Anatomy of Murder - Where is Christina? (Christina Morris)

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

A woman disappears after a night out with friends. A car wash would be key to finding her killer. But the mystery still remained: where was Christina’s body?         For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/ Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

Where is Christina Morris? I told you I wouldn't be able to answer that question. We made a promise to Christina that we would find her and we would bring her home. We refused to let her down in her most desperate time of need. We all knew and all felt in our instincts that he killed her. But we just couldn't find her. We couldn't prove it. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anasika Nikolazi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder.

In Plano, Texas, just north of Dallas, there is a sprawling shopping and entertainment area called the Shops at Legacy. It's got it all. High-end stores, restaurants, bars, hotels, and even a residential area. It is a popular spot to spend the night out. People shop, eat, drink, meet friends, and then usually head home. But in 2014, one young woman never made it back home after spending an evening with friends. Zeke Fortenberry, a former prosecutor at the Collin County District Attorney's Office, lived just a few miles down the road from the shops. There had been some headlines on the news, just like a girl goes missing at the Plano Shops of Legacy. It was five or six miles from my house. And so it was kind of like, wow, that's where I go to shop and go out to eat sometime. Little did Zeke know that this new

story would soon become a major part of his life. Years earlier, when Zeke first joined the DA's office, he worked on misdemeanors and nonviolent crimes. His first felony case he ever tried was something called, at least in Texas, a hot check. It's when someone knowingly writes a check for money they don't have. With experience, Zeke moved on to prosecute violent crimes. The gravity of the cases struck him from the start. It gets real, you know, like we're dealing with real people's lives who were either severely hurt, assaulted, or killed in some way, and they're grieving. And so pressure's on because this family, they're relying on you.

You are the one thing that they're relying on to bring justice to their situation. And part of the process of seeking justice is figuring out what happened in a case. When a young woman named Christina Morris went missing, Zeke was tasked with exactly that. Christina had gone to high school just up the road from Plano. She was 23 years old, had big brown eyes, blonde hair, and lots of friends. And really not to sound cliche here, but her beauty was from within as well. Christina was just a beautiful person, and everyone that knew her just kind of talked about her spirit of just being this joyful, happy, thriving young female. She graduated from the

University of Texas at Dallas in 2013 and moved to nearby Fort Worth with her boyfriend. She was working in marketing for a dating company, plotting out those next career steps as young people often do. She'd gotten her college degree, kind of trying to figure out what she wanted to do. She was kind of an artistic in nature. Her hobbies included like photography for a while. She thought she could be a photographer, like fashion design. So she was working at a desk job with her college degree, but then really just trying to figure out what she wanted to do long term.

At age 23, she was just starting out and beginning to work towards her dreams. But on August 29th, 2014, things took a dramatic turn. The Friday night before Labor Day, Christina met up with a group of former high school classmates. They got together at a friend's home right by the shops at Legacy. They started a friend's apartment and everyone met at that apartment. They had a couple of drinks, and everyone met at that apartment. They had a couple drinks, and then there were some neighborhood bars. This is called the Shops at Legacy,

where they went walking and kind of went to a couple different bars. They'd already been out for a few hours, and people started to head home. I think a couple people left after the bar, and then the remaining, like, six or seven went back to the apartment where they started. Christina returned to the apartment. Friends noticed that she seemed upset and was calling and texting on her phone.

She told them that she was in a fight with her boyfriend, Hunter. It's getting late in the night. Christina is trying to contact her boyfriend. They're in a fight, but they're trying to like, what are you doing? Where are you at? Come get me. Come meet me. Hunter wasn't responsive.

So around 3.30 a.m., Christina decided to drive herself home. She left the apartment and headed towards her car. It was late and dark, so she walked out with a former classmate, Enrique Orochi, who was also headed to his car. They're both going to go home, and the apartment is about a 10 or 15-minute walk from where the parking garage was, where they had parked their cars. And so Christina and Enrique leave the apartment. They walk along side streets back to the garage where their cars were parked. But Christina never made it home. That she was missing didn't immediately register with those that knew her.

Over the weekend, her parents had called a few times with no answer. They assumed she was with her boyfriend. Because it was the holiday weekend, people thought she was at her boyfriend's house, and her boyfriend thought she was at her parents' house. That Tuesday, Christina didn't show up for work. A friend got word of her absence and alerted her parents. You know, as the parents are figuring out that Christina's not answering her phone, she didn't show up to work,

they start calling her friends about like, hey, have you seen her? When did you last know where she was at? Her parents tried to get in touch with Hunter, but he was slow to reply. And then when they, I think, finally got a hold of him, he kind of said, well, I thought she was with you guys because we were in a fight.

It had been three days since Christina had last been seen. The fact that Hunter had not reported her missing was definitely feeling off. And you know, Scott, really, the relationship between Christina and her boyfriend, it's going to have to factor in about whether that was strange or not. You know, for some couples, that would be absolutely expected to be reaching out and looking the moment someone wasn't heard from. But for some, not so much. Yeah, I mean, you'd think at this point they did know the type of relationship that Christina and Hunter had. So you would think that he would make an ovation to the parents and be able to, in a sense,

let law enforcement know that she's missing. I mean, he has the information before they did. So that was a bit of a head turn. He didn't have any good excuse about why he hadn't reported her missing. He just kind of said she was gone and he thought she'd come back in a couple of days. She shared with the parents that, well, when she left, she left this guy Enrique. And so that girl gave the parents his name and information about who was the last person Christina left the party with. Then Christina's stepmom called Enrique and spoke with him on the phone.

He said that he last saw Christina when they got near their parking garages. They had parted ways right there because their cars were in two different places. That was the last time anyone had seen Christina. Her parents filed a missing persons report and gave police a description of her car. It didn't take long before an officer found the car. It was in the very same place that Christina had left it, at the shops at Legacy, and it appeared untouched. Well, it seemed like she hadn't made it back to the car, right? So her purse wasn't in there. Her phone wasn't in there.

The keys weren't in there. There was nothing overtly suspicious about the car. But from its condition, it appeared that it had been just parked and she never returned. With so many more questions than answers, it was clear a wider investigation was needed. Police started by interviewing people from the night Christina was last seen. Christina's family also sprang into action. The family just starts organizing. They put together some like missing person flyers and the friends of the family go to the shops at Legacy and post those flyers that, you know, the stoplights, the parking garages are around. Word of Christina's disappearance spread like wildfire. Disappearances in that area and from the popular shopping district just didn't happen.

This is weird. It's not something that's normal at all in this community. And so it raised people's concerns. You know, is this a safe place? Who's out there taking these girls? I mean, people were concerned about the safety of their loved ones in this area because it was just so abnormal for this community. The community quickly got involved in trying to help find Christina. They organized search parties, even fanning into the underdeveloped outskirts of Plano.

At some point, they had a volunteer organization called EquiSearch, which is very Texan. They're on horseback and they ride through these fields looking for whatever they're looking for. People are on ATVs, four-wheelers, out through these fields in the north side of the county looking for her too. Hundreds of people devoted days to helping find Christina, but one person was notably absent, her boyfriend. Hunter Foster is her boyfriend who she lives with. They have a long-standing relationship.

Why isn't he distraught? Why isn't he helping search? That's odd, right? For the boyfriend to not be upset and really invested in looking for Christina. Was Hunter's absence just a bad look or was there a darker reason that he wasn't helping to try and find Christina. After Christina Morris went missing,

police spoke with friends who had been out with her the last night she'd been seen. Detective starts interviewing those friends. Who was she with? Who was she last seen? How much did she have to drink? Was she intoxicated? Those types of questions. They also she with? Who was she last seen? How much did she have to drink? Was she intoxicated? Those types of questions. I also spoke with someone who wasn't there, Christina's boyfriend, Hunter. It's always the boyfriend, right?

That's the first suspect in almost any homicide case is a known relative or lover. And so sometimes that's just the easy first target. And even before Christina had gone missing, her family was not thrilled about their relationship. Hunter had a reputation as a partier and hadn't been much of a provider. He was unemployed, and Christina supported both of them with her marketing job. I think the family always thought Hunter was a decent guy, but didn't have his act together. And Christina deserved better, like a guy who could provide for her and a man who would be good stability for her. And Hunter wasn't that. He didn't have his act together. And Christina deserved better, like a guy who could provide for her and a man who would be a good stability for her. And Hunter wasn't that.

He didn't have a steady job, wasn't the best support system and things like that for Christina. Not long before Christina disappeared, she had confided in her mom that she was done with the relationship. Her mom shared all of this with police. Shortly afterwards, investigators sat down

with Hunter for an interview. He told them that the last time he had seen his girlfriend, they'd gotten into an argument. Her phone records seemed to corroborate his story. What we know is that she was talking to Hunter. And so there was several missed calls. She just kept calling him over and over, like 130, 135, 140, you know, just kind of over and over as the night

kind of ended into the early morning hours. But when investigators asked Hunter to look at his phone, he refused. He was really resistant and he wouldn't let him see his phone. And so that too kind of raised an eyebrow and a suspicion about like, why won't you let him see your phone? Now investigators questioned Hunter why he would not allow them to see his phone. Clearly, it's his right not to show them. But if he was attempting to cooperate and help find his girlfriend, then why not provide them with the information that they're requesting? Which is my question. It seemed clear that Hunter was hiding something. It was going to take some digging to figure out exactly what that was.

While investigators are still looking into Christina's boyfriend, Hunter, they decide to also focus on the last person known to see her that night, Enrique, the former classmate who had left the party with Christina. He was cooperative and told police about the last time he saw her. He walked her towards her car, and he says that they split ways at the street corner. He went to his parking garage and he thinks she went to her parking garage and that she was fighting with her boyfriend. While Enrique's story made sense, they had a feeling that he could know more than he was letting on. Police decided to keep an eye on him while they re-approached Hunter. Hunter's refusal to share his phone was a big red flag. Now that a few days

had passed, maybe his position had changed. And it had. During his now second interview, Hunter allowed investigators to scroll through his phone. And one thing immediately stood out. It kind of looked like some stuff had been deleted. It raised some suspicion with the detective and he still wouldn't let him download his phone. She wanted to, like, hook it up to one of their devices and download it for all the information. He just was like, no, you can just kind of scroll through it. And so it seemed that there was some missing text messages that maybe he was withholding from the police. So those deleted messages, who were they to and what were they about?

That's what police wanted to figure out. But before they could, there was a break in their investigation. An officer had been working to pull surveillance footage from the shops at Legacy. He starts pulling footage from every store, bank, apartment complex he can in that area to kind of splice together what happened. Where did Christina walk to? Where did Enrique walk to? And what can we find from the video surveillance? The answer was a lot. The first thing they saw was him and Christina walking by several stores, just as Enrique had described. There were some actually pretty good footages of them walking. It just would be for a glimpse, though, for two seconds as they passed this store,

you know, we would catch them on that store camera and then they would catch them on the next camera in front of a different store. The pair got close to the area where the parking garages were. And then we see them turn in together into the same parking garage and they walk into the first floor level side by side. Just a minute or two after they entered the garage, a camera catches Enrique's car backing out. That camera activated just as Enrique is backing his car out of the garage. And we can see both Enrique's car and Cristina's car in the same garage, parked kind of like facing each other. The footage did not substantiate what Enrique had told police. Quite the opposite.

He had said that they were parked in different garages. But the footage showed that they had entered the very same garage together. Not only were they in the same garage, a camera had captured their cars in the same shot. The timing of the videos left detectives with only one logical conclusion. The timing of them entering the parking garage and then the timing just a few seconds later when he's backing out of his parking spot and pulling out of the garage. We know that she walked in. We know that less than a minute later, his car pulls out and her car never moves.

That all things point to they left in the same car. You know, this really is the moment of here we go. It's the first thing that's really, Scott, moving them in any direction because, again, he says one thing, but his car is pulling out. Christina's not there. It really starts to paint a different picture, at least, than what he's been telling police so far. We're thinking what everyone else here is thinking

is that obviously he's not telling the truth, and it's likely that Christina is in the car. So why not just be truthful? The fact that he isn't coming clean at this moment, big BRF. Police confronted Enrique about the discrepancies between his story and the footage. He claimed he'd been pretty drunk so that his memory was hazy and that it was possible that they'd entered the same garage.

But Enrique was adamant. Christina had never been in his car, not that night and not ever. So police asked to look at his car, and he agreed. I would definitely want my team to go through that vehicle with a fine- fine tooth comb to determine if any DNA, anything from Christina could be proof that he is not being truthful about her not being in the car on that night. So they go out and they just take some pictures of his car.

Some of the things they noticed is that it was immaculately clean. I don't know how you keep your car, but like there's's not even a paper towel or a straw wrapper or a receipt. You know those vacuum lines when you vacuum carpet? That's how clean it was. There's vacuum lines in the floorboard of his car. It seemed like Enrique had given his car a thorough cleaning before coming to the station. And that gave investigators a strong hunch that they needed to keep digging into his story. And dig they did.

In Texas, when you dispose of trash and put it out on the curb for the weekly trash pickup, they don't have to get a search warrant to search through your trash. And so what the detectives were doing is every week when he put his trash can out on the curb, they would come in at like 5 a.m. and they would actually swap out his trash can with a substitute one and then take all his trash and go through it. The saying goes that one man's trash is another's treasure. After three weeks of going through Enrique's garbagechi's garbage, police found a post-it note. On it was a list that read, black shirt, text messages from August 29th, bank and cell phone bills. He kind of had this like checklist on a post-it note that he had written out of the things he needed to get rid of and he threw it away and the Plano police found it. And as we look back,

like those are kind of all the things that tie him to Christina. Police treated the list like a roadmap for their investigation. If Arochi needed to get rid of bank bills, that was the first place they wanted to look. They started by checking his bank statements around the time of Christina's disappearance. It led them to a gas station he had visited that Saturday morning. Detectives pulled surveillance footage from the station and found Orochi filling up his car tank. But that wasn't all. That gas station where he's getting gas, there's one of those squeegees where you can wash your windshield. And so what he does, he grabs that squeegee and he kind of like washes the passenger door handle and he buffs it with the tail of his shirt. And then he goes around while he's getting gas and he washes the trunk where his license plate is and the bumper. He washes that with that squeegee

from the gas station. You know, Anasika, I just kept thinking about these two words, epic fail. You know, in our line of work, kept thinking about these two words, epic fail. You know, in our line of work, we're not shocked a lot, especially when it comes to people committing crimes, not being honest, thinking that they were smarter than everybody else, including even science. To think that a squeegee could clean up micro amounts, I'm talking about micro amounts of potential DNA. That's one part. And the second part really is, what if somebody sees you or you're captured on videotape? Then what are you going to say?

And all I could think about is three words that I'd be telling a jury if it gets that far, which is consciousness of guilt. You know, using a squeegee to wash your car window is one thing, but washing a door handle and the trunk latch, that's not something you see every day. And it was enough information to secure a search warrant to search his car. So this time they, you know, get a search warrant, they go to his house, they put on a tow truck, and they take it into the Plano Police Department to be forensically investigated. CSI technicians had prepared themselves before getting into Orochi's car. The lead technician had studied the gas station footage. She knew where she wanted to

focus and why. She kind of said she thought to herself, if I was putting something heavy, like a body, into the trunk, where is a surface here that might catch something that would be really hard to clean? She noticed that there was rubber weatherstripping on the perimeter of the trunk lid near the latch. And she said, I should swab that, right? Like, that's a porous material. It's foam, rubber. It would be hard to clean. And if I was putting something heavy, you know, 100 pounds into the back of the trunk,

it might brush up against that as you're sliding it in. So she took swabs of that weather stripping along with other areas of the trunk. The team also did the test called Blue Star, which reacts when it comes into contact with human blood. Knowing that Orochi had focused on cleaning the back latch, they paid extra attention to the trunk area. And it paid off. The Blue Star test reacted to the trunk's floor mat, signaling that human blood had been present. Whose blood was it had yet to be determined. Along with the swabs from the weather stripping, it was sent off for DNA testing.

In the meantime, Orochi remained a free man. So we got this weird stuff, you know, car washes, the Blue Star, but it's still not enough. And we don't have a body. We don't know what happened. And so they've done all their investigation, and they give the car back to Enrique. Months passed with little progress in finding Christina. In December, police learned of something that had nothing to do with Orochi.

Christina's boyfriend, Hunter, had been arrested by federal agents on narcotics charges. When Plano police heard of the arrest, they reached out to the federal agents to narcotics charges. When Plano police heard of the arrest, they reached out to the federal agents to learn more about their case and to tell them about their investigation. And they're like, oh, no, we were texting him all night and setting up an undercover drug deal, and he gave a hand-to-hand deal.

Hand-to-hand is a legal term for, like, he sold drugs to an undercover officer in this club that night. So the very night Christina went missing, her boyfriend was in Dallas selling narcotics. The arrest helped explain his resistance in sharing his phone with police. And it also gave him a solid alibi. It's not a good alibi, the sense that like he got arrested, but it's a pretty good alibi. I didn't kill Christina. I didn't have anything to do with it.

I'm down in Dallas dealing drugs. So Hunter was cleared as a person of interest, and the investigation turned its full focus to Orochi. Less than one week later, the DNA results from Orochi's car came in. The DNA from the rug in the back of the trunk matched Christina, and the DNA on the weatherstripping of the trunk lip, as you shut the trunk, that matched her too. DNA results are presented as a probability. For example, there could be one in a one million chance that DNA belonged to someone else.

In the case of Christina, the results said there was one in a quintillion chance that the DNA found did not belong to Christina. A quintillion, remember, has 18 zeros. Basically, that number means it's not somebody else. This is Christina. There's not that many people even on the planet Earth. That number meant it was Christina. No doubt about it. The results were a culmination of months of hard work by the investigative team. I got chills, right? We got it.

I can't believe that through this crazy investigation and all of the efforts, that one little swab on the weather stripping kind of broke open the case as matching Christina's DNA. There was also an obvious contradiction to Orochi's claim that Christina had never been in his car. But without her body, one question loomed large. What would they charge Orochi with? I believe in my heart at this point she's dead. I believe Enrique is the one who did it, but I don't know how he killed her. It could be a gun, a knife, his fist. We just don't know. And so we kind of start going to the drawing board on what can we prove? What does this evidence that we have, what crime does

it prove? One thing was certain, the DNA testing showed that Christina had been in Orochi's trunk. Well, our theory was that she didn't get in the trunk willingly and that any consent to get into his car was by deception. And so if he uses deception to lure her into his car, then that's not valid consent. So him transporting her from one place to the next place is kidnapping. Orochi was charged with aggravated kidnapping, but Zeke was worried without a victim to testify, how would a jury view that charge? I always try to prepare for trial and put myself in the juror's shoes. And I'm just thinking there's so many unanswered questions and that makes it feel weak, right? Like if I can't tell the whole story and there's these

missing gaps, it feels like it's not beyond a reasonable doubt, you know? So that was my biggest concern was how do I tell them that we don't have everything and that's okay for this charge, right? That we're going to be able to prove this charge and don't worry about the murder charge. And there was added pressure. This would be the first time that Texas had prosecuted a kidnapping without the presence of the victim. When you think of kidnapping, you think of like on a TV show, it's like, oh, they swoop in, they tie you up and throw you in the back of a van. And then we recover you.

And then you can testify and say, I was kidnapped. I was tied up and thrown in the back of a van. And so kidnapping charges almost always have the victim testify to say I was kidnapped. And so the thought of having no one to say I was kidnapped, could we still prove that kidnapping charge? In September of 2016, two years after Christina Morris went missing, Zeke headed into court to find out the answer to that question. Members of the jury, where is Christina Morris? I told you I wouldn't be able to answer that question, and we haven't.

At trial, the case against Enrique Orochi began where Christina Morris was last seen, entering a parking garage. We don't believe there was an altercation in the garage. There was not time to have some sort of fight, altercation, or something to happen in the garage. We don't believe there was an altercation in the garage. There was not time to have some sort of fight, altercation, or something to happen in the garage. We think that she gets in the car healthy, surviving, nothing weird going on, just because there's not time for something to occur. Cell phone data showed the path that Orochi's car took from the garage, first away from the shops, and then a U-turn back towards them. Combined with other evidence, that was telling. It's almost like a fight happened. Like, she's like, take me home.

This is the wrong way. Where are you taking me? Zeke had evidence to support the fight theory. When Orochi had first met with police, his hands had scratch marks and bruises on them. There was likely an assault. And so we first came into the police that first time. There was some bruising on his knuckles and scratches on his arms. And we said that there was a fight.

The following audio is from Zeke's closing argument at trial. Maybe the defendant hit her in the passenger seat and bruised his wrist. Maybe he punched her in the mouth and cut his knuckles on her teeth, but something changed. Zeke believed Christina knew she was in a dangerous situation, that Christina even may have jumped out of the car. My theory is she jumps out thinking, this is not good. He's going the wrong way. Take me back to my car. And so maybe she jumps out and he like swerves and hits her. I don't know. But I always had that in me back to my car. And so maybe she jumps out and he like swerves and hits her. I don't know. But I always had that in the back of my mind.

I think she at some point realized this wasn't safe and didn't want to be in there. And that he then used his car like a weapon. Remember that indentation on his car that had been observed by investigators. And maybe at some point when they slowed down in the stoplight, she jumped out. And maybe he swerved the car and it hit her. Because you know, that's no tire drop. That's no punch. That's more like a head or a hip. Maybe it knocked her out. In order to drive home this theory, Zeke did something extremely unusual during the trial. He took the jury on a field trip to view Aruchi's car.

The way the pictures were, and it's like the car was dark gray, like the glare and the reflection, it just, you couldn't see it very good in pictures. And so I had gone to see the car myself, and I was like, yeah, I want the jury to see what I saw. You know, I want them to see it just like I'm seeing it. These pictures don't do it justice. While the move was unexpected, it was important to Zeke that the dent on the car be fully appreciated by the jury. I wanted my good evidence to be great because I was missing these other pieces like, well, what happened to her? Where's her body? And so I wanted to make sure that the evidence that we had, that it stuck, that it made sense, that it was strong and reliable. Because if they questioned some of those things, my fear was these unanswered questions would lead them to have some sort of reasonable doubt and acquit him.

So Zeke even went outside the usual evidence box to try and prove his case. Christina's friends and family were called to testify about a fear that Christina had. She was afraid of the dark. So we were able to bring in a few of her character traits to show it would be unlike her to just jump in a car, to get in the trunk. Ironically, she was very scared of the dark as a 20-something-year-old. Her father testified, her friends testified that she was like a big scaredy cat, like would leave the light off in the closet when she slept, and has done that since she was like 10-year-old or something. And so, you know, this idea that she would willingly go into a dark space was just against her character. Zeke finished his case with a reference to the town where Orochi's phone had pinged the day after Christina went missing, Anna, Texas. Here's a bit more from his summation. There's still unanswered questions. Things I'd like to know, I'd like to know what's in Anna,

Texas, and why you're driving up there the next day for a couple of hours. What we'd all like to know is where is Christina Morris? Here I have tried this super long case and we're at the very end, but I walk over towards him and gesture kind of and say, I want to know what's happening in Texas. I kind of just left that question open, telling the jury I still have questions. After summations and the judge's charge, the jury left to deliberate. So the first day they went out, he deliberated about eight

hours, and then he sent him to a hotel for the night and brought him back the next morning. The longest night of my life, you know, like I only had a few juries kind of deliberate overnight, but never on like a major case like this. And so, of course, I didn't sleep. After two days of deliberating, they reached a verdict. Orochi was found guilty in the aggravated kidnapping of Christina Morris, a verdict that meant so much to so many. It just felt like everything had worked out just as we had anticipated. It was such a relief. Orochi elected to be sentenced by the judge who gave him life in prison. For her family, while relieved by the verdict and sentence, that layer of forever sadness along with the pain of the unknown remained. I think as a parent, you just question what happened in those last moments

and where did he put her. And so while they got the satisfaction of the guilty verdict and the life sentence, they didn't have that satisfaction or that peace in their heart about where is she. It was a sadness that Zeke spoke of in court too. And I can imagine that for a family, it would be hard to lose a loved one. And particularly hard when she's in her prime, in her mid-20s, that for a family, it would be hard to lose a loved one. And particularly hard when she's in her prime, in her mid-20s, and coming into adulthood with her college degree and blossoming as a person. But imagine how difficult it is when you can't say goodbye. You can't have a funeral because you don't know where her body is.

Years passed after the trial and no progress was made in finding Christina. In some ways, life moved on. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex continued its outward expansion, swallowing up Plano and other areas north. New neighborhoods were being built from the ground up each and every year. What happens is these home developers come in and they'll clear a field and build like 300 homes and create a neighborhood. Literally, like it goes from a field to like a park and streets and 500 houses in like a year. And in building those housing areas, the first step is doing a thorough survey of the land.

I guess before they plow down or level the field to start building, they actually walk the field with a bulldozer. Someone is walking in front of a bulldozer. They're kind of like grading the land to make it flat just to see if there's any pipes or things that are going to cause a problem for the bulldozer. In one of these newly planned neighborhoods in 2018, someone walking the land spotted what appeared to be a human skull and he called police. Ultimately, they come out and it is a skull and they find other bones in the area. They find some remnants of her clothing and send off those bones and stuff for DNA analysis to confirm that it is Christina. By this point, Zeke had left the DA's office to open up his own private practice in civil law. Imagine his surprise when in March of that year, he got a phone call from the lead detective from the Christina Morris case.

I was at my civil lawyer job and the detective called me and she hadn't called me. I mean, we didn't talk, right? Like I wasn't a prosecutor anymore. The detective told Zeke that Christina's remains were found in Anna, Texas, the very place that Orochi's phone had pinged the day after Christina went missing, the very place that Zeke had spoke of during his closing arguments. And not only that. I had actually walked a few of those searches on the weekends, and I had walked in the end of Texas,

because we knew that cell phone ping, and that always was a weird thing in my head. And so I always felt that had something to do with where she was at. And so on a couple of the walks that I had gone on in the searches, I had walked in the end of Texas, probably just like half a mile from where she was found. Finding her remains gave some closure to her loved ones and for everyone else that had been involved in this case. So they then had a funeral. It was not only a chance to finally lay Christina to rest, but to celebrate her life as well. They say like funerals

are often or can be like a celebration of life. So not that it wasn't sad because it was super sad, but truly we were able to celebrate her life and all the good things that Christina stood for. After his time in the prosecutor's office was over, Zeke moved his career to the civil courts. What happened to Christina and the many other victims' cases he handled over the years stayed with him.

The thing about the criminal justice system is it's really focused on the bad guy. It's really about holding the criminal responsible and punishing them for their actions. What I've seen on the civil side is it actually compensates the victim for what they've been through. And sure, it's only dollars. We can't go back in time and undo things. But the civil system is actually a way for people to be compensated for what they endured. Now as a civil attorney, Zeke remains an advocate for victims. I have my own firm, and what we typically do is we piggyback on criminal cases, and we represent victims on the civil side, victims of crime. What I do now is I'm like the civil prosecutor. I want the bad guy to go to jail,

and then I want to sue them and get the victim a million bucks or whatever we can get. But his years as a prosecutor stay with him, as does what happened to Christina Morris. To this day, Zeke is still in touch with her family. I still talk to her family today. They're great people. We just have a connection between me and them, and they text me happy birthday.

When I post a picture of my kid, they comment on it and stuff like that. So we've developed a friendship and a respect for each other from the case. I felt proud of my profession when hearing how hard Zeke worked along with investigators to get justice for Christina, and also when it was clear how much he cared about what happened. It's that empathy combined with skill that makes for the very best of prosecutors, and that is what all victims deserve. The toll of murder is obvious. The victim loses life. Family and friends ache with a hole in their hearts, often one that never heals. The additional

agony for a family to not know what happened to their loved one must be all the more brutal and cruel. We are so thankful that the question, where is Christina Morris, never has to be asked again. On the day

police announced the recovery of Christina's body, her mother, her father, and her sister attended a press conference at the police department during which her sister Sarah stepped up to the microphone and talked about the three-year journey to find Christina. Come home, Nina. Find Christina. Giving up is not an option. Can't stop, won't stop. These are the words we've proclaimed time and time again over the past three and a half years.

We made a promise to Christina that we would find her and we would bring her home. We refused to let her down in her most desperate time of need. She would expect nothing less, and we were determined to keep that promise. 2,185 days after her disappearance, Christina was found. Our hearts are irreversibly broken. We never wanted closure, even if there was such a thing. We only wanted Christina. We only hope that bringing Christina home has, in fact, given this family finally some peace. Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder.

Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. This episode was written and produced by Tracy Levy. Researched by Kate Cooper. Edited by Ali Sirwa, Megan Hayward, and Philjean Grande. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?