Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

One of the lesser-known cases of American true crime is also a very sad one. Meet Charles Morgan, a man who got in over his head with organized crime.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Do you want to see into the future? Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human? On Tech Stuff, we travel from the minds of Congo to the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners

to the depths of TikTok, to ask burning questions about technology, from high tech to low culture and everywhere in between. Join us. Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. He's older than 50 it turns out and there's Jerry and this is short stuff.

And let's go. That's Jerry. And this is short stuff. And let's go. That's right. This is the case of a sort of a lesser known, unsolved true crime murder, in fact. Yeah. I hope that didn't spoil anything. And this thing you put together, called it Bizarre. I take issue with that.

I don't think it's bizarre at all, But it is unsolved and interesting. Okay. I think when you, yes, you're right. No, it's not bizarre. But regardless. It sounds like any episode of The Sopranos to me. It is unsung in that it doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. No mention of this whatsoever on all of Wikipedia, which is very surprising. But we're talking about the death of a man named Charles C. Morgan,

who died in May of 1977 in the desert outside of Tucson, Arizona, and his death was, like you said, almost certainly a murder, but it was pronounced suicide by the local sheriff, even though the coroner was like, I don't know what this was, everyone else on the planet will tell you it's a murder, especially once you know the details, which we're gonna get into right now. Yeah, well let's just describe the crime scene.

This guy was found deceased at the scene, wearing a bulletproof vest, from a gunshot wound from his own handgun to the back of his head, and it did not have his fingerprints on his own gun. And it was laid beside his body. Yeah, so the sheriff was like, well, it looks like a suicide to me, you know? The guy put on surgical gloves

and shot himself in the back of the head, as one does, and then managed somehow to take those gloves off and hide them. Exactly. Before he died. And then he said, let's go get lunch. Yeah, his wife said, no, there's no way that this was a suicide, that's impossible.

And now we're gonna tell you a little bit about Charles Morgan and things will become pretty clear as we do. Yeah, so he was an escrow agent. And the escrow agent, as anyone who's ever bought a house knows, is the person who holds the money. Yeah.

There's this impartial third party who follows a set of rules about keeping and dispersing money and basically once the sale of some high value thing, almost always real estate, but sometimes things like if you're buying a bunch of gold or you're buying a private jet or something like that, there's gonna be an escrow agent involved because you don't just hand over the money and hope for the best. And then once everybody's signed

and all this stuff is legal and set, then the money gets sent out. But they hold it in escrow. And by being an escrow agent, not just Charles Morgan, but any escrow agent, I think even still today, is in a really good position to help organize crime launder money. Yeah, like just putting money in escrow, all of a sudden it's got a little bit more legitimacy to it.

Yeah. It's not the most regulated industry, so it's a little easier to get away with something like that probably as an escrow agent, or at least certainly it was in 1977. And that's what he was doing it seems like. From all accounts it didn't seem like he was a bad dude. It seems like somebody maybe like in a Sopranos episode where he got in a little over his head maybe ended up feeling like he had to do certain things once the mafia got their finger in his pie.

What? That's a good one, man. I love that. That's the best one since sniffing them off the case. Oh, man. That's wonderful. As it was coming out of my mouth, I knew that it was not right. Seventeen years in and you're still doing it, man.

I appreciate that but he was doing this for the mafia and there's a journalist for Unsolved Mysteries at the time named Don Devereaux who basically was like this guy was helping the mafia launder money through Arizona as an escrow agent like by buying and selling platinum and gold is how they were doing it. Yeah, because again, like you said, just taking tainted money, money made from selling drugs,

you put it in an escrow account, it gives it legitimacy. If the escrow agent isn't asking where it came from, from that point forward, once it's in the escrow account, that's when the paper trail really kind of starts. So if they use that money to buy, legitimately buy legal gold and platinum, and then turn around and sell that, that illicit drug money just became legitimate in the eyes of everybody, thanks again,

in part with the help of Charles C. Morgan. And did you say he oversaw a billion dollars with the transactions in the few years he was doing this? I did not. A billion dollars, that's what Don Devereaux estimated, that journalists for Unsolved Mysteries. And like you said, he was a good guy. That's the sad part of all of this.

He wasn't some scumbag, he wasn't a scal, he seems to have gotten in over his head. He was definitely helping the mafia launder their money or organize crime, but he was also a dedicated family man who cared very much about the safety of his family. And I say we take a break and come back and really kind of get into the sad story of Charles Morgan's death.

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and what you need to know to survive the singularity. So join us. Listen to tech stuff on the iHeart So join us. Listen to Techstuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so surely there's other people out there who know much more about this and the chain of events that led to this, but if you take it from the story of Ruth Morgan, Charles Morgan's wife, the whole thing starts in March of 1977 when all of a sudden one day Charles Morgan goes missing.

And he's missing for three days and he finally turns back up. But when he turns back up, he's not carrying like flowers and chocolate to apologize He shows up missing a shoe among other things. Yeah, he's missing a shoe His hands are zip-tied together there another set of zip ties that I guess he got out of but on one of his ankles and She immediately is like, oh my god, the mafia has their fingers in your pie. That's right. I know what this means.

He was refusing to speak and wrote down on a piece of paper, and this is the part that I just find interesting, and I don't take issue with it, but I'll tell you what I mean. He wrote down that his throat had been painted with a hallucinogenic drug that could either drive him insane or his words or destroy his nervous system and kill him. So don't call the cops and don't say anything out loud and move my car. Go hide my car because I don't want them to know I'm back. Yeah, so I get the impression that he wasn't just telling his wife that because they didn't feel like talking to her.

I think he was naive enough that somebody told him that they did that. Yeah, okay. That he was really worried it was true. All right, we're in agreement then, because I don't think that's a thing, is it? No. I mean, you would still absorb whatever drug through the mucous membranes of your mouth. Yeah, what I really tried to dig up, and again there's just not a lot,

is like did he experience any drug effects? I don't know, but I did see that Ruth nursed him back to health from different sources. So I don't know what the deal was. He also was handcuffed, so it could have been trauma from that, who knows. But he didn't want her to call the cops because like I said, he was dedicated to his family

and he was so up against the wall that he could not involve the cops. He had to figure out how to do this himself. I mean, people write entire books about this few week segment of Charles C. Morgan's life. That was the kind of trouble he found himself in. Yeah, for sure. Super scary stuff, obviously. After about a week, like you said, Ruth had nursed him back to health, and things sort of returned to normal in

his life, except that he started wearing a bulletproof vest. He started, he grew a beard out to try and kind of disguise vest. He started, he grew a beard out to try and kind of disguise himself. He started driving his daughters to and from school every day when they used to walk because he was worried for their safety. And he wouldn't tell his wife what was going on. He was just like business as usual. And the excuse was like, hey, I can't tell you what's going on because I have to keep you safe. He might have hinted that he was a government agent, but basically, Ruth, don't ask. Yeah, pretty much.

So things kind of, like you said, get back to normal a little bit, but that was March of 1977. In May, a few weeks later, he suddenly went missing again. And this time, I mean, I can't imagine the dread Ruth experience. Like the first time, I'm sure she was like,

where is that Charles? And she had like a rolling pin in her hand or something like that waiting for him to come home. This time, after he showed up the way that he did, after he started wearing a bulletproof vest, as scared as he was, and then also not letting her in on anything, him disappearing a second time had to be torture for her. I think it was gone nine full days

before she got a phone call from an anonymous woman, and it was a bizarre phone call. So let's say that if the whole case wasn't bizarre, Chuck, there's bizarre elements, and this is definitely one of them. No, no, for sure. I mean, this stuff is a little weird. She got the call from a woman who said he's okay, I think she called him Chuck even, Chuck is okay, he's all right. She also mentioned Ecclesiastes from the Bible, chapter 12, verses 1 through 8. This would

pop up again in a second, but I'm sure you went and read Ecclesiastes, verses 1 through 8. This would pop up again in a second, but I'm sure you went and read Ecclesiastes 12, 1 through 8 as I did. Yeah, it's weird. The only thing I can sum up is that it sounded like some Sam Jackson kind of stuff in pulp fiction. Yeah, kind of. Like, just sort of a scary, ominous biblical passage is how I interpreted that. Yeah.

I mean, yeah. But it was also really odd. I mean, I'm sure if I had read much more around it, it would have made a little more sense, but the end of it being just the way that it did, I think somebody said like, lies, these are all lies at the end. Yeah.

Which is not, you know, it was just really strange. So yes, I find that bizarre that that was even mentioned. And it also comes up again after that, right? So this Ecclesiastes 12, colon. Colon! Versus one through eight is also mentioned on a $2 bill that was found on Charles' body, Chuck's body. Not you, Chuck. I hate to even say that out loud, just the thought that was happening to you.

It was on this $2 bill. He had written Ecclesiastes 12, and then he circled a 1 and an 8 that were in the serial number of this $2 bill to show reference that this was in verses 1 through 8. That's right. Did you say that was in the serial number of this $2 bill to show reference that this was in verses one through eight. That's right. Did you say that was in his underwear? I didn't. I was leaving that for you. It was clipped to the inside of his underwear.

The bill also had seven Hispanic last names written on it. There was a map showing a known drug smuggling route between Mexico and Tucson. Yeah. And then the founders, on that bill, the founders are signing the Declaration of Independence. They numbered them one through seven. And then the biblical stuff, they also found one of his teeth wrapped up in a handkerchief in the car. There was a piece of paper with directions of where he was buried, handwritten handwriting, and someone else's sunglasses were in the car. I've never seen any explanation for what his tooth was doing wrapped up in a handkerchief.

I don't know. Maybe they intended to send it as like you would a lopped finger as a warning and they never got around to it. That'd be what I would say. But why did he have it? Well that's what I'm saying. I mean, someone clearly was out there in the desert with him in that car. Yeah, I guess. And then left.

There's not really any bigger message that you could send rather than leaving his dead, murdered body right by the car. Why would you put his tooth in a handkerchief in the car? It's just strange to me. You know what? I would even go so far as to call it bizarre. Here's the scene. The two mafia guys are driving away, and they're like, hey, nobody's ever gonna find this body, right? Hey, not out here, they're not.

And you got the tooth to mail to the broad, right? Oh, Vinnie, I left the tooth. You left the tooth? Right, he said, I thought you said, leave the tooth, grab the cannoli. So that's what I think happened. But yeah, that doesn't make a lot of sense. A couple of days after the body was discovered,

a woman called the sheriff's department said, I am the person who called Ruth Morgan a few days earlier. My name is Green Eyes. And they said, how pretty. And she said, thank you. And they said, are your eyes green? She said, they're actually a shade of blue. She said, maybe.

She said, but that's not important. She said, I met with Chuck at a local motel recently. He had been hiding out there for about a week and he was on the run. He had a briefcase, like had a ton of money. He said that someone put a hit out on him and he was getting in touch with the hit man to buy back that contract. obviously that did not happen.

No. And that's really just such a sad twist too because he seems to have spent the last week of his life on the run under the idea that he had some hope. He had hope that maybe, just maybe he could get out of this by buying that contract back and maybe this would all go away. But it does seem that he did have a contract out in his life for real that it was because he was informing on the mafia to the feds,

the treasury department specifically, so that does seem to have been true. And then that journalist for Unsolved Mysteries, Don Devereaux, he posits, and this makes a lot of sense, that the hitman did get in touch with Chuck Morgan. He said, I'm afraid to tell you this, but I'm coming to kill you, but you can get out of this if you buy the contract. So you pay me what the mob's paying me to kill you,

you pay me to not kill you, and we'll just call it even. And not only was that a way for this scumbag of a killer to make double the amount on the contract by basically duping Charles Morgan into thinking he could buy his way out of it, it also was a great excuse to get him to an isolated spot to hand over the money, as it were, but really to murder him out there

in the desert. If you look at it like that, this guy was so in over his head and he was trying so hard to save himself. It's so sad. This is just, for some reason, this one really gets me. I don't know if it's because it was recent enough or what, but there's just a lot to it that really makes me sad for him and his family.

Yeah, and also, I feel so bad that he had that hope, that he thought, wait a minute, so you'll betray the mafia if I just buy you out of this thing? And I was like, yeah, totally, that's no big deal. And then he actually believed that. I mean, what an awful way to die, desperate and also hopeful at the same time.

Agreed. There's some other weird stuff to this case, so I would suggest that anybody who is interested, go check it out. You can read a lot about it. And in the meantime, RIP Chuck Morgan and short stuff is out.