Tag Archives: Catching Stalkers

es·ca·late – Become or cause to become more intense or serious

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It was coming to a close, the term, “getting close to an arrest,” was being bandied about with new meaning.  In a discussion Morgan had with her doctor concerning how she was feeling about her stalker, only 36 hours before we found her lifeless body, Morgan told her doctor that she was positive, and upbeat and that the Detectives in her case felt they were very close to making an arrest.  She saw the end of the nightmare, and she smiled at the thought.

On the drive home there were even giggles about the happy thoughts we focused on even though some very disturbing news to Morgan had been told to her by a friend over her cell phone.  Instead of going into self-pity mode Morgan, being Morgan asked her dad for a knife for extra protection, which he stopped and purchased for her on our way home.  Morgan had such courage and it never left her, even at the bitter end.

The very day before this drive (2 nights before her murder) I asked Detective Glassmire what he thought it meant, with so many upcoming events in her stalking case.  About how I thought the colder weather may also turn the stalker away, as one of the Sheriff’s Patrol Officers had mentioned in the beginning of the stalking.  When I think back on it now, his answer surprised me for an instant, as he said very matter-of-fact type of way that he felt, “if anything, it was going to escalate.”  Just like that, he “felt it was going to escalate.”

To put it in perspective, when you are not getting sleep, watching surveillance videos until you pass out and finding great joy and relief in a trip to Grand junction for an annual gynecological appointment, the word escalate is not something your mind wants to hear, much less process into a tangible thought.  Steve would have had some quick comeback, he would not have let that particular word slip by, but Steve was not there.  It was only Detective Glassmire and myself, standing at the corner of the house, between Morgan’s room and a tree we would later learn the stalker used to exit the roof.

To find out now that Detective Glassmire had told the suspects about her pending formal interview, on camera, I have to ask…was he thinking that this would scare them?  That knowing their goose would soon be cooked was all this case needed to end?  No, he knew the answer when he told me that, if anything, there would be a reaction, an increase in intensity, it would escalate.  That was Tuesday afternoon, November 30th, 2011, 2 days before Morgan would go to sleep for the last time.

Sandwiched around that day would be an interview with the on again off again prime suspect, known to be involved by the Garfield County Sheriffs Department Detectives, just not in what capacity, Brooke was, “kicked around constantly,” as the leader of the stalking, a participant alongside Keenan, and as knowing what Keenan was doing, but that was all.  This was before we would find out that Brooke had a habit of threatening Morgan, telling many others that Morgan was going to get it someday.  Detective Glassmire would reveal the date of the pending interview of Morgan with this suspect.  Something would happen to raise the Detective’s level of certainty that Keenan was Morgan’s stalker to 100%.

Morgan did not need any more evidence, she was already 100% sure it was Keenan.  She was an eyewitness to Keenan’s stalking, having seen him from a distance of less than 15 feet four times.  Once getting out of her car to stand in the roadway because she was not about to tell the Deputies she was 99% sure it was him only to be told that was not good enough.  Morgan was willing to risk it all to be 100% sure.  She did and she was,  I was 99% sure, and told Detective Glassmire that.

Keenan would know that the record of his hours working for City Market was going to be handed over the Sheriff’s department the following week.  Not only did the Detective think that, “if anything, the stalking was going to escalate.”  He would ask for, and receive increased patrols, an extra one or two a night.  And they would all be 100% focused up on our roof.  What did they find out?  And why did they not share it with us?

Knowing why the extra patrols were ordered would have been far more valuable than the extra minute or two of safety the extra patrols gave.  If we had known the danger level Morgan was in we would have somehow gotten her away where no one could find her – but we were not given that chance.  Was critical information withheld from us?  This has been eating at me for such a long time now and I really need to know.  Law enforcement doesn’t want to give that up – that would look like they made a mistake so they sweep it under the rug for no one to see.  How does that help the next victim?  What do you tell her parents, the same lines we were fed?  Accountability for your actions and changing the way things are done so it doesn’t happen again is what we teach our children – why were we not told, when our daughters life could have been at stake for all they knew those few days before she was, in fact, killed?

Tomorrow on Dr. Phil

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Just in case you missed the Dr. Phil show at the end of last November here it is again…airing tomorrow on Wednesday, 7/10/2013 one of our supporters sent us this to let us know.  It was really edited down so we were not able to say a lot but it is interesting to watch.  Let me know what you think.

Attention supporters, @morgansstalking will be appearing on @DrPhil tomorrow, 7/10/13. Sneak peak -> http://www.drphil.com/shows/show/1918 

Law and Order, or is the Beginning of the End of #Stalkers Running Free too Tall an Order?

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Expressions of Morgan

Expressions of Morgan

‘Law and Order’ is such a simple phrase, that means so very much when you find yourself a victim.  Law is the premise, the nucleus, that brings order.  Law is dynamic, very dynamic I’m finding this as I read the Colorado Revised Statutes with all of the year specific repeals, and additions.  Keeping pace with the ever altering landscape that is our lives is graphically displayed.  How one single word changes everything is just as amazing to me.

In Morgan’s case I am troubled to no end, because laws existed, but were not enforced, or maybe brought into play is a better way to think of it.  For example part of a Colorado Revised Statute (or C.R.S.) says:

The general assembly hereby recognizes the seriousness posed by stalking and adopts the provisions of this part 6 with the goal of encouraging and authorizing effective intervention before stalking can escalate into behavior that has even more serious consequences.

Then we had a Sheriff, under whom’s direction, his department assigns a Detective on day 58 of Morgan’s Stalking.  Effective Intervention?  58 days?  What do you think?  And remember Deputies did respond during the 58 days before, but, no sirens, no blinking lights, they can’t collect fingerprints, cast shoe prints or effectively collect evidence, the case has no case number, because it has not opened yet, and as I’m also finding, record keeping is completely shaky at the very best.  The responding Deputies also told me that this was Colorado Law,  I haven’t been able to find the law they talked about, but as you can see the one I did find is quite the opposite.  And that the stalking did in fact “escalate into behavior that had even more serious consequences”, is without question.

And it was not just the nearly 60 days or two months of living hell before there was a Detective, and a case number, along with the hope of a forthcoming plan to catch the stalker(s), and bring about an end to the ensuing nightmare.  It was also that once assigned, our detective had to justify the amount of time he spent on Morgan’s case.  “Higher ups” within the Sheriff’s department saw fit to allow an hour or two here or there.  Was he assigned to Morgan’s case only to have his hands tied?

Our felony stalking detective was angling for an extra hour or two to work her case, and now Morgan is dead, killed by her stalker.  Doesn’t seem right to me in any way, shape or manner, and I suppose it never will.  How could it?  In the name of Morgan having every dream she ever had yet to realize taken from her, the stalking case deserved the number of hours it took to solve it.  Not the best that can be done in an hour or two a week.  And if that is not enough, “oh well”, that’s the best we could do.  We all know how that worked out for Morgan.

Another section of the same law on stalking that I found to be right to the point, especially in Morgan’s case is:

Because stalking involves highly inappropriate intensity, persistence, and possessiveness, it entails great unpredictability and creates great stress and fear for the victim

Morgan was stressed, and she was in fear.  She also had little hope for the simple pleasures in life, like a “good nights sleep”.  The Colorado General Assembly, which drafted and passed the laws on stalking obviously got it.  If you want you can read the entire text of the C.R.S. that was law during Morgan’s stalking here it is, STALKING LAW.

The General Assembly deserves kudos for understanding the evil serpent so well, and drafting an effective response.  I don’t believe the Sheriff got it… at all.  The response that is spelled out in the Colorado Revised Statutes for stalking never arrived for Morgan.  For the sake of all the victims of stalking,  I sincerely hope that changes in the future.  Morgan’s stalker(s) are still running free.

And often I have spoken of another Colorado organization – the CBI, or Colorado Bureau or Investigation.  The big guns of law enforcement here in this state.  Many have pointed to the need for a “microscopic” investigation of an unattended death under suspicious circumstances as Morgan’s was.  The CBI could have been and should have been called in the morning we found Morgan dead, but it would have been the Sheriff’s call and they did not make it.  That would have given Morgan a proper investigation instead of the, “so thoroughly botched,” investigation that unfortunately Morgan did have.

I bring this up because, just recently right here in the Roaring Fork Valley, the body of a man was found in an irrigation ditch, deceased.  Only he was not found in Garfield County, he was found in Pitkin County.  Different County, different Sheriff, and fact is that the protocol there for an unattended death under suspicious circumstances was to immediately call in the CBI, that’s why we have the CBI is my understanding, not just for deaths, but any investigation that is beyond that capabilities of a smaller Sheriff’s department.  The CBI responded, was there within a few hours, and evidently evidence was actually found quite a distance from the death scene, and collected, to be processed.

There is a difference between that, and reading Morgan’s texts, and a old journal from her room.  But her PJ’s she wore to bed the night before, completely missing, her panic button gone from its mount, her body posed, redressed, none of that mattered.  Who were they investigating, really?  How was that going to ID or catch the intruder?  A crime scene such as Morgan’s is to be considered a homicide until proven otherwise.  What gives here, really?

Complete answers to the possible crime just committed sits at the root of prevention of crime, and isn’t that the goal of law enforcement?  To Protect and To Serve?  If a person, usually a woman, is the victim of stalking, doesn’t she deserve adequate protection?  Or is that too much to ask?

And though the following was in response to a different post there is a comment I want to share again with you, this is too perfect a place for it not to – Guardian Angels.

Is there sense in it all?

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Just what is going on

Just a Jumble? Or does it all come together?

You just never know.  Everyone tells you, and you hear it in so many ways your entire life – you just never really know.  Is it all just a jumble, or can it really be unraveled to make perfect sense?  Time will tell, because the truth never changes.

I think about the things that have happened, good and bad, and sometimes I see them in a new light.  For instance there was a night that Fall of 2011 when the Deputies, led by Patrol Officer Grzegorz, decided enough was enough, and they headed to Keenan’s house for a little chat with the suspect in Morgan’s staking.  Nothing wrong with a Sheriff’s Deputy coming by to ask a question or two – if you haven’t done anything wrong, is there?

In fact, as I ponder the choices, if your concern is for the safety of the neighborhood you lived in, you neighbors, and upholding the law then you would be very helpful, accommodating, welcome him in, and tell him whatever he needs to know I would think.  Aid in the investigation, right?

Deputy Grzegorz is very observant, he also moves very quickly, and noticed things on his way to the door.  His reports show just how serious he is.  After a short wait Brooke Harris answered the door.  Her father James was gone, and she was home with just the person Deputy Grzegorz wanted to speak with, Keenan Vanginkel.  But Brooke told him Keenan was asleep!  Could not be woken up?

Then comes the part that makes me go, huh?  Deputy Grzegorz reports hearing a commotion behind Brooke in the house, and he asks her about it.  Brooke does not let him in or go herself to see what the commotion is.  They had no pets, and only Brooke and Keenan were at home so what was the commotion in the house?  And not inviting the Deputy in would mean?  And the alcoholic beverage found when only two minors are present would mean?  Well I’m just thinking now, what was the problem with letting the Deputy in the house?  I have heard lots of explanations, but none of them make any sense to me.

And there was the time when Brooke was out with her friends, and we asked them, her friends, not Brooke, if they had heard about the stalking, and what they thought about it.  Brooke immediately claimed to not know anything, but her friends corrected her and reminded her about what she was just saying about the stalking.  Then she cut them off and ordered, not asked, ordered them to just shut up.  What was the problem there?  And why did she want them to just shut up.  What was she afraid of?

After all there was an ongoing investigation into the felony stalking case, Detectives were assigned, they had a suspect, she actually was his girlfriend.  In the interest of solving the crime Brooke could have asked her friends to help out the Sheriffs department in their felony stalking investigation, and tell them everything they know.  But that didn’t happen.  No one said anything about the stalking, except to say that they knew there was one.

So today I wonder, if you knew there was a stalking, and you were not Morgan, or you were not Steve or I, how did you know?  She had claimed that her boyfriend was exonerated from the stalking.

Finally there was a hearing, Steve and I were there.  The judge was there with his aide.  Jonathan Shamis, a lawyer from Alpine Legal Services was representing Brooke, her mother Christina and father James, they said they were frightened of us, but we stood five feet apart.  Jonathan Shamis wanted the judge to lift the temporary restraining order they had asked for so they could appear on a television show with us.  Quite odd because they didn’t seem frightened, actually I would call their demeanor as more like combative, if I were asked to pick a term.

The shocking part was when they said they needed their attorney Jonathan Shamis to go with them, to be right there off camera to protect them from criminal implications.  I turned to our counselor and asked him if Steve and I needed him to come, and protect us too, but he explained we had no criminal exposure so there was no need for him to come.

Then we get to Los Angeles and find out that Keenan’s lawyer won’t even let him come, because it’s far too risky.  Obviously his lawyer didn’t tell us.  She told the producers of the show, they knew.  So even if his lawyer is ten feet away to jump in it’s still too dangerous.  But Steve and I didn’t even need a lawyer at all!  What does that tell you?

If I’m trying to unravel the jumble, I am at the point where you ask – is this what happens when the Sheriff’s department has so thoroughly botched the crime scene, and then the suspects need lawyers to talk because of criminal implications, and actually the #1 suspect can’t even talk at all, and an officer of the court can insult the victims, on national television?  But did the #1 suspect forget that he had an ongoing six month private facebook conversation?  Must have, doubt his lawyer would have approved of that.

Just what kind of crime scene is this?

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Morgan and a painting over her bed, blurred

Morgan and a painting over her bed, blurred

There was nothing about that morning on December 2, 2011 that was like any morning in my life.  Today is different.   I had so many questions struggling, and swirling between thought, and emotion that finding a lucid place to start was a problem.  Now I’m far more fixated on the answers that have never been very forthcoming, if they have come at all.  They are for the most part simple answers, but even a simple yes or no has developed a degree of impossibility.  And one small group of questions that must have answers, but do not, is what about the items that disappeared from her room on the night she was killed.  Each is uniquely different, each with its own story and importance.

I’ve written about her PJ’s that were never to be found…ever, and if you missed that post it’s here – what happened to her PJ’s .  Her valuable jewelry that disappeared also has been touched on in this post – Morgan’s  missing jewelry , but that full story is right around the corner as the search of cash for gold stores is wrapped up.  There were other items that turned out to be missing as well, but this blog is going to specifically talk about a small card that also went missing the night Morgan was killed.

It was a driver’ license, obviously Morgan’s license, she would misplace it along with her purse every so often, but she was always very quick to find it when that happened.  It was one of her habits that she would not drive if she knew she did not have it, so to leave it missing was not an option for her.  Her license was always in her wallet, which was always in her purse.  She also kept her previous license right behind her current one.  The previous one was in her wallet after her death, as always, but the current one was not.

This little fact, that Morgan’s license that she always kept in her wallet was gone, and was never to be seen again after the night she was killed is so important to a proper investigation.  Her wallet was right in her room, in her purse, just minus her current driver’s license. We assumed the investigator’s took it, but much later found out they did not.  And we know Morgan did not take it, so that leaves only someone else.  Another of the many pieces of evidence pointing to an intruder.  This fact that we finally discovered gives me the “creeps”.

It is considered a common attribute of serial killers, and other criminals, to be “trophy collectors”.  Just as trophies are meant as rewards for an accomplishment in the real world, off in the sick and twisted hemispheres of some criminals, a trophy from their victim is thought to mean the same thing to them.  And a driver’s license is a very often collected “trophy” to be kept after a victim has been violated, and stripped of all that ever mattered in this world…their life.

A Dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Boston, Dr. James A. Fox, co-authored a book in 1985 titled “Mass Murder: America’s Growing Menace.”  Talking about mass murders, he says that, “In all of their lives, they’ve never distinguished themselves, they’re ordinary at school, ordinary at their jobs, ordinary with their friends, but at murder, they’re extraordinary.”

The FBI considers a murderer to be a serial killer after 3 murders, with a cooling off period between each.  Profiling and categorizing serial killers is a voluminous subject with the FBI as they tend to be the only agency with the manpower, and expertise to uncover and prosecute the true depth, and breadth of criminals that have been arrested, and found to have killed again, and then again…. largely discovered by accident.

Not every killer is a serial killer, but why would a proper crime scene investigation of a young woman who was found dead under suspicious circumstances not determine if common “trophies” had been taken?  Starting with Morgan’s license for instance, even her PJ’s, the last clothes she had been seen wearing would be a natural to check out, undergarments are another choice, and as Morgan was redressed, we know only the undergarments she was wearing after she was found to be dead, not what she was wearing when she went to sleep the night before.  Those could have been taken as well, but we do not know.

In today’s world there is always the possibility of DNA on any of these items, and it would make sense for a criminal not wanting to get caught to take them with him rather than chance leaving some identifiable trace evidence linking him to the crime.  But a search was never even made for any of them.

Despite the fact that Morgan’s death was considered to be under “suspicious circumstances” the morning she was found, and despite the fact that investigators were told that when Steve had said goodnight to her the previous evening she was dressed in PJ’s.  There was no effort to locate the last item of clothing she had been seen in, and subsequently her PJ’s that were missing went from a red flag to a nothing.  See how easy it is to thoroughly botch a crime scene?  Same as with her Driver’s license, a simple check of her wallet, and an obvious red flag jumps out, but instead it was a nothing.

Besides the evidentiary value that her license holds, Morgan was an organ donor.  A status deemed safe, because she had never tested positive for any disease that would preclude her from being one.  Morgan had the concern, and foresight to check with her doctor before declaring herself as an organ donor.

Her organ donor status was never checked following her death.  When she was “officially”, found to have died of natural causes.  It was yet another slap in the face for Morgan, and her last wishes were denied by the Coroner’s office of Garfield County, and the contracted forensic pathologist the Coroner leaves to run his office.  When in reality we now know that Morgan’s blood contained a massive dose of Amitriptyline, which could have easily rendered her organs as unsuitable for donation, but no one knew it at that time.  I do know that since it was her wish they should have made an attempt to honor it, or at least discuss with us the reasons why they were not going to honor her wish.  Then again maybe in this one instance it was a good thing that someone “dropped the ball”.  With a dose so many times over the lethal amount for her body weight, to ever term it “insignificant”, as the contracted pathologist tried, should have red flags waving everywhere,  perhaps transplanting her organs would have killed the recipients too.

Wouldn’t that have been a twisted way to find out how massive a dose of Amitriptyline our daughter had been given?  I am so very relieved that nothing like this came to pass.  Justice will come for Morgan.  It will take time, and be very tedious.  That much is abundantly obvious to us, but we will never give up our quest for justice and we will never give up our efforts to raise awareness and promote change.