Murder With My Husband - 289. The Deadly Friend - The Murder of Steven B Williams

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

On this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into the chilling case of a beloved radio host whose friendship with a charming investor aboard a luxury yacht takes a deadly turn, ending in betrayal, greed, and murder on the open sea. Links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/murderwithmyhusband NEW MERCH LINK: https://mwmhshop.com Discount Codes: https://mailchi.mp/c6f48670aeac/oh-no-media-discount-codes Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/themwmh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murderwithmyhusband/ Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@murderwithmyhusband Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-dark/id1662304327 Listen on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/36SDVKB2MEWpFGVs9kRgQ7?si=f5224c9fd99542a7 Case Sources: CrimeLibrary.com -  https://www.crimelibrary.org/notorious_murders/celebrity/steven-b-williams/a-body-in-the-water.html PressTelegram.com - https://www.presstelegram.com/2011/11/09/updated-man-found-guilty-in-killing-of-denver-dj-off-catalina-island/ Distractify.com - https://www.distractify.com/p/harvey-morrow-now IslaPedia.com - https://www.islapedia.com/index.php?title=WILLIAMS,_Steven_B. DailyBreeze.com - https://www.dailybreeze.com/2013/02/27/murder-case-of-disc-jockey-found-off-catalina-island-in-2006-to-be-heard-on-appeal/ DenverPost.com - https://www.denverpost.com/2006/09/21/arrest-made-in-djs-death/ OCWeekly.com - https://www.ocweekly.com/harvey-stephen-morrow-conman-who-preyed-on-late-cdm-mans-famous-son-convicted-of-murder-6465510/ Oxygen.com - https://www.oxygen.com/deadly-waters-with-captain-lee/crime-news/murder-dj-steven-williams-catalina-island CBSNews.com - https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/jury-convicts-suspect-in-denver-dj-murder/ TheCatalinaIslander.com - https://thecatalinaislander.com/mysterious-island-the-curious-demise-of-steven-williams/ TheCinemaholic.com - https://thecinemaholic.com/steven-b-williams-murder-how-did-he-die-who-killed-him/ Dateline NBC - https://podcasts.happyscribe.com/dateline-nbc/who-killed-the-radio-star Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Td Bank knows that running a small business is a journey, from startup to growing and managing your business. That's why they have a dedicated small business advice hub on their website to provide tips and insights on business banking to entrepreneurs. No matter the stage of business you're in, visit td.com slash small business advice to find out more or to match with a TD small business banking account manager. You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with my husband. I'm Peyton Morland. And I'm Garrett Marlin.

And he's a husband. I'm a husband. If you are watching on YouTube, sorry about the lighting, we're missing a shade. And it's really bright. If you were listening on audio, you have no idea that anything is different. And that's great. No idea that anything is different. Is that what I said?

Yeah. But it's okay. We all understood. And long day, long day. We all understood. Hope you guys are all doing good. Payton and I are actually going to a hockey game after we record. Pretty excited.

Hockey season is starting. It's October. It is officially October. We forgot to put our skeleton up. We did forget our part of skeleton up. Happy October. Spooky. It's creepy.

What else? Amazing month. Merry October, everyone. It is a pretty amazing month. We have our house decorated already. We got spooky stuff. where we are ready to go. Yeah,

I hope everyone's doing good. We're going to kind of hop into today's case. I will say really quick that I'm officially going to be opening a bagel store. It'll be early next year. Stay tuned. I will keep you updated. I won't mention it too much more other than that. I have a lot of work to do.

And Loki, I've just been getting bagel after bagel and they're so good. True. It's been eating a lot of bagels. I was like meditating and you came in and he just. waved one over my nose. I know, it's like drugs in our house now. They're just bagels everywhere.

Bagels, bagels, bagels. Thanks for listening. Thank you for supporting. Remember, if you want bonus content, you can check out our Apple subscriptions or Patreon, Spotify subscriptions, and you get bonus episodes and add free content. Let's hop into today's case.

Our sources for this episode are Crimesibrary.com, press telegram.com, distractify.com, Ilapedia.com, Dailybreeze.com, Denverpost.com, Ocweekly.com, Oxygen.com, CBSNews.com, the Catalina Islander.com, thecinemaholic.com and dateline. There's one thing about being an adult that I have learned, and that is how much harder it is to make strong, meaningful friendships as we get older. When you think back to childhood, you're just so open and willing to let people into your life, how easy it is to just watch. walk up to someone in a classroom or a playground and just play with them and build this

friendship right then and there. But as we reach adulthood, that sort of fades. And is it because by that point many of us have already established our group of friends, our core community that we already feel comfortable with? Or is it because our time becomes more valuable and we want to spend it more with those we care about and less with getting to know new people? Or is it because our perspectives of the world has changed. Our trust in others is more fragile than it was when we were younger. I thought you were going to say life's expensive. Why does that make you not have friends? No, I'm just saying as I've gotten older, I feel like I've realized. It is. Like when I turned into an adult, I was like, oh my gosh. Yeah. World's expensive. Yeah. I'm definitely, I'm one of those

adults that's like, this is a scam. We should reverse. And be a kid forever. Look it up while you can. I do think, though, despite all the reasons, there are certain things that happen that should lead you to being more careful about the new people you let into your life. Because when someone is so eager to be your friend, there's usually a good reason why. And like in today's story, sometimes that reason can be deadly. So let's take a trip to Denver, Colorado, where we start today's case. We are actually back in the 1980s, and there is a man named Stephen B. Williams that is dominating the local radio waves in Denver. If you were in Denver at the time, you might remember his morning show on KPKEE radio called Stephen B and the Hawk. The show was a pretty huge hit

and was said to pave the way for a lot of morning radio talk shows. And Stephen really did have the voice and personality to lure in listeners. He had this charm about him. His deep, soothing voice earned him the nickname, The Voice of the Rockies. But Denver wasn't exactly where Stephen saw himself being forever. So born on May 14, 1947, Stephen's dad was in the U.S. Air Force, and he grew up presumably on a base in Hawaii.

When his father finally retired in 1963, Stephen's parents and older sister, Jan, moved to Corona del Mar, California. But even then, the now 16-year-old Stephen... It's a nice area, by the way. Very nice area. But despite the fact that his parents and his sister moved to California, 16-year-old Stephen decided to actually stay in Hawaii. From a very early age, Stephen knew that he wanted to be a radio DJ and even got a job at a popular radio station in Honolulu in the early 1970s when he was around 20-something years old.

So after finding some success there, Stephen went on to work at several more radio stations, including one in San Francisco. And then he was offered that great opportunity to join the team in Denver. That's when you move there around 1980. It's pretty funny because that job doesn't really exist anymore. I mean, it does to an extent, but not how it used to. I mean, growing up, the local radio DJs or talk show hosts, they were like celebrities, like local celebrities. And now social media has kind of taken over.

Well, and kids just don't really listen to the radio. Or people who are DJs. I mean, there's DJs on like TikTok, like, or their clubs. It's just changed quite a bit. Yeah. But our story's obviously in 1980, so it is popping off. The president of the Denver Radio Company was extremely impressed by Stephen. He specifically talked about how grounded Stephen stayed in the midst of the local fame, saying, quote, sometimes egos grow with ratings, but not Stephen. He and Don Hawkins were the market leaders, but he was a good guy.

Now, unfortunately, Stephen couldn't ride that wave of fame and success in Denver forever. So around the turn of the millennium, he was laid off from the radio station. But instead of getting the same job somewhere else, Stephen decided to actually change career paths and follow a different passion of his. And that was winemaking. So he moved to the Napa Valley area and began working at a winery. Okay. And he also started going to culinary school. And though the winery was a huge pay cut for Stephen, he really didn't seem to mind.

Cooking and wine had always been a huge part of his life. And he was happy being out in the fields with a hose, lugging buckets of grapes down to the cellar. So for a while, doing this was his happy place. Unfortunately, though, life didn't allow him this pleasure for very long. In 2001, Stephen's father got very sick. And so Stephen moved back to Corona del Mar, California to help take care of him. And that was where Stephen stayed for the next two years. Finally, in 2003, Stephen's father's health became irreparable.

He passed away that year. But he didn't leave Stephen and his sister with nothing. By that point, Stephen's father had amassed a $2.4 million estate, including his million-dollar home, which he left to Stephen and his sister, Jan, to split after his death. And I will say, I do not think you could find anything close to a million dollars in Colonel Lamar these days. And it was a whole home. I would say the average home in CDM these days is probably three to four million. A nice home is going to be eight to ten million.

It's definitely like the nice suburbs next to the ocean. It's like right next to Newport Beach. I mean, technically sometimes it's considered Newport, but just crazy how much has changed. So his father leaves this money to Stephen and his sister, Jan, but problem was is Stephen was pretty overwhelmed by this. He had never been great with managing his finances, and now he had even more than he knew what to do with. Taxes, bills, savings, and investments were not Stephen's strong suit. But thankfully, he had found some relief in September of 2003 when he reunited with an old friend.

Stephen had invited this friend over to his house for what seemed like dinner one night, and that guy brought along another friend, a man named Harvey Morrow. Now, one of the first things Harvey noticed when he stepped into Stephen's house was all of the open bills and paperwork that he had strewn about. It seemed clear that whatever Stephen's financial situation was at this point in his life, he was in over his head. So over dinner that night, the three of the men get to talking, and Harvey mentioned that he had been in the investment banking business, and he was a retired Wall Street executive.

He had made quite a few bucks from stocks, and apparently at one point he even had a job importing luxury cars from Canada. Harvey had actually gotten divorced several years back, but then remarried a woman named Debbie in 2000. And they had been living in a beautiful lakeside home in Texas but had recently relocated to Los Angeles, which was not very far from where Stephen was living now. And they had flipped that investment into a 75-foot luxury cellboat that they now had docked out in San Pedro, California, about 45 minutes away. 75-foot boat, that's big. Yeah.

So Harvey is telling Stephen all about this and that him and his wife, Debbie's plan is to get the boat fixed up a bit and then one day travel the world. And Stephen thought this was one of the coolest ideas he had ever heard of. At the time, Stephen was kind of unsure what the next chapter of his life would be, with radio behind him and no longer needing to take care of his father, not to mention this lump of cash that he had. The world was pretty much Stephen's oyster and he tells Harvey that. Now, at some point, Harvey seemed to joke with Stephen going along with them on this boat to travel the world as their own private chef.

And Stephen seemed to think it was actually a good idea. So from there, Stephen and Harvey become fast friends and they begin spending more and more time together. Now, Stephen began taking more cooking classes at this point while he and Harvey split their time between staying at Stephen's house and on the boat. where they worked tirelessly to get it up to seafaring condition. And the additions they made were pretty lavish. Teak floors, new masts, state-of-the-art electronics, a new GPS system, and internet access. And these updates continued for the next few years as their friendship blossomed kind of overfixing up this boat. And before long, they were mapping out their route for the trip.

One version was to travel north and spend the summer in Alaska before moving down and heading towards the Caribbean for winter. Meanwhile, the two get closer and closer spending more and more time together. But for Stephen, it might have been more than just a friendship with Harvey spending all of this time with him because apparently Stephen was gay and not many people knew about that. Now, whether or not there was anything more to their relationship than the promise of just being the chef on this, this adventure. I'm not sure. People say there's no evidence that it was romantic between the two, but other people felt it was kind of weird that he was just willing to go third wheel on this boat for so long. But it could explain why Stephen felt so connected to Harvey and why he felt like he could trust his new friend when it came to managing his finances too. Now, as I

said, Stephen is the first to admit he was bad with money. And one friend actually mentioned how there was a time when Stephen would just forget to file his taxes for a few years at a time. So imagine how overwhelmed he must have been when he had to figure out how to handle his father's estate after his father died. And thankfully, Harvey was a pro at that. Harvey offered to help him set up a trust fund where he could stash away that $2 million in inheritance. So he helped Stephen set up an account and he promised to manage it. And after that... No, no.

Issues start arising between Stephen and Harvey, but it's not actually over the account. The issues were because by 2006, Stephen was ready to kick off this boat trip as the chef. It had been nearly three years of him helping Harvey work on this boat and them looking forward to it. But every time he would mention taking the boat out and starting, it seemed like there was something else that needed to be done on the boat, according to Harvey. Harvey always had an excuse for why they just weren't ready to go quite yet. And understandably, Stephen gets frustrated because he had really put his life on hold to help fix this boat up for three years and then go on this adventure. That was his plan.

And then around April of 2006, Stephen tells his older sister, Jan, something odd. He says someone had gotten into the trunk of his car and stolen his passport and his laptop, which was alarming for two reasons. Oh, shoot. Dude, getting your passport stolen would be 50 times worse than getting your license stolen. And this is even worse for him because he's just antsy to get on this trip and now it's going to delay this travel even further. And two, because there were some important business documents on that laptop with sensitive information about his accounts that held all his money. Still, that didn't stop Stephen from wanting to take the boat out that mate.

So he told his friend at the beginning of that month that he was planning on going to Catalina Island for the weekend. This was about 22 miles off the coast of Los Angeles. And this isn't really weird for Stephen because he's been working on this boat for three years, so it's not weird that he's like, I'm going to just take it for a short trip. On Thursday, May 4th, 2006,

another boat owner saw Stephen getting on board Harvey's boat at the marina. But then after that, May 4th, 2006, Stephen seemed to go radio silent. Luckily for Stephen, he had a lot of close friends who were worried about him several days later, and that was including his friend Leo Rossi. Now, Leo and Stephen spoke to each other almost every single day. So when three days went by with no word from Stephen, Leo panicked.

So he calls Stephen, he leaves him, five or six voicemails, but still does he. hear back. So then he calls another friend who then calls Harvey. And Harvey tells this friend, oh yeah, Stephen was planning on taking a trip back to Hawaii for a bit to blow off some steam. And then when that friend relays back the message to the other friends who are worried, they're like, there's no way that's true. Okay. Because Stephen had talked about going back to Hawaii before and he just said he didn't really want to go back. He wasn't interested in it. But when they say this to Harvey, they're like, hey, dude, he didn't want to go to Hawaii.

Harvey doubles down and insists, no, he changed his mind and made the trip back. He'll probably be home in a couple weeks. A couple. Okay. However, Leo, his friend who initially was really worried about him still isn't buying it. Especially when another friend tells him, oh, Harvey told me that Steve. even went to Mexico, not Hawaii. Why would, that's crazy.

I mean, we obviously know where this is going. It's crazy. He's trying to cover it up. And not telling. Yeah, why would you say different stories? Because you forget your lies. Idiot. So Leo's like, that's it.

I'm filing a missing person's report. I'm not taking Harvey's word that he's in Hawaii. And so around Stephen's 59th birthday on May 14th, he gets a missing person's report filed in his behalf. Now, cut to four days later, March 18, 2006. The sheriff's deputy on Catalina Island gets a call from the U.S. Coast Guard. Okay. A boater was out in the channel between Catalina and the mainland near Los Angeles

when they spotted a bunch of seagulls circling a floating object out in the water. Yep. And when they got closer, they realized it was a human body, floating face. down. Now, once police are able to get out there and get the body onto a boat, they noticed a few things. One, the body seems to be a male, though it's hard to say for sure. The decomposition and time spent in the water has made it nearly impossible to identify this person. The person is wearing a green fleece track suit, gloves, and expensive deck shoes. But the most telling part is that there are already barnacles stuck to the bottom of the shoe.

Now, for barnacles to grow on something like that, it means the body must have been out in those waters for at least five to 15 days. Now, unfortunately, there is no identification on the body. And at first, police suspect this might have been someone who was out working on their boat and then fell into the water accidentally and drowned. But when the body is then transported to the morgue, the autopsy tells a different story. For starters, this wasn't someone who fell off a boat and drowned because there is a bullet hole in the John Doe's head. Wow.

And when they remove the gloves from the John Doe's hands, they notice that this person happens to be missing three fingers that looked surgically removed prior to death. Okay. Now, I haven't told you this yet, but back in high school, Stephen had lost three of his fingers in a woodworking accident. Got it. Okay. So now our John Doe is missing three fingers, and Stephen, who is currently missing, is also missing three fingers. All right. Now, knowing all of this, police realize they likely have a homicide investigation on their hands.

So they start going through missing persons reports. And they come across the one Leo Rossi called in about his. friend Stephen B. Williams four days ago, which matches up with the story the barnacles told that the victim was in the water for at least five to 15 days. So they get in touch with Leo and they ask, hey, are there any features that could help us identify Stephen if we find him? And he's like, oh yeah, he actually is missing three fingers from a woodworking accident he had. And suddenly John Doe number 88 is given a name. He is a name. He is a identified as 59-year-old former DJ Stephen B. Williams. It's crazy because, I mean,

I know where this is headed. I'm sure you guys all do, right? It's wild to me, the amount of cases we do that involve money. It's mind-blowing how much money plays a role in, I mean, everything. I mean, even at the beginning of the case, right? I said life's expensive. Like, money plays a huge role in so many aspects of, I mean, everything. To be honest, obviously I don't have, like, defined data on this, but from all the cases I've researched, it seems like money is one of the top motives that police look into immediately. They immediately check out their victim's financial situation to see if there is any money

motive around them in their life that would have caused this. it's similar to like a love triangle right like police immediately look for these things whether it's they had a lot of money whether they owed someone money money money plays a role i mean i would say at this point 75 80% of the time in these cases bro's always thrown out statistics i made the statistic up but it sounds pretty good so we're going to keep going with it so obviously they're like yeah leo this is definitely your friend stephen's body that we found in the water do you know anything. And Leo's like, oh, let me tell you about this guy, Harvey, who Stephen was supposedly last seen with, like getting onto his boat. And now he's telling different people. So this is one of

the first places detectives pay a visit to. On May 25th, 2006, about a week after Stephen's body was found, police get a warrant to search and seize Harvey's boat in the San Pedro Marina. Only Harvey isn't there and he doesn't know about the search until a contractor named Greg LeBano calls him to say, hey, dude, the police are on your boat. Now, when this contractor talks to Harvey, he doesn't seem too concerned. However, Harvey does show up shortly after that phone call at around 10 a.m. to watch police search his boat. Now, the dockmaster and the marina office manager later tell detectives, oh yeah, we saw him come by, but he didn't ask a single question or say anything about why you guys were here and on his boat. He just watched you guys for a little bit and then disappeared.

Please are like, he had no question as to why we were searching his boat. That's insane. But on board the vessel, there's not a whole lot to go off of. For example, detectives find an operating manual for an expensive portable GPS system. Only that GPS system itself is nowhere to be found. And when they turn on the main GPS that had been installed inside the main cabin, they realized it had never been used. But other than that, there's no signs of a struggle on board.

There's no hint of a murder weapon, not a drop of blood from what they can tell. But police do speak to a witness. It's the same guy who actually called Harvey to tell him that police were searching his boat. Greg Labano. Now, Greg had been doing some work on the boat that night before it was searched, which was why he was even there. And afterwards, Harvey asked if he wanted to grab some dinner and drinks. Then he offered to let Greg spend the night on the boat rather than drive home. Greg said Harvey was adamant that he sleep in Stevens' designated cabin.

But after dinner and seeing the police search the boat and then how Harvey's acting around the entire situation, Greg starts to get a bad feeling. He noticed that Stephen's room on the boat was practically sterilized. And he had been working on this boat with them for a while. This wasn't how Stephen normally kept his cabin. Now, when Greg asked Harvey where Stephen was, he's like, yeah, he actually went to Hawaii because we called off our big sailing trip. So this is kind of what's going on with Greg as police are continuing to look into Stephen's disappearance. and they get to the point of going through Stephen's cell phone records.

And they showed that on the afternoon of May 4th, Harvey and Stephen had called each other back and forth a few times. Stephen's phone last showed him that same day in the area of Catalina Island. And then after that, the calls between Stephen and Harvey stopped completely. Now, obviously, none of this looks good for Harvey because the day Stephen goes missing before anyone supposedly know he's missing, he just stops calling his friend. And he also knows, I mean, yeah, how do you explain Hawaii?

How do you explain Mexico? It's just not going to happen. They don't really have any, like, actual evidence of the murder. So police start digging into Harvey's background to see if he has the means and motive to kill his friend, Stephen Williams. And it doesn't take long for them to realize Harvey Morrow does have a past, and he kind of seems like a master, manipulator. Turns out, while Stephen was ramping up his DJ career in the 1980s over in

Colorado, Harvey was in Florida. And he wasn't importing luxury cars or working on Wall Street, like he had said. He was operating an investment scam, selling back stocks. When the U.S. Attorney's Office found out about this scam, they charged his company with corruption. Surprisingly, all of the senior staffers were caught and slapped with charges. except for Harvey. He ran off to Colorado and kept his head down for eight years while the statute of limitations expired on the case. Wow. Okay.

There, he married a lawyer named Deborah, which is not to be confused with his new current wife, Debbie. Also, how ironic that he is in trouble with the law and that goes to marry the lawyer. So with Deborah, he has a few kids. He also gets a huge house, a couple of Mercedes. His kids? With his wife after he runs away. Nine motorcycles and expensive wardrobe.

Harvey again tells everyone he's an investment banker. When in reality, he was working as a human resources officer. Eventually, things fell apart between Deborah and Harvey, which Harvey didn't take very well. In response, he lit one of her dresses on fire and was convicted of arson in 1996. That is when Harvey moved to Texas and met his new wife, Debbie. The two get married in 2000 and eventually moved to Los Angeles in 2003, where they bought a brand new boat and began outfitting it with state-of-the-art technology. And it's around this time where they were introduced to Stephen Williams.

Where's all this money coming from? So in the weeks before Stephen's death, Harvey had actually called his ex-wife, Deborah, to say that he was having a hard time making ends meet and he needed to lower the child support payments that he was paying for a while. which is interesting, considering at the same time he was dumping more and more money into his boat. Here's a thing, though. Remember, Stephen was terrible with his finances to the point where Harvey was managing them. Only Harvey didn't take the money and put it into a trust like he said he would. He moved the money into an offshore account on the British Virgin Islands and was withdrawing the money in small increments and using it for himself. Harvey probably told Stephen the withdrawals were for stock investments. He definitely told him that this was the way to save on taxes,

but when Stephen lost access to his account completely, alarm bells started to sound. And what's even worse? That money belonged to Stephen's sister, Jan, as well. The two were supposed to be splitting it, and Jan trusted Stephen and Harvey to manage all of the money together. And Stephen had nothing in writing to show for it. There was no paperwork, no documentation, nothing to say that he had given Harvey his money and was trusting him as his financial advisor.

Instead, the money slowly trickled out of that account and into renovations for the boat that Stephen had no idea he was paying for. Now, meanwhile, Jan, who was apparently living with a disability at the time, was evicted from her townhouse for not being able to pay her rent. Oh, my gosh. Then she was thrown out of another apartment where she found herself unhoused before moving in with friends in Tennessee. Stephen also confided to a friend that he no longer had a dime to his name. He was having a hard time paying for meals at restaurants, buying himself groceries because he no longer had access to his inheritance because it was locked up in this account. Oh, gosh.

That's horrible. Now, when his friend offered to give Stephen a loan back in April a month before his death, Stephen actually declined. He said, uh-uh, I am approaching Harvey. I'm going to confront him about this and I'm going to get my money back. Now, Stephen's friend begged him not to do it. She's like, and if you are going to do it, please do it in a public place. She just kind of had a sense that this whole thing was weird, that Harvey had locked Stephen's account and now Stephen doesn't have access to the money. And Harvey's just kind of giving him the runaround. But Stephen doesn't take the advice. And that was the last time he would ever see his friend.

Which is why police start to suspect maybe Stephen had confronted Harvey about the money on the boat that day. Maybe the two started arguing. Maybe Stephen asked where all of the money was and if it was even there. And Harvey responded by shooting him in the head. Oh, okay. The problem was there was zero evidence tying Harvey to the murder. Sure, he had a history of being a con man. He had very strong motive, but he didn't have any history of being a murderer and everything we have right now is circumstantial. Still, knowing that Harvey was managing Stevens funds and stealing them, was enough to file the case with the DA, except for one big issue.

Harvey Morrow was now on the run. Immediately after seeing the police on his boat that May, Harvey took off leaving L.A. and his wife behind. After speaking with some of Harvey's connections, they were worried he might have actually left the country, either going down to Belize where he had some criminal ties he could rely on, or to the Virgin Islands, where the offshore account was established. Turns out, Harvey had a whole other idea entirely. To run to a place no one expected him to go. Great Falls, Montana.

By September 2006, Harvey had settled down there and gotten himself a job at a used car dealership. By that point, he had already blown through all of the money from Stephen and Jan and was probably looking for his next target. This blew through $2 million. Mm-hmm. And it was there that he actually became close with the manager at his place, a former cop named Joe Parseditch. Now, Harvey told Joe, his wife had died in a boating accident in the Gulf of Mexico and he was looking for a fresh start. Now, Joe, the ex-cop, is not buying it. Harvey seemed too cocky and overly confident to be this morning husband who moved to Montana after

his wife died. So Joe goes on the internet. He looks Harvey up and that's when he discovers that Harvey is a wanted man, wanted for murder in LA County. Good job, Joe. Apparently Harvey didn't even try to change his name. So Joe waste zero time. He calls the police immediately to say, hey, Harvey's hiding out in my hometown. On September 20th, 2006, authorities moved in on the 55-year-old Harvey and finally arrested him at the used car dealership where he was now working. He was then brought back to California to face murder charges. There was still something weighing on prosecutors. Could they build a case against Harvey based on motive alone? The murder weapon was likely at the bottom of the ocean. Any DNA had been cleaned from the boat or washed away from the victim. There was little hope of

finding something concrete at this point, but then a miracle happened. In February of 2007, as the prosecution was putting together their case, someone at the Los Angeles Yacht Club called the police. He said they'd found something inside one of the cabinets at the club library, and they believed it was something police might be interested in. No way he would put it... Okay, wait, keep going. Okay, apparently this was the area where Harvey Morrow always used to sit and read at the Yacht Club library, and right near it was a filing cabinet. One of the employees was going through the cabinet recently when they discovered something in the back of one of the drawers. It was a heavy object wrapped in paper towels.

It was a gun. When they unfolded it, they saw it was a handheld GPS system. Ah, his old GPS system, yeah. And the batteries were removed. moved. So the yacht club employee took the device home, got it new batteries, turned it on, looked at the most recent trip. It showed a voyage from Los Angeles to the far side of Catalina Island. And even stranger, the boat seemed to move in circles for a while before it turned around and came back to the mainland. Now, this yacht club employee clearly knew about the case of the

person who was wanted for murder on a boat from their yacht club and was worried this might have something to do with it. So they called police, told them what they found and that it might be evidence. And sure enough, the GPS matched the exact same manual they had found on Harvey's boat when they first searched it. It was the missing GPS from the boat. And the timing of the route matched exactly with the data from Stephen and Harvey's cell phones from that day. Now, his defense team uses a suicide theory saying, no, Stephen took his own life at trial. But Harvey's wife actually divorces him while he's sitting in jail and says, I had no idea about Stephen's money. I had no idea that Harvey was even managing it. Like I thought this was all of our own money. That's horrible. They claim that Stephen was distraught over the mismanagement of his funds. And instead of confronting Harvey about it that day, he and Harvey were on a fishing trip that weekend when Stephen shot himself and fell overboard. They said the only reason Harvey took the money from Stephen and his sister was because their father and Harvey's father knew each other. And he said the Williams were indebted to the Marrows and they had been for 20 years.

So he's like, making things up. He's like, yeah, once I saw my friend take his own life, I just took the money because I deserved it. So extremely strange defense, but. I also want to say there's no evidence that the families knew each other or had a relationship. Wow. So finally on November 9th, 2011, five years after Stephen B. Williams' death, a jury reached a conclusion. They found the 60-year-old Harvey Morrow. guilty of first-degree murder and murder for financial gain.

He was sentenced to life in prison without parole, plus 25 years. And as for Stephen's sister, Jan, following the sentencing, authorities attempted to sell Harvey's yacht to help recoup some of the losses that she had suffered. They also began an investigation to see if they could recover some of the stolen funds. Now, whether or not that came to fruition is unclear, but I do know that about a year later, Jan actually passed away, seemingly from natural causes. The one silver lining is that she did get to see her brother's killer brought to justice before she said her final goodbyes.

And that is the case of Stephen B. Williams. I can't believe he had kids, too. Harvey? Yeah, just like, what a horrible human being. Also, it is eerie when someone who is a local celebrity to many people, like back in the day on the radio, their favorite DJ, He then moves on with his life. He's going to go sell the world.

And then you learn that he was murdered. Yeah, it's sad. Because someone was stealing his money. It's just an eerie case. It's crazy that this guy was doing stuff. And like kids didn't know. His different wives didn't know. Just all behind someone's back.

Scammers, man. The pipeline from fraud, money to murder is insane. Like, it happens so often. Yeah. It's actually kind of. scary because I think that when you're committing a bunch of scams and you're stealing people's money when you're a con man, I think it's so easy for that person to justify murdering somebody. Well, because at first they justify money, right? It's like, well, I'm not a bad person. I just need

this money to pay this person back. I'm not hurting them. And then they get in this web. Yep. And then boom. You've murdered someone to try to keep up with the lies. It's, it's wild. It's honestly and crazy. It's actually, I think it's like a disorder. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, that is our case for this episode, and we will see you next time with another one. I love it. And I hate it.

Goodbye.