Forensic Files - Season 2, Episode 4 - Sex, Lies and DNA - Full Episode | Forensic Files

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] 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'd had it for years and years And they built it up, you know, together from scratch,
and, you know, 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 and-- unless she called her and canceled,
and she didn't do this. 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.
LEE LUGINBUHL: And that's really all I expected it to be. Was another missing person's 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. [dramatic music] It took Earl Morris longer than anticipated to drive home
from California, but when he arrived, the police were anxious to speak with him.
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.
She ever may have 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.
That the possibility of that she was missing, possibility of a suicide, possibility of a homicide.
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 Det. 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.
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. ROD ENGLERT: To me upon looking at it, you could determine, because of the distribution,
and 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.
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. LEE LUGINBUHL: We noticed that the whole bedroom floor, which
was carpeted, started to glow. 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 Morris's 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. 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 had 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. Also, 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 vacation going to San
Diego that weekend when 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 Morris's bedroom, which scientists concluded belonged to Ruby. We didn't know where the body was.
We didn't know if he would transport the body to 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 Morris's 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 off shore from the San Diego marina. This is actual footage of the fire taken
by a television news crew. 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.
Normally, the fires start either in the engine room or in the fuel compartment. And it just looked very suspect right from the beginning.
So the things that stood out were the fact there was like a lantern right in the middle of the boat,
right on top of the melted fiberglass. It 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's blood, Ruby Morris's 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. [gunshots]
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 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. Sometime 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. BILL CLAYTON: What decisions did you make? I had to hide the fact about 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. 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 the 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.
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 stained,
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. [music playing]

While Earl Morris was vacationing in California, he learned his wife had gone missing from their home in Arizona. The search for Ruby Morris involved dozens of investigators and scientists, even the coast guard. And the results of that investigation surprised everyone... especially Earl Morris. Originally aired as Season 2, Episode 4.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

Earl Morris was convicted of murdering his wife Ruby after forensic evidence revealed shocking family secrets and inconsistencies in his story.

Key points

The Disappearance of Ruby Morris. Earl Morris learns his wife is missing while on vacation, sparking a massive investigation.
DNA Reveals Shocking Family Secret. DNA tests reveal Earl Morris is not the biological father of his children, leading to shocking implications.
Earl Morris's Trial. Earl Morris admits to sinking his wife's body but claims it was suicide, leading to a tense trial.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Mom's missing?

Cindy's reaction to her mother's disappearance.

0:18WatchMay 27, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

More from Forensic Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.