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NARRATOR: While Earl Morris
was vacationing in California, he learned his wife had
been reported missing
00:00:13
from their home in Arizona. What? Mom's missing? What happened? NARRATOR: The search for
Ruby Morris involved dozens
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of police investigators,
forensic scientists, DNA testing, and
even the Coast Guard.
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I'm heading home. NARRATOR: The results
of that investigation surprised everyone,
especially Earl Morris.
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[theme music] Ruby and Earl Morris were
partners in both business and in marriage.
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They had been married
for over 20 years and were the parents of
three grown children.
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The Morrises were
both accountants, and operated their
own accounting and tax preparation firm.
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They'd had it
for years and years And they built it up, you
know, together from scratch,
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and, you know, it
was doing very well. NARRATOR: Their business
made them millionaires,
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and they raised
their three children in this luxurious mountain
home just outside of Phoenix.
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On June 4, 1989, Earl
Morris headed to California to see his oldest
daughter, Donna Kay,
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perform in a concert. She was a country singer
with a promising career. Ruby decided not to join
her husband on that trip,
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planning instead to go shopping
with her other daughter, Cindy, for some furniture
for her new home.
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But Ruby didn't
show up on Sunday morning at Cindy's home for
the planned shopping trip.
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So Cindy drove out
to her parents' home. CINDY LILLY: That's
totally unlike her mom.
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I mean, her mother
kept every, you know, date that she ever
had with her and-- unless she called
her and canceled,
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and she didn't do this. NARRATOR: Ruby
Morris wasn't home. The burglar alarm
was turned off.
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Ruby's pocketbook was missing. But her car was still
there, although it wasn't parked in its usual spot.
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Ruby Morris was a neat,
meticulous person, and her daughter
noticed right away that things were out of place.
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A faucet was dripping
in the bathtub, dirty clothes were piled high
inside the washing machine
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and hadn't been washed, a carpet
shampoo cleaner was left out. But the most troubling
discovery was
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that a 22-caliber pistol,
usually kept in a closet, was missing. Cindy Morris immediately
called the police.
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LEE LUGINBUHL: And that's
really all I expected it to be. Was another missing person's
case, that this person would
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be found in a couple of hours. NARRATOR: When Earl Morris
heard the news of his wife's
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disappearance, he told family
members that he would head straight home from California.
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If Cindy Morris was right
and something happened to her mother,
investigators hoped
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to find some clues
to her whereabouts inside the Morris home. [dramatic music] It took Earl Morris longer
than anticipated to drive home
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from California,
but when he arrived, the police were anxious
to speak with him.
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So have you ever
had any fights? NARRATOR: Earl Morris told
police that their relationship
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was basically a good one
with occasional arguments, but nothing out of the ordinary.
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She ever may have done
anything at all like this before?
I mean, left and-- Yeah, she's done it before.
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But she usually calls, you
know, or gets mad or something. NARRATOR: Morris also confirmed
that the 22-caliber pistol
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the couple owned was not in the
closet where he last saw it. We were going in several
different directions with this.
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That the possibility of
that she was missing, possibility of a suicide,
possibility of a homicide.
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The car broke down. NARRATOR: Earl Morris told
police that his car broke down on the drive home
from California
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and that he rented a car
to complete the trip. But Det. Luginbuhl noticed
something suspicious
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when he looked inside the
trunk of the rental car. Attached to Earl's
suitcase was an airline
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luggage tag for a recent flight
from San Diego to Phoenix. A search of the passenger
list from that flight
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did not include the
name of Earl Morris, although there was
a G Norris listed. Police put together a
group of photographs
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including one of Earl Morris
and showed it to the airline crew members to see
if anyone recalled
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seeing Earl on that flight. One of the flight
attendants remembered him distinctly, because of the
poor quality of his toupee.
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Faced with this
inconsistency, detectives decided to search the
Morris home further
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to see if there was any
evidence of foul play, which might have been overlooked
during their first visit.
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LEE LUGINBUHL: So what we did
is we called in our ID techs to give us a hand, and we
asked them to do luminol.
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NARRATOR: When luminol
is sprayed onto an area, a black light is used. The luminol will actually glow
when it comes into contact
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with the blood enzymes. Forensic detectives began their
search in the master bedroom
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spraying luminol on the
headboard of the bed, an area instantly turned blue. It was a very fine
mist pattern, one
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they immediately recognized. ROD ENGLERT: To me
upon looking at it, you could determine,
because of the distribution,
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and the shape, and the
size of the droplets, that it was high
velocity from gunshot.
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NARRATOR: Only a bullet
produces a fine mist of blood similar to that found
on the headboard.
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A beating or a stabbing
produces a much different blood spatter pattern. On the surface of the mattress,
they found tiny bloodstains,
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and they also found blood
inside the mattress itself. Next, investigators sprayed
luminol in the bathroom.
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LEE LUGINBUHL: The entire
shower stall lit up, basically, with the luminol. NARRATOR: Luminol tests also
revealed blood on the cement
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patio outside the master
bedroom as well as on the master bedroom carpet. LEE LUGINBUHL: We noticed that
the whole bedroom floor, which
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was carpeted, started to glow. We knew that,
from what we were seeing, that we did
have a violent crime
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scene, maybe not a death. But somebody had
suffered some pretty good injuries at that point.
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NARRATOR: But
detectives had no idea to whom the blood belonged. To find out,
scientists conducted
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a DNA test on the bloodstain. The results of that
test shocked everyone. A deep, dark family secret
would soon be revealed.
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Police suspected that
the bloodstain found in the Morris's bedroom
belonged to Ruby Morris,
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but there was no blood
from the body to match the blood in the bedroom. But science can often
identify a bloodstain
00:07:51
by using DNA testing. By analyzing the DNA from
children for example, scientists can tell
whether the bloodstain
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would have come from a parent. In the case of children,
50% of the DNA from each child
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will come from one parent
and the other 50% will come from the other parent. So this obligated inheritance of
DNA from the mother to children
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is one of the important
factors that we are looking for in
conducting this analysis.
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NARRATOR: Since
children get half of their DNA from their
mother and the other half
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from their father, a DNA
profile of the children and from one of the
parents can give scientists
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enough genetic
information to identify the DNA profile of
the other parent even without a blood sample.
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If the DNA profile
of the missing parent matches the DNA profile
of the bloodstain,
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scientists will
then analyze the DNA from a missing person's siblings
to confirm their findings.
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When scientists compared
Cindy Morris's DNA to the DNA from the bloodstain, they
found one matching band.
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They also found
one matching band when comparing the DNA
profile of Ruby's brother
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to the bloodstain. It's highly probable
that those bloodstains came from Ruby Morris.
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NARRATOR: But scientists
noticed something peculiar. When they compared
Earl Morris's DNA
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to the DNA profile of
his daughter Cindy, there were no matching bands. Earl Morris was not
Cindy's biological father.
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When they compared Earl Morris's
DNA to his oldest child, Randy, they discovered the same thing.
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Earl was not Randy's
biological father either. Randy's DNA matched
that of his grandfather,
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his mother's father. When law enforcement
authorities in Tennessee learned of these DNA
results, Ruby's father
00:10:04
was charged with incest. According to the DNA tests,
Ruby's father had sex with her
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when she was just 15 years old. BILL CLAYTON: Well,
we had a surprise, and we felt that
perhaps the family would
00:10:17
be surprised by it,
and that Earl Morris himself was surprised by it. NARRATOR: The Morris
children had another family
00:10:24
secret to reveal. They admitted that their mother
had been depressed recently since she learned her husband,
Earl, was having an affair
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with her sister, Peggy. In fact, Ruby and
her daughter Cindy once caught the two together
at the Phoenix airport
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when Peggy secretly
flew to Phoenix to meet with Earl,
Ruby confronted Earl about the affair.
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But he reportedly
refused to end it. Also, looking at
Peggy, the sister, she had motive and opportunity
to be involved in this too.
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She lived in
Louisiana at the time, but we discovered that she had
a planned vacation going to San
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Diego that weekend when
we discovered phone calls that Earl had made to her. NARRATOR: Peggy admitted to
police that she had planned
00:11:14
to meet Earl in San Diego
shortly after Ruby disappeared but missed her flight. But police knew Earl
had been in San Diego,
00:11:23
not only because of the baggage
claim tag on his suitcase, but they also found his car
in the airport parking lot.
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The car appeared to be clean. But when luminol was applied
to the inside of the vehicle,
00:11:37
the floor of the passenger side
revealed a huge bloodstain, so much blood that the
individual it came from
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would almost certainly be dead. A DNA analysis of
the blood in the car revealed that it matched
the bloodstain found
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in the Morris's bedroom,
which scientists concluded belonged to Ruby. We didn't know
where the body was.
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We didn't know if
he would transport the body to San Diego, why would
he transport it down there?
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We had no real clue. NARRATOR: The clue was
here in a San Diego marina. The Morris's owned a boat
which was stored there.
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Marina employees told
police that Earl Morris was at the marina on June 5 and
had taken the boat for a ride.
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When police went
to search the boat, they discovered it was missing. The Coast Guard was asked to
help locate the missing boat,
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and they told police about
a mysterious fire on a boat about the same
size, which burned
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and sank 13 miles off shore
from the San Diego marina. This is actual footage
of the fire taken
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by a television news crew. DAN TORPEY: There were
no survivors, no people anywhere inside.
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The first thing that was
unusual was the way it burned. It burned pretty much
from the center out.
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Normally, the fires start
either in the engine room or in the fuel compartment. And it just looked very suspect
right from the beginning.
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So the things that
stood out were the fact there was like a lantern right
in the middle of the boat,
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right on top of the
melted fiberglass. It looked like somebody
had thrown it there
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and possibly started a fire. NARRATOR: Records indicated that
Earl Morris rented a small boat
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on the morning of June 5 and
returned it around 12:00 noon, about the same time
the Coast Guard
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discovered the burning boat. It was beginning to appear
that the body of Ruby Morris
00:13:29
was on that burning boat,
which sank to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. But prosecutors
believed that they
00:13:37
still had enough
evidence to prove Ruby Morris had been murdered. You start building
all of those together,
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then what you have is
Ruby Morris's blood, Ruby Morris's bed,
Ruby Morris with a high-velocity gunshot wound
that killed her in her bed,
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at her home. Who was there? Earl Morris. NARRATOR: Earl Morris was
charged with the murder
00:14:05
of his wife, Ruby. But the case was far from over. Investigators were in
for another big surprise.
00:14:14
Earl Morris's defense would be a
challenge for forensic science. In 1991, Earl
Morris went on trial
00:14:24
for the murder of his wife. The prosecution,
first, had to convince the jury that a murder had taken
place since there was no body.
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BILL CLAYTON: We had to
build a case from scratch. We had to prove a "corpus
delicti," that in fact a murder
00:14:39
had occurred without the
physical evidence for someone to look at. NARRATOR: According
to the prosecution,
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Earl Morris entered the
master bedroom early on Saturday morning, June 4. [gunshots]
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He dragged her body into
an adjacent bathroom, removed her clothing, and
put her into the bathtub
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to remove the blood. He then dressed her
body in a jogging suit, covered her head wound
with a baseball cap,
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and carried the
body to the garage. Since his car
didn't have a trunk, he had no choice but to place
the body into the passenger
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side of the front seat. Earl, then, cleaned
all of the blood from inside the house
from the headboard,
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the bathtub, the carpets, all
later revealed by the luminol. Earl began his
journey to San Diego
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driving nearly 400 miles with
his wife's body in the seat next to him. Blood continued to drip from the
head wound falling to the floor
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beneath the seat, later
discovered by the luminol test. Earl stopped once for
gas, and no one noticed
00:16:05
that his passenger was dead. When Morris arrived
in San Diego, he towed his boat to the launch.
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And in broad daylight, placed
Ruby's body on the boat along with some of the bloody
sheets and the murder weapon.
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He also took along a
lantern and some gasoline. After renting a smaller
boat, he set off to sea
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towing the rented boat behind. 13 miles offshore in the
Pacific Ocean, Earl Morris
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prepared the boat
for destruction hoping to bury not
only his wife's body but all of the remaining
evidence of his involvement.
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After dousing the
boat with gasoline, he stepped into the rental
boat, lit the lantern,
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and threw it onto the deck. He left before being
spotted by the Coast Guard. Sometime after Morris
left the scene,
00:17:22
a news crew captured
these pictures while the boat was still on
fire, minutes before it sank.
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Neither Ruby Morris nor the
boat was ever recovered. During the trial, Earl Morris
delivered a surprising defense.
00:17:40
He admitted that
his wife was dead and that her body was indeed on
the boat that burned and sank.
00:17:47
Morris also admitted to setting
the fire and sinking the boat. But Earl Morris insisted
he did not kill his wife.
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He said she committed
suicide because of guilt and depression,
guilt over the fact
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that her husband wasn't
the father of two of their children, and
depression about Earl's
00:18:09
affair with her sister Peggy. My first thoughts were
that I would be blamed for--
00:18:15
for Ruby committing suicide. After you had those thoughts,
did you make any decisions?
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Yes, I did. BILL CLAYTON: What
decisions did you make? I had to hide the fact
about what she'd done.
00:18:33
Up until that point in time,
we had circumstantial evidence that she was dead-- no one to say, "I saw Ruby
Morris's body," no one
00:18:43
to say, "I saw Ruby
Morris injured," no one to say, "I
saw the shooting, I heard the shooting."
00:18:51
NARRATOR: Earl Morris testified
that he discovered his wife with a gunshot wound
in her left temple
00:18:57
and that she used the
couple's 22-caliber pistol. He said he found her
body after the suicide
00:19:04
and feared he would be blamed. So he disposed of the
body by sinking the boat, but the forensic evidence
proved otherwise.
00:19:14
The blood spatter evidence
told forensic detectives that Ruby could not
have committed suicide.
00:19:21
Earl said the gunshot wound was
in the left side of her head, but Ruby was right-handed.
00:19:26
It would have been impossible
for a right-handed individual to shoot herself in the left
temple using her right hand,
00:19:34
especially with the
long-barreled 22-caliber pistol the Morrises owned. But the strongest argument came
from the blood spatter evidence
00:19:43
on the headboard. The blood patterns revealed
two layers of spatter, one on top of the other.
00:19:51
This told forensic experts
that there were two shots. ROD ENGLERT: One shot could not
have caused the distribution
00:19:59
of two separate patterns. There were actually two
separate patterns going at two
00:20:02
different angles that are not-- you cannot create
that in one shot. NARRATOR: And the person
committing suicide does
00:20:11
not shoot twice to the head. [gunshot] The jury saw Earl Morris's
last minute claim of suicide
00:20:20
as just one more lie. He was convicted of murder and
sentenced to 25 years to life.
00:20:27
ROD ENGLERT: He dropped
traces of Ruby Morris. And that was Ruby Morris
on the floor, that
00:20:32
was Ruby Morris in
the El Camino, that was Ruby Morris in the
bed that was stained,
00:20:37
this is what happened. That was our read on it. So Ruby Morris was
actually telling
00:20:41
us what happened to her. BILL CLAYTON: No body,
no gun, no confession. The science gave us Ruby Morris
and gave us the corpus delicti.
00:20:52
If it had not been for the blood
in the car and the DNA testing, I wouldn't be sitting
here talking to you today.
00:21:00
Earl Morris would be a free man. [music playing]