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Tonight on Dateline. When people tell me she's in heaven now. No, Morgan doesn't want to be in heaven.
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She wants to be here. She wants to be raising her daughter. She wants to be living the life.
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She was shot while she was getting into the vehicle. So this is an execution. That's what it appeared.
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She was discovered by her boyfriend. There's very distinct things that you're doing that are not normal.
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She was a manager at FedEx. She came to me and she was crying. She felt that people were harassing her.
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She had complained about it to management, and what? She said that nothing has been done.
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I'm like, oh my God, one of those boys at work did this to her. Did you ever want something romantically with her?
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No. Did you shoot Morgan Puck? No. One manager had it bad for her. He really wanted to date her.
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You're wondering how, who, where, and why. We found close to 100 pictures taken off of Morgan's Instagram without her knowledge.
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Panic rushed over my body. Every single red flag came out. Let me guess. This is all a big mistake.
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A young mom gunned down in the dark of night. Even darker, the killer's secret obsession.
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I'm Lester Holt. This is Dateline. Here's Josh Mankiewicz with Breaking Point. Here's the thing about working in America.
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You put a bunch of people in an enclosed space, tell them to work as a team, shoulder to shoulder,
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add in some deadline and performance pressure, and a couple of things are sure to happen.
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They'll start to rate each other. Who's good? Who's lazy? Who's cute? He was significantly into her.
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Yes. You could tell. You could tell. They'll start to date each other. It's unavoidable.
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She met a guy at work. He was super sweet and super kind. And sometimes they'll start to hate each other.
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That's when management usually steps in. I went straight up to the supervisor, and I was like, he's bothering me again.
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Some things companies just can't predict. Some things they can. Like the dependability of an employee like Morgan Fox.
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Ah, Morgan, she was great. She was fun to work with. She was genuine and very much a hard worker.
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All was there as her shift started, except on the morning of October 28th, 2020.
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Quite a few people were asking, like, hey, has anybody seen her? Has anybody talked to Morgan today?
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Morgan worked the early shift at this FedEx ground sorting facility in North Canton, Ohio.
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Nikki Watkins was her co-worker. Everybody's radioing, like, no, I haven't talked to her.
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Has anybody tried calling? Maybe try calling her mom. Because this was so unlike Morgan, people got concerned pretty quickly.
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Very quickly. And then we kind of ended the shift with it was a no call, no show. Maybe she just slept in.
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It turned out Morgan had not just slept in. What her co-workers didn't know was that at about 630 that morning, Morgan's boyfriend Jason called 911.
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What makes you say that, sir? I came out. I got up to work and came out. Look, I thought I'd seen a car out here.
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I came out here and she's laying in her front seat, unresponsive, very cold, covered in blood.
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Looks like her head is bleeding from behind. I don't know if she fell or if she got bashed.
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If you think he sounds a little less than frantic, you are not alone. You want to try CPR?
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Or do you think she's... You don't feel a pulse at all, sir? I don't feel pulse at all.
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When you get here, officers are already here. Paramedics are here. Yeah. Stark County Sheriff's Office Sergeant Craig Kennedy supervised the investigation.
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Her car is parked right here in the driveway. And she's still in it? So partially she slumped into the driver's seat with one foot still out on the ground.
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Door still open? Door was still open and there was some remnants of some food wrappers that appeared she was taking items for lunch.
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The passenger side window had been shattered. 29-year-old Morgan had been shot. So she comes up the front door, gets in her car.
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Somebody comes up from behind her. Yes. It's quick. Yes. And this is an execution.
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Like, there's no fight. Correct. Around 8 a.m., one of Morgan's family members noticed the law enforcement presence at the house and called Morgan's mom, Cindy, who at first was not worried.
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She had just chatted with her daughter at 1.30 a.m., about six and a half hours earlier.
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She's like, she should be fine. Morgan's aunt, Chris Wilkop. So then she started trying to call Morgan and she couldn't get a hold of Morgan.
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And then she called Morgan's boyfriend and couldn't get a hold of him. So Cindy got in the car and drove over.
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That's what she found out. When she got there the police officer wouldn tell her anything Finally a reporter screamed across the yard to her that she was dead Somebody shot her in the head
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That's how she found out. That's not how that's supposed to happen. No. Yeah. It is the kind of loss that, to this day, is hard for Morgan's family to accept.
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Doesn't go away, does it? No. it's like something that you only see on TV that ever happens, you know, to you.
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To investigators at the scene, the time of Morgan's murder was starting to become clear.
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She talked to her mother at about 1.30 in the morning. She had to be at work at 2.30,
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so this was around 2 a.m. Right, so 2 a.m. when she would normally leave for work. Correct.
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Answering the question of why she was killed was going to be a lot more complicated.
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Anything of hers stolen? When we looked through, there was money laying in the console of the vehicle,
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and her purse was draped around her neck, so it didn't appear that anything was stolen.
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Not a robbery, which meant someone wanted Morgan Fox dead and badly. The question now was who?
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Nobody could think of any person that would have reason to do this to her. When she came to me, she was crying.
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Detectives would uncover many potential suspects. You didn't shoot Morgan? No. Absolutely not.
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Did you love her? Did you want more? There was nothing intimate. There was nothing sexual.
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You think to yourself that could have been me? Yes. I think it is a true definition of if I can't have her, nobody can.
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Did you kill Morgan Fox? Morgan Fox's stepsister, Cora Stonerock, had just put a roast in the crockpot that October morning
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when one of her other sisters let out a scream. I'm thinking, what could be wrong?
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So I go downstairs and she is completely ghost white and she says, she's dead. And I'm like, who, who's dead?
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And she's like, Morgan. And I'm like, Morgan, who? Like, because in my mind, there's no way that like our sister is dead.
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And I remember screaming at her like, how, like, what, what are you talking about?
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Why are you saying that? Hearing that made little sense to Cora. Didn't then. Doesn't now.
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I just cannot wrap my head around the fact that that's really how Morgan's story ends.
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I just don't get it. I don't get it. How somebody so pure is just gone. Cora and Morgan met when they were both about seven years old.
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Morgan's mom, Cindy, married Cora's dad. And the two girls were suddenly siblings, blended together.
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in a new family of 12 kids. I mean, that can go one of two ways, right? You can suddenly be put in this house with this other girl your age,
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and you're like, who are you? Or you can become great friends, and you became great friends.
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Yeah, absolutely. I remember literally meeting her and thinking, like, I just met my new best friend,
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and this is a friend that I get to live with, stay with. She doesn't have to go home.
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We get to share clothes. We don't have to return anything. She's just here with me all the time.
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Cora says Morgan was fun and had a knack for getting them both into trouble. I heard you TP'd a house once.
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Yes, we have toilet papered a house. Morgan thought it was a great idea to ring the doorbell and wake them up so that they could see our lovely TP job.
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And she was also unflinchingly kind, especially to those who needed a helping hand.
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The amount of animals that we brought home, the amount of trouble we got in on bringing said animals home, you know.
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She didn't care. No, not at all. Not at all. I remember we were set on starting a nonprofit to help animals.
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To help broken wing birds. Yeah, we were going to have all the animals in the world and we were just going to save everybody and give everybody a home.
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And if she saw someone being wronged, she would stand up for them. And if she thought she was being wronged, she would say something.
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Yeah, yeah. Morgan was very loud. You know, that's something she didn't hold back on.
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That was her beliefs. If she stand on it, she stood on it, and she was going to let you know about it.
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Morgan grew up quickly, pregnant at 20. She had a daughter, Amelia, Emmy for short.
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Morgan raised her as a single parent. When she landed an entry-level job as a package handler at FedEx,
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That was good news for a working mom. Working at FedEx was a big step up from what Morgan had been doing before.
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Yes, because she had had a lot of server jobs, so this was something that she's seen as an opportunity to better herself
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and her life for her and her daughter. Inside the FedEx facility, Morgan quickly made an impression.
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Within two years, she was promoted to manager. Her co-worker, Michelle Hanna, saw Morgan's value.
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She didn't tell someone what to do. She would get into trucks and move packages,
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showing other package handlers how to actually do it. Feels like exactly the kind of employee you want to hire and retain.
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Absolutely. Mickey Watkins started calling her Mary Poppins after Morgan helped her through a feminine hygiene crisis.
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She was like what wrong Like what happened And I was like I have no pads nothing And she goes get somebody to cover my line grabs this little backpack and shoved her whole arm in What she give you She gave me a pad and she handed me a little small bag of Cheez and a Hershey bar and then said do you need a Powerade so that you can get back to work and be hydrated
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That's a great manager and a good friend. She was exceptional. FedEx is also where Morgan met the man who made that 911 call, Jason Skarnackia.
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Jason came out of the military and was a single parent, just like Morgan. I remember her saying that she met a guy at work and that he was super sweet and super kind, but he had a daughter.
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And I remember thinking, like, I know that you would be a good person for his kid, too.
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At first, they kept their relationship quiet. When it became public, they decided it was best for one of them to leave FedEx.
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Both of them knew that they wanted to be together, so they agreed that Jason would get another job.
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In July 2020, they moved into that house together, and Morgan started to dream about a future.
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She really wanted to expand her family. She wanted to own a house, get married, have more kids.
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She longed for that. Only three months after moving in, Morgan Fox was shot dead in her driveway.
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Investigators found a .22 caliber bullet lodged in her car door. And they noticed something else.
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When I look over here, there's actually a fresh set of tire tracks that had left indentations
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in the ground because it had been raining. Fresh mud had been flung all over the side of the fence.
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As if? As if someone had pulled out in a hurry and spun out. So you're thinking that's your killer making a getaway.
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Correct. Investigators also talked with the neighbors, who surprisingly had not seen or heard anything at 2 a.m.
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It's got to be dead quiet here at that hour. It's a very quiet neighborhood. It's dark, not a lot of streetlights.
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Nobody hears a gunshot. Correct. Including her boyfriend, who's right here. Yes.
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Or at least that's what he says. He doesn't hear anything. That's what he told us.
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It's safe to say that wouldn't be the last eyebrow-raising thing about Jason Skarnickia.
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There's very distinct things that you're doing that are not normal. If there's a handbook for how you're supposed to act when your girlfriend is murdered,
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Jason Skarnickia did not follow it. When we spoke with Jason, he wasn't super upset.
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He didn't exhibit signs of being hysterical or anything like that. And he sounds pretty calm on that 911 call.
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He was pretty calm on the 911 call. She's bleeding from her head. It looks like it, yeah.
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But we kind of kept in mind people handle stress differently. His lack of emotion was not the only thing that caught investigators' attention.
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When we wanted him to come to the sheriff's office for an interview, he said that he wanted to get a pair of socks and at that point in time for scene preservation
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we told him we couldn't just allow him to go through the residence that we would retrieve
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them for him and he decided not to wear any socks to the sheriff's office suggesting he doesn't want
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you looking through his bedroom correct well that must have made you sit up a little taller that's
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our first red flag. Jason, my name's Craig Kennedy. Within an hour, a sockless Jason
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was sitting face-to-face with Detective Kennedy at the sheriff's office. How long have you guys been dating?
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How long have you lived together? Dating since August of last year. And how does he seem in that interview?
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In the interview, he was relatively calm. Jason walked the investigator through the previous 12 hours.
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He said he and Morgan had dinner at home. Then Morgan dropped off her daughter at her mom Cindy's house,
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where she sometimes slept when Morgan had to get up early for work. So once she comes back home, what happens?
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I was in the bedroom. She goes, hey, I need to use your laptop. She's typing her email. I eat an apple.
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And I said, hey, all right, I'm going to bed. She goes, okay, I'll be in soon. Jason said he went to sleep and was only half conscious when Morgan got out of bed around 1.30 a.m.
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She goes, I'm getting ready to work. I was like, oh, okay, that's right. I'm about to sleep.
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Jason said he did not hear the gunfire that killed his girlfriend. You sleep with earplugs in, anything like that? You guys sleep with the fan on, anything like that?
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No. You never heard any gunshots last night? No, I didn't. Jason said he woke up about five and at first did not notice anything unusual.
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Then he glanced out the window and saw Morgan's car still in the driveway. I was like, okay, that's really weird.
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So I went to my room, put on some clothes, tried a flashlight and went out there.
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That's when he said he found her. I was like, kind of shook her head a little bit.
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Morgan? Poor Morgan. Morgan, are you awake? Morgan, I'm shaking her a little bit.
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Checked her pulse. Checked her wrist. Couldn't find a pulse. She was really cold.
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Ran inside up to my bedroom grabbed my phone went outside and called 911 Is your relationship good with Morgan Absolutely
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No issues whatsoever? We're fine. We're blending a family, so we're fine. There were challenges.
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Investigators did talk to Morgan's mom who indicated that they were having some struggles in their relationship.
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Her mom paints a little less rosy picture of that relationship than the boyfriend does.
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Correct. Did you guys ever get physical with each other? No physical violence at all? No.
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Well, a text on Morgan's phone suggested that wasn't true. Morgan had gotten physical with him during a fight just two weeks earlier.
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There was one text message that was in there where Jason indicated that he would never forgive Morgan for what she did.
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and ultimately that was because she had either pushed or swatted at him. And even though Jason handed over his phone willingly,
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he hesitated when Detective Kennedy asked to access it. Do you have a passcode on your phone?
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I do. You do. What's that passcode? Do I have to give you my passcode? This interview wasn't going well for Jason.
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Detective Kennedy told him exactly what he was thinking. There's very distinct things that you're doing that are not normal.
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Okay. Okay? We call them red flags. He asked why Jason had been so reluctant to let investigators look through his bedroom.
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In the drawer above my sock drawer, I have a little bit of marijuana. Okay. In the grand scheme of things, Jason, do you think I give two s*** about a little bit of marijuana?
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That's why I give up, yeah. I know. So, second question, what do you have on your phone that you're not real fun?
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I have nothing. I have nothing. Okay. Okay. Because the typical reaction during the homicide when your girlfriend you're in love with, I presume,
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is what do you need, whatever it takes. Right. You know what I'm saying? I'm sure.
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You didn't shoot, Morgan? No. Absolutely not. Would you tell me if you did? Yes, I would tell you if I didn't.
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After the recording ended, Kennedy says, Jason broke down. At the end of the interview, he did exhibit some emotions, which we would expect from someone that's kind of in shock.
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And after everything finally hits them. So was he telling the truth? Morgan's family believed he was.
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I think that it's normal to think that boyfriend, jealousy. Something goes wrong in the relationship.
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Yeah, absolutely. Did you ever wonder about Jason? I never thought it was really Jason Skardecchia.
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He cared too much about Morgan. The Jason the family saw was devastated. Morgan's mom pointed Sheriff's investigators in a new direction.
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The first thing out of Cindy's mouth was, go to FedEx. FedEx is how this happened.
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As far as investigators could tell, Morgan Fox was a woman with no enemies. There was no obvious place to begin the search for her killer.
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Except, according to her mom, maybe one. The first thing out of Cindy's mouth was, go to FedEx.
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FedEx is how this happened. FedEx, the job Morgan had been so excited to land. Her family says she had been happy working at the sorting facility for a couple of years.
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Then, everything changed. Some of her colleagues didn't like it when Morgan was promoted to manager.
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I think it just put a big target on her back. And she was young. And I think that it just rubbed them the wrong way and kind of made a few people upset.
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It wasn't just one person. It was a couple of people that were rubbed the wrong way.
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Yeah. Because this, what, young, attractive woman was suddenly in charge. Yeah. Detective Kennedy discovered Morgan's workplace had very quickly become the place where she was least comfortable.
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She had recently been having some problems with other co-workers, male co-workers,
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that she felt she was being treated unfairly and harassed by. What kind of behavior are we talking about?
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It appeared that they were playing jokes on her by moving her chair, hiding items and taking clipboards from her desk.
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Morgan's co-worker Michelle says the warehouse wasn't exactly a comfortable place for women to work.
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I mean, it's a warehouse, so you walk into a big building and you feel like as a female, I felt small walking around and then people staring and maybe making comments.
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So I know that Morgan experienced that because she actually told me, you know, that people were making comments as she walked by or staring at her.
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What picture emerged of the culture at FedEx? Throughout our investigation, it actually appeared that harassment at that point in time in that facility was a common practice, especially from male co-workers towards women co-workers.
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It was like a frat house. Yes, correct. Were you aware that men who worked there were jealous that Morgan had gotten that promotion to manager?
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Oh, yeah, I knew that. There was quite a few people that made it verbally known that they did not like the fact that she was in that position.
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The one manager, he said she only got it because she was pretty. I was like, okay.
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Three weeks before Morgan was killed, she had a parent. reached a breaking point. One of her co-workers took her personal cell phone.
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She didn't know who. After she was looking around for her phone, it was just told to her
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that a group of guys had the phone, kind of like phone tag. Like, I don't have it, they have it. I
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don't have it, they have it. She finally found her phone in the hands of a co-worker she considered
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a friend, and it was unlocked. Morgan could tell someone had gone through it. In tears,
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she went to Michelle. What was on the phone that made her so concerned? She had said that they had looked at her personal phone and private pictures.
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Right, and she felt violated by that. She definitely felt violated. Morgan told Michelle she had complained to management, but almost two weeks had gone
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by and she hadn't heard a response. What Morgan did hear was that she had violated the FedEx
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dress code. She was given a form of the dress code so that she could be told she should be
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wearing khakis instead of leggings. And it seemed disgusting to me that she's asking for some
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resolution and she's instead getting reprimanded. She stuck up for herself and she said the dress
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code policy also says no ball caps and all of the male managers wear hats. So that dress code was
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enforced for women, but not for men. Apparently. Michelle was an administrator who sometimes
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advised employees on workplace issues. She had heard enough. On Morgan's behalf, she sent an
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email to FedEx's offsite human resources department. I've explained about the phone,
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how nothing had been done. I explained the dress code incident where she's not to wear leggings.
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Anything come of that? No. No. And she would ask me day to day, have you heard anything?
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Morgan would ask you. Yeah. And I said, have you heard anything? And she didn't hear anything
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either. As we know, Morgan Fox was not one to back down. She wrote her own email to HR
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after talking with Michelle one last time. We had talked on the phone that evening and I said,
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I think that HR needs to hear from you personally instead of getting the email from me.
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Morgan hit send around 11 p.m. At 7.50 a.m. the next day, HR responded, asking to talk.
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Except by that time, Morgan Fox had been murdered in her driveway. Were you thinking it was someone from FedEx?
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I'm thinking, well, who would have done that? I was like, would somebody have taken her life?
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Would somebody get that upset over her complaint and really do that? investigators were wondering the exact same thing.
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And suddenly, they had a warehouse full of people to talk with. So I'm going to ask you a very direct question.
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Did you shoot her back then? After Morgan's murder, her Aunt Chris arrived in Canton.
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Morgan's mom, Cindy, was waiting for her in the front yard. When I get there and I get out of the car and she just crumbles and starts crying, Cindy
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never cried. So it was really hard. Cora drove in too, trying to prepare herself for what was coming.
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I've never lost anybody besides grandparents. So I also was like, I have to be strong.
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I'm going to keep it together. She failed to do that when she took Morgan's daughter to the house to pick up some clothes.
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The lunch Morgan had packed for work was still lying there on the pavement. I remember pulling up to the house and seeing the water bottle and the pot pie still in the driveway.
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And knowing that, you know, 36 hours ago, Morgan was still alive and standing right in that same spot and dropping those items because she was shot dead is something that I literally see in my sleep.
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It is something that sticks with me forever. And I hate it. At the sheriff's office, investigators now focused on the FedEx workforce of which Morgan had been part.
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In her complaint to Human Resources, she had named several co-workers. One of them was the guy Morgan found holding her phone, Jason McDermott.
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When we first started looking at Jason McDermott, we did some social media searches,
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and we observed his profile picture was him posing with a cat. We looked at each other and we were like, this isn't our guy.
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Single guys, single men with cats don't commit murder. Cat lover or not, they had to look into it.
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Jason McDermott was also buddies with Mickey Watkins. He'd helped her get the hang of the job.
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What made you guys close friends? Jason was a really good trainer. He knew how to be helpful and keep you going pretty much throughout the day.
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And he had the same interests as me. I wasn't a gamer, but my son was. So he could tell me stuff about video games,
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and that made me a better cooler mom to my son Hey Jason Hello We ended up meeting with him And he was very quiet calm almost nerdy
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I think he can help you. Okay. Kind of helpful. He was very helpful. How did this nerdy cat owner describe his relationship with Morgan?
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As best friends. He said that they talked to each other quite often, which we verified through their text messages to one another.
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You guys get along good at work? We were friends before she was the manager. Basically, when one of us was having a bad day,
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we were the person that we would go to and vent about that type of stuff. She's been having issues on the morning shifts with a lot of people,
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so she was venting to me about that. So I'm going to take you to an incident that happened a couple weeks ago,
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this phone incident. I know you already know what I'm talking about. Yes. Well, we have to talk.
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I'm aware. Jason explained what happened. He said he wasn't the one who originally took her phone.
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Jason said he found it in the hands of a co-worker and got upset when he realized it was unlocked.
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So the screen was open. I saw her sh** was open. So I was obviously unhappy about that immediately.
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Then, instead of just returning it to Morgan, Jason admitted he did something stupid.
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Upon taking it back up to my workstation, I let my emotions get the better of me.
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I made the dumbest mistake. I was sitting there like, all right, I want to know what the hell he was looking at.
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So I turned on her phone and I regrettably looked through a few of her files. I saw one where she was in her brown underwear and I was like,
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as soon as I saw that, I clicked out of it because that wasn't our relationship.
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I panicked and closed everything on the phone, gave it back to her, and then I told her, hey, I found it like that.
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Later, when he saw how upset Morgan was, he says his conscience got the better of him.
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FedEx management did speak with Jason. They told him to respect the privacy of others and that he would be fired if it happened again.
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Jason tried to apologize, but Morgan wasn't getting over it. She blocked him on social media.
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His story believable? Yeah, his story to us did make sense. Still, the detective probed a little more into their relationship.
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Did you ever want something romantically with her? No. You didn't? Do you have a girlfriend?
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Currently, no. You don't? No. He did say he had his eyes on someone else. There's another girl that I'm interested in.
00:32:35
There's another girl that you've been talking to. It's Mickey. You've already met Mickey.
00:32:40
When he was being interrogated, Jason told police that he was interested in you.
00:32:45
Do you ever get any sense of that? I did get sense of that. I actually sent him a long text message and told him I'm not interested in that.
00:32:53
Then the detective got to the point. So I'm going to ask you a very direct question.
00:32:58
Did you shoot her in the back of the head? No. So your phone that you have, is that phone going to show you at all at Morgan's house last night?
00:33:07
No. It's not. No. Where were you last night? At home. He stated that he was at home and he had never left home that evening.
00:33:18
And he also had to get up for work at approximately 2.30 a.m. And he drove straight to work.
00:33:27
Does he willingly give you his cell phone? Jason did willingly give us his cell phone to look through.
00:33:34
Which sort of by itself kind of says a lot. Correct. And sure enough, his alibi checked out.
00:33:41
You checked his cell phone tracking data. We did check his cell phone data, and it showed that it never left his residence.
00:33:49
There's nothing like a good alibi to take you off the board. At the same time, Jason had a hunch as to who the killer might be.
00:33:59
Who was the first thing that popped in your mind? Colin. He was one of the other guys Morgan thought might have swiped her phone.
00:34:08
Why? Jealousy. Colin wanted her. Okay. Big time. In the aftermath of Morgan Fox's death,
00:34:28
the FedEx facility where she had worked and succeeded became where investigators hoped to do the same.
00:34:37
Suddenly, your workplace... Is turned upside down. And is in the middle of a murder investigation.
00:34:44
Yes. Anybody getting any work done that week? Everyone's expected to, but no, it's really uncomfortable.
00:34:51
For me, I was scared. I was afraid that maybe there would be retaliation against me.
00:34:59
Just because of you helping Morgan out? Just because I had known what was going on.
00:35:06
On top of that, Michelle thought her bosses were angry at her for not doing more.
00:35:13
Three of them took me into the conference room and started grilling me about what's going on.
00:35:20
And I said, I don't know. I told them the situation from my perspective of she came to me.
00:35:27
She was upset. Nobody was doing anything about the situation with her phone. I don't know what's happened.
00:35:36
But she's dead. But she's dead. And I felt that they were blaming me, that they kept questioning me.
00:35:46
And I told them that I reached out to HR and nothing had happened. So what? Why are you pointing the finger at me like it my fault You have any theory of your own about what had happened Did you think it was connected to FedEx Yeah I knew there was a connection to FedEx but my mind was open to many different people
00:36:11
Mickey Watkins says the warehouse gossip revolved around one name. What were people at work saying about who the killer might be?
00:36:20
They all thought it was Colin. Colin is Colin McCauley. Morgan's manager, and one of the people she thought might have taken her phone.
00:36:30
Mickey says it was not exactly a FedEx secret that he had a crush on Morgan. She was a very pretty girl, long blonde hair.
00:36:40
If we were back in high school, she was the head cheerleader that everybody wanted to get with.
00:36:44
And she was kind on top of it. So he had it bad for her. He really wanted to date her.
00:36:50
That was Colin. Yes. He tried and it just was like, no, I don't want that. I have a boyfriend.
00:36:58
Jason McDermott also told the sheriff's office all about Colin. Who was the first thing that popped in your mind when I said somebody shot her in the back of the head?
00:37:07
Colin. Why? Jealousy. Way back when, before she started dating Jason Skarnickia, her current boyfriend, Colin wanted her.
00:37:18
Okay. Big time. Okay. And he's obviously ever since been very upset that Jason won.
00:37:25
Adding to the speculation, Mickey says she didn't see Colin for a couple of days after Morgan was killed.
00:37:32
At some point he comes back in. Yes. But he's different. Definitely different. He came back and he looked depressed.
00:37:40
And he always had a snow cap on, like a hat. And then he'd have his hood up over it.
00:37:46
And he wasn't talking to anybody. He wasn't doing what he normally did. He just looked, I'm here, I'm just going to work, and that's it, and be monotone.
00:37:56
Investigators sat down with Colin for an interview. It was not videotaped. Colin was Morgan's direct manager.
00:38:05
He was. Detective Brian Johnson assisted with the investigation. Also one of the people she suspected of taking her phone.
00:38:13
Correct. He was. And he also pretty clearly at one time had a significant crush on her.
00:38:20
He did. And that was clear in messages between him and Morgan as well. One thing he did tell us during his interview was that once he found out that Morgan was moving in with Jason Skarnecchia and it was serious, that he apologized to her and wasn't going to try and pursue a relationship with her.
00:38:40
Colin also denied ever taking Morgan's phone. Colin did tell her that her phone was on one of the workstations.
00:38:48
He said he moved it. That's all I did. He never went through it. And there was no video to show him taking her phone or browsing through it that we got from FedEx.
00:38:58
Anything in Colin's phone or text messages that made you think his story wasn't the same one you were being given?
00:39:04
There was nothing surrounding Colin that would give us any indication that he was involved in this.
00:39:11
He had messages with her that consisted of maybe going out for drinks or going out as friends.
00:39:18
Once he learned about Jason Skarnecchia, that turned strictly to work-related conversations.
00:39:25
All of that seemed to clear Colin McCauley. There was another FedEx manager to talk with.
00:39:34
We would get together, have some drinks. It wasn't like her and I were dating. He was not happy being questioned about Morgan's death.
00:39:41
After Morgan Fox's murder, her sister Cora and mom Cindy had to make arrangements.
00:40:00
That's a very sterile word for planning someone's funeral. Cindy said, like, we need to pick out what she's going to get buried in.
00:40:10
I should not be picking out the outfit that my sister, for her funeral, that shouldn't be happening.
00:40:18
It was the fall of 2020, the middle of the COVID pandemic. A difficult time for a lot of families to gather, even harder to mourn.
00:40:29
It's a six feet rule. It's that we're only allowed in there for 20 minutes. It's that people aren't supposed to be gathering.
00:40:35
The service was open casket. What I saw in that casket is also something that I can never unsee.
00:40:43
Her hair still had blood in it, and her mom showed me that. I'll never forget that.
00:40:49
And you're still thinking about it? Mm-hmm. Yeah. It breaks my heart. Morgan's 8-year-old daughter, Emmy, was there, and she carried something with her.
00:41:00
Emmy and her mom played a game, pretending like they would be sleeping in the Vicks VapoSticks.
00:41:08
They would put it under their noses, pretend like, you know, Emmy would wake her up.
00:41:14
And Emmy took it with her to the funeral home. She thought if she would wave that under her nose, she'd wake up.
00:41:24
It was a heartbreaking moment. And with Morgan's killer still at large, there was also an undercurrent of fear at the funeral.
00:41:34
To know that the person responsible is still walking the streets. You're not sleeping. You're wondering how, who, where are they?
00:41:41
And why? And why? Detectives were working to answer those questions, and they received a significant tip.
00:41:50
A person that wanted to remain anonymous claimed they worked at FedEx, and there were some rumors about Morgan Fox and David DiNarda having an affair This person was claiming that that affair was the cause of David DiNarda recent divorce
00:42:06
David DiNarda was another manager at FedEx. Detective Johnson tracked him down at his sister's house, where DiNarda had been staying since his divorce.
00:42:17
He's not happy to see you. Right. He was not happy with being questioned about Morgan's death.
00:42:25
He was especially not happy about us taking his cell phone, especially his FedEx phone.
00:42:30
My name's Sergeant Kennedy, okay? I'm sure. Detective Kennedy conducted the interview, and he did not pull his punches.
00:42:38
I don't care what's on your phone. Other than the fact of whether or not you were having conversations,
00:42:44
had some type of relationship with Morgan going on, what I'd like to do is get a consent from you to go through your phone.
00:42:51
We have a little machine. Nothing, no. It got wiped two days ago. You wiped it two days ago?
00:42:57
No, I was at my girlfriend's house, and my phone popped up and said, your fingerprint sensor doesn't work, type in your code.
00:43:05
I did it three times, and it said erasing phone, and I wiped my phone and told it out.
00:43:08
We ended up finding that there was information and data that had been cleared off of it.
00:43:14
Suspicious? Uh, yeah. Except, Denarda offered an alibi. Where did he say that he was when Morgan was killed?
00:43:23
He actually had been having dinner with some family members and then went to bed.
00:43:27
I mean, almost everybody's alibi is going to be, I was in bed, right? Yes, at that time of night.
00:43:34
There was a glitch in Denarda's alibi. He said his girlfriend was also at the dinner.
00:43:42
Except his sister told detectives he didn't have a girlfriend. Why would your sister say she has no idea about you having a girlfriend?
00:43:51
My sister? That's what I'm being told. Does your sister know that you guys are dating, or would she just consider her a friend?
00:43:58
No, she knows. To Detective Kennedy, David Donarda's story was not passing the smell test, the credibility test, or the alibi test.
00:44:10
So he asked some very direct questions. You've never had sex with her? No. Have you ever attempted to have sex?
00:44:18
No. Have you ever talked to her about having sex? No, absolutely not. Did she ever come on to you about having sex?
00:44:23
No, there was nothing intimate. There was nothing sexual. Last year, her and I hung out a couple times after work.
00:44:30
We would get together and have some drinks. It wasn't like her and I were dating.
00:44:35
Denarda stuck to his story about the night of the murder, saying he slept at his sister's, heading to bed at 11.45.
00:44:43
Did you ever leave your sister's house after 11.45 last night? No. Did you shoot Morgan Fox?
00:44:51
No. Would you have a reason to shoot Morgan Fox? No. She had nothing to do with her divorce?
00:44:57
Nothing. Morgan was my friend. A follow-up investigation tracked with everything Denarda said.
00:45:05
That included his company phone, which was wiped clean by FedEx and had nothing to do with Morgan.
00:45:13
Detectives also confirmed he did have dinner with his girlfriend at his sister's house on the night of the murder and did not leave until the following morning.
00:45:23
They believed his sister did not want to mention her brother had a girlfriend so soon after getting divorced.
00:45:30
Does he being honest? Does everything line up with what he's telling us? And I think it did.
00:45:36
One by one, Morgan's co-workers sat down for unpleasant questions about their relationship with her and where they were when she was killed.
00:45:47
None were happy about the experience, and one of them was lying. Detectives narrowed their focus.
00:45:56
He tried to play the hero with Morgan. Clearly that was all a lie. It was Halloween night, three days after Morgan Fox's murder.
00:46:16
And this year, real life was more scary than anything a pagan ritual could generate.
00:46:23
A young mom was dead. Her killer was on the loose. And Morgan was being remembered at a candlelight vigil,
00:46:31
organized by her FedEx friends Mickey Watkins and Jason McDermott. Morgan's daughter Amelia was there, dressed in a trick-or-treat fox costume.
00:46:42
Her daughter ran to the side of my Yukon where Jason was, and they're hugging each other.
00:46:50
And he's telling her, like, I'm so proud of you, you still did the fox costume, and your mommy would love to see that.
00:46:59
About 50 people attended, mostly co-workers, sharing their memories. sad occasion or happy occasion? Both. It was people laughed about the things that she did
00:47:12
at work. She would hide behind boxes. She'd jump out and scare you. She'd jump out and scare you.
00:47:17
That was her thing. It was just, I'm going to wake you up in the best way possible. Or she'd just
00:47:22
come up and make funny comments to you. Or she'd come up and help you. So people talked about those
00:47:27
moments and in those moments we could be happy. But then it came down to that realization that
00:47:32
We're staring at a cross with her name on it. There's candles and she's not coming out the door.
00:47:39
Jason McDermott later posted a long loving tribute to Morgan on Facebook. He wrote, it's so strange not having you around to talk to.
00:47:50
And this has left a giant hole in my heart. You have left a lasting impact on all of our lives and you will never be forgotten.
00:47:59
Rest easy. Morgan. The Facebook post rubbed me for sure the wrong way. I'm like, there's just no way.
00:48:05
I don't even know this guy. Because it was too familiar. Yeah, like it was just like. Because
00:48:10
it sounded like it came from her boyfriend. It sounded like her boyfriend, her best friend,
00:48:15
somebody that's known her forever to say that you are the light of my life. There's no way. There was something else Cora had heard about Jason McDermott that bothered her.
00:48:24
It happened less than three months before the murder, during Amelia's birthday party at Morgan's house.
00:48:31
When people there mistook Jason McDermott for Morgan's actual boyfriend, Jason Skarnackia,
00:48:39
McDermott did not correct them. In fact, he totally went with it. So it was like he was the Jason, like Morgan's boyfriend Jason.
00:48:48
And he was following Morgan throughout the house. Like he lives there? Yes. And not the other Jason?
00:48:53
Absolutely. He introduced himself to my grandma and said, you know, hi, grandma, I'm Jason.
00:48:59
And he just totally played a role that wasn't there to be played. It was Jason McDermott's behavior and the purple prose in that Facebook message that also made Detective Kennedy lean forward in the saddle.
00:49:14
Jason McDermott kept inserting himself to the front of that investigation, including the Facebook post that was kind of dramatic and to us was over the top.
00:49:30
Detectives took a closer look at Jason McDermott. FedEx cooperated with you in this investigation.
00:49:37
They did. They gave us everything that we asked for. That included security camera footage from the FedEx sorting facility.
00:49:45
What are we looking at here? So we were able to get some videos from FedEx of Jason McDermott arriving to work the morning of the homicide.
00:49:55
Anything unusual about him on camera that day? No, he walked in normal, clocked in normal, and it lined up with what he told us during his first interview.
00:50:04
And I look at Jason, I don't see somebody who looks particularly worried. No, he's not distraught or anything in these videos.
00:50:10
He walks in, it looks typical like it would be any other day to him. The sheriff's office got other videos from FedEx,
00:50:18
including some from the day Morgan's phone went missing. And what those showed was a game changer.
00:50:25
And in here, you're able to see Jason working on the line here. That's not his phone in his hand there.
00:50:32
That's not his phone? That's Morgan's. Jason had admitted looking at Morgan's phone but said it was just for a moment.
00:50:41
The video shows him studying it like it's the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
00:50:47
He has Morgan's phone and on different clips he's going through it. So right here he's going through it.
00:50:53
He's pretty clearly looking very carefully at her phone. He is and you'll also see throughout here he's looking back making sure nobody's watching him.
00:51:02
Morgan approached Jason and asked about her phone. That's when he handed it over.
00:51:09
Little did she know he was hiding behind boxes looking at her. His story is, I was just trying to get your phone back.
00:51:15
I was not snooping. But that's clearly not true from this video. Obviously, video shows that that's completely untrue.
00:51:22
He tried to play the hero with Morgan. Clearly, that was all a lie. He had her phone for almost an hour.
00:51:30
Jason had given detectives his phone without hesitation. What they found on it absolutely made them pause and think about his relationship with Morgan.
00:51:41
This guy wanted way more than just a friendship, and he was very infatuated with Morgan.
00:51:48
There were times where he would obsessively send three, four, five texts in a row with no response from Morgan.
00:51:57
So he's pestering her. He won't leave her alone. It appears that the relationship is more one-sided and that she's being nice to him as a friend and a co-worker.
00:52:11
It was not a great look for Jason, but Mickey Watkins, who knew him very well, thought there was simply no way he played any role in Morgan's death.
00:52:21
You did not doubt him. No, not one bit. That's my best friend. And we would talk for hours.
00:52:29
He asked you about yourself. It wasn't just all about him. For detectives, this investigation was becoming all about him.
00:52:38
They needed to have another conversation with Jason McDermott. This is a homicide investigation.
00:52:45
This is as real as it gets. The cell phone belonging to Jason McDermott started off as his alibi, proving he was at
00:53:06
his home at the time of Morgan's murder. When detectives looked at what was on that phone, it raised a lot of questions.
00:53:15
So they brought Jason back for a second interview later that same day. Detective Kennedy set the tone immediately.
00:53:24
immediately. There's some things that I am going to confront you on. Okay. Okay, point blank.
00:53:29
Because there's a lot of s*** you left out with me earlier. In his first interview, Jason said he never wanted anything more than friendship with Morgan.
00:53:39
His phone suggested something else. So, just from looking through you guys' text messages, I 100% believe that you're on Webligar.
00:53:49
100% believe that. There an infatuation there going on on your end Maybe not necessarily her end I never saw it as such Kennedy had already pressed Jason about the true nature of his feelings for Morgan
00:54:05
This time he pushed even harder. You ever had sex with her before? A long while ago, yes.
00:54:11
Okay. This is not the time to be lying about it. This is a homicide investigation. This is as real as it gets.
00:54:18
You only had sex one time with her? Yes. Jason said sex with Morgan was, quote, fun, unquote, but not really a big deal.
00:54:29
Hooking up, he said, was kind of his thing. I have a few friends with benefits, yes.
00:54:33
Okay. Jason said once Morgan started dating Jason Skarnackia, he had no issues with returning to the friend zone with her.
00:54:43
Once you are not single, I'm not doing anything with you. That's always been my rule and that always will be my rule.
00:54:48
Detective Kennedy wasn't buying any of it and came to believe Jason and Morgan were never intimate, that it was just his fantasy.
00:54:58
I don't believe it ever happened. I'm guessing that after that second interview, you're no longer thinking that this is a harmless guy.
00:55:06
The course of the second interview changed because all flags that we were getting raised were all pointing towards Jason McDermott.
00:55:15
You search Jason McDermott's apartment. Correct. And his car. Correct. Jason's apartment was clean.
00:55:25
His Ford Focus contained the whiff of a clue. They wanted me to check it with my dog.
00:55:33
Michael Green was the sergeant in charge of the canine unit. He brought in Judge, a police dog trained to sniff out explosives.
00:55:42
He runs right up to the driver's side door. He then slowly moved down to right where the molding is in between the seat and the floorboards.
00:55:50
And as soon as he put his nose on that, he then sat, which is his alert. Green says his canine partner was signaling the presence of gunshot residue.
00:56:01
Did Jason McDermott own a gun? He did not. His father owned several firearms. Jason's dad kept his guns in a basement cabinet.
00:56:10
Four of them were .22s, the same type of weapon used to kill Morgan. Would Jason McDermott have access to that?
00:56:19
He would because the key was just a couple feet away in a drawer. Jason McDermott went to their house the day before Morgan was killed,
00:56:30
and then he also went the day of she was killed in the afternoon. Guns from that cabinet were tested,
00:56:38
and one came back as a possible match for that stray bullet found in Morgan's car.
00:56:45
The lab could not say for sure because that slug was too badly damaged. Undeterred, investigators looked at Jason's movements before and after Morgan's murder.
00:56:58
One of the things that Jason McDermott had told me was that he had stopped at a local gas station on his way to his parents' house.
00:57:08
It happened after Jason finished his shift on the day Morgan was killed. Investigators were able to get security video from that gas station.
00:57:18
And what they saw became an enormous piece of their case. Jason was washing his car.
00:57:26
It's very unusual that someone takes their car through a car wash on a day that was pouring rain.
00:57:34
Oh, it was raining that day? It was raining that morning. Remember the tire tracks and the mud found on the fence at the crime scene.
00:57:42
It wasn't a leap for detectives to think Jason's car left those tracks and got splattered in mud.
00:57:49
Maybe his stop at the car wash was to get rid of that evidence. He actually pulled up to the point where it washes the underneath of your car,
00:57:59
backed up, and then went through that portion again, and then ran through the entire car wash.
00:58:04
So he made sure that the undercarriage of his car was washed twice. Yes, that was a big indicator to us that we were on the right track with that guy.
00:58:13
And they were about to find someone with her own frightening story about Jason McDermott.
00:58:20
It's really nerve wracking. I'm just living my life and it's like, boom, I look over my shoulder.
00:58:25
There you are like, hello. Mickey Watkins was doing her best to comfort her friend and co-worker, Jason McDermott.
00:58:47
You spent a lot of time with Jason in those days after Morgan was killed. Yes. How was he doing?
00:58:53
He wasn't doing good at all. He wasn't eating. He was, however, says Mickey, pondering some creepy questions.
00:59:03
At one point, Jason wants to know what a .22 will do if you fire it into someone's head.
00:59:10
He asked me about a .22, a .9, and a .45. The difference between the wounds caused by those three kinds of guns.
00:59:19
Yeah. She says he was also curious about traffic cameras near Morgan's house. Were they running all the time, or was it just when you were committing a criminal infraction?
00:59:30
Like you're speeding or you blow the light. And I was like, I don't know. Still, Mickey was certain he had nothing to do with Morgan's murder.
00:59:41
That changed the day she was on the phone with Jason at the exact moment detectives paid him a visit.
00:59:49
Hey, Jason, how's it going? It's going all right. You can hear this. I can hear everything that going on I just wanted to give you this What is that Another search warrant So what we going to do we going to collect your DNA Oh okay That fine Mickey who had taken classes in criminology knew what that meant
01:00:08
Panic rushed over my body because I'm like, if they have a warrant, they have probable cause.
01:00:16
It was like one push happened and every single red flag came out. Like, oh my God, this is what happened.
01:00:23
He did it. That afternoon, Mickey cut off all communication with Jason. And I was terrified to do that because the last time somebody blocked him or didn't talk to him anymore, they ended up dead.
01:00:38
So I went home and I sat with a gun in my living room and waited to see if he was going to show up.
01:00:47
All night? All night. I did not sleep. For detectives, one giant obstacle remained.
01:00:55
an alibi that has gotten thousands of suspects off the hook ever since the digital age began.
01:01:03
In modern criminal investigations, your phone's location is nearly always assumed to be where you are.
01:01:11
And Jason's phone was definitely at his apartment at the time of the murder. Okay, so what about Jason's car?
01:01:20
We started just looking at traffic cameras going to and from Morgan's house. Investigators scrolled frame by frame through hours of video.
01:01:33
And then, there it was. We did see a vehicle that we believed was Jason McDermott's vehicle.
01:01:41
Same kind of vehicle, same color. Correct. On the cameras, you can see a bent up front license plate.
01:01:48
You can also see two objects on his dash and hanging from his mirror. And those are consistent with Jason's car?
01:01:55
They are. And it's the right time. It's exactly the right time that puts someone there at the time of Morgan's murder.
01:02:04
For prosecutors, it told a story. Jason McDermott's car on the way to Morgan's house in the minutes before her death.
01:02:13
A week after Morgan Fox's murder, the sheriff's office arrested Jason McDermott for committing it.
01:02:22
And I remember feeling just so much relief. Like, there's no good to this. Nothing's going to make it better.
01:02:28
But knowing that he can't hurt Emmy was a huge relief for me. That relief would soon be mixed with another emotion, anger.
01:02:38
because in the days after the arrest, Morgan's sister found something. I saw a post on Morgan's wall
01:02:48
from another girl that says, I'm sorry this happened to you. I'm sorry he couldn't control his obsession with you
01:02:58
like he could with me. And I remember screenshotting this post and calling my stepmom and like,
01:03:04
you need to call this girl. This girl knows something. That girl is Sienna Clements.
01:03:11
The story she told would reveal that Morgan Fox was not the first woman at FedEx
01:03:16
to attract way too much of Jason McDermott's attention. I just remember him being that weird kid in the back of the class in my eyes.
01:03:26
I feel bad for him. Sienna was 19 when she started working at the FedEx warehouse and met Jason.
01:03:35
So I was just like, let me go be a friend. Around that time, Sienna was caught driving while impaired.
01:03:43
She had to attend court-mandated counseling sessions, and her license was suspended.
01:03:48
She says Jason stepped in. And he started giving you rides to work? Yes. And mind you, he lives 30 minutes away.
01:03:55
So this was like an inconvenience for him? Yes. But he was still doing it? Yes. Eventually, Sienna started getting rides from one of her neighbors.
01:04:04
How'd Jason react to that? That's where things got weird. He started blowing my phone up all throughout the day.
01:04:12
What are you doing on all of my socials? Sienna blocked Jason on social media and asked him to leave her alone.
01:04:21
She says he did not. It's really nerve-wracking. I'm just living my life and it's like, boom, I look over my shoulder.
01:04:28
There you are, like, hello. And ominously, at one of her counseling sessions, She looked out the window, and there was Jason McDermott in his Ford Focus.
01:04:41
And I instantly, like, Gina, my counselor, I was like, I'm freaking out. Like, I told him to leave me alone.
01:04:49
So she goes, you stay inside. And so she goes back out there, and he finally drives off.
01:04:53
She goes, I had to threaten the cops on him. Sienna let co-workers know what was going on, and when Jason bothered her at work, she would yell and curse him out.
01:05:03
Did you talk to your manager at FedEx? I spoke to several supervisors at FedEx about the situation.
01:05:10
And each time you would say, Jason is bothering me. Yes. Following me. Yes. Calling me.
01:05:18
Yes. Won't stop. And their response was what? Their response was more so taking me away from where he might be working in the building
01:05:27
or tell me to not even go around him. Their solution to this was you stay away from him.
01:05:33
Yes. Sienna says Jason continued to harass her. And one morning, her emotions reached a boiling point.
01:05:41
He came by just bugging me. And I immediately got flustered and I went straight up to the supervisor, the main one.
01:05:49
And I was like, he's bothering me again. I don want to get in trouble for my language and my behavior for lashing out on him But like what do you want me to do He keeps bothering me And it just more so it felt like I was just getting shrugged off and shrugged off A FedEx manager did speak with Jason and told him to stop all communication with Sienna
01:06:10
Sienna says Jason ignored the directive from FedEx to leave her alone. What finally happened?
01:06:17
I just remember having a really rough day at FedEx and I kind of got angry. just because I was honestly over-stimulated with the job in general.
01:06:29
And, yeah, they let me go that day. Sienna was fired. What did FedEx tell you about why you were being let go?
01:06:38
My behavioral issues. Your behavioral issues? Yes, because I was the one yelling and cussing and screaming.
01:06:46
But that was also after months of being harassed and not heard and tension just being built up.
01:06:53
Jason, however, still had a job. Two and a half months later, Morgan Fox was shot dead.
01:07:01
When Morgan died, you think to yourself that could have been me? Yes, many times.
01:07:06
Sienna did see Jason one more time. It was at the candlelight vigil for Morgan. He had found me afterwards and came up to me and apologized for everything he's ever done to me.
01:07:18
And I was like, well, how are you doing? Are you okay? I know you were really close to Morgan. And when I tell you this man dropped down on his knees and
01:07:28
started bawling, like just, it was nothing I've never seen before. The chills it sent down my body
01:07:36
was just unreal. When Morgan's family heard about what happened to Sienna, they were outraged.
01:07:44
Why didn't FedEx handle Jason McDermott with the first person the first time, you know,
01:07:49
or Morgan the first time or the second time? Why are all these things still happening and nothing being done?
01:07:56
Why didn't FedEx protect her? Yeah. Now the family hoped for some measure of justice at the trial.
01:08:05
That's also where they learned the true depth of Jason McDermott's obsession. He was recording her behind during the whole conversation.
01:08:19
29-year-old Jason McDermott was behind bars, about to go on trial for the murder of Morgan Fox.
01:08:35
One by one, investigators had cleared all the other potential suspects, Colin McAuley, David DiNarda, and Morgan's boyfriend, Jason Skarnackia.
01:08:47
Jason McDermott pleaded not guilty. And Morgan's family knew a circumstantial case might be a tough sell to a jury.
01:08:56
No DNA? No video of him committing the crime? Mm-hmm. Were you worried? Leading up to the trial, it was nerve-wracking.
01:09:05
I was scared. You know, I didn't know what to expect. Prosecutor Dennis Barr tried the case.
01:09:14
What picture did you paint of Jason McDermott in that trial? We painted a picture of Jason as an obsessed individual, somebody who was seeking in every way, shape and form a romantic relationship with some female individual.
01:09:32
Barr says the true magnitude of that obsession became clear when investigators did a deeper dive on Jason's phone.
01:09:40
We found on his phone close to 100 pictures that he had taken off of Morgan's Instagram without her knowledge.
01:09:49
We found Snapchat videos that he had taken off her phone without her knowledge. Detectives also found images of Morgan that Jason had recorded secretly.
01:10:01
Some of those were at the facility and one of those videos actually was at her house
01:10:07
and he was recording her behind during the whole conversation. The prosecutor says it was Jason's obsession
01:10:15
that drove him to look through Morgan's phone. That was the straw that broke the camel's back for Morgan.
01:10:23
She sent him a text, I don't ever want to talk to you again. Barr told the jury Morgan's rejection and withdrawal of her friendship
01:10:31
pushed Jason from obsession to homicide. His co-worker said, Jason went into this downward spiral.
01:10:40
He looked like he wasn't showering. His hair was just a mess. The clothes didn't seem like they were washed.
01:10:47
Around this time, Jason texted a co-worker, I haven't been this bad in years. I feel like I'm constantly holding on by a thread.
01:10:57
Over the next couple of weeks, he attempted to reconcile with Morgan via text. He even wrote her a letter.
01:11:05
You are easily one of the greatest friends I've ever had, and I hope someday we can start to fix this rift I've created with this mistake.
01:11:15
It didn't work. Morgan kept her distance. If the prosecution's right, that's when he starts thinking, I'm going to kill her.
01:11:23
Yeah, I think it is a true definition of if I can't have her, nobody can. On the 27th of October, Prosecutor Barr says Jason put a carefully orchestrated plan into action.
01:11:37
He says Jason grabbed a .22 caliber revolver at his parents' house, set his phone alarm for 1.20 a.m., then left his apartment without his cell phone, deliberately off the grid.
01:11:52
That suggests a murderer who has thought ahead to what your investigation is going to be.
01:11:57
It definitely shows pre-planning. And how am I going to fool the police once this happens?
01:12:06
Barr says Jason then drove to Morgan's house. When she left for work, he ambushed her from behind.
01:12:13
And in his rush to leave, left those tire tracks. Then Jason drove back to his apartment.
01:12:21
By 2.59 a.m., he was ready to start his shift at FedEx. A murderer with a minute to spare.
01:12:30
When he comes into work, he's all happy and chipper. He was clean shaven. His hair was brushed back.
01:12:37
He had clean clothes on. And he was smiling. He'd gotten control of whatever was going on.
01:12:43
For the first time in like four weeks. All that remained for Jason was to play the grieving friend.
01:12:51
Barr left the jury with one final piece of evidence. A detail he noticed in that car wash video.
01:12:57
Barr says after Jason washed his car, he did something only the killer would know to do.
01:13:06
He walks around his car and as he's going up to the passenger side, he looks down at the right front quarter panel.
01:13:14
Which could be him checking to see whether the mud that came from parking next to Morgan's house was washed off.
01:13:21
It absolutely is him looking to see if the mud has been washed off. Now it was up to defense attorney Ty Graham to convince the jury.
01:13:31
Jason was far too meek to murder. He was a young man just trying to figure life out, not menacing, not threatening,
01:13:40
didn't come across as a danger to society. Jason was very much so into things like Pokemon cards and Pokemon Go,
01:13:50
very much so into fictional stories, enjoyed reading. Graham argued the case was completely circumstantial, like those traffic camera images.
01:14:01
There was no proof that that was Jason's vehicle. There was not a reading from a license plate.
01:14:08
And Graham said the prosecution was never able to definitively match the bullet found at the scene
01:14:14
with their supposed murder weapon. The bullet was unique in how it was coded. None of those
01:14:21
bullets were found in Jason's father's parents home Graham suggested the sheriff's department may have arrested the wrong Jason Graham pointed to that
01:14:32
fight Morgan had with her live boyfriend Jason Skarnackia two weeks before she was killed There were some pretty nasty things said by both Ms Fox and Mr Skarnackia Jason Skarnackia
01:14:46
The prosecutor's response, by the day Morgan was killed, they were doing fine. Jason had texted her when he woke up.
01:14:54
Morning, babe. Hope your shift's going well. Love you. The jury never heard Jason McDermott tell his side of the story.
01:15:02
But he did have plenty to say. To me. Let me guess. This is all a big mistake. There's always more to the story.
01:15:18
To go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, listen to our Talking Dateline series with Andrea and Josh.
01:15:24
Available Wednesday. During the five-day trial, the jury never heard from Jason McDermott,
01:15:38
because he didn't take the stand. He did share his story with me. Let me guess. This is all a big mistake.
01:15:47
You'd be correct. Did you kill Morgan Fox? I did not. Were you obsessed with her?
01:15:54
I was not, no. You certainly seem to be, from everything we know. What makes you...
01:16:01
you wouldn't leave her alone. You texted her dozens of times, hundreds of times.
01:16:09
You had hundreds of photos of her on your phone. That all says obsession. All right.
01:16:15
And I can explain the majority of that right there. One, yes, I did save a lot of pictures on social media and stuff like that,
01:16:22
which I admit was inappropriate behavior on my end. As for the texting things, yes, I realized there were a lot of unanswered text messages
01:16:30
between the two of us. The main reason for that was she was always notoriously bad at responding to text messages.
01:16:36
The police theory is when Morgan cut you off, you couldn't take it. You were angry, you were crushed because you were so obsessed with her and attached to her,
01:16:45
and you solved that problem by killing her. No, I was never angry at her. What did I have to be angry at her about? She did nothing wrong.
01:16:52
I was the one that screwed up, not her. Jason seemed to have an answer for everything,
01:16:58
including his prior fascination with Sienna. She was someone who I was close friends with
01:17:05
and me and her had a bad falling out. Like things were said and done on both sides.
01:17:10
Did you stalk her I did not That was a stupid misunderstanding that happened one day It so coincidental that the guy that sort of wouldn leave her alone and was constantly talking to her and bothering her at work
01:17:23
also shows up at her counseling session. I think that's what she was reacting to.
01:17:26
I was stopping at that place well before she was ever forced to go to that counseling thing.
01:17:31
Like, you can check my phone. I lived by there. As for the prosecution theory about how he planned and carried out Morgan's murder,
01:17:38
You didn't borrow a gun from your dad and then return it? No. The only person that was ever allowed to handle his guns at his house was him.
01:17:45
Nobody, not even my mother, was allowed to know where the key was. Where were you when Morgan was killed?
01:17:50
I was in my apartment. And you never left? Not until I went to work. What made you want to wash your car that day?
01:17:57
Just the fact that I was going into my parents' house, and I said my mom's always on my butt for not cleaning my car.
01:18:03
You weren't washing mud off your car that came from being at Morgan's house? No.
01:18:07
Jason also says that Mickey's stories about him are not true. The worst thing he did, he says, was to look at Morgan's phone and then lie about it.
01:18:18
I shouldn't have, and that was that. But like I said, we went a couple weeks without talking.
01:18:23
But then after that, like I said, we were talking again and... Everything was fine.
01:18:27
Obviously, like we were still working on repairing things, but... So you're unjustly accused.
01:18:32
Correct. You got to be like the unluckiest guy in America, if you're telling the truth.
01:18:37
Right? I mean, everybody else is lying or making something up, and you're the only one telling the truth.
01:18:44
I never said everybody was lying or anything like that. That was Jason's story. I didn't do it. It wasn't me.
01:18:51
Morgan and I were just pals, and I'm not an obsessed stalker. Now a jury would decide his fate.
01:19:00
After less than a day of deliberation, they reached a verdict. Guilty. the hugest sigh of relief all i cared about was amelia i really was worried about amelia and
01:19:13
now she's safe and now i know that he could not hurt her and it was eight-year-old amelia who
01:19:19
gave the most surprising and most heartbreaking statement at jason's sentencing while he and
01:19:25
morgan's family listened i thought monsters weren't real but you proved me wrong you hurt
01:19:31
so many people. You hurt me and the people I love. You ruined your own life because of how much of a
01:19:40
bad person you are Jason McDermott was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole That guilty verdict it doesn turn back the clock No But it better than nothing sometimes Yes He got what he deserved
01:19:59
However, this family's search for justice was not over. As brutal as it is to lose Morgan,
01:20:10
to hear that there were warning signs from the man convicted of killing her has got to be even tougher.
01:20:18
Yes, it is. Hearing that just, it makes me furious because it could have been prevented.
01:20:28
Might have saved Morgan's life. Yes. One year to the day of her murder, her family and friends held a protest outside the FedEx facility where Morgan had worked.
01:20:39
The company eventually agreed to pay the family $4 million. Other details of the settlement are confidential.
01:20:47
I mean, interesting that, you know, Morgan spent her life sort of sticking up for other people.
01:20:53
Yeah, nobody was there for her. And then when the time came for somebody to stick up for her, they weren't there.
01:20:59
We reached out to FedEx, asking them to comment on the culture at their North Canton facility,
01:21:06
the story told by Sienna, and the complaints made by Morgan. Their reply? Our thoughts remain with the family and friends of Morgan Fox.
01:21:17
In her memory, the family has created the Morgan Ashley Fox Foundation. What's the mission there?
01:21:26
To help other people like other children who've lost a parent due to violence. That's a good cause.
01:21:35
The foundation also encourages people to do a Morgan once a month on her birth date.
01:21:43
On the 22nd of every month, we do a Morgan. which is just a random act of kindness.
01:21:49
It could be, you know, telling somebody she looks nice today or paying for the meal of the person behind you.
01:21:55
Paying it forward, Morgan Fox's legacy. Someone whose kindness and compassion inspires those she left behind.
01:22:06
She was funny. She lived life. She was honest. When she loved you, she loved you.
01:22:12
She cared for her family. Everybody wants a Morgan in their life. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.