THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 12, 1996 TAG: 9605120139
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LYNN WALTZ, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MIDDLESEX COUNTY LENGTH: Long : 195 lines
The breeze came strong off the Piankatank River on Saturday, and federal investigators were hoping it would stir up the scent of Eugene Morris.
Fuchsia azaleas framed a stunning river view that included a sailboat bobbing in shimmering water off a long wooden dock. It was hardly a sight that conjured thoughts of murder and clandestine graves.
But that's what federal authorities believed happened here nine years ago on a May day when Morris disappeared from his Buckroe Beach home.
Saturday, a crew of cadaver-seeking experts, including a half-dozen trained dogs, set out to prove it.
By day's end, after some promising leads went sour, droopy-tailed dogs and disappointed investigators drove out across Virginia to their homes while Morris remained undisturbed - perhaps forever.
The Secret Service case of the murder of Eugene Bryce Morris was officially closed after Saturday's last-ditch effort to find his body. It wasn't for lack of trying.
Along with a team of cadaver dogs, the Secret Service brought in one of the country's foremost body-locating experts, Clark Davenport of NecroSearch International, a coalition of scientists out of Colorado.
Without physical evidence, it is uncertain whether Morris's wife can ever be charged with her husband's murder. Deborah Morris is serving time in a federal penitentiary after pleading guilty to fraudulently collecting her husband's pension after he was dead - which is why the Secret Service got involved.
Deborah Morris was 37 when her husband disappeared. He was 73. Authorities say Morris gave them several clues that led them to Saturday's search. During another search for the body, she told friends, ``They will never find him there.'' She later told friends, ``If I killed him, I would bury him at the (farm).''
In her plea agreement, Morris affirmed that she lured her husband from his rooming house so that her brother could kill him for a share of his $100,000 in retirement benefits.
Before her brother, Michael Michael K. Russell, was mangled in a fishing winch and died, he bragged that he had shot Eugene Morris in the back of the head and left him in the woods for the dogs to eat.
``This was a place where his wife and their friends came to get drunk, party and target-shoot,'' said Secret Service case agent Darryl Daniels. ``We believe they got him drunk and brought him up here. Mike was young and strong. If Eugene was drunk, they could have walked him into the woods and shot him.''
Daniels doesn't believe Morris was killed in Buckroe Beach, an area of Hampton about an hour and a half south of Middlesex.
``That's a long way to drive with a dead body in your car,'' Daniels said. ``I think they did it here.''
Cadaver-finding expert Clark Davenport insists he does not have a criminal mind, but Saturday he found himself thinking like a killer.
``If they told Morris they were going to target-shoot, it would explain why they had a gun,'' he mused. ``He might not have suspected anything.''
Davenport's nonprofit company, NecroSearch, has helped in about 300 cases, primarily eliminating suspected areas as dumping or burial sites. However, NecroSearch has helped find six bodies. One had been buried under a slab of concrete 26 years earlier.
The company, founded in Denver 10 years ago as ``Project Pig,'' has grown to include 36 people from 24 scientific disciplines, including botany, meteorology, psychiatry, archaeology, anthropology and geophysics. The company, which helps only law enforcement, has worked cases in 33 states and nine foreign countries, Davenport said.
``It's basically a midlife-crisis vehicle for a lot of people trained with scientific skills who have moved up in their career to administrative work.'' Davenport said. ``I push a lot of paper, but I still have the skills, and I want to use them.''
Using aerial photos from the Virginia Department of Transportation taken just six months after Morris disappeared, Davenport tried to establish where the partyers might have gone to shoot.
It is almost always the first step he takes in analyzing a crime scene. Historical aerial photos can also be found in tax assessors' offices, he said, and can be useful in re-creating old crime scenes.
Saturday, Davenport and investigators determined that the location of gravel and dirt roads had not changed - significant for determining body-dumping sites - and that some large trees had been cut down since 1987.
Davenport's specialty is ``remote sensing,'' or trying to determine potential locations of bodies based on earth disturbances.
A geophysicist, Davenport is trained in oil and mineral exploration. He began his sleuthing after watching a television news show with his son.
``Local sheriffs were looking for bodies in drums 6 to 12 feet deep with a metal detector,'' Davenport said. ``I told my son, `I've got an instrument I use all the time that could detect those drums.' My son said, `Dad, why don't you do something about it?' He challenged me. I had to do it.''
Saturday, as the dogs searched, Davenport looked at vegetation patterns and growth disturbances that can be signs earth has been moved. Though he is not the company's botanist, he has picked up some tricks - and ticks - he said.
Davenport carried a magnetometer, a yellow stick with a small box at the top. It is used to detect ferrous metals like iron and steel and can also indicate when the Earth's magnetic field has been disturbed. That would happen if a hole had been dug and backfilled.
Others in the firm - like archaeologists and anthropologists - help to excavate once a body has been found. Entomologists can study bugs, including larvae or maggots, and use the insects' life cycles to figure out a possible time of death.
The firm also buries dead pigs to study what happens to bodies - hence the company's original name.
``We thought, there must be a better way to locate remains,'' Davenport said. ``So we buried three pigs and left them to see what changes took place. By God, there were. Two of them were gone. Animals had been scavenging. So we called in the naturalists.''
Nineteen pigs later, the naturalists are beginning to map out the scavenging habits of different animals in different habitats using remote transmitters to help find pieces of the pig that are dragged away.
In the meantime, the company's name was changed.
In one Colorado case, NecroSearch provided key information in locating the body of a girl in the mountains missing since the mid-1970s. About five years after the girl disappeared, a dog carried a braided pigtail into town, Davenport said.
Twenty years later, law enforcement approached NecroSearch. A botanist with the company determined that vegetation found in the hair grew only on south-facing slopes at certain altitudes. A ground search turned up the remains.
As Davenport's story showed, dogs are usually a key part of any search for clandestine graves.
Saturday, dog handler Sharon Johnson held up a cigarette lighter to check the wind direction before sending her German shepherd Reva off to search.
Johnson, a member of Dogs-East Search and Rescue from King George County, explained the significance of a green metal box nearby. It contained scent similar to dead bodies to remind the dogs of why they were there.
``We don't know what the dogs smell or what makes it a human smell vs. a deer. There are chemical differences,'' Johnson said.
``Even years after death, the human scent remains, different enough from other smells that dogs may shy away or bristle,'' she said.
What differentiates a good cadaver dog from a search-and-rescue dog is its ability to find a weak scent, the scent of a deeply buried body or one that has been in the ground for years.
A Rottweiler named Zeke, a German shepherd named Boots and a mixed-breed named Boo helped Reva search the 30 acres Saturday. The dogs have helped find seven bodies in the past five years.
``We never take just one,'' Johnson said. ``We take at least two for confirmation. We let them do their own thing naturally. Like a wild dog that works the wind. We try not to interfere too much.''
Just as searchers began to get discouraged, the dogs ``alerted'' on an area off a dirt road that ran beside an old soybean field, now grown up with 30-year-old pines.
One dog gave a bark and made eye contact with a handler. Another, named Bear, lifted his head sharply, sniffing the air. After the other dogs seemed to confirm the alert, an area was roped off and Davenport moved in with metal detectors and his magnetometer.
``Morris was wounded in World War I,'' case agent Daniels said. ``His ship was hit by a Japanese torpedo in an assault on Iwo Jima. He carried shrapnel in his hip the rest of his life. We're keying in on the shrapnel.''
Bright pink ribbons marked every spot where Davenport got a hit with his metal detectors. Then excavation began.
After investigators carefully scraped off the top cover of leaves and pine needles, Davenport worked the area again. This time, no hits. Small pieces of metal washers, a nail and a rusted piece of metal were the only things found.
``There were three hot spots. We eliminated them all. There was nothing there,'' said Secret Service agent Barney Gary. ``We're at a dead end at this point.''
Daniels was disappointed. It was the end of the road for an investigation that has stretched across the years.
``We had our hopes up,'' Daniels said. ``We never did figure out what the dogs were hitting on. After we scraped it off, we punctured the ground to aerate it for the dogs to get a better scent. We sent the dogs back in and they didn't show any interest at all. He's not there.''
Investigators are still hoping the murder case can be prosecuted, they said. It is possible to prosecute a case with only circumstantial evidence. And, Morris' case is still open in Hampton.
Still, while state agencies may pursue the case, for the feds it's the end of the road.
``This is it,'' said agent in charge Lawrence Kumjian. ``It's something we felt we had to do. It was the last lead. We thought we had to do it to close the case.''
``I really feel that Eugene was lured away from his rooming house and taken somewhere out in the wilderness and killed and his body disposed of,'' Kumjian said. ``That's why we felt we had to do one more search to eliminate all the possible locations. We knew it was a long shot going into it, but we felt it was the right thing to do for Mr. Morris. For Eugene Morris.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot
Reva, front, with Bear and Boo, lead human staffers from Dogs-East
Search and Rescue in Saturday's search. Karen Mersereau, Rob Douglas
and Sharon Johnson, from left, walked with them.
Photo
VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot
Clark Davenport, a geophysicist with NecroSearch International,
reviews aerial photos with Secret Service agents. The location of
gravel and dirt roads had not changed, and some large trees had been
cut since 1987.
KEYWORDS: MISSING PERSON SEARCH INVESTIGATION by CNB