by Robert Scott
Jessica recollected, “Doug offered to get a pizza to share, and we ate that while they talked. Since we only had the ten dollars, Gabe asked them if we could stay with them. And Judy said we could.”
As it turned out, Gabe, Jessica and Kalea did stay at the house that Judy and Doug shared. Gabe, Jessica and Kalea were given a bedroom, and Judy and Doug took another room, which was not their usual bedroom. Jessica recalled, “We got their bedroom, which had, like, a king-sized bed, and they slept in a different room. Gabe may have stayed up that night. I don’t remember. I was really tired and went to sleep.
“The next day Doug took us over to a sandwich shop and bought us some lunch. He was very nice and very kind. I remember at one point I told Judy, ‘It’s really hard to take charity,’ and she just smiled.”
The next day, Judy discovered something that really concerned her. She looked in her closet and there was a small blue bag. In the bag was a semiautomatic pistol. But then she remembered that Gabe supposedly worked for the air force on secret missions. She assumed he needed this weapon for his job. What she didn’t seem to consider was, why was a secret operative so short of money?
Judy recalled, “My husband drove a truck, and we didn’t give Gabe or Jessica any money. My husband pays for our meals and putting gas in the car and things.” Gabe and his family just basically hung out at their house, eating their food and not having any money to contribute.
Judy did say that at least Jessica helped out a little bit around the house. “She did cook. She was very, very quiet and didn’t say much. One night my brother and my husband’s best friend just showed up at that house, and she didn’t eat until everybody else ate.
“Every time she talked, she was very tentative. About Gabe, everything he did, she justified as being God’s work or whatever. I asked her one time when he wasn’t around, did she ever doubt his actions or what he says, and she said no. She did say sometimes something seems off, but that was just her insecurities and lack of faith in him.”
One of the more incredible lies Gabe told Judy and Doug was about the living arrangements that had occurred in Bandon, Oregon. Judy recalled, “He said that he had a house and he let his mom and her boyfriend stay there. They took care of it while he was out doing business. When he was not there, they would stay there. I got an impression of the place that it was remote, not within a city with a lot of lights, because he talked a lot about the sky. He didn’t go into a lot of detail about the house.”
As far as Gabe’s early life, he told Judy that his mom had been a prostitute when he was young. Something that was totally untrue, of course. Gabe said they had been living on the streets, which was also untrue. And as far as being in Michigan, Gabe told Judy that he had gone there because he had a grandfather buried there.
A big concern for Jessica was that she noticed plaques on the walls of the house noting that Doug’s mom worked for the police department in some capacity. It seemed to concern Gabe as well. He told Jessica, “Get ready to leave. Not immediately, but get ready.”
By February 17, Judy recalled, “Gabe kept talking about Florida. My husband and I always go to Florida for a vacation, and Gabe was talking about going to Florida or getting an RV, or traveling all over the place visiting different people. Just hanging out and having a good time.”
Judy didn’t drink, but Gabe and her husband did. She said later, “My husband came back from work and brought some absinthe, some Southern Comfort and Captain Morgan. Gabe got very, very drunk. And he got sick. Jessie tasted some absinthe, and I tasted it, but we didn’t drink.”
The most amazing thing was, Judy saw Jessica, whom she called “Jessie,” smoke marijuana with Gabe. And more than that, Gabe wanted to try salvia, which was legal in the state. He tried it and tripped out.
Judy added that around this time, her “sister came over, and she was a little late getting back after dropping a friend off somewhere else. And Gabe said, ‘Let’s drive around to the friend’s house to see if she’s there.’ He had the gun with him. He had the ammo clips on his lap, and he got out of the car. He went over to a 7-Eleven and got an apple, and while he did that, he had me hold the clips of ammo.” Judy didn’t know if he took the gun with him into the convenience store or just kept it under the seat.
The initially charming Gabe was now overtaken by Gabe and his all-too-frequent rants. Judy said later, “I didn’t start to get really scared until the weekend. That’s when there were, like, two different sides to him. Like he just completely flipped to a different demeanor. He got more aggressive, more demanding. He was getting very restless, and that’s when I started to get scared. But I didn’t know where the fear was coming from.
“He was talking about all kinds of things. He was talking about hanging out with Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z, and I was like, ‘Come on, I can’t believe this.’ And he brought up about how his mom tried to poison him. It was rat poison. And he said they stuck around for a month trying to reconcile. And there was an urgency in his voice. He led me to believe that he felt threatened, so he shot his mom and her boyfriend. I was led to believe he shot them just once.
“I was there, and Jessica and Kalea were there when he said this. And he looked over at her and said, ‘Didn’t you see me shoot my mom and her boyfriend?’ and she said that she heard, and then she saw the bodies later. But she never said she physically saw him shoot them.”
Judy added that Gabe told her that his mom had hired someone to kill him or something like that. It was all very unclear. And that was part of the reason he had to shoot her. “His mom was supposedly doing it for money. Like one hundred thousand dollars or something. She was heading for the door, and he knew somebody else was behind the door, and he felt threatened. And that’s when he shot her and the man.” This was yet another of Gabe’s continually evolving stories about the shootings.
Gabe was also becoming more and more persistent about having things his own way. Judy recalled, “He wanted me and Doug to go with him, and we were both being resistant. We couldn’t just jump up and leave, and I wasn’t leaving without Doug. But whenever they went anywhere, we were always with them. There was one time, I think it was Saturday, we went back to Uno’s to eat and the place was crowded. We were sitting at the bar area and the bartender was backed up with dishes piled up, glasses piled up, and the waitress waiting for drinks. And Gabe got mad. He went and spoke with the manager and the manager got short with him. And Gabe left the table. He left the restaurant. He got in his car and he left. He wasn’t gone for very long, maybe ten minutes, and he came back and he said he had to go take out his aggression. He said he went over to the gym and he picked a fight with somebody. He didn’t go into details beyond that.”
It was all becoming very weird and scary for Judy by that point, but still she did not ask Gabe and his family to leave. And it may have been around this time that Gabe and Judy had sex. Judy thought that Jessica knew about this and she was either okay with it or was so browbeaten by Gabe that she didn’t make any complaints. And apparently Doug did not know about this at all.
By Saturday, Gabe was very restless. Judy said later, “He always said that he was going to leave by Monday. And he always said I was going with him. He tried to convince me to go with him, with or without my husband. And I said ‘No, I can’t go without my husband.’ I told him outright, ‘I’m not going with you,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, you are!’
“He started packing on Saturday night. He and his wife started packing up my clothes. They kept saying we were going to leave now. ‘We’re going to leave now.’ But they kept putting if off because I was resistant. He kept threatening me that he was leaving, and I had been sick. I had been sick for years. I recently had surgery last year and he knew about it. I wasn’t doing very well physically. So he, and my husband, and his wife there for support, did a prayer, and I did feel better. He used that against me. And he said that if I didn’t go with him, I would be sick again, that I would start hurting again, and I was scared.
; “I was scared of the pain, and scared of him. Because at that point, he started threatening me. He never told me where we were [specifically] going. He always said we were going to Florida. The night before they had my clothes laid out, not in bags, but just laid out aside. Both of them did that. And he tried to get me to gather some items myself, and I never did. But I always had a to-go bag packed, that just had basic toiletries, toothbrush and stuff like that.”
Apparently, Gabe told Doug a slightly different tale about the murders, and added that he had to kill his mother to protect his family. As to the reason why, Gabe said that his mother was “evil” and had been hired by the people who were trying to kill him and his family.
In this tale, Gabe said that his mother was part of the plan with Bob Kennelly to poison him with rat poison. And he said that he’d ingested a lot of rat poison, and that would have killed a “normal human being.” However, he was able to heal himself because he was beloved by God.
One of Gabe’s most outlandish claims to Doug was that there was a conspiracy by the government to set off fault lines in California and sink it into the ocean. Perhaps the reason why Doug did not turn Gabe in to the police was because he thought the man was just a raving lunatic and everything he said was either a lie or a delusion.
CHAPTER 21
On Monday morning, February 22, Judy recalled, “I think Gabe knew he was surrounded. He started freaking out. Because his urgency—it went from restlessness to urgency on Monday morning. That’s when I got really, really scared because I had no idea what was going on. My mother-in-law called me and wanted me to get out of the home. I found out later she had gone to work and was talking about Gabe to a couple of her coworkers, and one of the coworkers asked what his name was. So my mother-in-law told the woman because he had used his real name. And you know what? This woman looked it up on the computer and a story came back about America’s Most Wanted. And that’s when my mother-in-law called it in to the police.
“Anyway, my mother-in-law called my cell phone and didn’t get in touch with me right away. And Gabe came into the room and said she had been trying to call me and to call her back. So I called her back and she said her mother was in the hospital up in Fairfax and she needed me to take her car up to her. She was basically trying to get me out of the house, and I could tell by her voice that what she was saying wasn’t true.
“Gabe was sitting right there. I got off the phone with her and then he said to call her back and to tell her I was going to take a shower first and then be there in thirty-five minutes. So I did call her back and told her that. Then Gabe said to call her back again and ask where the keys were to her car. So I did.
“Basically, Gabe was biding time, and she called back again somewhat later. And in the meantime I was telling him I was not going. And that’s when he started putting my clothes in bags and Jessica started getting their stuff together and packing up Kalea’s stuff. Right before we walked out the door, my mother-in-law called again. And right at that time, I don’t know why, my brother walked in the door.
“I was standing at the top of the stairs. And my brother walked in and said, ‘They have the roads blocked off to the entrance of the neighborhood.’ And there was a SWAT team out there and snipers on the roofs. And that’s when Gabe flipped out.”
Around 10:30 A.M., Special Weapons and Tactical (SWAT) team members started blocking all routes in and out of Dominion Drive in the Prince William Estates neighborhood. Snow lined the roadways, and it was a very cool and shadowed morning under the trees.
The SWAT team was actually a part of the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force (CARFTF) and they were suited up, heavily armed and ready for anything. They already knew all of the wild claims Gabriel Morris had been making to everyone, and he was clearly unbalanced. The worst fears were that they might now be headed into some kind of hostage situation or a shoot-out. This could be especially dangerous, since they knew Gabe had been a trained police officer. They didn’t know what kinds of weapons he might have with him or if he was wearing body armor.
Judy recounted, “He didn’t say anything. He just basically pushed us out the door and started giving orders. I was completely terrified. He found my dad’s rifle, and I don’t know if it even had any ammunition in it, but he wrapped it in a blanket and handed it to me. I don’t know what he planned on doing with it. And then he took all the bags and took them out. He said I was riding with him. And he made my brother give him the keys to his SUV. He told my brother to drive his car.” In fact, Gabe made Jessica and Kalea go in the Silver Ford Taurus with Judy’s brother.
By that means, perhaps Gabe was hoping to get away with Judy while the others were detained. If so, he was sacrificing Jessica and Kalea at this point in time.
Judy recalled, “I was so scared. I just kept thinking, ‘Somebody stop this! Please, somebody stop this!’ Then we got to the intersection, and that’s when the police pulled behind us. They had their lights on, and pulled us over and stopped us. And Gabe actually stopped.”
At around noon, as the Ford Taurus and Ford Explorer made their way from the driveway onto Dominion Drive, the SWAT team members suddenly broke cover and swooped in. Jessica, Kalea and Chris were detained first. Gabe and Judy made it a little farther, onto Curtis Drive, when they were suddenly blocked by squad cars.
As the Inside NoVa weekly newspaper related, The roar of cars and trucks on nearby Interstate 95, which runs adjacent to the neighborhood, drowned out commands shouted from a police bullhorn used to coax Morris from the car. From 150 yards away, police could be heard telling Morris to get out of the car with his hands up.
Despite their worst fears, Gabe surrendered without incident, even though he was in possession of a loaded .45 pistol and a rifle in the vehicle. Jessica surrendered as well without incident.
Judy recalled, “Gabe saw the police car lights and he said, ‘Oh, well.’ I’m not sure exactly how he phrased it, but he said, ‘They’re pulling us over.’ And I said, ‘I’m really, really scared.’ And he said, ‘Just do what they say.’ And then that was it. He cooperated one hundred percent and it was over.”
The U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) soon came out with a short statement about the arrests, and they also related how many law enforcement agencies had been looking for Gabe, Jessica and Kalea. These included the USMS, FBI, U.S. Marshals Oregon Fugitive Task Force, Washington County Sheriff’s Office, Portland Police Bureau, Oregon State Police, Multnomah County Probation and Parole, Clackamas County, Coos County Sheriff’s Office and even the Oregon National Guard.
Of course, Bill and Rita Pope were the two people waiting most anxiously for an apprehension of Gabe, Jessica and Kalea. On that Monday morning, they got a phone call from the Bingham County Sheriff’s Office. Rita said later, “Bill phoned me immediately at work. He was in tears, and he said, ‘They’re okay!’ During the past two weeks, I had every worst-case scenario running through my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking of the horrible things that might have happened.”
But the worst things didn’t happen to Jessica or Kalea. In fact, the Popes were informed that Kalea was now with police officers, eating popcorn and “having a great time.” Prince William County Police Department (PWCPD) 1st sergeant Kim Chinn later said, “We’ve got her at the station and we’ve had her coloring and giving her snacks.”
Around that same time, a reporter for the Blackfoot Morning News contacted the Popes. Bill Pope said that they were anxiously awaiting word that they could go and see their daughter and get their granddaughter. Bill added, “I do know because of the spirit and nature of my daughter that I’m sure she wasn’t involved in it. He probably threatened her and told her he would kill her if she didn’t stay right with him.”
Bill was wrong in this assessment, but it may have been a type of brainwashing on Gabe’s part that had made Jessica go along with the whole cross-country scenario. By February 2010, she was fully under his spell.
Rita Pope told the reporter that she had pleaded with
her daughter not to go to Oregon in an attempt to patch up her marriage with Gabe in 2009. Rita said that Jessica knew before going that Gabe had put them deep in debt. Rita added, “But I don’t think she really knew how bad it was until she got out there. For years, she was the only one working to support the family.”
The Popes were determined to go to Virginia in person and collect their granddaughter. They made plans to drive down to Salt Lake City, Utah, and catch the red-eye to Washington, D.C. Rita told an Idaho reporter, “I just can’t wait to get there and hold my little granddaughter.”
CHAPTER 22
Gabe was taken to an interview room in the PWCPD. Despite the fact that he sat in a straight-backed chair for the next four hours, he never complained or whined like some suspects did. And though he did not look outwardly agitated, his voice betrayed an inner turmoil.
The two investigators, one with the last name of Coady and the other with Troutner, were not confrontational in style. They tended to let Gabe answer questions in any length that he wanted. Coady started out by asking how Gabe was at the moment. Despite the circumstances, he answered, “Just fine.” Then he added, “I’m breathing, alive.”
Coady replied, “You can’t beat that.”
To which, Gabe said, “Well, it’s a matter of time, I suppose.” Which indicated he thought he might be heading toward the death penalty.
Coady said, “Well, it’s a matter of time for all of us.”
Gabe responded, “Right. You know, I’m not gonna make this difficult for you. You have questions—just shoot ’em and I’ll tell you the truth. I’m not gonna play games with you. I’m not gonna try and be intelligent. You guys got a job and I’m not gonna frustrate it. If I’m in your custody, that’s what should be.”