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Louisville, KY

Prison Inmate Accused Of 1980 Rape Of Louisville Woman

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — After nearly three decades, the bru­tal rap­ing and sodom­iz­ing of a woman in down­town Louisville may have finally been solved.

Metro police said they’ve made an arrest in the old­est cold case in the his­tory of the Commonwealth.

Inves­ti­ga­tors said on July 4, 1980, the vic­tim was on her way to work when a man approached her with a knife at Broad­way and Bar­rett Avenue.

They said the man forced her under a nearby rail­road tres­tle, where he sex­u­ally abused her.

Accord­ing to detec­tives, James Mob­ley threat­ened her with the knife if she tried to escape or call for help.

For­mer Police Lt. Bar­ron Combs said he went with the vic­tim to the hospital.

“It always stuck in my mind — that look on her face at the hos­pi­tal,” Combs said. “She was fright­ened to death. Scared — dis­be­lief that it hap­pened to her.”

On Tues­day, the now 60-year-old Mob­ley was indicted on charges of rape, sodomy, sex­ual abuse and rob­bery — after DNA from the victim’s rape kit recently matched his.

Mob­ley was con­victed in 1982 of three counts of sodomy against a sec­ond vic­tim and has been in prison ever since.

Last year, state Rep. Regi­nald Meeks helped pass a law that requires con­victed felons to sub­mit to DNA testing.

“This man’s been in prison since 1981 and we would never have gone out and had his DNA col­lected oth­er­wise,” LMPD Sex Crimes Unit Sgt. Andy Abbott said.

Mob­ley is serv­ing four life sen­tences at the Ken­tucky State Refor­ma­tory. He’s sched­uled to be arraigned next week.

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

The Miami Her­ald, miamiherald.com
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

The Times-Tribune, http://www.thetimestribune.com, The Asso­ci­ated Press State & Local Wire

Whit­ley County, KY

A south­east­ern Ken­tucky sheriff’s office says a break-in at the depart­ment has pre­vented it from respond­ing to an open records request from a news­pa­per about how the agency han­dled seized guns. 

The Corbin Times-Tribune reported that the Whit­ley County Sheriff’s Office declined to respond to a records request because some­one broke into the depart­ment on Dec. 21, leav­ing some records in dis­ar­ray and oth­ers in pos­ses­sion of the Ken­tucky State Police.

The paper reported that it asked for records on Dec. 15 to show whether 18 guns seized dur­ing an arrest in 2004 were still at the sheriff’s depart­ment or had been trans­ferred to another agency.

Ken­tucky State Police Det. Bill Cor­rell, who is lead­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into the break-in, said he’s wait­ing for a list of guns that were taken from the sheriff’s department.

Under state law, a gov­ern­ment agency has three busi­ness days to respond to an open records request, though they may take longer to actu­ally pro­duce the records if needed.

Whit­ley County Sher­iff Lawrence Hodge failed to for­mally respond dur­ing the three-day period, and on the fourth busi­ness day after the request was filed, the evi­dence locker inside the sheriff’s office was burglarized

Josh Price, an office worker at the sheriff’s depart­ment, told the news­pa­per the open records request could not be com­pleted because of the ongo­ing break-in case.

“What’s going on with that is of course, you know, our office was bro­ken into, all of our records as of this point are involved with that case with the state police, so I don’t know, as far as a time to give you, on when that will be com­pleted, when they’ll have that all fin­ished,” he said.

Cor­rell said Hodge has been coop­er­at­ing with the investigation.

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