IAPE Evidence Blog

The Miami Her­ald, miamiherald.com
Link to Arti­cle
By DON PERRYMAN, The Messenger

Madis­onville, KY

MADISONVILLE, Ky. — The last time Woody Mor­ris talked to his wife, Joy, was on Hal­loween night in Octo­ber 2002.

The cou­ple oper­ated a vehi­cle escort busi­ness, and she had made the long haul to West Palm Beach, Fla.

“We were both down there with sep­a­rate loads,” Woody Mor­ris said Thurs­day. “She wanted me to come on back home.”

Mor­ris said stor­age build­ings the cou­ple owned had been bro­ken into, and his wife told him to get back to Madis­onville and check on them.
He sug­gested Joy drive north on Inter­state 75 and stay overnight at a Best West­ern motel in Val­dosta, Ga.

“We always stopped there,” Woody Mor­ris said, “because the gas was about half as much as it is in Florida.”

What hap­pened that night in Val­dosta is still being pieced together. What Lown­des County Sheriff’s Depart­ment inves­ti­ga­tors know is that Joy stopped at exit 2 off the inter­state and gassed up her new Ford Mus­tang and had some­thing to eat.

Inves­ti­ga­tors believe that after a long day on the road, she had stopped to get some rest.

They believe that’s when Mau­rilio Masadiego Mar­tinez came upon the 47-year-old woman.

They believe that’s when her life came to an end.

A motel maid at the Best West­ern spot­ted Joy’s black Mus­tang in a wooded area Nov. 1 behind the motel. Author­i­ties were called.

When law enforce­ment arrived, they found Joy’s body sit­ting in the driver’s seat behind the steer­ing wheel. Inves­ti­ga­tors believe her killer moved the car to where it was found.

Rob­bery didn’t appear to be a motive for her death. She was wear­ing jew­elry, Woody Mor­ris said, and her purse had money, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and credit cards in it.

An autopsy revealed she had been stran­gled and sex­u­ally assaulted.
There were no sus­pects. Time began to pass. Slowly. Espe­cially for Woody Mor­ris and his family.

He took a poly­graph and had DNA sam­ples taken.

“I wanted them to clear me,” he said, “and they did.”

But not for everyone.

He began to hear whis­pers. Word began to spread that he had killed his wife — that he had a $1 mil­lion life insur­ance pol­icy on her.

It wasn’t true, he said.

At his wife’s vis­i­ta­tion, Mor­ris said he was out­side the funeral home, when a Madis­onville police offi­cer approached him in uni­form. The offi­cer said she wanted to go inside, and Mor­ris escorted her into the funeral home to see Joy and then back out.

“Every­body in there thought I was being arrested,” Mor­ris said.
About a month ago, Mor­ris said he and his cur­rent wife, Brenda, were at a local auto parts store. Mor­ris said he went into the store, and when he came out a woman called him a murderer.

Kathy Mor­ris, Woody’s daugh­ter and Joy’s step­daugh­ter, said there were a lot of peo­ple who thought that.

“It was rough,” she said. “I knew he didn’t kill her. I saw him here that Hal­loween night and saw him leave the next morn­ing. You can tell peo­ple, but they don’t believe you. They believe what they want to believe.”

Lown­des County sheriff’s Capt. Wanda Edwards worked the case and was get­ting nowhere. Lead after lead was fol­lowed and each led nowhere.

Inves­ti­ga­tors had DNA evi­dence that had been obtained at Joy’s autopsy. It was entered into Georgia’s Com­bined DNA Index Sys­tem which allows DNA evi­dence to be compared.

“We had DNA evi­dence,” Edwards said, “and sev­eral years later there was another sex­ual assault case in Valdosta.”

One of the peo­ple ques­tioned in that case was Mau­rilio Masadiego Mar­tinez, an ille­gal immi­grant from Guatemala, who worked sea­sonal jobs, Edwards said.

Dur­ing the inter­view, a DNA sam­ple was obtained and later matched to the DNA taken from the scene where Joy Mor­ris was found.

“Once we made the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in 2008,” Edwards said, “we obtained a war­rant for rape.”

But find­ing him was a dif­fer­ent story. Mar­tinez is a com­mon name and Edwards said that ille­gal immi­grants usu­ally don’t have authen­tic identification.

“If they’re picked up, they often use other names,” she said.
Edwards received a num­ber of hits on the name Mar­tinez that proved not to be the suspect.

Finally, Edwards and inves­ti­ga­tors had some luck. A cou­ple of months ago, a Mau­rilio Mar­tinez was arrested in Cas­sel­berry, Fla., on traf­fic charges.

“We check his fin­ger­prints,” Edwards said. “It was the guy we were look­ing for.”

Mar­tinez fought extra­di­tion. Lown­des County inves­ti­ga­tors obtained a governor’s war­rant. Once it was signed in Geor­gia, the Florida gov­er­nor had to sign off on it.

Mar­tinez spent his 40th birth­day in jail Thurs­day in the Lown­des County lockup. He is charged with mur­der and is being held with­out bond. He has a court appointed attor­ney from the pub­lic defender’s office.

The Mor­ris fam­ily has waited more than seven years for the news they received ear­lier this week.

“It’s a bless­ing,” Kathy said. “An answered prayer. We’ve been pray­ing for a long time. One thing I wish, if every­body would take a look at the peo­ple that they love and appre­ci­ate them a lit­tle more. They may not be here tomorrow.”

Infor­ma­tion from: The Mes­sen­ger, http://www.the-messenger.com

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org

www.thetimestribune.com
BYLINE: Saman­tha Swindler / Man­ag­ing Edi­tor
Link to Article

Whit­ley County/Corbin, KY

KSP request­ing sur­veil­lance from nearby businesses

Ken­tucky State Police con­tinue their inves­ti­ga­tion of a break-in at the Whit­ley County Sheriff’s Depart­ment early Mon­day morn­ing, but have yet to deter­mine what items were taken.

“I still don’t have an inven­tory list,” said KSP Det. Bill Cor­rell. “I talked to (Chief Deputy) Tim Shel­ley this after­noon, and he said he was still try­ing to get that together. I don’t have an idea of what, if any­thing, has been taken.”

The thief appar­ently gained access to the sheriff’s per­sonal office inside the Whit­ley County Cour­t­house, where seized guns and drugs are stored inside a locked evi­dence locker. Cor­rell said he does expect that once the inven­tory of remain­ing items is com­pleted, some guns will likely be found missing.

“As soon as I get that (inven­tory) list, I would like to pro­vide the trace­able items, for exam­ple firearms, and put that out there to the pub­lic in hopes that if those guns have been sold, those peo­ple now in pos­ses­sion of those guns will sur­ren­der them to us,” Cor­rell said. “It’s very pos­si­ble some of those guns are out there in cir­cu­la­tion and those peo­ple have no idea they came from where they came from.”

Cor­rell said he also met with Commonwealth’s Attor­ney Allen Trim­ble Tues­day and requested video sur­veil­lance from neigh­bor­ing busi­nesses around the cour­t­house square. Cor­rell said in an ear­lier inter­view that the cour­t­house has only “lim­ited sur­veil­lance” and there were no secu­rity devices inside the sheriff’s office.

Cor­rell said inves­ti­ga­tors believe the cul­prit had at least one key to get through the three locked doors to reach the evi­dence locker. There were no signs of forced entry at any of the four exte­rior doors of the cour­t­house or to the sheriff’s depart­ment, though there were some signs of forced entry inside the sheriff’s per­sonal office, he said. Accord­ing to Cor­rell, an office worker noticed signs of dam­age on the office’s main door and con­tacted Shel­ley. Some­time around 9 a.m. Mon­day, KSP was contacted.

Cor­rell also said the crime would have been com­mit­ted between mid­night Sun­day and 8 a.m. Mon­day, when the office worker arrived.

If you have infor­ma­tion relat­ing to this case, con­tact the Ken­tucky State Police Post 11 at 606 – 878-6622.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org

The Times-Tribune (Corbin, Ken­tucky)
Dis­trib­uted by McClatchy-Tribune Busi­ness News
BYLINE: Adam S. Sul­fridge, The Times-Tribune, Corbin, Ky.

Williams­burg, KY

Nov. 5 — In the same loca­tion that Williams­burg offi­cers pub­licly crushed over 5,000 cans of beer seized dur­ing boot­leg busts, Chief Wayne Bird set fire to a gross amount of con­trolled sub­stances and drug para­pher­na­lia seized by the depart­ment in drug-related arrests.

Pub­lic Affairs Offi­cer Shawn Jack­son said, “Destroy­ing the evi­dence is jus­tice and sat­is­fy­ing for us offi­cers because we know the cases have clo­sure, and these drugs now cease to exist… they’ve been destroyed, and for­tu­nately for locals, these drugs will never see the streets again.”

Among the evi­dence destroyed were numer­ous items of drug para­pher­na­lia, rang­ing from pipes for smok­ing, straws for snort­ing, and pro­fes­sional pill-crushing equip­ment. Sev­eral gallon-sized bags of mar­i­juana and a sim­i­lar sized bag full of liq­uid med­ica­tion, such as Mor­phine, were destroyed. The mar­i­juana slowly burned while the vials of liq­uid nar­cotics exploded like fire crack­ers. Over­all, though, Chief Bird stated that around 85 per­cent of the evi­dence destroyed were pills.

“Some of this was recov­ered after phar­macy thefts,” Jack­son explained, ref­er­enc­ing the bag­ful of liq­uid medicine.

“When you look at all the sub­stances com­bined, the street value is a very high dol­lar amount.”

Jack­son explained the process of seiz­ing evi­dence, say­ing, “When an offi­cer seizes some­thing, it is secured right then, and there’s most always wit­nesses present. It’s sealed in an evi­dence bag, and on the bag, there’s a seal which can’t be bro­ken.” Jack­son reit­er­ated, say­ing, “It’s sealed right on scene.”

After the evi­dence is secured at the scene of the crime, begin­ning paper­work is com­pleted at the police depart­ment, where the evi­dence is also locked into a spe­cial room.

“Lt. Jason Cad­dell is in charge of the evi­dence, our evi­dence cus­to­dian,” Jack­son con­tin­ued. “He is the only offi­cer who has access to the evi­dence room… the Chief of Police doesn’t even have a key to the room.”

By state law, every depart­ment must have a des­ig­nated evi­dence cus­to­dian who must undergo spe­cial train­ing for the position.

He added, “They have to com­plete train­ing, but not only that, they have to be a very cred­i­ble per­son with a lot of hon­esty and integrity, because, let’s face it, they have the key to a lot… They must have a very cred­i­ble rep­u­ta­tion, as Lt. Cad­dell does.”

“It’s logged any­time any­body makes entry to the evi­dence room, which is how it’s to be done under law,” he said, explain­ing how such pro­ce­dures ensure that all seized evi­dence is never mis­placed or taken for unlaw­ful purposes.

The only times evi­dence is removed are when it’s to be used in a court case, sent to a lab­o­ra­tory for analy­sis, or when a judge for­mally orders it to be returned to its right­ful owner or destroyed.

Jack­son said, “All of the cases this evi­dence was attached to have been resolved and destruc­tion orders have come down from the court system.”

Jack­son said it was ben­e­fi­cial for area res­i­dents to see what actu­ally hap­pens to all the drugs Williams­burg police seize and said the depart­ment looks for­ward to sim­i­lar events in the future.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org