02x04 - Sex, Lies and DNA

[bunniefuu]

[music playing]

NARRATOR: While Earl Morris was vacationing in California,

he learned his wife had been reported missing

from their home in Arizona.

What?

Mom's missing?

What happened?

NARRATOR: The search for Ruby Morris involved dozens

of police investigators, forensic scientists,

DNA testing, and even the Coast Guard.

I'm heading home.

NARRATOR: The results of that investigation

surprised everyone, especially Earl Morris.

[theme music]

Ruby and Earl Morris were partners in both business

and in marriage.

They had been married for over years

and were the parents of three grown children.

The Morrises were both accountants,

and operated their own accounting

and tax preparation firm.

They'd had it for years and years

And they built it up, you know, together from scratch,

and, you know, it was doing very well.

NARRATOR: Their business made them millionaires,

and they raised their three children

in this luxurious mountain home just outside of Phoenix.

On June , , Earl Morris headed to California

to see his oldest daughter, Donna Kay,

perform in a concert.

She was a country singer with a promising career.

Ruby decided not to join her husband on that trip,

planning instead to go shopping with her other daughter, Cindy,

for some furniture for her new home.

But Ruby didn't show up on Sunday

morning at Cindy's home for the planned shopping trip.

So Cindy drove out to her parents' home.

CINDY LILLY: That's totally unlike her mom.

I mean, her mother kept every, you know,

date that she ever had with her and--

unless she called her and canceled,

and she didn't do this.

NARRATOR: Ruby Morris wasn't home.

The burglar alarm was turned off.

Ruby's pocketbook was missing.

But her car was still there, although it wasn't

parked in its usual spot.

Ruby Morris was a neat, meticulous person,

and her daughter noticed right away

that things were out of place.

A faucet was dripping in the bathtub,

dirty clothes were piled high inside the washing machine

and hadn't been washed, a carpet shampoo cleaner was left out.

But the most troubling discovery was

that a -caliber p*stol, usually kept in a closet,

was missing.

Cindy Morris immediately called the police.

LEE LUGINBUHL: And that's really all I expected it to be.

Was another missing person's case, that this person would

be found in a couple of hours.

NARRATOR: When Earl Morris heard the news of his wife's

disappearance, he told family members that he would head

straight home from California.

If Cindy Morris was right and something happened

to her mother, investigators hoped

to find some clues to her whereabouts

inside the Morris home.

[dramatic music]

It took Earl Morris longer than anticipated to drive home

from California, but when he arrived,

the police were anxious to speak with him.

So have you ever had any fights?

NARRATOR: Earl Morris told police that their relationship

was basically a good one with occasional arguments,

but nothing out of the ordinary.

She ever may have done anything at all like this

before? I mean, left and--

Yeah, she's done it before.

But she usually calls, you know, or gets mad or something.

NARRATOR: Morris also confirmed that the -caliber p*stol

the couple owned was not in the closet where he last saw it.

We were going in several different directions with this.

That the possibility of that she was missing,

possibility of a su1c1de, possibility of a homicide.

The car broke down.

NARRATOR: Earl Morris told police that his car broke down

on the drive home from California

and that he rented a car to complete the trip.

But Det.

Luginbuhl noticed something suspicious

when he looked inside the trunk of the rental car.

Attached to Earl's suitcase was an airline

luggage tag for a recent flight from San Diego to Phoenix.

A search of the passenger list from that flight

did not include the name of Earl Morris,

although there was a G Norris listed.

Police put together a group of photographs

including one of Earl Morris and showed it to the airline

crew members to see if anyone recalled

seeing Earl on that flight.

One of the flight attendants remembered

him distinctly, because of the poor quality of his toupee.

Faced with this inconsistency, detectives

decided to search the Morris home further

to see if there was any evidence of foul play, which

might have been overlooked during their first visit.

LEE LUGINBUHL: So what we did is we called in our ID techs

to give us a hand, and we asked them to do luminol.

NARRATOR: When luminol is sprayed onto an area,

a black light is used.

The luminol will actually glow when it comes into contact

with the blood enzymes.

Forensic detectives began their search in the master bedroom

spraying luminol on the headboard of the bed,

an area instantly turned blue.

It was a very fine mist pattern, one

they immediately recognized.

ROD ENGLERT: To me upon looking at it,

you could determine, because of the distribution,

and the shape, and the size of the droplets,

that it was high velocity from g*nsh*t.

NARRATOR: Only a b*llet produces a fine mist of blood

similar to that found on the headboard.

A beating or a stabbing produces a much different

blood spatter pattern.

On the surface of the mattress, they found tiny bloodstains,

and they also found blood inside the mattress itself.

Next, investigators sprayed luminol in the bathroom.

LEE LUGINBUHL: The entire shower stall lit up,

basically, with the luminol.

NARRATOR: Luminol tests also revealed blood on the cement

patio outside the master bedroom as well as

on the master bedroom carpet.

LEE LUGINBUHL: We noticed that the whole bedroom floor, which

was carpeted, started to glow.

We knew that, from what we were

seeing, that we did have a violent crime

scene, maybe not a death.

But somebody had suffered some pretty

good injuries at that point.

NARRATOR: But detectives had no idea

to whom the blood belonged.

To find out, scientists conducted

a DNA test on the bloodstain.

The results of that test shocked everyone.

A deep, dark family secret would soon be revealed.

Police suspected that the bloodstain found

in the Morris's bedroom belonged to Ruby Morris,

but there was no blood from the body to match

the blood in the bedroom.

But science can often identify a bloodstain

by using DNA testing.

By analyzing the DNA from children for example,

scientists can tell whether the bloodstain

would have come from a parent.

In the case of children, % of the DNA from each child

will come from one parent and the other % will

come from the other parent.

So this obligated inheritance of DNA from the mother to children

is one of the important factors that we

are looking for in conducting this analysis.

NARRATOR: Since children get half

of their DNA from their mother and the other half

from their father, a DNA profile of the children

and from one of the parents can give scientists

enough genetic information to identify

the DNA profile of the other parent

even without a blood sample.

If the DNA profile of the missing parent

matches the DNA profile of the bloodstain,

scientists will then analyze the DNA

from a missing person's siblings to confirm their findings.

When scientists compared Cindy Morris's DNA to the DNA

from the bloodstain, they found one matching band.

They also found one matching band

when comparing the DNA profile of Ruby's brother

to the bloodstain.

It's highly probable that those bloodstains

came from Ruby Morris.

NARRATOR: But scientists noticed something peculiar.

When they compared Earl Morris's DNA

to the DNA profile of his daughter Cindy,

there were no matching bands.

Earl Morris was not Cindy's biological father.

When they compared Earl Morris's DNA to his oldest child, Randy,

they discovered the same thing.

Earl was not Randy's biological father either.

Randy's DNA matched that of his grandfather,

his mother's father.

When law enforcement authorities in Tennessee

learned of these DNA results, Ruby's father

was charged with incest.

According to the DNA tests, Ruby's father had sex with her

when she was just years old.

BILL CLAYTON: Well, we had a surprise,

and we felt that perhaps the family would

be surprised by it, and that Earl Morris

himself was surprised by it.

NARRATOR: The Morris children had another family

secret to reveal.

They admitted that their mother had been depressed recently

since she learned her husband, Earl, was having an affair

with her sister, Peggy.

In fact, Ruby and her daughter Cindy

once caught the two together at the Phoenix airport

when Peggy secretly flew to Phoenix

to meet with Earl, Ruby confronted

Earl about the affair.

But he reportedly refused to end it.

Also, looking at Peggy, the sister,

she had motive and opportunity to be involved in this too.

She lived in Louisiana at the time,

but we discovered that she had a planned vacation going to San

Diego that weekend when we discovered phone calls

that Earl had made to her.

NARRATOR: Peggy admitted to police that she had planned

to meet Earl in San Diego shortly after Ruby disappeared

but missed her flight.

But police knew Earl had been in San Diego,

not only because of the baggage claim tag on his suitcase,

but they also found his car in the airport parking lot.

The car appeared to be clean.

But when luminol was applied to the inside of the vehicle,

the floor of the passenger side revealed a huge bloodstain, so

much blood that the individual it came from

would almost certainly be dead.

A DNA analysis of the blood in the car

revealed that it matched the bloodstain found

in the Morris's bedroom, which scientists concluded

belonged to Ruby.

We didn't know where the body was.

We didn't know if he would transport

the body to San Diego, why would he transport it down there?

We had no real clue.

NARRATOR: The clue was here in a San Diego marina.

The Morris's owned a boat which was stored there.

Marina employees told police that Earl Morris

was at the marina on June and had taken the boat for a ride.

When police went to search the boat,

they discovered it was missing.

The Coast Guard was asked to help locate the missing boat,

and they told police about a mysterious fire on a boat

about the same size, which burned

and sank miles off shore from the San Diego marina.

This is actual footage of the fire taken

by a television news crew.

DAN TORPEY: There were no survivors, no people

anywhere inside.

The first thing that was unusual was the way it burned.

It burned pretty much from the center out.

Normally, the fires start either in the engine room

or in the fuel compartment.

And it just looked very suspect right from the beginning.

So the things that stood out were the fact

there was like a lantern right in the middle of the boat,

right on top of the melted fiberglass.

It looked like somebody had thrown it there

and possibly started a fire.

NARRATOR: Records indicated that Earl Morris rented a small boat

on the morning of June and returned it around : noon,

about the same time the Coast Guard

discovered the burning boat.

It was beginning to appear that the body of Ruby Morris

was on that burning boat, which sank to the bottom

of the Pacific Ocean.

But prosecutors believed that they

still had enough evidence to prove

Ruby Morris had been m*rder*d.

You start building all of those together,

then what you have is Ruby Morris's blood,

Ruby Morris's bed, Ruby Morris with

a high-velocity g*nsh*t wound that k*lled her in her bed,

at her home.

Who was there?

Earl Morris.

NARRATOR: Earl Morris was charged with the m*rder

of his wife, Ruby.

But the case was far from over.

Investigators were in for another big surprise.

Earl Morris's defense would be a challenge for forensic science.

In , Earl Morris went on trial

for the m*rder of his wife.

The prosecution, first, had to convince

the jury that a m*rder had taken place since there was no body.

BILL CLAYTON: We had to build a case from scratch.

We had to prove a "corpus delicti," that in fact a m*rder

had occurred without the physical evidence for someone

to look at.

NARRATOR: According to the prosecution,

Earl Morris entered the master bedroom early

on Saturday morning, June .

[g*nshots]

He dragged her body into an adjacent bathroom,

removed her clothing, and put her into the bathtub

to remove the blood.

He then dressed her body in a jogging suit,

covered her head wound with a baseball cap,

and carried the body to the garage.

Since his car didn't have a trunk,

he had no choice but to place the body into the passenger

side of the front seat.

Earl, then, cleaned all of the blood

from inside the house from the headboard,

the bathtub, the carpets, all later revealed by the luminol.

Earl began his journey to San Diego

driving nearly miles with his wife's body in the seat

next to him.

Blood continued to drip from the head wound falling to the floor

beneath the seat, later discovered by the luminol test.

Earl stopped once for gas, and no one noticed

that his passenger was dead.

When Morris arrived in San Diego,

he towed his boat to the launch.

And in broad daylight, placed Ruby's body on the boat

along with some of the bloody sheets and the m*rder w*apon.

He also took along a lantern and some gasoline.

After renting a smaller boat, he set off to sea

towing the rented boat behind.

miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean, Earl Morris

prepared the boat for destruction

hoping to bury not only his wife's body

but all of the remaining evidence of his involvement.

After dousing the boat with gasoline,

he stepped into the rental boat, lit the lantern,

and threw it onto the deck.

He left before being spotted by the Coast Guard.

Sometime after Morris left the scene,

a news crew captured these pictures

while the boat was still on fire, minutes before it sank.

Neither Ruby Morris nor the boat was ever recovered.

During the trial, Earl Morris delivered a surprising defense.

He admitted that his wife was dead

and that her body was indeed on the boat that burned and sank.

Morris also admitted to setting the fire and sinking the boat.

But Earl Morris insisted he did not k*ll his wife.

He said she committed su1c1de because of guilt

and depression, guilt over the fact

that her husband wasn't the father of two

of their children, and depression about Earl's

affair with her sister Peggy.

My first thoughts were that I would be blamed for--

for Ruby committing su1c1de.

After you had those thoughts, did you make any decisions?

Yes, I did.

BILL CLAYTON: What decisions did you make?

I had to hide the fact about what she'd done.

Up until that point in time, we had circumstantial evidence

that she was dead--

no one to say, "I saw Ruby Morris's body," no one

to say, "I saw Ruby Morris injured,"

no one to say, "I saw the sh**ting,

I heard the sh**ting."

NARRATOR: Earl Morris testified that he discovered his wife

with a g*nsh*t wound in her left temple

and that she used the couple's -caliber p*stol.

He said he found her body after the su1c1de

and feared he would be blamed.

So he disposed of the body by sinking the boat,

but the forensic evidence proved otherwise.

The blood spatter evidence told forensic detectives

that Ruby could not have committed su1c1de.

Earl said the g*nsh*t wound was in the left side of her head,

but Ruby was right-handed.

It would have been impossible for a right-handed individual

to sh**t herself in the left temple using her right hand,

especially with the long-barreled -caliber p*stol

the Morrises owned.

But the strongest argument came from the blood spatter evidence

on the headboard.

The blood patterns revealed two layers of spatter, one

on top of the other.

This told forensic experts that there were two sh*ts.

ROD ENGLERT: One shot could not have caused the distribution

of two separate patterns.

There were actually two separate patterns going at two

different angles that are not--

you cannot create that in one shot.

NARRATOR: And the person committing su1c1de does

not sh**t twice to the head.

[g*nsh*t]

The jury saw Earl Morris's last minute claim of su1c1de

as just one more lie.

He was convicted of m*rder and sentenced to years to life.

ROD ENGLERT: He dropped traces of Ruby Morris.

And that was Ruby Morris on the floor, that

was Ruby Morris in the El Camino, that

was Ruby Morris in the bed that was stained,

this is what happened.

That was our read on it.

So Ruby Morris was actually telling

us what happened to her.

BILL CLAYTON: No body, no g*n, no confession.

The science gave us Ruby Morris and gave us the corpus delicti.

If it had not been for the blood in the car and the DNA testing,

I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you today.

Earl Morris would be a free man.

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