He related with some pleasure how he intimidated his wife. “Jessica does what I tell her to do, ’cause I’m intimidating. If you’ve got a guy who just shot two people and he’s telling you to get into a car, you’re gonna get in the car. That type of woman is gonna get into the car, especially if she’s got a 4-year-old girl.”
Gabriel Morris
Mug Shot
He fought extradition to Oregon.
Eventually, in a deal made with the Coos County District Attorney, the death penalty was removed from consideration in exchange for Morris’ cooperation and stipulation to the facts that he killed Robin Anstey and Robert Kennelly Jr. He finally waived extradition and was brought back to Oregon. On May 6, 2010, he was arraigned on two counts of aggravated murder.
His defense? Insanity.
Gabriel argued with his attorney about this defense strategy, insisting that he had no mental defect and was perfectly sane.
Jessica Morris
Mug Shot
Jessica Morris did not fight extradition. She was brought back to Oregon and pleaded guilty to hindering prosecution. Her parents kept Kalea. She agreed to testify against her husband and was sentenced to three years’ probation and fined $1,344. She currently lives in Oregon with her two daughters.
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Chapter 7—The Trial
District Attorney R. Paul Frasier has his hands full. For a small county in southern Oregon with limited resources, there seem to be a lot of murder cases to try.
Frasier left his post as Special Prosecutor at the South Coast Interagency Narcotics Team and Deputy District Attorney in Josephine County, Oregon, when Governor Ted Kulongoski asked him to take over the Coos County position from retiring DA Paul Burgett. Frasier was sworn in on December 31, 2007. He inherited a serious budget problem with the loss of millions of dollars to the county’s general fund as a result of reduction of federal timber money. In an interview in January 2011, Frasier said that because of the low pay offered his new deputy district attorneys in Coos County, his office serves as a training position until they can find a better-paying job elsewhere.
DA R. Paul Frasier
Portrait
Just because the prosecutor’s office has budgetary problems doesn’t mean that crime stops in the small coastal community. By April 13, 2011, a Register-Guard article stated that “not yet four months into the year, [Coos] County already has topped the three killings recorded in all of 2010 and has tied the number (four) set in 2009.”
Considering his budget, Frasier felt it prudent to take the death penalty off the table in return for Morris’ stipulation to the fact that he committed the killings. That way, Frasier didn’t have to foot the bill to retrieve witnesses from Virginia for the trial, which could have lasted two weeks. Morris also waived his right to a jury trial, which further streamlined things.
Coos County Court House
Oregon Secy. of State Website
Along with his court-appointed defense attorneys, Peter Fahy and Michael Barker, Gabriel Christian Morris faced District Attorney Paul Frasier in Coos County Circuit Court Judge Martin Stone’s courtroom for his trial, which began August 9, 2011.
Judge Stone runs an efficient courtroom. A thin man with sharp dark eyes and a smooth low voice reminiscent of actor George Takei’s, he conducted himself with cool concern for the process. He wasted no time, but kept everyone on task.
Judge Martin Stone
Portrait
Frasier and Fahy were equally on task. All three men were at ease and comfortable in their roles, and they treated the defendant and every witness with respect.
The first day of testimony was dedicated to establishing the known facts of the homicides (when District Attorney Frasier referred to them as murders, defense attorney Fahy objected). Detective Sergeant Daniel Looney of the Coos County Sheriff’s office testified to all of the crime-scene details and described evidence shown in many photographs displayed on a projection screen.
Bullet Hole in Leaf
Police Evidence Photo
Then Christine Karcher, a forensic nurse with the medical examiner’s office and a member of the Major Crime Team, explained the autopsy photos and charts of wounds on the bodies of the deceased. As she took the stand, Fahy turned to family members in the gallery and wisely advised them to leave the courtroom. They stayed and listened, but the emotional nature of this particular evidence began to take its toll. Jesse McCoy and his uncle, Scott Walsh (Robin Anstey’s brother), sat with their faces in their hands as Karcher described the grisly details The defendant, his reddish hair and beard about the same scruffy length, looked on with no apparent reaction.
Before the prosecution rested, they showed the defendant’s hour-long video confession, a rambling affair during which he related the story of being dropped into the ocean. He said he felt that he just wanted everyone to get along and had been looking for a place where people were nice. “My plan is to love everybody,” he said. When asked what he thought would have happened had a police officer walked into the house when he was confronting Bob Kennelly about the rat poison and his plans to sexually molest Kalea, the defendant replied, “If a cop walked in, he’d have shot them.” At the end of the interview, the defendant praised the professionalism of the SWAT team that took him and his wife safely into custody.
At the end of the first day, the prosecution read into the record some facts about the case that had already been agreed to between the parties, and then the prosecution rested.
On the second day of the trial, the defense began to call friends and family members of the defendant to the stand. The purpose was to identify Gabriel as a good-hearted human being, a devout family man who adored his mother, but who’d had some sort of a stress-induced “crack” that altered his behavior. Again, emotions ran high when Lynn Walsh, Gabe’s maternal grandmother, testified. Gabe, sitting at the defense table, asked for paper and began drawing little boxes on a legal pad, occasionally wiping his eyes. At the end of the prosecution’s cross examination, she looked fondly at her grandson and said, “I will never believe that my grandson killed my daughter. Never.”
In addition to Morris’ church friends, former employers and family members who testified to a similar downward trajectory in his mental state, Gabe’s brother, an emotional Jesse McCoy, testified about their childhood. As he recounted some good times and some not-so-good times, the defendant went back to drawing little boxes on his pad, occasionally wiping his eyes with a tissue. McCoy talked about the strong bond he and his brother shared and how he always worried about him. Gabriel was only 8 when Danny Morris filed for custody and won. “I had anxiety about Gabriel being okay,” McCoy said.
During the brothers’ last phone conversation before the killings, Gabe rambled about God, his distrust of Bob Kennelly, and his feelings of being abandoned by his mother. In this wordy monologue, Morris talked about being able to run through a forest with a blindfold on and not tripping or stumbling. He had superpowers from God and was now a prophet. He had the ability to heal, could see the future, and still could not believe that his mother had left him with Danny. While he said he didn’t like Bob Kennelly, he never said anything about his mother’s safety, or that he thought Bob would molest Kalea. Never, McCoy testified, did he think Robin or Bob were in any danger.
Nobody did. Nobody who testified thought Gabriel’s apparent altered mental state was alarming enough to call the authorities or to think he could be a danger to himself or others.
Before the end of the day, Deputy Richard Gill testified to Morris’ physical fitness. Morris was a model prisoner, the deputy said. Morris was not on medication, didn’t have counseling, and was busy helping others. Gabe took under his wing a scared 18-year-old inmate who spoke little English. There was no outward evidence of mental instability.
“This case is just weird,” Frasier said in a newspaper interview after Wednesday’s testimony.
The third day of testimony opened with Coquille School Boa
rd member Fred Eschler, the man to whom Gabe ran after the murders. Fred said that Gabe was good with words and told a good story. He had a way of putting people at ease. In Fred’s estimation, when Gabe and his shoeless family showed up at his doorstep on the night of February 8 with an outrageous story, he was not delusional, but in control of the situation. Fred had no reason not to believe him, so he and his wife outfitted the young family with a gun, ammunition, food, money, clothing, and a car, ostensibly to get them to the Air Force base where they’d find safety. He said that if he had it to do all over again, he would act exactly as he had that night, though he had taken a lot of flak from his friends and religious community for his part in the getaway.
Continuing the third day of testimony, “Big John” Lindegren testified about going out to the Kennelly place 10 to 12 days before the shooting to bid on a drywall job. While there, he said that Gabe was agitated, “bouncing on his heels,” and that he and Bob weren’t speaking. The prosecuting attorney, referring to an interview that Lindegren gave earlier, asked Lindegren if Gabe had met with him in his office after that appointment at the Kennelly place, and Lindegren said that he seemed like the same old Gabe. In the interview, Lindegren said Gabe had asked about acquiring a gun. On the stand, Lindegren denied having said this. Lindegren did say in response to a question that if he had to think of who might have shot Robin Anstey, Gabe would never have even made the list.
At the end of the day, the defense attorneys announced that Morris would not testify in his own defense.
On Friday, Dr. Loren Mallory testified that in his opinion, Morris suffered from a delusional disorder, marked by grandiose and religious themes. In his psychological evaluation, he noted that Morris was of above-average intelligence. He “tends to present himself in a consistently favorable light, and as being relatively free of common shortcomings to which most individuals will admit. He appears reluctant to acknowledge personal limitations and will tend to repress or deny distress or other internal consequences that might arise from such limitations.” The report went on to say, “This person gives evidence of limited capacity to form close attachments to other people. Although he may not necessarily avoid interpersonal relationships, these relationships tend to be psychologically at arms’ length rather than up close… He shows less interest in other people than ordinarily would be expected.”
Dr. Mallory suggested on the stand that things got progressively worse in the months before Morris shot his mother and her boyfriend as he lost touch with reality. The district attorney challenged that diagnosis, and asked if he could be certain that Morris was not lying about his delusions. He offered another motive, the $25,000 that the defendant owed Bob Kennelly for the marijuana business. Dr. Mallory responded, “Yeah, if you want to say that he would kill him for owing him $25,000, you could say that.”
People have been killed for far less.
The only witness called to the stand on Tuesday was Laura Eschler, who, along with her husband, gave Gabe and his family provisions to leave the state after the murders. She testified that he seemed himself and seemed in control that night.
In closing arguments, Fahy claimed that Morris acted on his paranoid delusions that Kennelly was trying to poison his family, that God was talking to him and that he was a prophet, perhaps even Jesus Christ himself. He self-medicated with marijuana and alcohol, confusing things further, but used the substances to try to quell the chaos in his mind. Fahy went through a list of things that a rational person would not do, such as standing on the balcony to open fire. A trained police officer such as Morris, he said, would find a better position from where to make his ambush. Then Morris left the scene without even retrieving his identification or putting on a pair of shoes.
Frasier argued that Gabe Morris’ actions before, during, and after the killings weren’t those of an insane person. Morris had a long history of making up elaborate lies and then bragging about how he got away with them. Frasier said that Gabe was in control of himself and that he knew what he was doing was a crime. He pointed to the way Gabe drove up the driveway, parking so that Robin and Bob would not see the truck. Gabe shot his mother four times and Bob five times, making certain they were dead before he left. “The defendant knew he shot those people, and that what he did was against the law,” Frasier said. He stole money and gift cards from the dead man and cooked up a story for the Eschlers. “That was just a story I told so I could get a car and get out of there,” Gabe told Virginia authorities. He threw away the murder weapon and later bragged to police that they’d never find it. These were all the calculated choices of someone who knew he had committed a crime and was trying to get away with it, Frasier said.
Morris may have had a mental defect, Frasier argued, but an insanity defense requires not just a mental defect, but one that prevents the person from having the capacity to appreciate his criminal conduct.
In Oregon, to find someone not guilty by reason of insanity, the person must “lack substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality of the conduct or to conform the conduct to the requirements of law.” Even if Morris was found to have a mental defect, or a personality disorder, it would not constitute insanity if he was aware that what he was doing was wrong or had the capacity to control his conduct. According to court documents, “This is an affirmative defense, requiring the defendant to prove the defense by a preponderance of the evidence.”
Disturbing behavior does not constitute insanity.
Mental disease cannot be determined through a blood test, and medical experts cannot make an absolute diagnosis. To make a mental-health diagnosis, the medical practitioner must rely upon the symptoms and actions of the person, according to court documents. If the person is not telling the truth to the doctor, the validity of the diagnosis is in question.
In the plaintiff’s trial memorandum, Frasier wrote:
The defendant’s credibility is almost non-existent. He will lie at any opportunity. He lied about why he left Air Force ROTC. He lied about being in the Air Force and being part of a special operations team. He lied about why he left the sheriff’s office in Idaho. He lied to Allie Smith about getting a divorce from Jessica. He cheated Allie Smith by improperly using her credit cards. He lied to Jessica when he denied being sexually involved with Allie Smith and Kelly Love. He lied to Bill Pope about what opportunities he had with James Anstey in order to get Bill Pope to loan him money and a truck. He lied to the Eschlers about what happened. He lies when it is in his best interest to do so. Clearly, he’s capable of lying to a psychologist.
After a two-hour lunch break, Judge Stone pronounced his verdict: Guilty on two counts of aggravated murder. “He was in control when he moved down to the ground level and finished off the victims by shooting them as they lay dying on the ground,” Judge Stone said. “Mr. Morris is not a dummy. He’s intelligent, articulate, he has training as a police officer. His actions speak volumes. Those actions are not the actions of a person who is delusional.”
Before sentencing, Morris addressed the court. “There’s a million things I could say, but I’m not necessarily sure this is the best environment to say them in,” he said. “I’m proud of my family and friends, not for what they said about me, but I’m grateful for their love and support.… I pray we live in a society that can heal and change things the way they are.”
Judge Stone then delivered his sentence: Two consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole.
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Chapter 8—Conclusion
The question remains: Why did Gabe Morris kill his mother? Not even he seems able to answer this question. All we have is his cryptic answer to his wife when she asked him why he did it: “Because it had to be done.”
Robin Anstey
Family photo
Two scenarios are likely.
The first is that he went back to the house that day fully intending to confront Bob about his share of the living expenses, the $25,000 loan, the marijuana business a
nd a few other things. While he waited those long eight hours, he chewed on all manner of injustices, beginning with his perception that his mother abandoned him to the hands of his abusive father when he was a child. He ran scenarios in his head. He ran dialogues (“If he says this, then I’ll say that”) until his rage became so overwhelming that by the time they returned home, he could have talked himself into believing just about anything, but most of all, he believed, “It had to be done.”
In “The Role of Psychopathology and Personality in Rage-Type Homicide,” author Duncan Cartwright notes, “An act of murder driven primarily by an uncontrollable explosive rage reaction has been found by many to be a common form of homicidal behavior. What makes establishing a psychological profile of these kinds of offenders particularly intriguing is that most are classified as apparently ‘normal’ individuals. ‘Normal’ is used here to refer to offenders who do not typically have a history of violence or enduring psychopathology.” The author goes on to note that long parental absences and a chaotic family background usually characterized emotional deprivation.
Another scenario is that Morris began planning this day a long time ago, perhaps in his childhood fantasies. No matter what he did as an adult, he couldn’t get the type of attention he wanted from his mother, the primal source of a deflated ego and lifetime of humiliating events. He authored those events, but wasn’t strong enough emotionally to be able to triumph over them, as would a person with a healthy ego. Gabe worked at the Idaho State Mental Hospital, and perhaps he did some research by observing how mentally ill people act and took the time to perfect his manic persona so that people actually believed that he had suffered a breakdown. He seemed to systematically try this role on with people who knew him as humble Gabriel Morris, but he wasn’t altogether consistent with this act, at least not consistent enough to get away with murder.
Something Happened to Grandma Page 4