Crime Junkie - CONSPIRACY: Charles “Chuck” Morgan

Episode Date: July 11, 2024

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Hi, Crime Junkies. I have a special treat for you, hence why I'm popping into your feeds on a Thursday. I don't know if you know this, but this summer marks five years since we started the Crime Junkie fan club. We don't really plug it super often. We might mention that you can see a pic in the app. But clearly I'm doing a terrible job of keeping you in the know, and I know this because while I was at this author true crime event in the Hamptons this spring, met a group of lovely ladies. Hello ladies who were super fans. They listened every episode

They run with me in their ears every week and they've been doing this for years and they said they wished we had more episodes And I said what we do in the fan club and they had no idea what I was talking about So if you're in the same boat, let me fill you in. Back in 2019, I started in Patreon because I heard so many of our crime junkies asking for more, more episodes, more ways to connect with us, more case visuals. And while we were on Patreon, I also spent years building our own custom app.

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that's different every month. So, to answer the question once and for all, but what are the episodes like? For the rest of the summer in celebration of the fans, every Thursday we're gonna be releasing an episode from the fan club vault. If you like what you hear, go to the link in the show notes and try it out.

If you sign up directly through our website, you can use code FREESUMMER and new members get to join whatever tier you want for free all of July and August. So today I'm going to give you one of our most recent full-length fan club episodes so you can see what you're missing out on. Enjoy! Hi Crime Junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And not to spoil the ending, but this story ends with me not knowing what to believe. This is the story of Charles Chuck Morgan. In In February of 1977, Ruth Morgan is getting concerned about her husband, Chuck. He's not missing or dead, she sees him every day, but something is up with him and he won't

tell her what. And it's little things, or little to her anyway, like one day he comes home with a bulletproof vest carrying two newly purchased guns. Now Ruth knew that he was on the rifle team back in college, but he hadn't carried guns on him in years. And the vest just seems like a little over the top. At first she just kind of chalks it up

to maybe this new job he'd just gotten as president of Statewide Escrow Service, Inc. in Arizona. This new role is like a huge deal, but with all the new responsibilities, Chuck seems stressed, maybe even a bit paranoid. Are there a lot of security risks that come with this job?

Not that Ruth knows of, but there's nothing else she can point to that she thinks would make him afraid for his safety. It could just be him picking up an old hobby, who knows? Like I said, he didn't want to talk about it, so she just kind of let him do his own thing. And things in the home were a little tense, sure, but they stuck to their normal routine and operated as best they could.

So some time was going by, and I'm sure things that once stood out as odd just kind of became their new norm and faded into the background. That is, right up until Tuesday, March 22nd, when Chuck dropped off two of his daughters for school and then just vanished. He doesn't show back up Wednesday or Thursday. And did Ruth report him missing then? No, which at least to me is especially surprising

in light of his recent purchases and changing behavior. And I tried to find something from Ruth explaining why she didn't call police, but I can't find any instance where she talks about it. So I don't know what's going through her mind or if Chuck is prone to disappearing, but the next couple of days, she just kind of tries to like, you know, keep life moving.

She's got kids to worry about, whatever. Well, fast forward to Friday, March 25th, Ruth is asleep in bed when she is woken up by her dog barking at around two in the morning. So she gets up, she walks to the back door of her house in Tucson, Arizona, and before she even gets there, she hears this thumping sound.

So she opens the door, and there, with his hands tied together by some plastic handcuffs, is her 39-year-old husband, Chuck. He has another cuff around one of his ankles, and he's missing a shoe. I mean, frankly, this guy looks like hell. RUFUS But he's alive. TARA He's alive. But he's frantically pointing to his neck, and he won't speak a word. alive, but he's frantically pointing to his neck and he won't speak a word. Now Ruth's having a hard time taking all this in. In her 2 a.m. sleep-filled haze, she asks if he can talk and he shakes his head no. So she runs, she grabs a pen and paper,

and he writes down that his captors had put some kind of hallucinogenic drug on his throat, and that if he swallowed, it could cause irreversible damage to his nerves. What? I know, just when you think you've heard it all, some cases can still surprise you. Yeah. Now Ruth is like, "'F this, I don't know how to handle this situation.

I'm calling the police.' But according to an Unsolved Mysteries episode, Charles shakes his head and he picks up the pen again and he writes down that if she did, she'd be quote, signing a death warrant for the entire family. And that stops Ruth in her tracks. She and Chuck have four daughters together and she's not willing to do anything that puts them in danger. So now her only priority is to make sure her husband doesn't swallow Whatever this hallucinogenic drug is okay, but how?

Patients and an eyedropper question mark like apparently she's giving him water with an eyedropper Trying to make sure that the drug doesn't cause any serious harm But hallucinogenic drugs don't cause nerve damage and even if it did couldn't it still be getting into his bloodstream? There's a lot about this part I don't understand. There's no indication in any of the source material I have of what this drug is or how it's like painted on or coated on to his throat. I don't, I truly have no idea like what they're even trying to do with this eyedropper method. I guess she's like testing if it's real, like seeing if maybe like if small amounts go down his throat, does he have any kind of reaction?

And it seems like he doesn't because he makes it through the rest of that first night. And while Ruth spends the next week making sure he isn't affected by this drug long term, she starts thinking back on all of that odd behavior from the few weeks prior. So in all these little notes he's writing, he hasn't told her what's up? No, not yet. And I have to believe that like Ruth and Chuck have a very different relationship than me and Eric because I'd have been like, I'm not eye-dropper-ing that out of your throat until you pick up that goddamn pen and tell me what the hell is going on.

Yeah, especially if our family could be in danger. What? I know. And I'm sure, I'm sure, it's not like she never asked. I'm sure she did. But apparently Chuck couldn't speak at all. And the only things he'd written down were really vague. Vague things like he worried about them doing something to his family without ever actually telling Ruth who they were. Well, at least that's how it starts. But about a week into all of this, Chuck finally drops a bomb on Ruth that sends her spiraling.

He tells her, or writes down on his little paper, whatever, that he is not who she thinks he is. He writes that he's an agent for the federal government and he's been working for them for almost three years. And Ruth is reeling. I mean, she's trying to process what he's writing, saying, whatever. I mean, she's rethinking their entire 18 year marriage together. But even if this is true, it doesn't totally explain away his odd behavior, because what he's saying doesn't make sense.

Before his voice is back to normal, he writes down another claim that confuses Ruth even more. He writes that, They took my treasury identification. And when Ruth presses on what he means, he doesn't elaborate. In fact, he never gives Ruth anything else to go off of. So whatever Chuck is involved in, it isn't new apparently, but Ruth says she knows nothing about it. And unfortunately, once Chuck is better, he doesn't really give her any more information. What? I know. I don't know if he tells her it's for her

own safety, or again if this is just like old-school marriage. I mean. I don't know if he tells her it's for her own safety or again if this is just like old-school marriage I mean when I say this happened in the 70s, I'm always like, oh this is like 30 years ago No, this was 50 years ago Like women couldn't even open a bank account without their husband's signature until three years before this whole thing So we're not considered equal partners in the home at this time. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So basically make the meals look pretty and pretend everything's fine, Ruth. And that's kind of what she did. Even when her whole world seems to be falling apart.

Even though Chuck continues acting strange and keeping things to himself. So as you can imagine, things are tense in the Morgan household. Chuck seems to be growing even more nervous. He's always watching his back. He's on edge about his girls going to school. After the kidnapping or his disappearance or whatever, he implements this new rule that only he can take their daughters to school. He doesn't trust anyone else to do it anymore.

Which probably has Ruth stressed AF, especially because during this time, he's also changing up his appearance. He lets his beard grow out, even though he's always kept his face clean shaven. And I can imagine her stress reaches an all-time high when on May 4th, Chuck is subpoenaed to testify for the state in Phoenix, seemingly out of nowhere, at least for Ruth.

But when he gets this subpoena, he still won't tell her what is going on. He just says that it is a very secret probe, and that's it. He gives nothing about the investigation or how he's involved in it. I mean, I know it's a bit of a trope for, like, when men want to tell secrets, they just say they're in the CIA and no one asks them any questions. But like is that what's actually going on here?

I don't know and I don't know even when you're in the CIA like do you do your family really not know what your life is? I feel like they know you work for the CIA. They might not get to know anything. But that's that's the hard part for me to wrap my head around. I again if you want to get really conspiratorial, which I always tend to like go there, not that I like stay there, but I'm like, does Ruth know what's going on? But like she is like in full family protection mode. She's also kind of working for the CIA

by not saying anything, right? Yeah, we're not telling the story about Chuck because it ended well for him. Like maybe she's just like, listen, like I'm gonna pretend to know nothing. But nothing has ever indicated that. I just, to your point, like, I don't know if he's working for some big agency, and I don't know how that infiltrated his life.

But anyways, he gets this subpoena. The following week, he goes to testify. But after he gets home, he's more on edge than ever, but still just as tight-lipped. Over the course of about a month, Chuck's doing who knows what. Like, literally who knows, because I can't exactly find in the source material what he's doing during this time, but his behavior is getting more erratic, and Ruth notices that he's always, like, scribbling away on these papers, seemingly making records of things, or taking record of everything he's doing, seeing... I don't know. And she doesn't get to see these papers, seemingly making records of things or taking record of everything he's

doing, seeing, I don't know. And she doesn't get to see the papers. Like the only tidbit of information Chuck gives her is that he's been keeping tabs on politicians in Tucson and he's got a lot of dirt. And he says that's why the family needs to be extra careful. If she could just take a peek at those papers, maybe she would finally understand what was going on, or if she should be more worried than she already is, even though that doesn't even feel possible. But it is possible. According to the Tucson Citizen, on June 7th, at 7 a.m., Ruth watches Chuck leave to take one of their daughters to school. But then, just like almost three months before, he never comes home. That night, Ruth goes to bed worried.

Worried about Chuck and worried about calling the police since he told her that they, whoever they were, would have killed the whole family if she'd called last time he disappeared. But something in her tells her to report him missing anyway. So I'm assuming, though this isn't explicitly said in the source material, that she is the one who goes to the Tucson Police Department the next day, which would have been Wednesday, June 8th. After they take the report, all she's left to do is wait and hope that he shows up like

last time. But three days come and go and Chuck's still not back. Four days, five, then nine days after his disappearance, Ruth gets a strange call. The woman on the other end never identifies herself. In fact, all she says is, quote, Ruthie, Chuck is all right. Ecclesiastes 12, one through eight. Amber, I'm going to need you to do what Ruth does when that call ends. Like, I'm going to need you to go get your Bible girl.

OK, you told me to bring it to this recording. And I was like, I have questions. There's a, again, there's a lot of firsts. OK, so this passage goes, Remember your creator in the days of your youth, Before the days of trouble come, And the years approach when you will say, I find no pleasure in them. Before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark,

And the clouds return after the rain. When the keepers of the house tremble and the strongmen stoop, When the grinders cease because they are few, And those looking through the windows grow dim. When the doors to the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades, when people rise up at the sound of birds but all their songs grow faint, when people are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets, when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags itself along and desire no longer is stirred.

Then people go to their eternal home and mourners go about the streets. Remember him, before the silver cord is severed and the golden bowl is broken, before the pitcher is shattered at the spring and the wheel broken at the well, and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it." And then the final verse just says, meaningless, meaningless, says the teacher, everything is meaningless. Now if you could translate that, please. Sure. So Ecclesiastes is like this book of reckoning and wisdom that's kind of being passed on.

And this passage specifically is kind of like a return to God before you grow old and also return to God before the world ends kind of passage. Okay. world ends kind of passage. Okay, so again this woman calls, she says Ruthie, Chuck is all right, and then basically return to God before the world ends. Yes. I mean, I guess I'm not asking, I'm telling you. Right, so she called her Ruthie. You haven't called her Ruthie at all. Is that like a pet name that Chuck has for her or like a nickname that only like her friends and family would call her? I don't know about family or close friends. I do know that Ruth tells the Tucson Citizen later that Chuck never called her Ruthie.

She says he never even really called her Ruth. Like he would call her honey or deer. So maybe this woman is just pulling it out of nowhere. But it doesn't make Ruth, at least from what I've read, it doesn't make Ruth seem like this woman really knows her. You know what I mean? Right, like calling her Ruthie isn't making Ruth feel more comfortable or at ease or anything like that.

Yeah, and honestly, nothing about this call does. I mean, it almost means nothing to her. It's so cryptic. Well, and she's not just taking this woman's word that Chuck's okay, though, right? Like, she's calling the police, telling them about this call. She just filed the missing persons report, like, last week. Yeah, no.

That's not what happened. She didn't actually tell anyone about this call at the time. I mean, she didn't even want to report him missing in the first place because she's so afraid for her family's safety. So and, I mean, to be fair, like getting this call, you could argue it either way. Like some people could say, like, I mean, it seems like a hoax.

It seems like it doesn't mean anything. But she doesn't tell the police in the end. She's still just waiting, hoping that police are on it. Like they're figuring out what's going on. Then she'll hear more. And they are. Even without knowing about the phone call, investigators are taking Chuck's disappearance seriously.

According to the Tucson citizen, by now detectives have learned that he was last seen at around 12.40 p.m. on the 7th. So about five and a half hours after he left his house, like when he was dropping the girl off for school, he was seen near North Craycroft Road. They talked to one of his coworkers, who must've told them that Chuck was out that way, and they said that he had called them to give him a heads up that he's gonna be back in 30 minutes, but then his coworkers say that he never showed back up, and that's the last time they heard from him.

So pretty quickly, detectives are at a dead end too. They know when he was last seen, but that's kinda it. I'm not sure what else they did, but their mystery was about to get a little bit of a break. It's been 10 days since he was reported missing, and on Saturday, June 18th, police get a call about a body that has been found on the side of the road.

Passerbys say that they came across a deceased male on the highway right off of US 86, about 40 miles west of Tucson. When police arrive on the scene, they see that the man is wearing a suit, he's wearing a bulletproof vest, and cowboy boots. Now, I don't have anything in the source material about how he's identified, but it seems like pretty quickly they know that they've found Chuck Morgan. And it appears that he's been shot in the head and he's lying right near his vehicle,

which might actually be how they identify him, but I don't know. How long has he been lying there though? Well actually not long because I mean this is a remote area, yeah, but it was still a main highway and I mean I'm guessing people traveled along it frequently. And even just the state of the body tells them that whatever happened here actually was pretty recent. So it's not like he's been out there the full 10 days. But they will have to wait for the medical examiner to give them like a real time of death.

Now what they can tell is to them it looks like he'd been killed right there at the scene. There's a 357 magnum revolver lying near his left hand with an obvious gunshot wound at the top of his head. And as they look around, they find a pair of sunglasses nearby and about $10, I'm assuming in his wallet or pockets, but it doesn't say. And then when they search his car, they find two CB radios, a police monitor, and a few weapons,

including a sawed-off shotgun and a pistol. And then in the back of the car, detectives find a package of plastic handcuffs. A plot twist. Yeah, but that's not all. Reporting for the Arizona Daily Star says detectives find something that looks like a piece of a tooth inside of a white handkerchief

in the back of his car, but they don't know if it belongs to Chuck or someone else, which to me is like a big question, like can't we just open his mouth and see if he's missing a piece of a tooth? That was my first thought. Yeah. And then they also find an assortment of like scribbled notes all over Chuck's car. Some of the notes appear to be telegrams from Switzerland, England, and Mexico regarding the purchasing and selling of millions of ounces of gold. Is that what Ruth saw him writing too?

I mean, I don't know for sure, maybe. I don't think so though, because I think the telegrams would have been typed, right? Or am I making that up? Like, sure, I know nothing about telegrams. Well, either way, the things that they don't find are any clothes or toiletries or anything that would make it seem like he planned to be away for 11 days. And you said that it didn't look like he'd been out there very long. Right.

So, where has he been? And how has he been taking care of himself? Does he have any, like, defensive wounds that they can see? Like, are there signs of a struggle around the car? No signs of a struggle. And I was actually just about to get to what Bambi found. So to answer your question, there were no defensive wounds. His autopsy showed that he hadn't even been dead

for 12 hours when they found him. And he had died from a gunshot wound to the head. The medical examiner finds that he was shot in the back of the head and that the bullet lodged in his mouth. But the bullet did too damage to determine through initial testing if it came from the weapon detectives found next to Chuck.

So they have to send it off to the FBI crime laboratory to see if they could gather any results. But that angle he was shot at, like in the back of the head, means that his death clearly looks like a homicide. Now there's really nothing else of note found when examining his body, but they did find something when preparing his body for examination.

The ME found it when they were undressing Chuck. So there was this $2 bill pinned to his underwear. And it had writing, I know, it had writing on both sides. And on the front, just to the left, there is this list of Spanish last names, and they're listed alphabetically. Acevedo, Bejarano, Cajero, Duarte, Encinas, Fuente, and Gradillas.

And I keep reading that Ecclesiastes 12 is written at the top of that list, but I actually have a picture of this bill. I'm going to put it in the blog post. I can maybe see Ecclesiastes and then maybe there's, again, it was really hard for me to see. I had to have like other people try and like point this out. There's maybe this little 12 right under the E And then there are these arrows pointing to a number one and a number eight on the bill's serial number.

What is up with this Bible passage? I believe that this is like referencing it because it's so bonkers. But honestly, my biggest question here is why is this pinned to his underwear? Dude, I know this is what I like was, I couldn't let go. It had to be in my mind done by him. Like something he wants to keep safe because there's other cash that they find like at the scene. It's not with the other money. It's not with other notes.

I have to say, I don't think it's about the money. I think it's about what was written on it. He wanted to have like some message that, I mean, he clearly thought something was gonna happen to him in his last days. And he didn't want people finding that but like what then why couldn't you have written on a normal piece of paper and there's notes all over his car yeah are those not also cryptic is this one more cryptic like what's the difference

I don't know this writing and that writing what are these nice oh my god I feel or you know there's someone who pinned it because they were trying to send a message afterwards I I truly don't know but the fact that it is pinned you could go either way and I can I can talk about this forever But I need to keep going with the story because I still have a lot to tell you and things only get stranger and stranger So buckle up. So that's on the front of the bill on the back. There's what looks like a map of the bill. On the back, there's what looks like a map? Question mark? Like there's some road names and lines drawn on it, which basically point to the spot where Chuck is found, which is in Southwest Tucson. And detectives confirm with Ruth that the writing on the bill is Chuck's handwriting. So I mean, it doesn't help me at all. I know that it goes to me.

It goes back to like him being the one to pin it on his own underwear and like wanting to have this information, like not just with him, but like on him. But no one seems to know what it means. So why? Like, what's the point? Who's supposed to find it? And what does it mean? So if the map is to where he was found, maybe he wrote the map to where he was going to

meet someone. I don't know what the Bible verse has to do with it. And why do you keep the map? Like you're headed there. Why are you pinning it to your under? I cannot figure it out. Like I said, I have to move on. So no one knows what to make with this note on his underwear, but they look at all the

notes found in the car trying to determine if they were written by Chuck or someone else like I said I don't know if they were typed they determined that most of the scribbled notes are in his handwriting, too But police still plan to send them off not to see if they're his handwriting They're pretty sure but they are looking for a psychological evaluation to help try and understand Chuck's mindset and emotional attitude at this time Mm-hmm, but before they get those results, guess who calls? Mystery Bible Woman is back? Bingo. And she refuses to give them her real name either.

She only identifies herself to them as Green Eyes. And she wants to talk to someone about Chuck. When Chief Deputy Dupnik gets on the phone with her, she has a lot to say, and a lot of it helps account for those 11 days that Chuck was missing. Green Eyes claims that she had met with Chuck many times before he died. She said they met at a local motel a few times,

and that Chuck told her that he was in serious trouble, but he had some kind of plan. He told her that there was in serious trouble, but he had some kind of plan. He told her that there was a contract out on his life for $90,000, and it was increasing by $5,000 every day that he was still alive. So he basically had come up with this plan to pay them off, whoever they were, so he could stay alive. She says he even opened this briefcase he had and showed her that it was filled with a bunch of cash and he told her that there were thousands of dollars in there.

Okay, I don't think that's how contracts for your life work, but besides that- I don't know, no one's ever put one out on me. It just seems like if someone wants you dead, they want you dead. You can't pay them off to convince them not to kill you. Does that make sense? I mean, you can't pay them off, but you can pay the people they hire off. Like, they're doing everything for money, right? I guess. But that's not even the beginning of my actual questions.

Okay, fair. How did Chuck and Green Eyes meet? When did they first meet? Like, what are they doing in a motel room together? That seems like a meet-up point that was decided. How did they figure this out? I need way more backstory on Green Eyes. Yeah, great questions. Not a whole lot of info on Green Eyes though. Of course. She tells detectives that she met with Chuck at a motel four different times during the 10-day span that he was reported missing. She says that she was seeing him socially, which I don't know if that means something different back in the 70s or truly they're just like friends.

Like it's social. It's not intimate. I don't know what that means something different back in the 70s, or truly they're just like, friends? Like, it's social, it's not intimate. I don't know what it is. Okay. But she basically says that she was Chuck's confidant, that he told everything to her, like way more details than he ever seemed to tell his wife. So what she's saying is someone or someone's maybe put a hit out on Chuck. Well she is saying that Chuck told her that, yes. Okay.

But this is where it gets tricky because she doesn't clarify who the mystery they are that he keeps mentioning, and she says that's because he wouldn't tell her that part. I mean, how do they even verify that she's telling the truth? I don't know that they can. I mean, in true Chuck fashion, everything is very hush-hush. But according to another article for Tucson Citizen, the woman gave investigators enough information that I guess made them confident

that she was telling the truth. Because I had the same first thought, like what if she really is just some lady who called Ruth and is calling police because she's- Gets super involved in a case that she has nothing to do with. Yeah. Inserts herself into an investigation

Not like we ever seen that before Yeah, but I I think that whatever information she had that they're clearly not sharing They're convinced that she was connected to him in some way So Green Eyes tells the chief that the last time she saw Chuck was at the motel the Wednesday before he was found deceased and the last time she talked to him was Thursday, when he asked her to call his wife and tell her that he was okay. Yeah, I feel like Green Eyes isn't like a mistress,

isn't like another woman, if you're asking her to call your wife to check in. Also, if you can call Green Eyes to tell her to call your wife, why can't you just call your wife? You know, the questions abound in this case. Yeah. Well, speaking of Ruth, remember, they haven't heard anything about the call she got.

So they reach out to her and they're like, hey, this woman said that she was told by your husband to call you. Did you get a call like that you didn't tell us about? She's like, yeah, I did in fact get that call. So after speaking with green eyes over the phone, I'm sure the detectives are even more confused. And all of this is starting to sound really bonkers. But then they get a call from a government agency

that may just confirm Chuck was involved in some sketchy shit. The US Customs Service calls detectives and says they've got information on Chuck Morgan. They tell him that back in 1973, customs agents worked on a criminal investigation involving Chuck. They said their investigation was related to a scam selling non-existent gold. However, they didn't have enough evidence to bring any indictments. But apparently, Chuck knew about the investigation because detectives learned that he'd told a colleague that he was always looking over

his shoulder and would be until the statute of limitations ran out. But again, no more information on that. This guy was pretty vague and probably sounded incredibly paranoid to his friends. So is Chuck really an undercover agent for the US Treasury or is he someone who's mixed up with some illegal gold scams? Right now, it's hard to tell. Chuck's story, at least to his wife, was that he was on the government side. And maybe the fact that he was killed supports that, but police aren't so sure.

They're wondering if maybe Chuck was the bad guy, and maybe, honestly, this wasn't a homicide after all. They begin to wonder if Chuck's death was actually self-inflicted, because they start uncovering even more unusual behavior by Chuck during his first disappearance. So detectives had learned all about the abduction or alleged abduction that had happened before Chuck eventually disappeared and was killed. But what they find in their own investigation

of that doesn't quite align with the version of events that Chuck told Ruth. During those few days in March that Chuck said he'd been held hostage, there were actual witnesses that had spotted him in Tucson when he was supposed to be in Phoenix. SONIA Was he with Green Eyes during the first disappearance? KATE I don't think so. I feel like that would have come up, but also they're holding a lot of stuff back about her, so I don't know. Nothing don't know nothing says and this is during the same time period that he had told Ruth he'd been Handcuffed drugged and threatened. Yeah, and then they find out after his second disappearance that he was spotted twice out on the town And which that part isn't a huge surprise like cuz we've got green eyes saying she's seen him multiple times and they don't specify

surprise like because we've got green eyes saying she's seen him multiple times and they don't specify who their witnesses are or whatever they just say that they confirmed that he was at a local financial institution and he stayed at a motel, but again presumably where he met up with green eyes. So all of that combined with the fact that they found those plastic handcuffs in his car, investigators aren't super convinced that Chuck was even really kidnapped. Although it does seem like he'd been telling people close to him that he was afraid for his life because of what he said during his testimony in May, but even though he's telling people that, he's never telling them what it was that

he said. So like part of his story is true, part of it seems to not be true. Okay, so I have to ask, was there really even ever a testimony? Like has anyone looked into that yet? Well they do, and at first it seems like it's BS because they find out that he lied to good old Green Eyes. He told her that he was being targeted because of a testimony he'd given in Washington DC, but detectives do end up figuring out that he gave some kind of testimony in Phoenix. There's no record of him even going to DC.

But then just when you think Chuck made some of this up or he's having some kind of mental break, they talked to State Attorney General Bruce Babbitt. And Bruce says that Chuck did give a sworn deposition for an investigation involving the State Banking Department. And it actually is super secret. He says he can't disclose the specifics of what that is they're investigating. But he can tell them that Chuck was offered

physical protection because of his testimony. Why didn't he take it? No one says. And that's pretty much all Bruce can say. Okay, let me make sure I have everything. I'm obsessed with this case, I know. There was a secret testimony that Chuck was legally required to be a part of.

And it involved a case that might require witnesses to need actual physical protection that he was offered and he said no. Check, yes. There's a gold scam that might be related, but might not be related. Yes. And Chuck believed there was a hit out on him, There's a gold scam that might be related, but might not be related. And Chuck believed there was a hit out on him, again, denying the physical protection

weird, but he still believed this, that he was a physical danger. Is that everything? Is that everything? Yeah. Is that all? It's some, no. Well, so that I can answer. No, that's not all.

This case doesn't get any less complicated from here because more players become involved. While the Pima County Sheriff's Department is investigating Chuck's death, the FBI joins in too because he wasn't just found on the side of the road. He was actually on the Tohono O'odham reservation, which is federal land. And that means the FBI is launching their own investigation.

Not just into Chuck's death, though. They're also looking into the case that he gave a sworn deposition for. So now that the FBI is involved, things are getting even weirder. Ruth tells local investigators that three weeks after her husband's death, two men claiming to be FBI agents knocked on her door, flashed some badges, and then barged their way in searching all over the house. They never told her why they were there or what they were looking for.

They just tore through everything looking for something. And it all happened so fast that she didn't get their names or anything. So who knows if these, I mean, were really from the FBI? I mean, to this day, no one has been able to verify that. But it kind of seems like whoever they were, if they were agents or not, they didn't find what they were looking for. So Ruth was just left to clean up a ransacked home. Now I don't know if what happened next is related or not. But around this same time, Chuck's car,

which is impounded and in the possession of local authorities, is broken into. Which is a bold move. Yeah. And then his office gets searched too. By FBI agents? No clue. I mean, there's nothing in the source material

that indicates any of these searches are done by real agents, but like, someone is clearly looking for something, right? Mm-hmm. Now, meanwhile, detectives at the Pima County Sheriff's Department are only getting more and more confused. Same. And that's when detectives get a call from someone claiming

to be the, quote, husband of Green Eyes. And he tells them that Chuck was in business with some shady individuals, and they were all buying gold bars and coins in Mexico for some kind of fraudulent reasons. So he's kind of backing up what the customs agents told detectives earlier, but who is they all? Like who is doing this with him?

The man just says his associates, but detectives at the sheriff's department aren't able to identify. I mean, they don't know who Green Eyes is, so they don't know who the husband of Green Eyes is. So they're not even able to follow up with any of these claims, which then makes you wonder if it's real or not. I mean, I'm beginning to wonder if Green Eyes is even real. Like, they've never interviewed her in real life, right? Like, this all done over the phone? I know. That's why, like, after all these years, I wish they would, like, say what it is she gave them

that made them so sure. Because everything that's been released, I'm like... To me, nothing's connecting her to Chuck, other than her own word, and we don't know who she is. I assume there has to be something, but you never know. Maybe there's not. So anyways, a couple of months go by, I assume there has to be something, but you never know. Maybe there's not. So anyways, a couple of months go by

and Chuck's investigation is seemingly going nowhere. But in mid August, the Sheriff's Department makes a shocking announcement. They say that their findings indicate that Chuck was not murdered out in the desert because of some secret state testimony. Instead, they ruled that he died by suicide, and they closed the investigation.

Just like that. Just like that. And with this explanation. Apparently, they found in his financial records that he had debts over $40,000, which in today's money would be like $200,000. And they say he had taken out a third mortgage on his home. So the only liquid assets that he had left

were about $400 in cash. Okay, but for how long though? And did they ever find the briefcase of money that Green Eyes said she saw? I mean, this all seems so confusing. Like why have potentially all this cash but still only like legally have $400 But you're majorly in debt. Yeah, I know they I know they found

So the briefcase of cash that she said he had they found a briefcase It wasn't Chuck's typical one that he took everywhere actually that one's never been found interestingly enough Oh, but the briefcase that they found didn't have any money in it. It just had like some papers and stuff. But the one with papers in it seems to be the one that Green Eyes described to them. So we do know that like it's his. But for some reason, the money that Green Eyes saw in it is no longer here. And neither is his like everyday bag. Yeah, one of the big questions I had was around the money.

You know, they're like, oh, he had $40,000 in debt. And I'm like, OK, yeah, but like, how recently? Is this something that happened over the span of years? Or did he like drain his account and take a third mortgage down in his house in the time when everything is happening? And he's saying there's a hit on his life that gets $5,000 more expensive every single day and he's trying to pay someone off. Like if it all happens in a short amount of time, to me, that's more evidence of a murder, not less. You know what I mean?

Right. Like, did he just like slowly find himself in over his head or is he in debt because he did that deliberately trying to save his own life? Right. But at least according to the police, they say that due to the financial struggles, due to the empty briefcase, there's just no evidence that there was a contract out on his life. And based on the fingerprints and footprints at the scene, the sheriff's investigators seem to determine that there was no one else out there in the desert with Chuck.

They also say that, hey, we checked with the Treasury Department, the FBI, the DEA, along with other federal agencies, and we can't find any evidence that Chuck was an undercover agent or informer for any of them. Granted. Would they ever tell anyone? Like, I don't know, but I don't think so. I feel like that's a pointless statement.

Yeah. And then they also say that they'd gotten the results from the bullet back, and the FBI had found that it did in fact come from a.357 Magnum revolver. Plus, they say he had large amounts of gunshot residue on his left hand, which, sheriffs investigators say is the hand that he used to shoot himself in the top of the head. Well, wait, I thought the ME confirmed he was shot in the back of the head. How is it now the top? Yeah, that's strange, right?

Like, no one ever explains that little switcheroo either. But the ME doesn't agree with the sheriff's investigator's findings. Like, they're like, listen, you know, even if it's like you don't want to say homicide, I'm saying it's unknown. Like, there's no way to rule it a homicide, sure, but there's also no way to rule it a suicide because there just isn't enough information. All the ME can really say is that Chuck was shot in the back of the head.

It just happened to be near the top, at an angle where the bullet got lodged behind his front teeth. So I don't know if it is a switcheroo, or if it's just like, they're just kind of cutting the same thing different ways, or it's strange though. I think it's possible he could have taken his own life at that angle, like top, back of his head. But why?

It would have been difficult, but why take your own life over some debt when someone's already, like, potentially trying to kill you or you think that or you've told enough people about that, like, people are saying that about you? I mean, more than that, I don't know why you even would stage it as a suicide. I guess what I'm saying is that there's no world where he does it because the gun's gonna still be there. I'm like having a hard time even like processing this in my head. You can't hide your own body essentially is what you're saying. Yeah or like the gun's gonna be there so it's not like I understand like if he's like oh I'm gonna like take my left hand

I'm gonna like put at the top of my head so it looks like someone else did it, but then the gun's gonna be right there if there is no one else. So like setting it up doesn't make sense to me. And then it only makes sense to do the back of your head if you're trying to set it up. I think that's what I was trying to get at is like,

if you just went out there to take your own life, you don't have to do it with your left hand at the top of your head. And the left hand is important because Ruth says that her husband was right handed. She said he literally couldn't do anything with his left hand. And a colleague of Chuck's also comes forward and says that he only knew Chuck to write with his right hand as well. And it's interesting because the Emmy also claims that the sheriff's department

detectives didn't find any evidence that put the murder weapon in Chuck's hands. Oh, what about the gunshot residue? So there was gunshot residue on his left hand, but I guess there weren't any of Chuck's fingerprints on the gun? So there's some residue, but technically they can't prove he held the gun. But a sheriff's deputy has an answer for that. He says that all the blood and dirt on the gun was why there weren't any fingerprints. So it seems like it's over. But just because the sheriff's department is calling it over doesn't mean the FBI is or even the Pima County Deputy Attorney for that matter. By the next year, in January 1978, James Howard, the Deputy County Attorney in charge

of White Collar Criminal Investigations, makes it clear that their office thinks there are obvious motives for this to be a homicide, like retaliation for that secret testimony. And this is where the plot thickens. So after some time, they end up getting more information about the secret testimony that Chuck gave. It seems like Chuck was backed into a corner

and was forced to do it. If he'd refused to testify, the state was gonna deny him a license, which would have jeopardized his new role at statewide escrow. So Chuck did end up testifying. And investigators learn that it was about illegal transactions by the former owner of the Banco Internacional de Arizona, which is a bank in Arizona.

And these dealings, I guess, Chuck played a pretty big part in them. He had allegedly written bad checks from the company that he worked for at the time, Western Title, and those checks funded the takeover of the bank and gave full control to this guy named David Calley. And then these bad checks all lead to a deeper probe into land fraud happening in Arizona. You see at the time of Chuck's death, Arizona was a blind trust state in real estate. So basically the law back then, in Arizona only, made it impossible to track land purchases and the only person to know who owned what land was the escrow agent that managed the

deal if it was done done in a blind trust. And Chuck was the escrow agent for some pretty prominent people. Chuck allegedly helped the Ned Warren family in Phoenix and the Joe Bonanno family in Tucson, two very prominent organized crime families with their escrow accounts. So he would have been the only one

with record or knowledge of what they were up to. The Arizona Daily Star reports that those notes he was always scribbling down were about prominent people in Tucson and included details on alleged land and gold deals. And in addition to this note keeping, Chuck's new position as president of Statewide Escrow was somehow seen as a threat to some people.

Now, I don't know exactly who those people were, but it seems like Chuck knew about these feelings of animosity, which could have honestly led to his paranoia. An employee at Statewide even said that Chuck wouldn't even sit with his back to a window because he was so afraid. So he truly believed there was a hit out on him.

And that's what it sounds like. It doesn't seem like he was making it up or if he did, the guy wins an Oscar. So maybe someone was after Chuck. It just might not have been government officials. Maybe there's a world where it's all a little bit true. Maybe Chuck was into some shady stuff, maybe he flipped and was then working for the government, and these, you know, mafia members or organized crime or someone, like, got, like, figured it out.

He, you know, he's now testifying against people. It's pretty obvious. He turns down his protection that he's offered, and those people are the ones after him. Now those same colleagues that had told them Chuck was super afraid, apparently it comes out that Chuck had even talked to some of his other colleagues about his involvement with the mafia. And when those colleagues finally come forward to investigators, they say he told them that when he first disappeared in March of 77, he'd had seven platinum bars stolen from the trunk of his car, which would have been worth over $250,000 today. Oh my God. Now, he never told Ruth any part of that,

like of his story though. Chuck had only told a few close acquaintances. So long story short, all of this really boils down to all of Chuck's notes and records that he seemingly kept everywhere. In his car, in his office, in his house. I mean, he had so many notes that investigators called him a collector. And they find that these notes are very detailed on all the gold and land deals that Chuck

had witnessed or been a part of. Which kind of defeats the purpose of a blind trust ownership if people were exploiting and maybe didn't want any of that documented. Exactly. And Chuck wasn't necessarily keeping all the information to himself. I mean, he was telling his colleagues, his wife,

pretty much everyone he talked to that he had some pretty damning and potentially embarrassing information on Tucson politicians. But I thought Ruth was in the dark. Like she seemed totally surprised by what was happening with Chuck. Sorry, I should clarify. So she she was totally in the dark, she says. But as he started telling her those little things, he apparently told her that he had

damning information. Remember one of the first notes that he wrote her? That he had dirt. Right, right, right. Right. But he never told her what the information was or who they were. Even though the FBI and the Pima County's attorney's office keep investigating Chuck's death after the sheriff's department closed the case, it seems like things still just end up going cold. There's really no news or reports on the other two investigating agencies' findings or what they end up determining.

Like nothing's ever released about the land fraud probe. There's no mention of gold scams being busted. I don't know if they don't find out anything or if they're trying to keep things hush hush while they put together a bigger case, but like, spoiler alert, it's 2024, no news ever comes from it. And so even back then, a few years go by and it's just quiet. It seems like Chuck was involved with a few different things that could have gotten him in trouble, but I think the big questions are, is his death connected to the government? Is it connected to the mafia? Or did he really take his own life like the sheriff's department once was?

I'm sorry, I vote not option number three. I vote same. But those were the questions that Unsolved Mysteries brings up when they highlighted his case in 1990. They lay out the conspiracies surrounding his death and Ruth shares her story, including what was happening leading up to his death. But there's also an investigative journalist on there, this guy named Don Devereaux. Before the episode, Don was investigating Chuck's death and he tried to do a public information request from the FBI to find more information about their 1977 investigation into Chuck. But, surprise surprise, the FBI claims to have no such information. Almost like Chuck's case never existed and was never investigated.

And to Don, it's all very strange that they just pretend his case didn't even exist, even though it's been like 13 years at that point. Well, regardless, Don shares his findings and his questions on the show, but after the episode airs, things start spiraling out of control. All right, Britt, so just to disclaim, we're about to go down a bit of a Reddit rabbit hole,

so buckle in, get your tin foil hat on, and prepare your grain of salt. So Don had been trying to uncover a motive for Chuck's death, and he thoroughly believed he'd found it. He thinks it's connected to the records that Chuck kept of illegal land transactions and potential gold scans happening in Tucson, which is like kind of where we're all at at this point.

So after the Unsolved Mysteries episode airs on May 14th, 1990, a man named Doug Johnston is found dead inside his Toyota station wagon with a gunshot wound to his head. Now Doug Johnston is found in the parking lot of his new job, which sits right across the street from Don's house. And apparently his car and Don's car kinda look alike. And it makes me wonder if Doug and Don might've looked alike as well. The Arizona Republic only reports that they had similar builds

and then both had a beard, so I don't know. But maybe the location of the car were enough for whoever to mistakenly shoot Doug, thinking that they were shooting Don. And according to Don, the whole thing was staged to look like a suicide, but there was no gun next to Doug. He was alone in his car with a gunshot wound to the head,

yet investigators jumped to a possible suicide and then ultimately rule his cause of death as undetermined. But Don is not convinced. He's pretty sure that his digging into Chuck's death and organized crime in the Phoenix area really ruffled some feathers. Did this Doug guy have a family? What did they make of this ruling? Yeah, so his family say they strongly believe that he didn't take his own life. I guess he'd just gotten a new job, things were looking up for him, so they believe he had a lot to look forward to. So it just didn't make sense to them.

And sure, maybe it's all a coincidence and Doug's death has nothing to do with Don. But a year after Doug's death in 1991, Don gets a call from Danny Casallaro, a writer in DC wanting to learn more about Chuck's case. So Don prepares the research that he's found on Chuck's involvement in the gold scams and the illegal transactions. But before he can even mail out these documents, he hears that Danny's been found dead in his hotel room under mysterious circumstances. Unfortunately, police never really

inspect the scene. Someone allowed the hotel staff to come in and just clean the room, subsequently destroying any potential evidence of a homicide. And according to the Unsolved Mysteries episode on Dani, there was two bloody towels, and to the housekeepers, it looked like someone tried to wipe blood off the bathroom floor. So despite what looks like a second person was at the scene, or at least what housekeeping says looks like that, police end up ruling Danny's death a suicide,

and they close the case. But Danny's family say there was no indication that Danny would have done that. And also he hated the sight of blood, it made him sick. So there's no way he would have chosen to end his life that way. So Don immediately believes that Danny's death is a murder and related to what he's found in Chuck's case.

But I don't know if I believe the Chuck's case part. So according to an editorial piece by Mary McGrory for the Standard Star, Chuck's death isn't the only conspiracy that Danny was investigating. He'd spent the past year researching some deep corruption in the federal government involving money laundering, spyware, and the Reagan administration, and he believed he'd found some incriminating information. He even

told his family and friends that he had just one more interview and the case would be cracked. So it might have had to do with a completely different case altogether. But you can't convince me that it was a suicide, mostly because like we can't even look at his body. Like this is the part I can't ignore. Police declared his death a suicide and had his body embalmed before they ever even notified his family of his death. No way. Do not like that. Not okay. So many reasons. I know.

No. I mean, literally everything in Danny's case was handled incorrectly. And his death might have been a coverup, but was it connected to Don or Chuck? I don't know. It seems unlikely considering everything else he was looking into.

However, the Arizona Republic reports that six months after Danny's death, Don claims that this reporter with CIA sources comes to him and says that there is a hit put out on him. And this reporter says they're pretty sure Doug's death was an accident because they were targeting Don. But no one has ever backed this information up. And in the same article that mentions the hit put out on him also says that, quote, others who knew Don Devereux say he is a zealous researcher who sometimes gets blinded by flawed conspiracy theories, end quote.

I mean, I can identify with that, but there's a chance he may have just fallen too deep into kind of his own rabbit hole and frightened himself. It's possible, but that might be something we never know. After all the drama in the 90s died down, Chuck's case goes cold again, and then it pretty much stays that way. Ruth died of cancer in 2006. And in 2010, reporting by Kimberly Mattis for the Arizona Daily Star, she says that Chuck's four daughters are still fighting to prove that their father didn't take his own life. They believe that he was murdered to, quote, protect the interests of corrupt businessmen

and politicians, end quote. And his daughters feel that he had a lot of information on politicians and other government officials in Tucson and maybe even in Phoenix, and that's why they wanted to silence him. 2010 was the last public mention of Chuck Morgan. It's been over 45 years since his mysterious death. His daughters are still alive and still deserve answers. Someone somewhere out there has to know more about the conspiracies circling in Tucson and Phoenix

in the 70s and 80s. And maybe that person is listening or maybe Green Eyes is listening. Even though Chuck's case is currently inactive, if you have any information that could be helpful, please reach out to the Pima County Sheriff's Department at 520-882-7463 or you can submit a tip online at 88crime.org. Don't forget, if you want more Crime Junkie episodes like this one, new members can get

all of July and August free in the fan club. Head to the link in the show notes and sign up. And make sure if you're still listening to us in this feed, you hit the follow button. That way you won't miss out on any of the bonus episodes that we're gonna be putting out every Thursday all summer long.

We'll be popping back in your feed next Thursday with another Vault episode. Bye, Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?