Chapter 2: Chapter 1: A Killer Coincidence? The Mary Morris Murders
In the 1984 science fiction classic The Terminator, a murderous cyborg from the future played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, hunted women in Los Angeles named Sarah Connor in order to stop a woman with that same name from giving birth to a man who would kill the cyborg's masters in the future. The plot was totally outlandish and not meant to portray or emulate any real event or situation, but a pair of murders in Houston, Texas in 2000 shocked area residents and to sci-fi fans it appeared to be a case of reality imitating art.
In the span of less than one week, two women both named Mary Morris were murdered in eerily similar ways in Houston. Once the local media made the connections between the two women's names, then other connections were quickly made: the two women looked alike, the manner of their murders was similar, and their bodies were discovered in similar locations. With that many similarities most people were convinced that the murders were somehow connected.
Was a serial killer using the Terminator as an inspiration for his sick homicidal fantasies?
The residents of Houston were on edge in the late months of 2000. Anyone could be the killer, and any woman named Mary Morris could be the next victim!
*****Mary Henderson Morris
Mary Henderson Morris was a forty-eight-year-old wife and mother who worked hard as a loan officer at Chase Bank in Houston. She and her husband had built a good life for themselves and lived in the reasonably affluent Houston neighborhood of Spring Valley. They were hardworking, successful people who were well liked by the neighbors, friends, and family. By all accounts, the couple had a good relationship and neither was involved in drugs or criminal activity, which makes this part of the case the most puzzling.
The morning of October 12, 2000, began as any other in the Morris household. Mary woke up first, got ready for work, and left the house about six am. But Mary never made it to work.
Mary's husband of five years, Jay, usually spoke with her several times during the day on the phone, so he began to worry when the afternoon came and he had yet to hear from his wife. Mary's daughter from a previous marriage, Marilyn Blalock, and Jay filed a missing person report early that evening about the same time a burned car was discovered in a vacant field.
A call was made to the Harris County Sheriff's Department at about 10 am that morning about what was believed to be burning debris or leaves. Later in the day, police arrived at the wooded area to find that it was not debris or leaves that were burning, but an automobile. After the fire was put out the sheriff's department determined that a charred female body was inside. It was the body of Mary Henderson Morris.
The fire made it impossible for coroners to determine the method of death, although it was quickly ruled a homicide. A search revealed that Morris' purse and wedding ring were missing, which suggested robbery, but too many questions remained.
If it were a robbery, why was her car not taken? Why would a robber, or robbers, go to such lengths to conceal part of their crime?
The crime was obviously not a carjacking because the car was burned. Even if it were an attempted carjacking gone bad, there would have been no reason to take the car and its owner to a remote location, kill the owner, and then burn the car.
And why was the car dumped and burned in a vacant lot?
The more investigators looked at the case, the less it made sense.
There were also no witnesses to her abduction or murder. Due to the circumstances, authorities quickly determined that this was no ordinary murder case, but little did they know how extraordinary the case would become.
Just four days later, after the Morris family put Mary to rest on October 16 Blaylock made the painful, yet seemingly simple journey to the coroner's office to retrieve some of her mother's personal effects.
Instead she walked into an episode from the Twilight Zone.
"They told me they still had Mary Morris' body," recalled Blaylock. "I was freaking out. I was thinking we just had the funeral. I saw the remains, and I was looking at something that wasn't even my mother."
It turns out that the woman Marilyn Blaylock saw on the coroner's table was not her mother, but was in fact another woman named Mary Morris—Mary McGinnis Morris.
****Mary McGinnis Morris
In many ways other than just the name, Mary McGinnis Morris shared a number of similarities with Mary Henderson Morris, which makes this case all that more eerie. Although Mary McGinnis was a bit younger than Mary Henderson at thirty-nine years old, both women were attractive, gregarious brunettes. Mary McGinnis was also a professional woman who shared a nice suburban home with her husband.
On October 16, 2000, the Harris County Sheriff's Department found the body of Mary McGinnis Morris badly beaten with a single gunshot to her head in a location about twenty-five miles from where Mary Henderson Morris was found days earlier.
Mary McGinnis was also found murdered in her car in a vacant lot in Harris County. Although the vacant lots were located on different ends of the county, both spots had an eerie familiarity.
In life and death, the two women shared some uncanny similarities, which raised the obvious question—who would want to kill the two Marys?
*******Suspects and Theories****
Although authorities were at a loss trying to find suspects and reasons for the murder of Mary Henderson Morris, they quickly zeroed in on two potential perps for the Mary McGinnis case.
At the time of her death, Mary McGinnis worked as a nurse practitioner and medical director at Union Carbide in Houston. Her supervisors noted that she was a good employee who got along with all of her co-workers and likewise almost all of her co-workers liked Mary, with the exception of one—Duane Young.
Duane Young was a nurse who worked alongside Mary, and as their time working together progressed, he apparently became obsessed with her. Young's obsession with Mary began innocently enough; he hung around her desk at work and engaged her in conversation whenever he could. The behavior at first seemed to Mary McGinnis to be more of a "puppy love" type situation than that of an obsessed maniac, but eventually Young's façade of a "lost puppy dog" was lifted to reveal the stalker that he was. As Young's menacing looks and comments towards Mary reached a creepy crescendo, she found the words "death to her" scrawled on her desk calendar. After numerous complaints to her bosses about Young's inappropriate and borderline illegal behavior, which was verified by co-workers, the stalker nurse was fired on October 13, just two days before Mary disappeared. The note scrawled on Mary's desk proved to be the last straw.
Weeks before her disappearance and death, Mary McGinnis bought a handgun that she kept hidden in her car. Owning a gun in the United States, especially in the state of Texas, is no big deal, and some even consider it not just a right, but an obligation. Mary McGinnis, though, was never a hunter or gun enthusiast, so when she started packing a pistol, her closest friends and family members knew that she was frightened of something or someone. Although Mary was a bit of a private person, she apparently felt that the threats from Young, or perhaps someone else, were grave enough that she needed to be armed because she did tell a couple of her closest friends about the handgun. Mary was no expert in firearms, so her husband gave her the gun and showed her how to use it.
Also, the day Young was fired Mary's employers told her to stay home in order to defuse the situation, which turned into a scene anyway, as Young demanded to see Mary and had to be escorted out of the premises.
October 15th was the last day Mary was seen alive.
By all accounts it was another Sunday for Mary McGinnis; she ran a number of errands and visited a friend named Laurie Gemmell. According to Gemmell, McGinnis called her from a store during the afternoon to tell her, "There is someone here who is giving me the creeps." Not long after that call, McGinnis then called 911(Police for help).
The transcript of the 911 call has never been released to the public, but a detective who worked on the case and heard the tape said that it, "had their blood chilled listening to it."
After the 911 call, Mary McGinnis' trail went cold.
When Mary did not return home that evening, her husband of seventeen years, Mike, filled a missing person report. In an unfortunate twist that brought Mary McGinnis' case together with Mary Henderson's, the body of McGinnis was found shot to death in a vacant lot outside of Houston.
Despite the similarities of both women being found murdered in their cars, the method of murder was clear in the McGinnis case—she had died of a single gunshot to the head from her own gun.
At first glance, it looked like a suicide, but as homicide investigators examined the scene more closely, they learned that the scene looked staged and it was instead a poor attempt to throw them off. Mary had been beaten and gagged, and her car keys were left outside the car.
Investigators quickly learned about Duane Young, who then went to the top of their suspect list. But as homicide detectives looked into Young's background, Mike Morris soon joined Young as a person of interest.
Morris supplied investigators with samples of his DNA and gave initial interviews, but he declined to take a polygraph exam, hired an attorney, and refused to cooperate with investigators as the case dragged on. Morris also refused to allow his sixteen year old daughter to be interviewed by police. Since it is a person's constitutional right not to talk to police in the United States, Morris did nothing legally wrong in that respect, although his actions placed him further under the police radar.
The more investigators focused on Morris, the more they learned that there was trouble in paradise at the Morris household. Although it was never proved, allegations of infidelity by both Mike and Mary surfaced. Infidelity is always considered as a motive in spousal murder. Whether it is murder to get rid of a spouse in order to be with a paramour, or done out of anger towards a cheating spouse, unfaithfulness must always be considered motive by police. The infidelity motive seemed to go nowhere but it was not long before more perplexing inconsistencies came to light.
It was learned that Mike had taken out a $500,000 life insurance policy on Mary, which alone is not enough to convict or even get someone arrested for murder, but greed is one of the most common motivations for murder throughout history.
Then there was the mysterious phone call.
Records indicate that on the afternoon of October 15 th , about two hours after she called 911, Mary received a call on her cell phone from Mike. Mike claims that he did in fact make the call when he was with his daughter at a movie, but that the call went straight to voice mail. Records show that the call was answered and lasted for four minutes. Morris claimed that the phone company must have made a mistake! Although it is possible that the phone company could have made a mistake, it seemed extremely convenient for the suspect in a murder investigation that such a mistake, which is nearly unheard of, would happen at this critical juncture.
Mary McGinnis was also not robbed. In fact, the only valuable item that appeared to have been taken from her was a ring, which was later found in the possession of their daughter. Mike later told investigators that his wife had lost the ring before her murder and that he and his daughter had found it in the house later.
The final piece of circumstantial evidence that points towards Mike Morris as the perpetrator in his wife's murder is the actual murder weapon. The gun that was used to kill Mary McGinnis was actually Mike's gun. He gave the gun to Mary after Duane Young's stalking reached its peak, and only he and some of Mary's closest friends even knew about the gun or where she hid it underneath the seat.
Clearly, many of Mary's friends, law enforcement, and the people of Houston in general began to think Mike was good for his wife's murder, but the evidence was just not there to make an arrest, never mind win a conviction in front of a jury.
Eventually, Mike and his daughter moved back to his native West Virginia where he still presumably lives to this day.
But even if Mike Morris or Duane Young was responsible for the murder of Mary McGinnis Morris, the elephant in the room remains: was her murder connected to Mary Henderson Morris'?
*******A Hit Gone Wrong?*****
Once the theory of a homicidal cyborg from the future that came to Houston to kill women named Mary Morris was eliminated, investigators were left trying to determine if the two crimes were connected or just some strange, macabre coincidence. It is difficult to get past the two victims similar names, appearance, the type of location where the bodies were discovered, the manner in which they were killed. Because of the plethora of similarities, many have concluded that either Mike Morris or Duane Young hired a hitman to kill Mary McGinnis, but in a cruel case of mistaken identity also killed Mary Henderson. An anonymous caller to the Houston Chronicle said: "They got the wrong Mary Morris," in reference to the murder of Mary Henderson Morris.
But investigators remain unconvinced that the two homicides are related. "As far as the dates go, they are so close they could be linked," said Harris County sheriff's detective Wayne Kuhlman. "But when someone is hired to kill someone, they are going to have their information and know their habits. Hit men don't just go out with nothing." As of 2016 both cases remain cold.
Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.
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