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E161: Chuck Morgan
5.1k Plays3 years ago
What happened to Charles “Chuck” Morgan in the spring and summer of 1977 seems the stuff of nightmares— abductions (yes, plural), poison, fear so great that it involves the constant wearing of a bulletproof vest, spies, organized crime, coded messages, and finally… murder. As if those elements aren’t strange enough, nearly every new development in this case will leave those hearing the story scratching their heads in both amazement and confusion. And, as always, you’ll walk away with far more questions than answers.
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Transcript
Finding Solace in Religious Texts
00:00:00
Speaker
To many, religious books offer more than just teachings. They often provide us guidance and comfort. As a Christian, I often find myself turning the pages of the Bible in times of need. Dealing with a miscarriage and subsequent infertility has been really hard. And the Bible's been a source of comfort for me in the most trying times of my life. And one of my go-to passages is Psalms 34, 8 through 20. It reads, "'Taste and see that the Lord is good. Oh, and the joys of those who take refuge in him.
00:00:28
Speaker
Fear the Lord, you his Godly people. For those who fear him will have all they need. Even strong young lions sometimes go hungry, but those who trust in the Lord will lack no good thing. Come my children and listen to me and I will teach you to fear the Lord. Does anyone want to live a life that is long and prosperous? Then keep your tongue from speaking evil and your lips from telling lies. Turn away from evil and do good. Search for peace and work to maintain it.
00:00:55
Speaker
The eyes of the Lord watch over those who do right. His ears are open to the cries for help. But the Lord turns his face against those who do evil and will erase your memory from the earth. The Lord hears his people and they call to him for help. He rescues them from their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted. He rescues those whose spirits are crushed. The righteous people face many troubles, but the Lord comes to rescue them. For the Lord protects the bones of the righteous, not one of them is broken.
00:01:23
Speaker
When my brother was fighting in the war on terrorism, he also had a psalm written on a handkerchief that he kept in his helmet. Various religious books offer different statements of hope and reassurance. One popular verse of comfort in Islam reads, quote, and we will surely test you with something of fear and hunger and loss of wealth and lives and fruits, but give good tidings to the patient who when disaster strikes them say I indeed belong to Allah,
00:01:50
Speaker
and indeed to him we will return. Those are the ones upon whom are blessings from their Lord and mercy, and it is those who are the rightly guided." One popular quote from Buddha reads, "...thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared." But religious books don't always offer us the answers that we want or even need.
00:02:15
Speaker
When a mysterious unnamed woman calls the household of a missing man and offers a Bible verse as a source of comfort, dozens of years later, they're still trying to figure out what that hidden message means in that passage.
Introduction to "Coffee and Cases" Podcast
00:02:28
Speaker
This is the story of Chuck Morgan.
00:03:04
Speaker
Welcome to Coffee and Cases where we like our coffee hot and our cases cold. My name is Allison Williams. And my name is Maggie Dameron.
00:03:13
Speaker
We will be telling stories each week in the hopes that someone out there with any information concerning the cases will take those tips to law enforcement. So justice and closure can be brought to these families with each case. We encourage you to continue in the conversation on our Facebook page, coffee and cases podcast, because as we all know, conversation helps to keep the missing person in the public consciousness, helping keep their memories alive. So sit back, sip your coffee and listen to what's brewing this week.
The Mysterious Disappearance of Chuck Morgan
00:03:41
Speaker
Okay, Alison today's case is one that has a lot of research. I had, I think when I finally sorted through like 60 pages of research on this podcast, which is a pretty good amount. And it is one that has a lot of twists and turns. And I think an interesting one. Yeah.
00:04:12
Speaker
So today's case revolves around 39 year old Charles or Chuck Morgan, as he was known by his family and friends. Chuck was a very successful businessman, despite his somewhat younger age. Cause 39 feels like, Oh, he really, you know, is up there. He's really got his stuff together. I'm sure. But then I'm like, I'm 32. And I don't know that I would describe myself as a successful adult yet.
00:04:39
Speaker
I would describe you as successful Maggie. Thank you. But along with his wife and their four daughters, Chuck enjoyed the life that they had built together in Tucson, Arizona. By no means on the surface at least did Chuck live a very exciting life. He was very comfortable with the exactness of his work because he worked with numbers and the comfort that he found at home with his girls.
00:05:04
Speaker
Okay. So, again, things that we don't understand the numbers part. Right. So, yeah. Yeah. We live in a world of emotion. Yeah. Yeah.
00:05:17
Speaker
not of numbers. March 22, 1977 began much like every other day for the Morgan family. Chuck was headed to work at the escrow company that he was president and owner of. So again, he's successful in his work. Yeah. And before heading into work, he was actually
00:05:40
Speaker
going to drop his two daughters off at school. And I'm assuming that the other two must have been older, though I didn't read anything about that. I'm just assuming that they were. The day proceeded as usual for his wife Ruth and his daughters who were at school.
00:05:56
Speaker
But in between dropping his girls off to school and coming home from work, something happened. More specifically, something happened to Chuck. So the day goes on. The girls get home from school. His family kept waiting for him to come home and they waited and waited and waited, but Chuck never came home. Okay. So I'm sure his wife is freaking out.
00:06:23
Speaker
Because 77, you're before cell phones, so there's no way of getting a hold of them.
Chuck's Bizarre Return and Strange Behavior
00:06:30
Speaker
And I'm assuming that she was. I didn't read anything in all of that research.
00:06:36
Speaker
very much about this initial search for Chuck. I even watched some different YouTube videos and some other media sources. But in those as well, there were just very little to be found about those initial days of that search.
00:06:54
Speaker
But I can assume like you said that the family was frantic they were devastated because from all I read about them from the outside at least the family seemed very happy and that their home was filled with love and even in the interviews with Ruth you could tell that she really loved her husband and that they had a happy marriage so I don't think that there was any turmoil really at home.
00:07:18
Speaker
And like I said, I assume searches took place, though I didn't really read anything of that nature. And even if they did take place, they wouldn't have lasted very long because on March 25, just three days later, Chuck came home. Okay, that was not what I was expecting you to say. I was expecting this to be a missing person's case. Or when you said it didn't take place, I was thinking, Oh, no, they found him. But he came home. Okay, so very different. All right.
00:07:47
Speaker
And despite what you may be picturing, which is probably what, similar to what I pictured, I pictured, you know, happy wife running into the arms of her husband because he walks through the door and she's like, you know, Oh my God, you're home. I'm so happy. Yeah.
00:08:04
Speaker
But this reunion wasn't the case for Chuck and Ruth. Ruth said that she awoke from her sleep around 2 a.m. to a loud thump on the door and she said, quote, I was in bed and the dog started barking. I got up, went to the door and opened it and there was Chuck. He was missing a shoe and had one plastic handcuff around one ankle and a set on his hands. What? End quote.
00:08:26
Speaker
Yeah. So running out of his arms would have been impossible because they were bound together by these plastic handcuffs. Plastic handcuffs too? That's weird. And he's missing a shoe. And now I didn't really make this connection until like I heard you say it, but I don't know how common plastic handcuffs are. They're essentially kind of like zip ties, correct? Oh, I was thinking like toy handcuffs in my head.
00:08:57
Speaker
No, I'm thinking like that plastic. Okay. Yeah. Like military uses. Okay. Because those are the type of handcuffs that my brother used in Iraq. And I'm thinking that it was like that type of handcuffs. Okay. Okay. I'm following now. In my head, I was like, toy handcuffs. What is this?
00:09:17
Speaker
Yeah. Where's he been? Right. So obviously he comes home in this weird state with the missing shoe and the plastic handcuffs and the handcuff on the ankle and she immediately starts bombarding him with these questions as we all would. Obviously, yeah. But Chuck just motioned to his throat. And according to Ruth, she said, quote, when he motioned to his throat and didn't say a word, I asked, can you talk?
00:09:42
Speaker
Can you write? He shook his head. Yes. So I went and grabbed a tablet and a pen. He wrote that his throat had been painted with an hallucinogenic drug and that the drug could drive him irrevocably insane or destroy his nervous system and kill him. I wanted to call the police and a doctor, but he was adamant that that would be signing a death warrant for the entire family. End quote. This is ridiculously crazy.
00:10:09
Speaker
First of all, painted with a hallucinogenic drug? What kind of people have access to whatever you have to do to paint someone's throat with a hallucinogenic drug? And what kind of drug could literally drive you insane? Is he insane? Well, so then I Googled it because I was asking myself the same questions.
00:10:38
Speaker
Google like what type of hallucinogenic drug painted on the throat could drive one insane What type of hallucinogenic drug could destroy the nervous system? The results are are just weird because of the word paint throws me off Right and I don't know if like that means that
00:11:00
Speaker
duplicate substance you would huff. I don't know if that's like something on the outside that would soak in to the nervous system. Again, sleuthounds, we are not familiar with the drug world. So we are very confused by this terminology. Yeah, I don't know what that means either. Let us know. Yeah.
00:11:25
Speaker
And then maybe like you said, maybe he is just crazy and this is all in his head, which could be a possibility. That's what I'm thinking right now. Ruth could tell that Chuck was scared. And she said in several interviews that he did look terrified. And as you can probably infer, Chuck wasn't, since he wasn't giving a lot of information, Ruth was begging him for that information. But he was
00:11:53
Speaker
very tight-lipped, not trying to be punny there, get it? But he didn't share a whole lot. And he just kept rotting over and over again, asking Ruth to move his car. He wanted it hidden and out of sight. And when she's like, why the heck do I need to move your car at two o'clock in the morning? He simply wrote that he didn't want them to know that he had returned home because they would be looking for him. I'd be like, who is they?
00:12:23
Speaker
Yeah. And she did ask that, but he just kept telling her pretty much the same thing over and over again. Like the less you know, the less likelihood that they are going to try to hurt you or the kids. And so he really didn't give any information than that. She did move the car. And when she gets back, she's like, please.
00:12:44
Speaker
Let's go to the police. Let's call a doctor again. Like we need to take extra steps. And he just kept telling her or writing to her the quote, the less I know, the less likelihood there would be of anyone hurting me or the children is what she said. Wow. Oh, my gosh. I don't know how I would react at this point because first of all, what he's saying sounds
00:13:12
Speaker
Crazy. I mean, this does not sound like real life. But then at the same time, if he's terrified, I would probably be terrified.
00:13:23
Speaker
And he'd be terrified because he could potentially die for whatever he's saying is on his throat, so that's another level of that. Plus there's people looking for him and potentially your kids, so that would be scary. See, when you add the kids into the mix, that's when I think you're like, okay, well, whatever precautions I have to take, I have to take. Yeah.
00:13:48
Speaker
And so they were very careful and over the next week, Ruth actually nursed Chuck back to health herself. And Alison, this woman literally was taking an eyedropper, putting water in it, placing that in his mouth so that he could drink small amounts of water at a time. Like this was the state that he was in, that the man could not even use a straw to drink water out of a cup. But did he think doing so was gonna like,
00:14:15
Speaker
caused this hallucinogenic drug to kill him? So I didn't read a whole lot about, other than the tithes on his ankle and his hands, about the state that he was in. There was only one article that said he had been beaten and physically abused. Only one article out of all those said that.
00:14:40
Speaker
I mean, I'm sure he didn't come home looking, you know, the picture of health. Right. But I'm wondering if it's like what you said and more about precautionary thing, then he just may not have been able to do it. Right. Maybe not a broken jaw. It's like fearful.
00:14:59
Speaker
why he's wanting her to do this. Yeah. And as she nurse sent back to health, she slowly found out more information about the air quotes them and even her own husband. Oh, like a hidden life. Yeah. Oh, okay. All right.
00:15:19
Speaker
So Chuck, through written communication, of course, began to hint to her that he had a secret identity as an agent for the federal government and had been involved in organized crime. What? How long had they been married and they've got all these kids? And she had no idea. Which I guess if you're a secret agent, then he's doing pretty good. That's what I was going to say. He's pretty good at his job. Yeah. Because if he kept his secret identity, a secret from his wife and kids, that's
00:15:48
Speaker
Pretty good. And he wrote to her that they took his Treasury identification, so his Department of Treasury ID card that she didn't know that he had, but he had it for this secret agent job. Huh.
00:16:09
Speaker
And she explained that he didn't give much more detail because, again, he just kept saying, you know, the less you know, the better and that type of stuff. But he kept assuring her that if anything happened to him, a letter detailing everything and the person's responsible had been left with his father and would be released to the press. So I don't know if he kind of.
00:16:32
Speaker
you know, gave his dad that information ahead of time. Like I could be in danger. Here's this letter. If anything happens to me, go to the press with it. Or if he had just, the dad had a letter and maybe in the letter it said that I'm not sure how that communication went down, but he's telling her, you know, if something were to happen to me, there's a letter that will have all of the details about this secret identity and my involvement in organized crime and the people that I think would be responsible for my death.
00:17:02
Speaker
See, that means his put his dad a danger. If his dad knows the truth and then if his dad doesn't know the truth yet and just has a letter, then part of me would be like, well, how come I don't have a, you know, like I want to know this stuff. I'm your spouse. And maybe that's the thing, you know, he didn't want to put her and the kids in danger. And so he's like, I'll just leave it with my dad so that, you know, they would have no ties back to you. Right.
00:17:30
Speaker
And like I mentioned, there was the one article that said he was tortured. He told her he was tied to a chair and he escaped from the VIM near the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. But I only found that in one article.
00:17:47
Speaker
As you can imagine, following this event, Chuck became increasingly paranoid. This typically well-shaven businessman grew a longer and ruelly beard. He began religiously, driving his daughters to and from school. And not only did he arrange this pickup and drop-off schedule, but he also told the school administrators that no one else, no one, but him was allowed to pick the girls up from school.
00:18:16
Speaker
Wow. I mean, this if it is in his head, it's really ingrained in his head. Because I mean, the unruly beard and all of that either he's so anxious, or he's wanting to drastically change his appearance. And then that protection of his kids to say nobody else can pick them up. Who is he afraid is going to stop by there?
00:18:43
Speaker
Mm-hmm, and I think the beard and stuff would be an attempt to change his appearance because I think at this point He's pretty sure he's being followed and I'm wondering if whoever they are Maybe he's worried they would potentially try to take the girls because remember it's not team 77 So it's not like now when we have to give a driver's license and be on a list right heads up, right?
00:19:07
Speaker
And so I'm wondering if it maybe was something like that. And he keeps reminding Ruth, you know, if something happens to me, my dad has these letters. And Alison, he even began wearing a bulletproof vest under all of his clothing. Oh my gosh.
Paranoia and Mafia Connections
00:19:22
Speaker
Yeah. He's terrified. The terror. Wow. And if you remember, I mentioned just a few minutes earlier that Chuck told Ruth about being involved in organized crime.
00:19:37
Speaker
And when I think about organized crime, I don't necessarily go to the state of Arizona. It's just not- No, I just think of the mob, which makes me think of New York, New Jersey, like Northeast. But apparently in the 1970s, the mafia established Arizona as a narcotics pipeline and a haven for money laundering. Oh, there you go then. So on their postcards, I'm pretty sure. Just kidding.
00:20:03
Speaker
But more than 500 racketeers set up shop there, and what made Arizona so attractive was a state law which allowed anyone to buy a plan through numbered blind trust accounts. So in a short version, this meant they could launder money and it really couldn't be traced.
00:20:21
Speaker
So Arizona became a hotspot for people of a certain business type one might say. Yeah, a very specific business type. Yes. And Chuck's paranoia wasn't completely unwarranted because Chuck did own his own escrow business and has an escrow agent, which by definition is a neutral third party entity that holds onto funds and assets related to the transaction
00:20:45
Speaker
until both parties have satisfied their contractual obligations and a cell, like a real estate cell can be closed. So he's like that middle buffer person. And as that person Chuck would have had
00:20:59
Speaker
or I guess Chuck could have been available for those types of clients in this money transaction, either knowingly or not knowingly, but many, many people believe it was knowingly. And Ruth knew very little of her husband's work in regards to money laundering and then eventually some other, hmm,
00:21:25
Speaker
business escapades, but she said, quote, Chuck mentioned to me once that there was money laundering going on, but nothing that he himself was involved in. He told me the less the girls and you know, the better off you'll be, end quote. And I just feel like that's something like a drug lord daddy would say. I can't tell you what's in the package, Billy, because the less you know, the better it is for you. So this is a line he's used before.
00:21:55
Speaker
Obviously, the less you know, the better off you'll be. At some point, if I'm Ruth, I'm going to be like, maybe you won't be very well off if you don't tell me what the heck is going on. If you don't tell me. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to start stalking you if you don't know what you're doing. But you can see if Chuck had done work with these organized crime bosses,
00:22:25
Speaker
Why he could be extra paranoid returning to his quote unquote normal daily routines. Yeah. Because if he has made some of these people mad, these people do not play around. No. And he did have reason to be paranoid and that paranoia was justified because Chuck disappeared again in June of 1977. What?
00:22:52
Speaker
I told you this one is like up and down. Disappeared for a couple of days, shows back up in plastic handcuffs, missing a shoe, saying his throat is painted with hallucinogenic drugs that might drive him insane, becomes so paranoid that they are going to figure out where he is and come after him again. And for all the precautions that he took, he disappears again. Yeah. Okay.
00:23:20
Speaker
Does he come back from this one? I guess I'll have to wait and find out. Yeah, you have to wait. Again, I neither read nor heard much, if anything, about the search for Chuck in those initial second disappearance days. But given that Chuck had already disappeared once and returned in a horrific state, Ruth, I'm sure, was like assuming the worst. I mean, you have to be, right?
00:23:46
Speaker
I'm laughing because not because the situation is funny, but of how crazy this story is that we even have to say, you know, in his second disappearance. I mean, that it's unfathomable. Let me tell you this story or this case, the first
00:24:12
Speaker
quarter of it, which we've gone through. It's very weird. I feel like this one's different than a lot of the ones that we've covered on here. But the last two thirds of this or three fourths or whatever is there are so many moments when I was researching this, but I was like, what the heck? This can't be right. Yeah. Really? Okay. This happened.
00:24:38
Speaker
Wow. Well, now I'm intrigued even more. Days passed and the Morgan family didn't receive any signs of Chuck returning home. In fact, it looked like this time no one was going to ever figure out what happened to him. Then suddenly out of the blue, nine days after Chuck's second disappearance, Ruth received a very weird telephone call. So Ruth's gone nearly two weeks without hearing hot nor hair.
00:25:06
Speaker
Yeah. From her husband or anybody that would know anything about his whereabouts. And when she picks up the phone, there's a woman on the other end. Okay. This unidentified woman called Ruth and said, quote, check is all right. Ecclesiastes 12, one through eight, and then literally hung up the phone before Ruth could ask anything else.
00:25:32
Speaker
Okay, so what are those verses? Is it a clue? So naturally, I had to know what it said because I was like, oh, I need to know because I like you. I was like, okay, this is definitely a clue and I'm going to have to figure this out because it's interesting.
00:25:57
Speaker
And we're not the only ones that felt that way. Investigators also thought that this passage was some type of code or clue into understanding what exactly happened to Chuck. So I thought that maybe reading this in a few different biblical translations would be helpful. Oh, that's true. Because sometimes even a single word difference could change, you know, especially if it's a clue. Yeah.
00:26:23
Speaker
Yeah. And I think if you're using, let's say the King James Version, that could be more difficult to understand than if you're reading like the NIV, which has more common language. So I think if we could read it in more common language, maybe we could understand the deeper meaning of the passage. Right. And I was actually curious if a certain translation of the Bible was more popular in 1977, because I figured that would have been the version this woman would have been referring to.
00:26:52
Speaker
And so I was like, well, I want to read the version that she was most likely reading. I'm going to guess King James version. Well, I tried to find if there were somebody out there who was tracking the most popular versions either of like a century or a decade or whatever. But there was nothing like that. I did find overwhelmingly that the King James version is still to this day the most popular version of the
00:27:23
Speaker
Bible, followed by the new international version. And I think this is like a little side note that really has nothing to do with, well, it kind of does, but I actually have a lot of different translations of my Bible. I typically take to church the NIV.
00:27:42
Speaker
But I have others that I'll cross-reference if I'm confused or words aren't making sense or things like that. And one of those is the New Living Translation Bible. And I use this one on particularly difficult passages because it aims to, according to BibleGateway.com,
00:28:01
Speaker
quote, to convey the meaning of the ancient Hebrew and Greek texts as accurately as possible to the modern reader. The New Living Translation is based on the most recent scholarship in the theory of translation. The challenge for the translators was to create a text that would make the same impact in the life of modern readers that the original text had for the original readers.
00:28:20
Speaker
So since this passage could potentially be a code for something we'll discuss later on in the show, I wanted to read it to you, Allison, and Irish Luthounds in two different translations. So first we're going to do the King James translation. Statistically, this was likely the translation the caller was referring to. And then we'll do the New Living Translation because it's more modern English. And I'm wondering if we'll get a different meaning from that. Okay. Ready.
00:28:47
Speaker
Okay, so here it is in the King James Version.
00:28:51
Speaker
Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. While the sun or the light or the moon or the stars be not darkened, or the clouds return after the rain, and the days from the keepers of the house shall tremble and the strong man shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, and the doors shall be shut in the streets.
00:29:17
Speaker
when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of a bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low. Also, when they shall be afraid of which is high, and fear shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden,
00:29:33
Speaker
and desire shall fall, because man goeth through his long home, and the mourners go about to the streets. Or ever the silver cord be loosened, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel be broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity." Okay. Okay.
00:29:57
Speaker
So if you're like me, I'm like, I would need to read that like three times and potentially take notes to really be able to understand what that said. Right. Yeah. Let's hear the modern version. Yeah. So here it is in the NLT. Don't let the excitement of youth cause you to forget your creator.
00:30:18
Speaker
Honor him and your youth before you grow old and say, life's not pleasant anymore. Remember him before the light of the sun, the moon and the stars is dim in your old eyes, and rain clouds continually darken the sky.
00:30:28
Speaker
Remember him before your legs, the guards of your house start to tremble, and before your shoulders, the strong man stoop. Remember him before your teeth, your few remaining servants stop grinding, and before your eyes, the women looking through the windows see dimly. Remember him before the door to life's opportunities is closed and the sound of work fades. Now you rise up at the first chirping of the birds, but then all the sounds will grow faint.
00:30:52
Speaker
Remember him before you become fearful of falling and worry about danger in the streets. Before your hair turns white like an almond tree in bloom and you drag along without energy like a dying grasshopper. And the Cape Berry no longer inspires sexual desire. Remember him before you near the grave your everlasting home and remember the mourners that will weep for you at your funeral.
00:31:12
Speaker
Yes, remember your creator now while you're young, before the silver cord of life snaps and the golden bowl is broken. But don't wait until the water jar is smashed at the spring and the pulley is broken to the well. For then the dust will return to the earth and the spirit will return to God who gave it. Everything is meaningless, says the teacher. Completely meaningless. Okay. I understood the words, but I don't really understand what this has to do with poor old Chuck.
00:31:43
Speaker
Well, I feel like this is a very in-depth metaphor, right? Okay. But I, again, I'm thinking Chuck is a successful businessman. Are they trying to say, you know, give glory to the person who's responsible, like who gave you these opportunities, you know? But then I feel like that is not really
00:32:09
Speaker
the mood I'm getting from these disappearances, that it's like to teach you some moral lesson. No, definitely not. So like you, I'm still confused and I'm sure Ruth was worried about Chuck. And then this phone call, she's now like, what? Right. What is going on? Yeah.
00:32:34
Speaker
And I think you would become obsessive over this, right? I mean, I don't think I would quit reading it because you know that she was thinking there's a meaning to this. What am I missing? Exactly. That's exactly what you would say. You would be like, OK, maybe if I read it one more time, I'll see something that I didn't see before. But then you get a line which says everything is meaningless. And that's kind of that has to be how she's feeling.
00:33:04
Speaker
And you know, I wonder if they brought like a theological expert onto this investigation because it would be interesting to hear someone who is more knowledgeable in this subject beyond a minor in college like I was to say what this passage really means because then I wonder if we would have a deeper understanding of how this could potentially be some type of clue. Like they might know something about like the ancient Hebrew word for something and like an alternate meaning.
00:33:34
Speaker
And even though the New Living Translation makes more sense to us, there could be things that are lost in the translation from the King James Version.
00:33:46
Speaker
So those clues could be, like you said, in words that are in the King James version, but we're losing them in other translations. So that could be interesting too. But just two days after this mysterious phone call, Allison, the Morgan family got the news no one likes to hear.
The Death of Chuck Morgan: Suicide or Murder?
00:34:03
Speaker
Chuck was found dead, shot to death in spite of the bulletproof vest he was wearing. Oh man. Does that mean, oh no. Was he shot in the head?
00:34:16
Speaker
Yeah, and it was weird. As you probably guessed. Oh my gosh. Okay. So his body was found in the desert just 30 feet off the highway in the San Juan Springs area. And investigators believed he was only dead for about 12 hours before he was discovered. So it's not like he'd been out there for days. He's been missing for days, but he's only been dead for about 12 hours. Yeah, he's been missing for almost two weeks. Mm-hmm.
00:34:46
Speaker
Now you said, so is this 12 hours after she calls police about the phone call? I don't even know that she initially. Yeah. I'm not sure about that.
00:35:04
Speaker
But I do know, like you said, okay, he's wearing a bulletproof vest. So how then was he shot? Cause he's not obviously going to be shot in the torso. No, he was shot a single time in the head, but he was shot in the back of the head with a bullet from his own 357 Magnum, which was left lying beside him. Hmm. Is it.
00:35:31
Speaker
could they tell, was this a wound that he could, could it have been self-inflicted? From the angle. There's theories on that. Okay. But you know, you would expect either way, if this is suicide, or if this is an attack, that there will be fingerprints on the gun. Right. But there were none. Not just, not anyone's.
00:35:56
Speaker
then somebody else had to have been there. Then it couldn't be him, because if it were him, he can't wipe off his fingerprints. Thank you. And I say this when we talk about this suicide theory, because how the heck do we explain away the fingerprints? You can. In that point second before he dies, there was no time. No.
00:36:20
Speaker
No time. And it's not like he was wearing gloves or something like that. No. Yeah, so it can't be suicide.
00:36:27
Speaker
There was gunshot residue found on his left hand indicating that he had fired the weapon. In his car, police found a note that had directions to the crime scene written in Chuck's handwriting. Also in the car, there were some weapons, some ammunition, a CB radio, and the weirdest thing in the car. Oh, and there was a pair of sunglasses that were found, but they didn't belong to Chuck. And the weirdest thing in the car was a piece of one of his teeth
00:36:56
Speaker
was found wrapped in a white handkerchief placed on the back seat. What? Okay, so several things right now where I'm gonna say and I know you're gonna get into theories here in a minute.
00:37:11
Speaker
But several weird things that are just like bing, bing, bing, bing, bing in my brain. And that is, number one, I already am saying it can't be suicide because his fingerprints would have been on the gun. So there had to have been somebody else there to wipe said fingerprints off of the gun. Second, I feel like if he has directions written down to this place,
00:37:38
Speaker
I would infer, the only time I write directions down is if someone has told me where to go and I need to write down those so then I can look up how to get there, right? So that would tell me he's going to be meeting someone and he's got all these weapons in the car. The sunglasses don't belong to him.
00:38:03
Speaker
So obviously they belong to somebody. Could that have been somebody else who's in the car? And if something has happened and I have chipped a tooth, right? And let's say, first of all, I don't know why you'd keep it, but let's say you'd say, you know what? I'm gonna keep this chipped tooth that I've got here and I'm gonna wrap it in a handkerchief. I wouldn't then put it in the back seat. Because if I'm the only one in the car, I'm gonna set it in the seat beside me.
00:38:30
Speaker
So there are just many weird things. Just wait until you hear my thoughts on this. Okay. Small little fact about my little sleuth hound and me. We could live on smoothies. My girl makes one every morning for breakfast to take on the bus and sometimes she treats me by making me one too that I can bring to work. But
00:38:58
Speaker
The clunky blender was always a pain. Lug it out, put it to blend, waking up the entire house in the process, wash it afterwards, leave it setting on the counter to dry, and then go through the hassle of putting it away just to do the same thing the next morning. Well now, with the BlendJet 2 portable blender, the process has been so much easier.
00:39:24
Speaker
Like Allison said, the Blendjet 2 is portable, so that means you can blend up a smoothie at work, a protein shake at the gym, or even a margarita on the beach. I keep mine downstairs at my work from home office, so it is handy for me if I decide to make a smoothie for breakfast or for lunch. It's small enough that it will fit in your cup holder, but powerful enough to blast through tough ingredients like ice and frozen fruit with ease.
00:39:52
Speaker
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00:40:07
Speaker
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00:40:32
Speaker
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00:40:56
Speaker
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00:41:21
Speaker
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00:41:34
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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00:43:00
Speaker
Okay, so what's crazy is, and you guys obviously don't know this, but in the show notes that we have, Alison's little blurb about all of her questions came before these ads that we just read, so there was like a page and a half of ads, so she could not see what I had coming next, which is questions that are so... All of my type of questions. More shit.
00:43:29
Speaker
Great minds think alike, Maggie. Yeah, that's exactly true. And, you know, there's not a whole lot of evidence at the scene where the body was found, but there was enough evidence that, you know, we do question a lot of things. So if there was gun residue on his hand, we can assume that he had to shoot the gun. Yeah, but he could have shot it at somebody.
00:43:54
Speaker
Right. And that's what I think happened because if he was shot in the back of the head and there were no fingerprints on the guns, my first inclination is that that couldn't have been him because he would have had no time to wipe some fingerprints off. So obviously I think he was shooting at someone. That's how the residue went. He was overpowered and then shot by his own gun.
00:44:20
Speaker
And we're gonna talk more about that when we do get to theories. Or they could have even grabbed his hand and like, you know, brought it around, you know, to the back of his head and pulled the trigger. And then maybe they were like, oh my gosh, what if some of my like even partial fingerprints got on it? And so they wiped the gun down. Okay, so when we get to theories, I'm gonna need you to remember this.
00:44:46
Speaker
So we can talk about it more in detail with how it fits into some of these series because that's a really good point. Okay. And then, you know, you talked about why are you drawing a map to your own demise, essentially, or writing down all these directions. I think like you that he was going to meet someone. And so who is he meeting and what is the purpose of said meeting? Obviously, it's not good if he's bringing guns. Yeah, and we'll find out that's not all he brought here in just a second.
00:45:15
Speaker
And then there's a CB radio in the car. And this is like, I'm like, is this yours? Is this someone else? It was 1977. So maybe it was his, and if it was, who's he communicating with on that CB radio? These people that he's going to meet? That's kind of weird. And then in regards to the tooth, were investigators able to tell anything from the tooth? Did it just naturally fall out? Did he have a decaying tooth? Was it knocked out?
00:45:43
Speaker
Were there fingerprints on the handkerchief? Yeah. Why was it in the back seat? Yeah. And the thing that also gets me is that it was wrapped in a handkerchief because if I punch you in the face and your tooth falls out and I murder you, I'm not going to carefully wrap your tooth in a handkerchief and place it on your back. Nor give you time to do it. Yeah. Yeah.
00:46:08
Speaker
That's weird. So I have to believe that Chuck was the one that would wrap, had wrapped the tooth, right? That's the only thing that really makes sense to me. Maybe I'm going conspiracy theory here.
00:46:21
Speaker
Maybe he was taken by whoever they were, and they actually had him for a few days. But he thinks he's going to meet, because if he's a secret agent, maybe he thinks he's going to meet his handler, somebody who's on his side, and they're going to help him.
00:46:38
Speaker
And so they're like, hey, bring everything that you need. And maybe he, you know, they knocked his tooth out before, but he has it. And so he wraps it and he gets there and he thinks that they're going to like work up some plan on how to save him. But whoever he went there to meet is actually working with the bad guys. So you say conspiracy theory, but that's really not that far off from some of the theories we're going to talk about. Okay. All right.
00:47:05
Speaker
I'm excited to hear another question I had is regarding the sunglasses, because I don't know about you, but sometimes my hair gets caught like in the arm of the glasses, you know, yeah, close and open, and it'll pull. And I'm wondering if there were hair fibers on these glasses.
00:47:26
Speaker
that could potentially be traced to someone. Or were these just their, his daughter's sunglasses and the, no one thought to ask, you know? Well, here's the thing. Like you said, I mean, you'd think there'd be something cause last I checked, you don't like to get sunglasses off your head. You don't, you know, bend your head down and just shake your head to get them to fall off. You pull them off with your fingers. Yeah, so there should be a partial print at least. At least. Strangely,
00:47:56
Speaker
And I do mean strangely because there's a lot of strange things about this case, but this is strange. Okay. Chuck had clipped a $2 bill inside his underwear.
00:48:15
Speaker
Oh my goodness. Just when you think this case cannot get any weirder, it just delves right down. It just, it just goes another step down. Okay. A $2 bill clipped inside of his underwear. And you know, when you're first hearing this, this seems really odd. Who's going to clip money into their undies? It's weird.
00:48:45
Speaker
But if you are a secret agent, that's a pretty smart place to play something you may not want a potential attacker to find. I don't think they're going to check inside your boxers. Right. So if you were going to leave a clue for somebody, maybe you would stick it in your underwear because they might check your pockets. But I don't think they're going to pull your drawers down. Okay.
00:49:13
Speaker
Weird, but I'm following you. And I say this because written on the bill were seven Spanish names from the letters A to G and
00:49:27
Speaker
Allison, and I don't know if these names were code. I don't know if they were people that he was meeting or involved with. I don't know if they were clients. I don't know. We don't know anything about these people or these names other than that. He had written them on a $2 bill. Okay.
00:49:47
Speaker
And there was an even bigger shocker, if you can believe it, on this $2 bill. And I don't even want to ruin what it is. So I posted a picture for you to look at if you go to the next page and I want you, it's just a clip of the $2 bill, not the whole thing, to tell the sleuth ounce what you see. Uh, okay. I'm kind of freaking out. Cause obviously I say the names, but the part that's freaky,
00:50:17
Speaker
is that it says Ecclesiastes written on it. And then the number 12. And then on the serial number for the dollar bill, there's an arrow going to the one through to a number eight. And the woman who flipping called him said Ecclesiastes 12, one through eight. Yes.
00:50:47
Speaker
Obviously, this is important and means more than just this random lady offering some type of comfort to Chuck's wife. Like this has a meaning, right? Well, now if I'm Ruth, I'm like, okay, clearly I missed something before because here it is again.
00:51:05
Speaker
Right, it's important. That's not a coincidence. A random lady that doesn't give you her name is not gonna call you and quote the same verse that your now dead husband has written on a $2 bill that he has folded up and placed inside his undies. Oh my gosh, yeah. He's telling us something. Yeah. But now we have this added weird thing of the seven names.
00:51:34
Speaker
And on the back of the $2 bill, the signers of the Declaration of Independence were numbered one through seven, which is weird. So we have two lists of seven, one of seven names and the other of seven signers of the Declaration of Independence. Yeah. And we also have a crude map drawn on the $2 bill, which showed several roads between Tucson and the Mexican border and they led
00:52:02
Speaker
to this area that was notorious for smuggling. Like they met, they were labeled and they met at this area that was a notorious smuggling area. Okay. So like I get with a map, okay, that's clear. It's clearly marking this drug smuggling. You know, he was talking about, you know, being involved with organized crime and drugs and things like that. There's clear connection.
00:52:29
Speaker
It's the Ecclesiastes 12, one through eight that is still completely throwing me for a loop. And I think when we think of a map, like I think you're picturing more than what it is. It's not like a map, so to speak. There it is. If you can see it. That's what they're calling a map. Those lines are rows and that circle is like. At least they're labeled.
00:52:59
Speaker
Yeah, but I do agree. The Bible verse is like really the stopper here for me. Right. And as if dealing with the death of her husband were not enough, Ruth soon learned of another mysterious phone call, but this one was placed to the police.
The Enigma of "Green Eyes" and FBI Involvement
00:53:17
Speaker
Two days after Chuck's death, an anonymous woman spoke to an officer at the county sheriff's department on the telephone.
00:53:25
Speaker
She claimed that Chuck was supposed to meet her at a local motel shortly before he died. So she's like, we met up at this hotel. Meet her for what purpose? I don't know why. And I read nowhere why he was meeting this woman, but she claimed. So she could be a secret agent. Yeah. Or she could be a phony baloney. Okay.
00:53:53
Speaker
She claimed that her nickname was Green Eyes, a nickname given to her by Chuck, which seems very secret agent-ish, you got a name. And she says that she was the same woman that called Ruth several days, months earlier, saying that Chuck is okay, Ecclesiastes 12, one through eight. Okay, so that makes me think secret agent, because if he has that marked down, and she had said that same thing,
00:54:22
Speaker
then obviously there's, yeah, exactly. She told police she had something helpful for their investigation. She claimed that when she met Chuck at the motel, he had a briefcase with him. And in that briefcase, he was carrying a very large sum of cash. I read there were two different totals. One said $60,000 was in the briefcase. One said $90,000. Either way,
00:54:52
Speaker
There's a crap ton of money in that case. Yeah. And when she asked Chuck why he was carrying such a big wad of money around, he told her that the money was to buy him out of a hit that had been placed on his head. Oh, and since money isn't found at the scene. And I'm wondering if that map
00:55:16
Speaker
was where he was supposed to go for this exchange. And then they take the money, but they still kill him. Yeah. So many bizarre things happened shortly after Greena's phone call to the police. Chuck's impounded car was broken into not long after that call. And weirdly, his car was in police possession at the time it was broken into. Okay. Obviously, clearly not being protected while in possession.
00:55:47
Speaker
Around that same time his office was ransacked and one of the weirdest incidents in this case happened three weeks after Chuck's death. Two men claiming to be FBI agents arrived at the Morgan home. They quickly flashed their badges and told Ruth that they had to search the home and pretty much like pushed her out of the way. Ruth reported that there was nothing routine in her eyes about the search that these two
00:56:15
Speaker
air quotes agents conducted. She said they left her home in shambles. They pulled drawers out and just emptied the contents in the floor. They completely wiped out contents of cabinets and just left the contents everywhere. Items were all over the floor and her house was a mess.
00:56:37
Speaker
She said they left quickly and never told her if they found what they were looking for or even what they were looking for when they came in. And to this day, Allison, we don't know if those were truly FBI agents or two men posing to be FBI agents to gain access to their home. Wow. Well, this at least tells me that it wasn't that Chuck was crazy at the beginning.
00:57:03
Speaker
You know, everything he was saying was so far-fetched, but then everything that we know is actually happening after he's gone is completely far-fetched. So, it fits. I feel like this needs to be... I almost feel as though I'm reading a plot of the X-Files. Yeah. This is very... It's not supernatural, obviously, but I'm lacking the word to describe it. It's just so...
00:57:33
Speaker
crazy for a better word. It seems out of the realm of possibility. They say for a story to be good, even one that seems far-fetched, you have to have that suspension of disbelief, where it's just believable enough. But with this story, it's almost so preposterous that you're thinking this can't be real. Yeah. It's almost unbelievable.
00:58:03
Speaker
And again, Allison, I have some questions. One major one was, like you said, how is a car getting broken into while in police possession? And I know these probably go into lots that just have chain length fences and barbed wire around them. They're not in a super secure area. But I would assume that they would be monitored by video footage. Right.
00:58:30
Speaker
I don't know. Also, another question that I have is how do we not know if these are FBI agents? Do we not keep record of who they send on searches? Should there not have been like a traceable search warrant if this was the case?
00:58:47
Speaker
Unless he, if, if Chuck Morgan is really part of some covert operation within the FBI or something like that, then maybe his, you know, fellow team members, it's so covert that it wouldn't, there wouldn't be record of it. That's the only thing I could think. Like there can't be a paper trail, which kind of makes sense for some stuff we learn later on.
00:59:17
Speaker
Because Ruth says that, you know, it was just so quick, she didn't even think to ask for a search warrant. Oh, right. And like you said, there may not even be one. And like you said, who is this green eyes? Yeah. And in all of these years, why has she not come forward unless she too is a secret agent? And do you remember that letter that Chuck kept telling his family about? Oh, yeah, that he left with his dad. Where the heck's that letter? Yeah, wouldn't his dad be like, oh, right here it is.
00:59:47
Speaker
Yeah, and we should know who killed him. What happened? We should know all that now. Yeah, we should have names. Yeah, this should be a solved case. I had forgotten about the letter. Obviously, it was never discovered then. Right. And it wasn't. So there are a couple theories, flash sub theories, I guess we can call them that we're going to talk about today. Okay.
01:00:11
Speaker
And there aren't like super fantasiful ones. Most of these, you're like, yep, yep, or yep. Like, they could pretty much, well, one, you're going to be like, no. And that is the theory. And that's the theory that law enforcement claim to be true, which is that Judd killed himself.
01:00:34
Speaker
Yeah, no, I'm out. I'm out on the theory. I told you why. Like you said, maybe technically he did kill himself because somebody pulled the gun around and like made him pull the trigger. Right. But in my mind, that is not suicide. That's not suicide. That's murder. Exactly.
01:00:52
Speaker
So here is what the police are basing this theory on. We know that there was gunpowder on Chuck's hand. We know without a shadow of a doubt that that gunpowder on his hand came from the gun that was at the scene of the crime and that the gun that was there was Chuck's and was used to kill him. So we know all of the drugs. And so the police are like, obviously this is a suicide.
01:01:16
Speaker
What I haven't mentioned, so we know that Chuck had gun residue on his left hand. Okay. What I haven't mentioned as of yet is that Chuck was right handed. Oh my goodness. And they think it's a suicide?
01:01:32
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm not a gun expert, obviously. Every time Anthony takes me shooting, I squeal like a little tiny girl. Every time I pull the trigger, it scares the pee out of me every time. But pulling a trigger on certain types of gun takes a lot of strength for a person. There are some that we shoot that I'm like, I need like a third hand to help me pull this trigger.
01:01:58
Speaker
And that's with my dominant hand. So there's no way I could pull a trigger with my non-dominant hand, especially when it's behind my head. And that's what I was going to say. I think if you're going to commit an act like that, and you know you're going there to commit this act, and it's intentional because it's suicide, you're going to use your dominant hand
01:02:25
Speaker
There's no legitimate reason that I can come up with as to why, if this were an intentional act of suicide, you would say, you know what? I'm going to throw everybody off. I'm going to use the wrong hand. And I'm going to shoot myself in the back of the head. Right. Yeah. It just doesn't add up.
01:02:47
Speaker
And I was reading this over to Anthony before we recorded today and I was selling him the type of gun that Chuck had at the scene. And Anthony said it would have been very hard to handle that gun with your non-dominant hand. So I just don't buy it. And then, like I said, I think that would be a very
01:03:11
Speaker
uncommon way to commit suicide killing by shooting in the back of the head. And I did try to find a statistic on it. I wasn't able to, but I did find an article publication on the National Library of Medicine called Suicide by Gunshot at the back of the head with a muzzle loading shooting revolver and homemade ammunition. So there was like this
01:03:33
Speaker
really bizarre instance that warranted this article. But in that article, it talks about how very rare that type of suicide is. I mean, that's not saying he didn't commit suicide this way. But it's just not your typical go to way. Right. And like,
01:03:54
Speaker
And the fact that there are no fingerprints. I mean, that's not something that you can explain. You can't, yes, you cannot explain away the no fingerprints thing. And that's where I was, what I was getting ready to say, like the, I can get, I can believe
01:04:09
Speaker
that he committed suicide in this very rare way with his left hand instead of his dominant hand. I can believe that. But when you tell me there are no fingerprints on a gun that he was supposed to have used to kill himself, I have a hard time believing that because he could not have cleaned off the gun unless, again, this is some type of cover-up, which I don't understand how or why. Right.
01:04:37
Speaker
And we have those sunglasses in his car that weren't his. So who the heck were those? His tooth is in the car. That makes no sense. And so I feel that maybe there was some type of scuffle and that led to the gunshot in the back of the head. Right. And I feel like
01:04:59
Speaker
With the clue of the $2 bill in his underwear, saying the same thing as Green Eyes is saying also tells you that there's something deeper going on than just a guy who's, and if he were going to commit suicide, I don't know. I don't buy it.
01:05:23
Speaker
I mean, you could say, right, if he were involved in these organized crime families, those are really hard. They're like gangs to leave that type of activity. And so maybe there was this hit out for him and he knows like there's no getting out of this. And so he does kill himself. I mean, he had, you know, reason to, I guess, if that's the right way to say.
01:05:52
Speaker
because, you know, he's trying to get away from these people that are killing him and maybe he thinks this is the only way out. But then how's the ring of the fingerprints? Yeah. Yeah. It's back to the fingerprints. So the next theory slash sub theories, because there's multiple in this is the idea that he was murdered. Okay. I do believe this. I don't know how, but yes.
01:06:20
Speaker
And I think there's really two plausible responsible parties. Either it's gonna be he was killed in some type of government coverup or he was killed by these organized crime bosses. So that's kind of where I feel they fall. This is either a government thing or this is an organized crime thing. I'm feeling government thing.
01:06:47
Speaker
Okay. So listen, originally as I'm researching this, I'm like, Oh, these mafia men or whatever they're called killed him because he, that he turned on them and they killed him. But then after I researched, I also am like, it was the government. It was the government. Right.
01:07:08
Speaker
And especially, and I know this is bizarre and totally off the wall, but especially because his clues or whatever are written on his like Department of Treasury money. And didn't he say that he lost his like Department of Treasury ID?
01:07:31
Speaker
He said they stole it. Right. But we don't know who they are. So it could be somebody from the government. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are the organized crime people. And I feel it's so bizarre to me when I saw the back of the bill to see those signers of the Declaration of Independence and they're like numbered as if that's some sort of code.
01:08:01
Speaker
Okay, that's what I was gonna say. I'm wondering, maybe Green Eyes is a secret agent and- Green like money, green like money, like the eye on the pyramid. There's something. And then maybe like Thomas Jefferson, who was labeled number whatever, is another secret agent. I'm wondering if these are people involved in this. Maybe the 12, one through eight isn't
01:08:28
Speaker
Okay, maybe like it does have something to do with the Bible, but maybe the one through eight are like people, like it's their numbers or something. So we're going to talk about both the government theory and the mafia theory. Okay.
01:08:47
Speaker
So okay, there are many that believe Chuck was doing work for, like I said, at least two very large organized crime families in the area and that he actually was turning against them and helping the government. We know now that shortly before he died, he testified in a secret state investigation regarding illegal smuggling activity that was taking place on the U.S.-Mexico border near Tucson.
01:09:12
Speaker
And one source said that he was actually very reluctant to be a witness for the Arizona Attorney General's office. He didn't really want to be involved, but he was in this questioning of a now closed bank in regards to this like smuggling money laundering.
01:09:31
Speaker
So did this have something to do with the Department of Treasury badge that was stolen? You know, like you said, was he working for the Department of Treasury and he was sort of an informant for them and he made the organized crime people mad? Or maybe he felt, you know, if he's a reluctant witness,
01:09:57
Speaker
I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. I'm still feeling. I'm not feeling like it's the organized crime groups. Something in my gut is telling me it's not. Something in my gut is telling me it's some sort of one of his his own quote unquote his own who has turned on him.
01:10:20
Speaker
And his daughter alluded to the same thing. His daughter Megan said, quote, my father had a lot of information about people here in Tucson that could have been very detrimental. There was a lot of information about politicians, people who are still alive that work in our government. He had that information and they wanted to silence him, end quote. My gut's agreeing.
01:10:45
Speaker
And there's a lot really that points to this government coverup. And I, we both live, I think, in a very naive state of mind. It is very hard for me to picture the land that I love being like this, you know, like the government killing people.
01:11:09
Speaker
So for me to say this and feel in my heart that this could be what really happened, it takes a lot of information for me to get there. It's not just somewhere I go automatically. Exactly.
01:11:22
Speaker
So to go along with this government cover-up theory, there was this man named Don Devereaux who worked with Unsolved Mysteries to investigate Chuck's case. And he actually contacted the FBI to see what their investigation into Chuck's disappearance and death had wielded. Because at one point, there was FBI involvement.
01:11:45
Speaker
It was in very credible sources that the FBI was involved initially in this case. Yeah. And I mean, if he's an FBI agent, it makes sense that they would investigate the death of one of their own. But what doesn't make sense is that when he heard back from the FBI, they complained, they claimed that they had never heard of a Charles Chuck Morgan. Well, again,
01:12:14
Speaker
If he is in some sort of covert group, then they might say that they've never heard of him because on paper. It's secret. They can't have a paper trail. Right.
01:12:30
Speaker
Dawn said, quote, when I made a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI, they had never heard of Mr. Morgan, despite the fact that they had obviously opened an investigation. Despite the fact the FBI interviewed Mr. Morgan's attorney, they were all over this thing like a blanket for a while. But now they've never heard of the guy. He never existed. No card, no file, no nothing.
01:12:56
Speaker
There's a great likelihood that Mr. Morgan was, in fact, doing something with the government. I think this was a guy who was extremely naive about a lot of things. I think somebody blew his cover and he got killed."
01:13:13
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that'd be like me. You'd not make me a secret agent. I'd be. Oh, I know. I'd blab it in five minutes. Yeah. First off, I would be like, I'd be calling Anthony. Anthony, I'm a secret agent. Right. And then I'll be texting Allison. I'd be like, I don't know how to text Allison. I'd be like, you can't tell anyone that I'm a secret agent. Right. I know.
01:13:35
Speaker
Yeah. And then I would be immediately off because they would be tracing my text messages. Exactly. They'd be like, you lasted a whole five minutes. Yeah. Congratulations.
01:13:48
Speaker
If Chet Morgan was doing undercover work for the government, Don believes the clues he wrote on the $2 bill might have been an attempt to pass coded messages along to the FBI. He said, quote, I think the $2 bill provided the basis of some kind of code. What seemed to be missing, however, was the document that the $2 bill would unlock.
01:14:08
Speaker
If he was quietly providing assistance to the U.S. government and monitoring the activities of one or more major organized crime families, then he wasn't a villain. He was playing or he was a good guy and they and they need to know that. See, maybe, maybe. I know you didn't read anything about his dad and whatever.
01:14:33
Speaker
Maybe the letter that he left with his ad was what the $2 bill was supposed to decode. I think that too. And I think if it was coded, I mean, we've talked about some crazy codes on here. What was that? And on Patreon, once it hadn't even been solved and they're like thousands of years old.
01:14:53
Speaker
So if it was a coded message, it could literally look like purple ducks and dog cow move. Like it could be nonsense that was thrown away. But then we have the code and it would make sense. Right. Or the letter was a code to unbreak what was on the money. Either way. Yep. We're missing a piece of the puzzle. I'm telling you that letter's out there somewhere. He wouldn't have kept repeating it. And I think it wasn't important.
01:15:23
Speaker
wow i honestly think that this theory of murder is very likely i just don't know which scenario it is i know we've talked about which one we are leaning towards i almost wonder if chuck did meet okay so like we said green eyes
01:15:47
Speaker
Is this person reliable? So did this meeting at the hotel happen? Was she a potential prostitute? Was she somebody that was undercover? I feel like that is a big piece of this too. Can we really believe what she has said? Because if he did have this money, that
01:16:07
Speaker
turns the whole thing, like you said, he's like, Hey, I brought this $90,000 to get this hit off my head. And the guy's like, well, thanks for giving me the money and then turns around and also kills him, you know, so now he has the money and the hit money as well.
01:16:21
Speaker
Police found out that Chuck was registered at the Southside Hotel where he met women several times. And Ruth was asked a couple of times if he thought, or if she thought her husband was unfaithful. And she denied that. She said, a woman knows when her man has strayed and Chuck hasn't strayed for 19 years, end quote. But those women could have all been
01:16:48
Speaker
Oh they could have all been secret agents involved in the government some way. And I feel like what's leading me away from any sort of theory that she
01:17:01
Speaker
is a prostitute or is anything other than a secret agent is the fact that this woman calls Ruth and says the Ecclesiastes 12, 1 through 8. It would be different to me if the $2 bill that was penned inside of his underwear had that written in a woman's handwriting.
01:17:23
Speaker
Because then I would think, oh, maybe she met him there, she killed him, this could be crazy talk, this whatever. But the fact that she says that, but the writing on the $2 bill is his handwriting, that's what's making me think that it has to be code for something deeper and that there's a work relationship there. It's not a- And I think this lazy motel,
01:17:52
Speaker
Yeah. And I think a sleazy motel is an excellent location for undercover work. Oh, yeah. It's not going to be traced there easily. Because who wants to admit that they were at the sleazy motel and saw you there. Right. Exactly.
01:18:06
Speaker
So there are two things that I want to make you aware of before you give us your final thoughts. Okay. Through his investigation, Don discovered significant evidence that Morgan had indeed been involved in laundering huge sums of money linked to organized crime families. And obviously I'm not going to name them because whatever they're doing is working. So I'm just not going to bother them. Carry on. We don't want to die.
01:18:33
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Furthermore, between 1973 and his death in 1977, he had also facilitated the transfer of hundreds of millions, hundreds of millions between 1973 and 1977 in gold and platinum. Wow.
01:18:54
Speaker
And much of these activities were made possible by those fraudulent land deals that took advantage of the legality of Bontress. Many also argue that this exchange of gold and platinum was why Chuck was in such a remote area at the time, that that's where those types of exchanges took place.
01:19:21
Speaker
According to Jason Roberts online, quote, as the evidence mounted, Devereux uncovered a rapidly expanding network of players with connections to the case. Beyond the mob, there was a local sheriff's department, the FBI, the treasury department, exiled Vietnamese government officials, and even rogue CIA operatives. While the connections were not entirely clear, the scope was massive, end quote. Oh gosh. So if this is,
01:19:47
Speaker
a government coverup, it goes deep and wide. Yeah.
Dangerous Investigations and Government Conspiracies
01:19:52
Speaker
And Don's investigation into the disappearance and death of Chuck Morgan took a very sinister turn on May 14th, 1990. That day, a man named Doug Johnson left for work as normal, gets in his car, drives to his office. About an hour later, he was found dead, slumped over the front seat of his car in the company's parking lot.
01:20:15
Speaker
He'd been shot behind the left ear with a 25 caliber bullet. A single bullet casing, but no gun, was found at the scene. Though the medical examiner determined that the bullet was fired from more than 12 inches away from his head, on the left side, while the victim was right-handed, Doug Johnson's death was also declared a suicide. Oh no. No! It cannot be!
01:20:45
Speaker
And in that same Roberts article, the incident didn't immediately concerned on until he received a phone call from a fellow journalist. Because I mean, he's just like, all right, well, there's a dead guy in the parking lot, you know. And where's his gun? And why would you hold it 12 inches away from your head? And how are you going to do it left handed when you're right handed?
01:21:11
Speaker
Well, what really concerned on was when this journalist who had sources in the intelligence community conveyed to Don that Doug Johnson's death had been a botched hit attempt on Don himself being the original target. Oh my goodness. All for investigating this case for investigating Chuck Morgan's case.
01:21:39
Speaker
Yep, and he went on to say that there was still at the time an open contract on Don Devereaux's head. Interestingly, Don and Doug Johnson drove nearly identical vehicles and the murder scene was across the street from where Don Devereaux's home was. Witness protection. I'll be calling him up right now.
01:22:07
Speaker
Well, the government may be potentially. Oh, that's true. Yeah. Gosh. Yeah. Then what do you do? Move countries, I guess. I guess.
01:22:18
Speaker
And one last detail I think you need to know Allison revolves around another air quotes suicide and Don Devereaux. While Don has thus far avoided being killed, he was contacted by another journalist who believed that Chuck's case was connected to a government conspiracy theory. The two were scheduled to meet to discuss this government conspiracy. But before they could meet,
01:22:45
Speaker
This other man was found dead in the bathtub of his hotel room with 18 razor blades inflicted, razor blade inflicted gashes in his wrists. And his death was also ruled a suicide. With 18 gashes. Okay, well now I'm a little bit scared.
01:23:08
Speaker
to continue to tout my theory. So I will just say, because I think I've already said plenty, that I do not believe that this was a suicide. I do believe that it was a murder. I will leave it up to people who are far more capable than I to delve deeper into the group behind it.
01:23:37
Speaker
the possibilities. Yeah, right. And I think at this point, which Ruth is now deceased, but I think at this point, the family more so wants to have closure. You know, and I think even if they could figure out the
01:24:02
Speaker
if it was murder versus suicide, I think even having that nailed down concretely would give more closure than it just being left up in the air. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I agree.
01:24:16
Speaker
Everyone loves a good puzzle. I often find myself spending hours working on puzzles with my mom. That's one of my favorite Christmas traditions. But with our puzzles, I know there'll be a resolution. I will get to look at the final product and see all the hard work we put in and all that hard work that paid off. And the results are something beautiful. I'll be able to stop and pause and remember those pieces that were hard to place. But given the bigger picture, I won't be able to see them.
01:24:45
Speaker
Some puzzles are hard to solve. I remember a few that we didn't finish because we liked the skill to complete it. Please, sleuthounds, don't let this be the case for Chuck. Don't let his case fall back onto the shelf because it's too hard to work. This Christmas season, it's my hope that we can finally put the puzzle together and see the big picture. I hope that for his family, things can finally start to make sense.
01:25:10
Speaker
Again, please like and join our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast to continue the conversation and see images related to this episode. As always, follow us on Twitter, at casescoffee, on Instagram, at coffee cases podcast, or you can always email us suggestions to coffeeandcasespodcastatgmail.com. Please tell your friends about our podcast so more people can be reached to possibly help bring some closure to these families. Don't forget to rate our show and leave us a comment as well. We hope to hear from you soon.
01:25:39
Speaker
Stay together. Stay safe. We'll see you next week.
01:26:07
Speaker
to send out a lot of love today to Jason, Hailey, John, Amanda, Dorothy, and Jana for reaching out to us on social media this past week or for recommending us to your friends. Yes. Thank you so much for supporting our show by telling other people about us. And if you would like to support us, we would love it if you would by recommending us or writing us a review on your podcasting app.
01:26:33
Speaker
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01:27:00
Speaker
then that will lock you in to that $5 a month rate even when rates go up in January. And if you join at the 12
01:27:10
Speaker
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