Suicide or Murder: the Death of Ruby Morris | The New Detectives

[00:00:06]In Florida, a young woman is hit [music] by a train, but what looks like a suicide [music] might be a killer covering his tracks.

[00:00:21]A woman disappears from her Arizona home.

[00:00:25]With no body, police must rely on a few drops of blood to determine her fate.

[00:00:32]In California, police are called to the scene of a grizzly double homicide.

[00:00:38]Only forensic [music] examiners can prove whether it was the result of self-defense or coldblooded murder.

[00:00:45]Some killers [music] go to great lengths to manipulate a crime scene, but the truth [music] is hard to disguise, and forensic examiners can see through the deception, especially when it's written in tainted blood.

[00:01:31]Around 4:00 a.m. on December 5th, 1993, a freight train was [music] passing through the small community of Crest View, Florida.

[00:01:42]On an isolated stretch, the engineer noticed something lying across the tracks up ahead.

[00:01:48]>> It looked like a human body.

[00:01:51]He frantically sounded [music] the whistle and struggled to stop the train.

[00:02:04]Underneath the 120 ton train, he discovered the lifeless body of a woman.

[00:02:11]The engineer quickly radioed in for help.

[00:02:16]>> Within minutes, police and emergency personnel from the Crest View Police Department were dispatched to the scene.

[00:02:26]The young female victim had suffered massive head and chest wounds.

[00:02:32]She was partially covered by a black trench coat that was stained with blood.

[00:02:39]Police began searching for any form of identification to tell them who this woman was. They found nothing.

[00:02:48]>> Hi, Richard.

[00:02:50]>> Blood found pulled on the tracks and on [music] some rocks just feet away from where the victim came to rest suggested the impact point.

[00:03:00]>> A few hairs and tiny drops of blood were found [music] at the front of the train.

[00:03:09]But investigators [music] found no blood smears on the tracks leading up to the victim's body.

[00:03:16]When questioned, the engineer told police that as he worked to stop the train, he believed that he made eye contact with the woman lying on the tracks.

[00:03:25]She never even flinched as the train approached.

[00:03:30]She just seemed to be staring at him.

[00:03:35]Before leaving the scene, evidence technicians photographed the area.

[00:03:43]At autopsy, the medical examiner determined the cause of death to be severe trauma to the unidentified victim's head and chest.

[00:03:52]She had suffered multiple skull [music] fractures and a broken rib.

[00:03:57]To the medical examiner, all of the injuries were [music] consistent with having been caused by the train.

[00:04:04]>> With no obvious signs of foul play noted during autopsy, investigators began looking for other explanations behind the tragedy.

[00:04:13]For Chief Maxi Barrow, there seemed to be only one.

[00:04:17]>> We would were thinking that it could possibly be a suicide. It could be somebody who was depressed and laid down on the railroad track and uh let a train run over.

[00:04:30]>> To confirm their suspicions, investigators first had to identify the young woman.

[00:04:36]Several local residents believed she was 24year-old Sher Marorrow, who lived with her husband less than a mile from the train tracks. I'll be there in 30 minutes.

[00:04:48]>> Police went to the address.

[00:04:52]There they were met by John Marorrow, Sher's husband, and the couple's roommate.

[00:04:58]>> Investigators showed the husband a photograph of the victim.

[00:05:03]>> John Marorrow couldn't believe what he was seeing.

[00:05:08]>> The woman lying dead on the railroad [music] tracks was his wife, Sherry.

[00:05:14]>> I know this is bad time for you, but I'd like >> Marorrow said that he and Sherry fought the night before. you >> get out. It's okay.

[00:05:23]>> She believed he was flirting with another woman who was at a party at the couple's house.

[00:05:29]>> She became enraged.

[00:05:33]John followed her outside, [music] determined to convince her that she was mistaken.

[00:05:39]>> Just talk about it.

[00:05:40]>> No, go. Just go.

[00:05:41]>> They walked up the street to a pay phone.

[00:05:45]>> She was cold, so John gave her his trench coat.

[00:05:49]Despite his efforts, Sherry remained angry and seemed depressed.

[00:05:56]John returned home, believing the best thing he could do would be to leave her alone.

[00:06:03]He thought that Sherry called a friend to come pick her up.

[00:06:07]>> Can you come pick me up?

[00:06:12]>> John never imagined that she would take her own life. Anybody go outside?

[00:06:17]>> Yeah. That's >> the couple's roommate corroborated John's story.

[00:06:20]>> Came back around 12:15.

[00:06:25]>> The husband's [music] account, in addition to the autopsy finding, left investigators with no reason to doubt the suicide theory.

[00:06:33]The investigation into Sher Marorrow's death was ready to be closed.

[00:06:41]The following day, however, Sher Marorrow's mother came in to speak with police.

[00:06:47]Okay. Your your daughter was married.

[00:06:49]>> She could not accept that her daughter had taken her own life.

[00:06:52]>> Never have committed suicide.

[00:06:55]>> John, she said, had had numerous affairs that Sherry found out about.

[00:07:01]>> Here's another one.

[00:07:02]>> As a result, Sherry had decided to end the turbulent marriage.

[00:07:07]>> Recently, she had begun searching for her own place so she could be closer to her mother.

[00:07:12]>> Okay, now we've got this one on main street.

[00:07:15]And though Sherry was upset to learn of her husband's infidelities, her mother was certain that she would never have killed herself.

[00:07:23]>> In fact, Sherry was prepared for a costly divorce, which John [music] desperately wanted to avoid.

[00:07:32]>> It's not unusual for the family of a suicide victim to determine that or to to say that they didn't do they didn't commit suicide. But in the case in the case of this victim, her mother was pretty convincing to me that uh that that this victim didn't do that and uh wouldn't have done that.

[00:07:56]Despite their new suspicions, investigators found no evidence suggesting that Sher Marorrow had met with [music] foul play.

[00:08:07]Almost a month after she was discovered along the railroad tracks, [music] the young woman was laid to rest.

[00:08:17]Over the next several years, investigators interviewed [music] dozens of Sherry's friends looking to uncover proof that she had been murdered, but they found nothing.

[00:08:28]>> The investigation into Sher Marorrow's death ground to a halt.

[00:08:35]The case was handed [music] over to Crest View Police Lieutenant Jerome Worley.

[00:08:44]>> Determined to breathe new life into the investigation, he began reintering the couple's friends and associates, [music] starting with their roommate.

[00:08:56]The roommate again corroborated the story John had given two years earlier.

[00:09:02]On the night Sherry died, he said John followed her after she stormed out of the house in anger, but he returned soon after and never left the house again.

[00:09:15]>> Detectives sensed that the roommate wasn't telling the truth.

[00:09:18]>> With the evidence we have right now, >> under threat of prosecution, he changed his story.

[00:09:28]John, he said, was sick of his wife, and he often bragged about how easy it would be to kill her and to make her death look like a suicide or [music] an accident.

[00:09:38]>> He said that on the night Sherry died, Jon was gone for hours after leaving with her.

[00:09:43]>> Body with a jacket.

[00:09:45]Look, man, you look really bad.

[00:09:47]>> When he returned, Jon was agitated.

[00:09:50]His knuckles were red and he told the roommate, "It's done.

[00:09:58]Did you beat him?"

[00:09:59]>> We kind of put his jack in when he left.

[00:10:02]>> Though the roommate's testimony confirmed investigators suspicions that John Marorrow was involved in his wife's death, Lieutenant Worley [music] knew it wouldn't be enough to prove murder.

[00:10:13]>> The roommate would be contradicting himself with a new statement and it would just be his word against the husband's word in court. So, we knew we'd have to have some physical evidence to prove the case.

[00:10:26]>> But with the victim [music] laid to rest and little evidence recovered from the scene, finding proof of murder would not be easy.

[00:10:36]>> For nearly 3 years, police in Crest View, Florida, struggled to make sense of the death [music] of 24year-old Sher Marorrow.

[00:10:45]Though all of the evidence suggested [music] she had taken her own life by lying in front of an oncoming train, investigators suspected that her husband, John Marorrow, had murdered her.

[00:10:57]But they didn't have a shred of proof.

[00:11:03]Investigators forwarded what little evidence they had to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Crime Lab in Pensacola.

[00:11:12]There, examiner Jan Johnson, [music] an expert in blood stained pattern interpretation, began examining photographs of the scene and the victim's clothes.

[00:11:23]Starting at the place where Sherry was struck by the train, Johnson began analyzing the blood stains.

[00:11:30]Generally speaking, if you would have a body lying on a railroad track and the the body still uh there is no movement.

[00:11:38]So therefore when the tri the train would strike the victim you would have spatter blood at that point of impact.

[00:11:47]>> But in the photographs there was no blood spatter at that spot. The blood was pulled.

[00:11:54]For Johnson the only way to explain the findings [music] was that Sherry was already bleeding when she laid down on the tracks.

[00:12:02]The lack of any blood smeared along the tracks leading up to Sherry's body was also troubling.

[00:12:09]>> If it was a train striking a woman lying on the railroad tracks, I would expect to see a trail of blood leading from the point of impact to the final resting place.

[00:12:21]>> In fact, no bleeding had occurred from any of the [music] wounds caused by the train.

[00:12:27]That would only make sense if she was dead at the point of impact.

[00:12:32]uh once your heart stops uh the blood flow ceases. So therefore any uh injury that occurs after that fact uh you will have very little uh bloodshed.

[00:12:45]>> But if the train hadn't killed her, the question remained, what had?

[00:12:51]To find out, Johnson began analyzing the [music] blood stains found on the victim's clothes.

[00:12:58]She found blood spatter on the [music] victim's t-shirt that didn't correspond to any of the head injuries noted in the original autopsy report.

[00:13:06]The size and the location of the spatter on the t-shirt was consistent with a specific type of injury.

[00:13:13]>> If I had not known this was a train case [music] and just received the clothing solely alone in the laboratory, I would have clearly thought someone had been [music] beaten uh just by looking at the clothing. Because again, we've got the spatter pattern [music] on the t-shirt and this would be consistent with someone being beaten, stabbed, something of that nature.

[00:13:37]Johnson passed on her findings to Crest View police.

[00:13:44]The forensic analysis convinced detectives that Sher Marorrow had been murdered.

[00:13:50]To take this case before [music] a jury, however, they needed to find the fatal injuries that had somehow gone unnoticed [music] years earlier.

[00:14:00]3 years after she [music] was laid to rest, Sher's remains were exumed and forwarded to the medical examiner for a second autopsy.

[00:14:10]A new medical examiner began looking for evidence of homicide. right down >> on the back of the victim's [music] skull. He found injuries consistent with blunt force trauma and the wounds were not consistent with any of the injuries caused by the train.

[00:14:33]>> Medical examiner Dr. Michael Berkeland next reviewed [music] the original autopsy photos looking for any other abnormalities.

[00:14:41]He noticed strange bruising on the victim's neck that had not been noted in the original autopsy reports.

[00:14:50]X-rays revealed the presence of a broken hyoid, a bone in the neck located at the base of the tongue.

[00:14:58]Dr. Berkeland didn't believe that the train could have caused the injury.

[00:15:03]It would be extremely unlikely that uh the train could have struck her in such a way to fracture the hyoid and leave the jaw intact uh because it is such a protected structure up high in the neck back behind the jawbone.

[00:15:18]>> The most reasonable explanation for the broken hyoid was that Sher Marorrow had been strangled.

[00:15:26]The blunt force trauma injuries found on the skull and the broken hyoid bone gave investigators [music] the evidence they needed to prove that Sher Marorrow had been the victim of a homicide.

[00:15:40]And though investigators suspected that her husband, John Marorrow, had committed the murder, they needed to find a way to link him to the crime scene.

[00:15:48]>> Walking in between the tracks was this couple. Though several years had gone by, police tracked down all of the railroad engineers who had passed through the area on the night Sherry was murdered.

[00:16:01]>> One immediately recognized photographs of John and Sher Marorrow.

[00:16:08]The couple, he said, were walking dangerously close to the tracks.

[00:16:15]They appeared to be having [music] a bitter argument and seemed oblivious to his warnings.

[00:16:22]and strike. [music] >> The engineer specifically remembered that the man identified as John Marorrow had been wearing a black trench coat.

[00:16:30]>> The murder.

[00:16:32]>> On April 29th, 1997, John Marorrow was placed under arrest and charged with first-degree murder.

[00:16:42]Though he maintained his innocence, police believe that when Sherry decided to end the marriage, the stress of a divorce was too much for him to bear.

[00:16:50]>> Yeah, I want a liar.

[00:16:51]>> If you decide to answer questions now, >> as the couple argued while walking along the railroad tracks, John grabbed a blunt instrument and struck Sherry in the back of the head.

[00:17:04]But when she failed to lose consciousness, he finished the job by beating and then strangling her, breaking her hyoid bone in the process.

[00:17:13]Then he laid her bleeding body on the tracks and covered her with a blood spattered trench coat.

[00:17:19]Sherry likely died within a few minutes.

[00:17:25]A jury convicted John Marorrow of murder and sentenced him to life in prison without parole.

[00:17:35]John Marorrow tried to deceive investigators by disguising his victim's cause of death.

[00:17:43]In a suburban community just north of Phoenix, Arizona, investigators would have to prove murder without the victim's body.

[00:17:53]On the evening of June 4th, 1989, Maricopa County Sheriff's deputies were called to the home of Earl and Ruby Morris.

[00:18:03]The couple's daughter, Cindy, was concerned that something had happened to her 49year-old mother, Ruby, >> came in here.

[00:18:10]>> The two had made plans to meet that day, but Ruby failed to show up.

[00:18:15]>> When Cindy stopped by to check on her, she found her parents' bedroom was unusually messy.

[00:18:20]>> This is all wrong. And as soon as I saw that, it >> and she [music] noticed that their 22 caliber handgun was missing.

[00:18:28]>> Did your mom or dad do any kind of recreational shooting? She said that her father Earl was currently in Los Angeles, California, but he would be back early the next day.

[00:18:39]But by the following morning, neither Ruby nor her husband Earl had returned home.

[00:18:45]Maricopa County Sheriff's Lieutenant Lee Luganbell was asked to look into the case.

[00:18:51]>> After reviewing [music] the daughter's statements, he agreed to open a missing person's investigation.

[00:18:57]Well, the daughter Cindy was supposed to meet her for lunch that day and she never showed up. And this was kind of unusual for mom. Mom was a a very uh prompt person. Would always meet her appointments and she was very neat around the house. Also, uh so there were some things that were out of place at the house that was just not like Ruby.

[00:19:20]>> Later that afternoon, the detective returned to the Morris residence [music] to interview family members.

[00:19:28]When asked about her mother and father's relationship, Cindy told police that her parents' 30-year marriage had turned ugly in recent months.

[00:19:38]>> What is this, Earl?

[00:19:39]>> Earl had been caught having an affair.

[00:19:42]>> Upset and angry, Ruby began threatening to end the marriage and vowed [music] to financially ruin her husband.

[00:19:49]>> Earl, a successful 49-year-old accountant, promised her that would never happen.

[00:19:57]But Cindy couldn't imagine that her father was capable [music] of physical violence.

[00:20:05]>> As the questioning continued, Earl Morris returned from his trip.

[00:20:14]Cindy [music] commented that he wasn't driving his own car.

[00:20:18]>> Morris. Yes, sir.

[00:20:20]Earl explained that his car, an El Camino, had broken down some 200 miles from home on the drive back from Los Angeles.

[00:20:30]>> After several hours stranded on the road, he managed to hitch a ride to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.

[00:20:37]There, Earl said he rented a car to get home.

[00:20:41]>> But almost immediately, the detective was suspicious of Earl's story. any indication like that?

[00:20:47]>> I looked at his clothes and his general demeanor, too. He was neat. Uh, he didn't appear to be out uh, you know, uh, trying to flag down a car. Uh, he was all put together.

[00:21:00]>> The detective also [music] noticed new airport tags on Earl's luggage, suggesting he had flown, not driven, from California.

[00:21:09]And the luggage tags originated from San Diego, not Los Angeles.

[00:21:14]With his suspicions raised, the investigator questioned Earl about Ruby's disappearance.

[00:21:21]>> Though he couldn't explain why the couple's 22 caliber gun was missing, he seemed unconcerned about his wife's whereabouts.

[00:21:30]>> Ruby, he said, would often take off for days on end without a word. airport.

[00:21:35]>> Earl told me he didn't think it was unusual uh for Ruby to be gone uh for a couple days that uh you know she had the wherewithal, credit cards, be able to go out, visit other people and and to leave. So he again was saying like it was no big deal that she was gone.

[00:21:53]>> Investigators felt differently.

[00:21:56]Looking to corroborate Earl's story, they began searching the interstates for his broken down El Camino.

[00:22:04]But hours of driving [music] turned up no signs of the vehicle, and there were no records of it having been towed.

[00:22:12]>> An APB was issued for the car.

[00:22:18]A short while later, Earl Morris's El Camino was located.

[00:22:23]It was found nearly 400 m away, parked near the San Diego airport. Yeah, we got the >> San Diego authorities impounded the vehicle and arranged for it to be transported back to Arizona.

[00:22:39]>> All right, thanks. Bye.

[00:22:40]>> For investigators, it was now clear that Earl Morris's story was a lie.

[00:22:47]To find out what he was hiding, they obtained a search warrant.

[00:22:55]Later that evening, police [music] returned to his residence.

[00:23:00]Having observed no obvious signs of foul play, investigators began scouring the bedroom for trace amounts of evidence.

[00:23:10]They discovered several blood [music] stains on the carpet near the bed.

[00:23:15]Maricopa County Sheriff's Crime Lab [music] supervisor James Serpa noticed something odd about their appearance.

[00:23:23]We saw visible signs that the carpet nap in the master suite had been disturbed um in a circular pattern which could indicate the use of a carpet cleaner.

[00:23:35]Try that again.

[00:23:37]>> Technicians also found a fine [music] mist of blood spatter on the headboard of the couple's bed.

[00:23:44]The evidence was collected and forwarded to the crime lab for analysis.

[00:23:49]For investigators, the discovery of so much blood was not encouraging.

[00:23:55]>> The amount of blood in the master suite uh was a significant amount of blood, and someone would have been uh at least direly wounded, if not deceased.

[00:24:10]Though investigators believed that someone was Ruby Morris, they soon learned that the blood recovered from the house was too degraded for a definitive DNA analysis.

[00:24:24]Technicians began scouring Earl Morris's vehicle for clues.

[00:24:30]>> The search revealed the presence of several large blood stains on the passenger side carpet.

[00:24:37]The samples were collected and sent out for DNA testing.

[00:24:43]Though the analysis would take time, police speculated that Earl Morris had [music] murdered his wife, then transported her body in his El Camino, and that meant [music] Ruby's body could be anywhere between Phoenix and San Diego.

[00:25:01]As investigators began the daunting task of trying to pinpoint Ruby's remains, one of the couple's daughters came forward with information.

[00:25:11]>> Earl owned a boat and he kept it docked in San Diego.

[00:25:17]Believing there [music] had to be a connection, police contacted authorities there.

[00:25:24]A few days later, San Diego Harbor Police [music] forwarded a video cassette to Maricopa County investigators.

[00:25:32]The tape shot the same day that Ruby was reported missing showed a boat burning at sea and authorities had positively identified it as belonging to Earl Morris.

[00:25:46]For detectives, [music] the significance was clear. and stuff has been doing.

[00:25:50]>> We speculated that Earl rented another boat tow out his boat and actually set it on fire to hide the body of uh Ruby uh and also the murder weapon at that time.

[00:26:05]The boat ultimately sank in treacherous waters [music] too deep to be recovered.

[00:26:12]Despite the clumsy lies Earl [music] Morris was telling police, it looked like he just might get away with murder.

[00:26:23]>> Detectives in Maricopa County, Arizona were convinced that Earl Morris had murdered his 49year-old wife, Ruby, and then intombed her in a watery grave several hundred miles [music] away off the California coast.

[00:26:41]But without a weapon or the victim's body, they would have to rely on the forensic evidence to prove murder.

[00:26:49]And first, they would have to show that blood found in Earl's El Camino belonged to his wife.

[00:26:59]With no known [music] samples from Ruby to compare to the evidence, examiners turned to a process called reverse paternity typing, which isolates strands of DNA that pass unchanged from mother to child.

[00:27:16]Maricopa County Sheriff's Crime Lab supervisor, [music] James Serpa, then compared the genetic profile of the samples collected from the El Camino to those generated from Ruby's two daughters and from her siblings.

[00:27:29]The blood stain on the carpet of the El Camino was the mother of Ruby's children and the sibling of Ruby's brother and sister.

[00:27:42]>> Though their [music] case was largely circumstantial, investigators arrested Earl Morris and charged him with murder.

[00:27:48]>> Morris >> through his lawyer, [music] Earl refused to make any statements in the court of law.

[00:27:57]As the trial approached, investigators struggled to come up with more incriminating evidence against Earl Morris, but they found little else.

[00:28:09]Then word came in that Earl Morris wanted to talk.

[00:28:15]He admitted he had been lying [music] to authorities, >> but he said it wasn't to cover up his wife's murder.

[00:28:21]>> I walked into my bedroom.

[00:28:23]>> Ruby, he said, had killed herself.

[00:28:27]Yeah, >> I got that new >> Earl said that in the early morning hours of June 4th, he entered the master bedroom and found Ruby dead, clutching the [music] couple's 22 caliber pistol in her hand.

[00:28:39]Blood was everywhere.

[00:28:43]Wanting to spare the family the embarrassment of the suicide, he cleaned up the room and drove her body to San Diego, where he then disposed of the remains.

[00:28:54]as you know.

[00:28:55]>> He thought it would be easier for the family to accept that Ruby had decided to just up and leave.

[00:29:05]>> Though the account sounded ridiculous to police, they realized that Earl's suicide story [music] had the potential to create reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors.

[00:29:15]>> Unless investigators could come up with hard evidence to prove otherwise, Earl Morris [music] could be a free man.

[00:29:24]And without the ability to examine the victim's body, it would be difficult to disprove Earl's story.

[00:29:33]Lieutenant Commander Rod Angler, an expert [music] in bloodstain pattern analysis, was brought in to assist in the investigation.

[00:29:42]Angler and Serpa began by re-examining the headboard collected from the couple's bedroom.

[00:29:50]When luminol was applied, Angler had [music] no doubt that the blood spatter present, which appeared as fine mist, had resulted from a specific type of injury.

[00:30:00]Well, when there's crimes of violence, blood is categorized into three major categories.

[00:30:06]The low uh category, which is termed low velocity impact spatters, just drops of blood, smears of blood, transfer stains.

[00:30:15]The second category is from blunt trauma which is termed medium velocity. And the third category which we're dealing with in this particular case is high velocity which is a specific uh easily identified uh pattern which is atomization of blood and that comes from gunshot.

[00:30:39]The location of the spatter on the headboard also allowed examiners to determine the position of the victim's head at the time she was shot. It was in this particular area like right here.

[00:30:48]>> Ruby had been lying flat in a sleeplike position.

[00:30:52]>> If that's the case and if this is >> though the finding was suspicious on its own, it did not contradict Earl Morris's suicide [music] story.

[00:31:02]After thoroughly photographing the blood stains, Angler began looking for [music] any abnormalities in the patterns.

[00:31:10]>> Something immediately caught his attention.

[00:31:14]>> As you look at the headboard, a left to right direction, you have a pattern of blood going up that direction. You have another pattern of blood over overlapping it >> and going another direction. So you have there two conditions that don't occur at the same time.

[00:31:31]We definitely have >> the blood stain patterns [music] indicated that Ruby had been shot at least twice.

[00:31:37]>> That boy doesn't show up as well.

[00:31:39]>> And if she had taken her own life, as Earl claimed, that would have been difficult to do.

[00:31:45]>> Well, first of all, Ruby Morris would have to been able to [ __ ] the hammer on the gun, which I'm told was singleaction revolver 22. after a shot to the head >> to a large source of blood would have to be able to [ __ ] it again and possibly even a third time and that's not likely.

[00:32:12]>> Investigators agreed.

[00:32:15]Based on the forensic analysis, there could be little doubt that Ruby Morris [music] had been murdered.

[00:32:24]Police believe that to avoid the financial ruin from a divorce, Earl Morris chose to kill his wife.

[00:32:32]As Ruby lay sleeping in the couple's bed, he pulled out the 22 caliber pistol and shot her several times in the head.

[00:32:44]After cleaning up the crime scene, he loaded her bleeding body [music] into his El Camino and drove several hundred miles away to San Diego.

[00:32:53]Once there, he loaded her body and likely the murder weapon onto his boat.

[00:33:00]He set the craft on fire, returned to shore, and began the process of covering up his crime.

[00:33:09]With the help of Rod Angler's [music] blood spatter analysis, Earl Morris was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life [music] in prison all over the pan.

[00:33:20]>> Earl Morris tried to explain his wife's death by creating a story about suicide.

[00:33:27]But sometimes murderers admit killing their victims.

[00:33:32]>> And the story they [music] tell investigators is one of self-defense.

[00:33:39]Around 1:30 a.m. on October 18th, 1984, the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department received a frantic 911 call.

[00:33:49]>> 24year-old Brett Harris, said that his mother, Barbara, had been murdered.

[00:33:55]His stepfather, Bob Gizler, was also dead.

[00:34:01]Distraught, Brett was threatening to take his own life.

[00:34:07]Sacramento County Sheriff's deputies raced to the scene.

[00:34:14]>> As they approached the house, they made a bizarre [music] discovery. Get >> out of that tree.

[00:34:19]>> A man identified as Brett Harris was hiding in a tree.

[00:34:25]Let's >> go check it out.

[00:34:27]>> After talking him down, one of the officers [music] made his way into the residence.

[00:34:31]>> Come on over here. I'm coming.

[00:34:34]>> Come on out.

[00:34:38]In the master bedroom, he discovered a gruesome scene.

[00:34:43]A woman lay dead on the mattress.

[00:34:46]And on the floor nearby was another lifeless body.

[00:34:53]Officers from the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department were dispatched to the home of 52-year-old Bob Gizler and his 55year-old wife, Barbara.

[00:35:04]The couple had been brutally murdered.

[00:35:08]Investigators questioned Barbara's son, Brett Harris, who had called 911.

[00:35:16]After some time, he was able to recount what had happened.

[00:35:24]>> Brett said that around 1:30 a.m., he heard a commotion and then a scream coming from his parents' bedroom.

[00:35:35]When he entered their room, he saw his stepfather standing above his lifeless mother.

[00:35:41]He saw an axe handle lying on the floor.

[00:35:44]>> As he went to grab it, his stepfather then attacked him with a box cutter.

[00:35:51]Brett said he managed to overpower him and in self-defense, he beat his stepfather to death.

[00:35:59]The young man was transported to the police station.

[00:36:04]Evidence technicians made their way into the bedroom.

[00:36:12]>> According to crime scene unit investigator Brian Kennedy, both victims had been savagely beaten. Their heads and faces were grotesqually disfigured and uh there were blood stains all over every surface. Um at one time the air must have been filled with atomized mist of or droplets of blood falling out of the air. It was uh quite a a horrendous sight.

[00:36:49]>> Technicians began looking for evidence to help them reconstruct what had happened inside the room.

[00:36:58]In addition to [music] the axe handle, investigators also recovered a bloodstained box cutter found resting on [music] Bob Gizler's chest.

[00:37:09]All of the blood stain patterns [music] were carefully photographed here. Get some pictures of that.

[00:37:17]>> As the search of the house continued, officers followed a trail of bloody shoe prints that led from the bedroom to the kitchen.

[00:37:25]The trail stopped in front of an opened utility drawer.

[00:37:30]Unsure what to make of the findings, officers created a visual record of the evidence.

[00:37:39]At the police station, investigators struggled to obtain coherent answers from Brett Harris.

[00:37:46]>> He was unresponsive to their questions and began rambling on about the devil and other things that made little sense.

[00:37:55]>> Officers photographed several superficial wounds on his body.

[00:38:03]Police also collected his bloodstained clothes.

[00:38:09]>> With so many unanswered questions, police hoped [music] autopsies of the victims could tell them more.

[00:38:16]The medical examiner concluded that Bob and Barbara Gizler had both died from massive blunt force trauma to [music] the skull.

[00:38:25]The beatings had been so savage that both the victim's arms had been broken while defending themselves [music] during the assaults.

[00:38:34]Special Assistant Attorney General David Drewiner followed the investigation for him. The autopsy findings were troubling.

[00:38:44]the viciousness with which the uh two individuals were killed uh Harris's mother and his stepfather um was very extremely similar. And so had had the stepfather been the killer of the of his own wife and then Harris been the killer of the stepfather, you wouldn't have expected necessarily it to have been uh in such an identical manner.

[00:39:12]Authorities couldn't ignore the possibility that one person had committed both murders.

[00:39:21]>> If Brett Harris was responsible for the vicious double homicide, investigators needed [music] to find out what could have motivated such rage.

[00:39:30]>> They turned to family members [music] for information.

[00:39:35]Brett's stepsister told detectives that her stepmother and father had always maintained a [music] good relationship with Brett.

[00:39:44]Though Brett would [music] sometimes find himself facing legal problems, his mother and stepfather would always look out for him, bailing him out of jail on a number of occasions.

[00:39:57]Brett's stepfather [music] even employed him at his tool making company in hopes that the young man would find himself.

[00:40:08]Though Brett suffered from a psychiatric condition, his stepsister said that he had made progress in recent months and with the help of medications, his prospects for the future were promising.

[00:40:21]She added that Bob and Barbara's relationship was strong and she could not imagine that her father would ever hurt her [music] stepmother. Very >> good.

[00:40:31]Nothing investigators had learned jiveed with Brett Harris's version of events.

[00:40:38]Believing the 24year-old [music] was hiding something, they turned to examiners at the Sacramento County Sheriff's Crime Lab for answers.

[00:40:48]There, examiner Brian Kennedy looked to the blood evidence to help him reconstruct the crime.

[00:40:55]This was an interesting case where we had three people in a house where only one person came out alive and he had a story.

[00:41:06]The story was not completely and totally uh impossible in piecing it all together. Um I tried to support his story. I actually looked at it to see uh if I could prove him correct.

[00:41:27]>> But in one of the photographs taken in the [music] bedroom, Kennedy noticed something odd.

[00:41:33]Though the entire room had been saturated with the victim's blood, the carpet underneath the stepfather's [music] body was clean.

[00:41:41]For Kennedy, there seemed to be only one way to explain that fact.

[00:41:46]He goes down onto the floor and he's incapacitated and shields the floor from any blood that would come from his wife.

[00:41:57]And so we know that he's down first because she's then attacked and her blood covers the rest of the room.

[00:42:06]And we can we can put her blood on top of him, but we can't put it underneath him.

[00:42:16]The finding contradicted Brett's story that his mother had already been bludgeoned and was bleeding by the time he entered the room.

[00:42:26]With the evidence now pointing [music] to Brett Harris as his mother's killer, Kennedy began analyzing blood stains on his clothing for proof.

[00:42:36]But cerological [music] tests showed that all the blood on his clothes had originated from the stepfather.

[00:42:45]Kennedy now wondered if it was possible for Brett to have bludgeoned his mother while avoiding getting her blood on him.

[00:42:55]To find out, he devised a blood spatter experiment.

[00:43:01]Simulating the asalent's position, he began striking [music] sponges soaked with blood with a wooden instrument.

[00:43:09]Looking to see how [music] the resulting blood spatter would stain his clothing.

[00:43:15]The results surprised him.

[00:43:20]The first couple blows, I actually turned my head to the side, you know, so I wouldn't get a full face of spatter.

[00:43:27]And I found out I wasn't getting anything. I just started um relaxing and letting letting it go. I started beating it even harder and it was all going out to the sides. Very little was coming back at me, if any.

[00:43:44]Kennedy had successfully [music] demonstrated that Barbara's asalent could have avoided being spattered by her blood.

[00:43:52]>> We have a lot of information that we're going to get. And coupled with the other findings, it was clear that Brett Harris's [music] story was a lie.

[00:44:00]>> So the bottom line is the two deceased people who couldn't speak for themselves spoke volumes with the bloodstain patterns that were produced from them.

[00:44:14]And I was unable to support or substantiate anything that the defendant had said.

[00:44:21]I'm sorry.

[00:44:23]>> After being charged with two counts of first-degree murder, Brett Harris underwent a psychiatric evaluation.

[00:44:30]>> He now admitted to both killings, but claimed it was in self-defense.

[00:44:37]>> After explaining that his parents were possessed by warlocks, Brett Harris entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.

[00:44:48]Though Brett had been previously diagnosed with a mental condition, prosecutors believed the story he was now telling was just a desperate attempt to escape justice.

[00:44:58]He wasn't insane. Uh and by that I mean uh did he know what he was doing? Did he know that he actually was killing human beings? And did he know that it was wrong? Um and there was no doubt as to the answer to those questions was yes and yes. He knew it was wrong.

[00:45:14]Otherwise, why'd he call 911 immediately after it? He knew it was a crime.

[00:45:20]>> But to win a murder [music] conviction, authorities needed to find physical proof that the coldblooded murders were not the result of an insane mind.

[00:45:33]Forensic examiners in Sacramento, California, had proven that 24year-old Brett Harris had brutally bludgeoned his [music] mother and stepfather to death.

[00:45:43]My dad's talking to you.

[00:45:45]>> After being charged with two counts of first-degree [music] murder, the suspect told psychiatrists that warlocks possessed both Bob and Barbara Gizler and he killed the couple in self-defense.

[00:45:58]Brett Harris entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.

[00:46:05]To prove that he was lying in order to avoid the death penalty, authorities turned once again to the forensic evidence.

[00:46:17]Examiner Brian Kennedy began looking at all the physical evidence recovered from the crime scene, looking for anything that could demonstrate that Brett Harris knew what [music] he was doing at the time of the murders.

[00:46:30]He focused [music] on the box cutter found on Bob Gizler's chest.

[00:46:37]After reviewing the autopsy reports, Kennedy believed it was unlikely that the box cutter could have been used as a weapon against Brett. As he had previously [music] claimed, both of our def our victims had broken arms.

[00:46:51]If you're defending yourself with your arms and you've got a holding something and it's severe enough to break the arm, you're going to lose control of whatever is in your hand most likely. I doubt seriously you could hang on to it. For somebody to have their arm broken and then place it on their chest is not likely.

[00:47:15]>> Believing that Brett Harris had staged [music] the crime scene to throw investigators off his trail. Kennedy next looked for a way to explain [music] the box cutter wounds found on his body.

[00:47:27]This looks like somebody has self-inflicted these injuries because they're in the right place for a right-handed person to cut himself on the left arm, to cut himself on the right cheek, to cut himself from left to right across his chest. So, it's all very consistent with staging his own injuries.

[00:47:48]>> The forensic [music] findings provided irrefutable proof that Brett Harris had gone to great lengths to conceal his guilt.

[00:47:56]And for prosecutors, those are not the actions of an insane man.

[00:48:03]He physically changed [music] the crime scene in anticipation that the police are coming to the crime scene. So, he tries to fool law enforcement. Why do it? Why come up with any sort of explanation? He wouldn't have to.

[00:48:17]Though unsure of the motive, police believe that on October 18th, 1984, Brett Harris snuck into the couple's room as they slept in their bed.

[00:48:28]Using an axe handle, he bludgeoned Bob and Barbara Gizler to death.

[00:48:35]After finishing the kill, he made his way into the kitchen, sliced himself [music] with a box cutter he took from the utility drawer, and returned to the bedroom to plant the evidence.

[00:48:50]Confronted with the evidence, Brett Harris withdrew his insanity defense.

[00:48:56]He plead guilty to one count of first-degree murder and one count of seconddegree murder.

[00:49:04]He was sentenced to [music] 41 years to life.

[00:49:10]Killers [music] skilled at the art of deception hope to confuse investigators by manipulating a crime scene.

[00:49:20]But forensic experts can find justice for victims of homicide by seeing through a murderer's [music] lies, which are written in tainted blood.

[00:49:33]>> [music] [music]