stalker was and the call was made almost an hour earlier, before this was caught on video camera. The deputy parked out front and sat in his truck for a few minutes, very common, then he came over to shine the flashlight under Morgan’s window. They all knew exactly which window because they had been there and seen it so many times before. This time he did not circle the house, he just walked to the corner and then came back to her window. He seemed to see something on the ground and kicked at it with his foot, but he never knelt down the the ground for a closer look, he did not take any pictures, and while Colorado law is very clear that the sheriff’s must:
respond as soon as reasonably possible to a report of stalking and to cooperate with the alleged victim in investigating the report. Colo. Rev. Stat. § 18-3-602(7)
The deputy, or anyone else for that matter, never followed up with Morgan to get all the details, and they never did anything else to investigate her stalking, this was not just common it was every single time. The deputy then went out to sit in his truck for a few minutes before leaving. There was no report by the sheriffs of what actually happened, and obviously absolutely no, “cooperation with the victim in investigating the report.” Well over a year after Morgan’s murder when we finally saw the sheriff’s reports for the first time, there was a reference to this incident that called it a, “trespass,” and that was it. It is no wonder that Morgan at times believed the sheriff’s were doing nothing to catch or stop her stalker. Morgan was killed two nights after this incident.
Now… does anyone really think there was any chance this deputy is going to see the stalker? The stalker comes, terrorizes, then he observes from the darkness before leaving. Steve always swore he could feel him out there in the darkness. Then, much later, long after the stalking incident was over, one or sometimes two deputies came, shined a light, talked, maybe walked around the house, then left. It was not even close to two ships passing in the night, it was two ships in opposite directions avoiding each other. This pattern of response had zero chance of ever seeing, much less catching the stalker. There needs to be education and training in order to help future victims of stalking.
If you are being stalked, you must know this – Most violent crime begins with some form of staking. If there is no investigation, they will never catch, or otherwise confront, the stalker, and until the stalker is confronted there is little chance the stalker will be stopped.
What is wrong with this picture?
The man in the middle is a detective on the morning Morgan’s death scene was being investigated. He is taking video of the exterior of the house. He’s the one front and center, standing 50 feet away, the two men behind him are deputies. To the left are Morgan’s bedroom windows, the same windows that the deputy was looking under with his flashlight 2 days earlier.
The problem is where he stands right now is the closest he will come to Morgan’s windows. I will say it again, THAT IS AS CLOSE AS THE INVESTIGATOR WILL GET TO THIS ENTIRE SIDE OF THE HOUSE WHEN TAKING VIDEO ON THE DAY HER BODY WAS DISCOVERED! Even the deputies who responded to a stalking incident would walk right up to the windows and wave their flashlights at the ground. It’s how they saw footprints in the dirt, scuff marks, they touched her windows and wondered aloud how the stalker would make the banging noise that startled Morgan every time. In front of that is right where Detective Glassmire knelt to the ground 4 days earlier and tossed rocks he picked up from the ground and threw them against that window, saying, “there is your stalker!” Right before he told me Morgan’s stalking was expected to escalate.
But four days later, after she was discovered dead, the investigator at her death scene was satisfied to take one quick flash of video from all the way back where he stands. Possible murder investigation or just going through the motions instead of investigating? Incompetence, or cover-up, call it whatever you want, but it was not an investigation. The back doors where we believe the stalker entered were not filmed either, nor were they fingerprinted, and the drapes were never touched from the inside, yet the sheriff’s can claim to be certain there was no sign of forced entry, when in reality that is just another false statement.
The night of Morgan’s murder everything went wrong…it was the perfect storm.
▪ It was one of the only two nights that week that Morgan wasn’t able to get a friend to sleep over on the couch. Our bedroom was on the back of the house, and her room was on the front – very far apart. She was scared to sleep alone and could no longer handle sleeping on the floor of my closet for protection as she did for the first month of her stalking. She was very much looking forward to being gone babysitting for the families of military veterans over the weekend.
▪ The sheriffs had increased their patrols and since their large trucks would set off our front door motion detector alarm and wake us up, Steve turned it off that night after Morgan returned home at 9:03 pm so we could all get some sleep. All 3 of us were way beyond exhausted.
▪ We always left our dog loose in the house to watch over things while we slept, except on the nights when Morgan had friends sleep over. That night we put her up in our bathroom, because earlier in the evening she had positioned herself by the front door to watch out the window, and we thought she would keep us and Morgan awake all night.
▪ We made all these mistakes -plus so many more that night. We had no idea what was about to happen. When you have a stalker you think that you have gone through all the motions before you go to sleep at night, but you never remember all of them, and as soon as there is a crack to squeeze through stalkers always manage to find that crack… it makes me physically ill to think about all the mistakes we made, especially since that very night my “intuition” was screaming at me, I was so worried, and yet I did not listen to myself. So now I always remind everyone to LISTEN TO YOUR INTUITION!
▪ The night before Morgan was murdered she asked her father to buy her a knife, which he did. She had it in bed with her when we found her body. This is how scared she really was.
And really:
- Morgan did not take the car without permission…this is such a ridiculous statement, and the sheriffs knew they misstated (or lied) about that. Morgan had an old Rover, which she loved, but it also had over 250,000 miles on it and Steve did not trust for Morgan to be driving it while she was being stalked – we were frightened it would break down on the road and leave her vulnerable. So Morgan and I shared my car, she drove it 75% of the time and I drove it ~ 25% of the time. She never needed “permission” to drive it, we just coordinated or drove together. The last day before she was murdered she told me she would be gone between 2 – 4 pm approximately, at which time she would return so we could run errands together, one of our favorite mom/daughter things that we did. At around 4:15 or so I texted her cell phone to see where she was. I was worried (because she had a STALKER and I couldn’t reach her, not because the car was gone!) Any parent would have been just as concerned as I was. Steve came home and sent her a text message around 6 pm and she answered him. She apologized by text for missing my earlier calls and the sheriff’s saw those texts. So why would they even say that Morgan took the car without permission? It’s incorrect and they know it. So basically she was out of pocket for 2 hours, I was worried, she did speak with us and apologized, she told us she was safe, and where she was, we told her that we would let her know when we get home so she could come home, that was our stalking protocol…she did not want to come home to an empty house because she was SCARED of her stalker. I hope that clears that up.
- Morgan was not out partying with friends that night – she got home at 9:03 pm and did not leave again.
This is a picture of Morgan arriving home after trying to sleep at a friend’s Aunt’s house on their couch, and when that didn’t work out she went to ask another friend if he would sleep over our house, but that didn’t pan out either so she came home alone. She wasn’t trying to stay away from home because of her parents – that is one of the stupidest thing so far that I have heard…she had a predatory stalker and she was afraid to sleep alone and she had every reason to be afraid. The Colorado statutes spell out the terror of stalking, and Morgan was living it. Everyone failed her, and the sheriff’s would rather blame the victim then man up and admit they made a mistake. How brave they are. If people can’t understand why a victim of stalking would be afraid then I suggest they read the Colorado Legislative Decree on stalking, they understood it and they summed it up well. Morgan had every reason to be afraid that night, the stalker’s pattern had changed again – and then she was murdered. - The backpack that was reported found in the car with alcohol in it was not Morgan’s and the alcohol was not hers. WE have the video of her ex-byfriend putting it in the front of the car. His driver’s license was in it, that’s how the sheriffs were able to investigate and know who’s backpack it was and give it back to him. SO – why would they associate the backpack with Morgan? It was my car and his backpack, they figured it out and returned it to him. Just another “blame the victim” rather than man-up??? Again, how very brave of them or was there another reason to try to mislead people with their reports?
- The pipe found in her room was not hers, but it did belong to her friend, the friend that had just slept over the night before her murder, and it was also given back to him. These are all provable FACTS. And just in case there is still a question, just as I, or any of Morgan’s friends would have expected, Morgan had no alcohol or illegal drugs on her toxicology reports. False reporting is not investigating, so why all the false reporting? More lies in order to muddy the waters and keep people from knowing the truth – she was a victim of stalking and she was murdered by her stalker(s). Remember justice delayed is justice denied.
Part 2 – Misconceptions? NO – Just Misdirection & Lies…
Patrolling for the stalker
This is a snapshot from the video over one of Morgan’s windows showing one of the patrols the night of December 1st and morning of December 2nd when Morgan was murdered.
For the last two months Morgan met with the detectives weekly to go over developments in the investigation of her stalker. I’ve never seen the records for all those meetings because every time I ask Garfield County sheriffs I am told a new commander would like to review her case before the sheriff can release the records…I know, it’s been over 3 years now so what is up with that? I would call this a classic run-around.
The last week of Morgan’s life the detective believed the stalking would escalate and he was going to increase the patrols and he did. However there are no records of any of these patrols. Early on in her stalking there were records, but for the last two months – there are none.
Of course there were patrols, above you can see a picture taken from the video of one of those patrols. In the picture a floodlight is being pointed at the roof over Morgan’s window. We were never told they were suspicious about her stalker being on our roof. You can see the wall above her window is lit up by the light. Now look at this picture.
The gutter over Morgan’s window
This is where the flood light from the deputy was aimed. Did the deputy see something up there? Is that why he was aiming his flood light up on the roof over her window? We’ll never know because there are no records. But the gutter right over her window was bent so many times it’s torn in two! The stalker was up there holding on as he leaned over to bang on her window – that’s why he wasn’t caught on video, he was up on the roof!
Now you would think the detective investigating the stalking would come to look at the gutter torn in two right over Morgan’s window, but no, he would not, because as we were told by the sheriff detective, “Even if Keenan’s DNA was found up there it would not prove anything.” And yes, there is no mention of that in the sheriff’s reports either.
The lesson from all this is that police or sheriff’s reports are not always complete and they are not always accurate. I kept records myself and even now, years later I will find a picture, or a text, or a post-it with facts that are not in my original timeline. New facts turn up all the time in murder cases, and that worries the guilty people out there, so much so that they will never stop trying to twist the truth to what they so desperately wish for the facts to be. And that is how they got away with it, but they haven’t…not forever.
Now I will throw out a couple of things (not all) I have heard, along with the answer to those strange assumptions:
▪ Yes, our camera’s were always pointed at Morgan’s bedroom windows – they were always captured on video surveillance 24/7 once we installed the cameras around our house. In addition to our cameras the Garfield County Sheriffs also had one wildlife camera mounted on one of Morgan’s bedroom windows, and another camera pointed at that camera. And yes, our camera did capture something the night of Morgan’s murder. But the cameras don’t alert you, or wake you when they capture something, you have to review the cameras after the fact in order to see if they caught something.
▪ Yes, Morgan really was being stalked for 4 months. The Garfield County Sheriffs department opened a felony stalking case, and a detective was assigned to her case, he talked to her once a week. We called and reported over 60 incidents to the sheriffs, and no, they did not write down the details of those incidents on their reports – that is why I now tell victims of stalking to not only call and report every incident, but to ask for all the individual police reports immediately following the incident to make sure they put the details in those reports…this is imperative! In Morgan’s case I did not know to ask for those reports…I thought just because we gave the sheriffs such verbal & written detailed reports and pictures and videos that they would write it correctly in their reports – wrong!!! They just wrote things like the date, and – suspicious event, or trespass, no details at all.
▪ No we did not have life insurance on Morgan. This makes me sick that people would accuse us of this, but they have…our children are supposed to outlive us, we supported Morgan, Morgan was a college student, why in the world would we have taken out life insurance on her?
▪ We did not know that Morgan’s stalker was terrorizing her from the top of our roof until AFTER Morgan was murdered. I never said I thought the stalker was accessing our roof in his bare feet in the freezing cold in the winter – that is really crazy, but trust me, some people have even said that.
▪ After our cameras were installed Morgan’s stalker took to our roof. And that is why we didn’t catch him on camera standing on the ground outside of Morgan’s windows. Whatever we did as a countermeasure he was sure to change up the way he was doing things. Our efforts to catch him never stopped him. We did not know he was on our roof until after Morgan was murdered. That is WHY he evaded detection when we ran outside to catch him. That is WHY it didn’t show up on the cameras. We know now that he leaned over the gutter and swung something off a string to bang on Morgan’s window without being detected. Very easy to do and yet the sheriffs had no clue how he could have been making the noise. The head of a stalking task force in Canada wrote in to me and said after reading an earlier post about the stalker being on our roof she now has all her officers check roofs. In Colorado Springs, CO last year a young victims’ stalker was finally captured when the police looked on her roof, he fled but was captured. This all makes me feel good that awareness is bringing about progress in the fight against stalkers. I only wish that had been the outcome in Morgan’s case.
▪ No, we never left any of our windows or doors in our house unlocked during her stalking, and we always double checked to make sure our cars were locked – we only left windows open in the same room we were in for air before going to bed while we were home, and we always made sure they were closed, and locked before we went to bed. Would you honestly think that any victims of stalking would leave something in their house unlocked intentionally? I even suggest to victims of stalking that they should have a two inch deadbolt on the inside of all their doors, the doors that lead to the outside of their house, along with bars in their sliding glass doors or sliding windows. I also suggest keeping the door between your garage & the inside of your home locked, even when you are not home…some stalkers have been able to access the garage and go in through an unlocked door between the garage & the house.
▪ No sign of breaking and entering – this is one of the most ludicrous statements made by the sheriffs. How many times have you heard that same statement? I have many, many times – well they do get in, and they do steal, sexually assault, and or murder without any sign of “forced entry.” In order to have forced entry you would need a window broken or and door lock shattered, very rarely does that happen. After Morgan’s murder a person I had never met before came over to our house to show me exactly how (within a minute) he could unlock a front door and enter without any sign of breaking and entering. We now know there were multiple ways the stalker could have gotten in undetected BUT the sheriffs did not want to hear about it. The fact that the stalker had attempted many times (and we all heard it) to punch in the numbers on our front door code should have given the sheriffs a clue that they should be looking for finger prints, etc. but to no avail. You can also refer back to my earlier post “No sign of forced entry? No intruder? Really?” https://morgansstalking.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1243&action=edit
▪ No sign of a struggle – the sheriff would certainly wish that was the case, but it wasn’t! There were many, many signs of a struggle. Morgan fought back. 3 nails broken, flattened nose, blood on her forehead and lips, hair tangled, abrasions on her hands, wrists, arm and breast. Pants unzipped and unbuttoned. Folded, stacked laundry tossed all over the floor, panic button ripped off the mount on her nightstand and thrown across the room, her cell phone found under her bathroom door, and much more. You tell me, does this sound like a struggle to you?
More to come tomorrow, but in the meantime if there is anything that you have heard on the internet that bothered you, and that you would like to know the true answer to please send me a comment and I will try my best to answer your question.
I always try to stay off all the hate sites because it does not contribute anything to my higher purpose, but other people have sent me copies of some of the things being said, so I know some of the lies, but not all. Don’t worry, your questions will not upset me – it’s better to know the questions and answer them then to never have them asked. In fact I believe if law enforcement would continue to ask the families of missing persons and homicide lots of questions, instead of assuming they know the answer, many more cases would get solved. Some families probably don’t even know they know some little piece of critical information that ties all the pieces together until they are asked. So ask away 🙂
Colorado Cares! This I truly believe after all the many people I have spoken. Colorado wants to be a leader in the fight against crime. Yes, they are up against some tough restrictions, as in home rule…it ties their hands when it comes to rouge law enforcement, but there are other ways to get to the truth and demand accountability. The world is changing right now – we all see it in the news and Colorado is right there with everyone else.