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