Friends,
Here is the link again to the petition I created in change.org entitled Colorado State Governor John Hickenlooper: We want Morgan Ingram’s felony stalking investigation reopened.
I’m now trying to collect 1,500 signatures, and we are almost there. You don’t have to live in Colorado to sign it – anyone can…it will just show him how important people believe this is. Thank you.
To read more about what I’m trying to do and to sign my petition, click here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/colorado-state-governor-john-hickenlooper-we-want-morgan-ingram-s-felony-stalking-investigation-reopened?share_id=rMbfongVvE&utm_campaign=petition_creator_email&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition
It’ll just take a minute!
Once you’re done, please ask your friends to sign the petition as well. Grassroots movements succeed because people like you are willing to spread the word!
Thank you all so very much!
Toni
Morgan’s favorite lunch – peanut butter, honey and bananas
Morgan has been feeling sick, and she ignores a text from her friend in Savannah, just past midnight at 12:44 am, “When is your Dad’s bday?”
We have a lot of activity in the morning from the stalker, and for some reason Steve is up, and ready. Like he knew it was coming. For the first time in a week he has the thermal imaging scope out, and is dressed all in black, when I see him go out the back door at 4:48 am, right after Morgan alerts us to rocks on her window.
I ask him if I should call the sheriffs, as he goes out he says no. He has a black aluminum baseball bat in his free hand, and I hope he finds something worthy of a swing. Steve was quite a home run hitter in his younger days.
I try to watch him from the back windows, and I have lost all sight of him, as I go around the house trying to pick out where he is. Normally the outside motion detectors would be announcing his actions around the house, but this time there is nothing they are picking up on. Whatever he has decided to do this morning, he is under cover.
He calls me at 5:45 am, it is still pitch black outside, and I ask him what is up. He has picked up two trails in the grass, and has located an area on the berm where he can clearly see the heat signature of where a body that was lying in the tall grass. He has been watching deer as they come through, and is very familiar with how they present on the thermal imaging and he is convinced this was a person. He is still close by so he whispers to me. Call the deputies and tell them I have heat signatures across the yard. Tell them to come in from the north side, our side of the street.
This is a different Steve, he has never had me direct the officers before. My chest is racing I think he must see something to have said that. One of the officers on the way calls and he has a thermal imaging scope also. Probably much better than ours and he will circle back in from the end of the street. I tell him Steve is on the berm and has located two spots where a body was hiding. The deputy is excited and shortly after our phone call I hear a truck race by the front of our house.
This seems too good to be true, we are working together and putting technology to work in order to catch the stalker. Steve calls me and says he see their flashlights coming, he wonders why they always use their flashlights, you can see them so easily. My Steve and Officer Steve P. from the sheriff’s department meet up out on the berm between our neighbor Rhonda’s house and ours. I can see them standing there and talking, pointing at the ground.
They split up and Steve comes straight for the back door. I unlock it and let him in, this is pathetic, were his first words. He is very angry. Something was moving down at his end and he could not see it. Because his batteries were dead. Of course he can’t take batteries from us because, what, we might catch the guy? He won’t take my thermal scope, because that is against policy. Steve says he told him, maybe we should rent the Unicorn hot air balloon for the day, but he didn’t understand, or wanted to choose to ignore him. He was coming right at them Steve tells me, right at them. I thought they had night vision, could have spotted him easily. This is a nightmare times two!
Morgan is wandering down the hall and wondering what is up. She tells Steve, it’s just rocks against my window daddy, it’s OK I can take it. He offers to make her French toast, and she perks up quite a bit. “But it is your birthday.” Morgan tells him. “Yes, it is and I want to make you breakfast.” Which he does, for us all.
Detective P. and Detective M. knock at the front door apologizing about the dead scope, and promising that they will have it working next time. I don’t tell him the same thing happened to the detectives last time they were here, and then I say good bye.
We have a wonderful breakfast and Morgan goes about getting ready for school. Steve tells me this is just not fair. Morgan is giving this all she has, more than anyone ever should, and it has just become one screw up after the next. He tells me we have to hold them more accountable. To actually have live batteries is not that big of a request he feels. I know they think this stalker is harmless, but you never know Steve tells me. First the car was keyed before the stalking started, with the word BITCH on it (down to the metal and the Carbondale police officer (not the Garfield County Sheriffs) said that it is usually a sign of someone with deep seated problems or on drugs), with lots of anger and who knows what they do next. I don’t like this at all.
I agree with Steve, they don’t seem to be very serious at all, just going through the motions, and it is having a big affect on Morgan’s life.
Steve leaves for a project he is working on in Aspen, and Morgan comes back out at 10:27 am to announce a text she just received from her instructor, “No class today. Had to pick up daughter from school. Homework due Wed. Classical vs Neoclassical.” Then she answers her friend in Savannah who was wondering about Steve’s birthday. At 10:48 am, she tells him, “Today. HaHa.”
Morgan is worried about her Dad, he seemed extra stressed this morning, and I tell her it is wearing on us all and he wants it over. Morgan assures me that she is fine. She feels safe as long as she is in the house. That actually for her the worst part is driving up the street, once she is in the front door she feels like everything is OK.
Today is October 28, 2012 – Another weekend has been spent with lists, timelines and more evidence – more then I ever thought we would have about Morgan’s death. The order to bring it all out, and through which communication medium, was a big decision today. Last year after our meetings in Los Angeles we had a very ambitious plan that has now been scaled back. Raising awareness is still our biggest goal, and our most successful to date. Justice for Morgan is still very problematic. We know what happened to her, that she never really stood a chance in her last 24 hrs of life, but presenting what we know and preserving the possibility of eventual prosecution is not at all so easy, as I would have thought. I miss my little girl so much and I want to do what is right, so waiting for a few more decisions this week will be something I can do. Steve and I have had so many offers for help that we are humbled by the love and understanding that Morgan’s story was able to spread in the world. We pray for the strength to do justice to what she had already accomplished in her lifetime.
The chatter on our tipline about stalkers being cornered, and stopped by the lessons we learned and that are being shared with us is very satisfying. Morgan’s stalker was a very talented individual, in a sick sort of way, and reading about what happened to Morgan has actually helped many other individuals. It has been more than satisfying for Steve and I, that methods we employed that were useless for us, have been very successful for others. And have so changed the perceptions of how to correctly confront your stalker for so many others. It is not the end I had hoped for when Morgan was still alive, but now I gladly take it, in the memory of Morgan and for all of those it is helping. But this doesn’t mean we are giving up – NEVER! And I am still very confident that a law enforcement agency will step up to the plate and take over this investigation. Thank you all for so many signatures to our petition to the Governor of Colorado – we will continue to take signatures (only 300 left to go) and then we will be presenting it to him.
Tessi babysitting Wylah so Morgan can get some sleep
Morgan calls me at 8:00 am and thanks me for taking Wylah, out and letting her sleep. She wants to sleep more if that is alright and I tell her certainly – go back to sleep. She needs the rest.
Our detectives are trying to come by earlier today so we can try to make some calls again. They are called pretext calls, which basically means Morgan gets on a phone that has been attached to something in Detective Glassmire’s briefcase and she picks up the phone after he has dialed the number and tries to engage the people in a directed conversation. It all sounds good and looks impressive, but unfortunately nobody on the other end has cooperated by answering yet.
Keenan had his cell phone disconnected, and they have been unable to find his new number yet, so a lot of this is shooting in the dark anyway. The calls today are started earlier in hopes we will catch someone at a different time. It starts out with promising signs, but is headed for discouraging results before long.
Steve tries to help and goes into my office to sign up for a service on the Internet that supposedly has all the answers for $20 and there are all kinds of special deals for increased access and information, which Steve accepts and we soon have names and addresses and all kinds of information to go with the numbers.
Again, this looks very promising at first. Even Detective Glassmire and Detective Alstatt are surprised by all the information that can be had on anyone. Only none of this information is working any better. Steve signs in again and tries a search on us using a number that we have had for six years, and is supposed to be private. The information comes spitting out and it is all wrong, we are not even anywhere on it. And it is our number.
We conclude the attempts of the calls, and Detective Glassmire announces he is going to stop by Keenan’s house on the way back to Rifle for a conversation – I did not know he knew where Keenan now lived. I am very hopeful of this development, and after the detectives check their cameras we say goodbye.
Morgan goes out with her puppy to take pictures, and Steve is trying unsuccessfully to get a refund from the Internet information site.
A friend calls me with information, even though we avoid talking about it now, a lot of people are trying to help us end this situation. My friend has scouted on the Internet and has some links I have to see. It is a picture of a young Keenan, decked out in complete camouflage with a deer he has successfully bow hunted lying dead alongside him. I call Steve over to see and he tells me he knows a few bow hunters, it is not an easy sport at all – requires great discipline and patience. There was also a link to a boast that he can go undetected by anyone that my friend is reading to me and I relay to Steve, he wants me to make sure that Detective Glassmire sees it.
At 5:58 pm I text Morgan, “Dad’s B-Day is tomorrow. Let’s talk when you get home.” She calls me back, and tells me about a project she is making for him. I am sworn to secrecy, and promise to let her make the cake as well – she loves to bake.
Detective Glassmire gives me an update later that Keenan was not at home, so he will try again soon. I found out this past May of 2012, that Detective Glassmire never had a real address for the “suspect,” Keenan, so I don’t know why he told me he went there and Keenan was not home…what was that all about? We have signs of momentum in positive ways and I thought after the last few embarrassing events they were trying extra hard, which was very appreciated.
After an uneventful evening the cameras in the rear yard picked something up at 4:51 am (this would now be on the 14th – the “suspect” Keenan Vanginkel was not working at all on the 14th!). Morgan heard what she called shots or bangs on her upper window and her motion detector lights were going on and off all at about the same time. Steve was up and instead of going out sat at the monitor and switched from camera to camera seeing nothing. He now wishes he had all motorized cameras with pan and angle instead of just a few. He had gotten an ad about a camera that followed motion all on its own and now he was going to check into it some more. We just kept thinking – how are we going to stop this!
I just ran across a short draft of a speech Morgan was asked to give at the GED/High School graduation on June 16, 2010 for Colorado Mountain College. Morgan was mentioned in the Colorado Mountain College eNews publication about GED’s and High School Diplomas, dated October 11, 2010. Morgan had had missed a lot of school when she was attending Aspen High School because of her exposure to Carbon Monoxide. Being held back was not a choice for her as she was too scholastically advanced for that so instead she enrolled in CMC and took College classes, and then received her GED and went on to receive her Associates of Arts degree in 2011. Below is the draft she wrote for the GED speech – I just wanted to share it with you so you could see another glimpse into who Morgan was – she never gave up on anything.
When normal kids are enjoying their preteen years, they are learning to flirt coyly with the idea of relationships with each other, homework becomes a common part of life, and drama huns high. Unfortunately, i never got a chance to indulge in many of these occurrences, because I was busy spending my junior high experience dying.
For three years, instead of growing into a young adult, I was in my bed ridden with an ever growing myriad of symptoms that doctors could not rationalize and could not even begin to fix. They did not know a flue on my house was installed incorrectly and that Carbon Monoxide was being pumped into me daily. In the end it was a simple detector that named my killer.
Devastation hit again when i tried to join high school, and discovered that the poison had left in its wake, long-term side effects. More vicious symptoms appeared, and once more my days were being taken from me. By the time I was starting to regain my health, my high school had decided to hold me back, I had missed too many days being sick. Shortly after, I was attending Community College and had gotten my GED. Never regretting a second of it, this experience taught me to fight for myself regardless of what I’m being told and shaped me into who I am today.
Because of the wonderful experience Morgan received through Colorado Mountain College, Steve and I set up a scholarship fund in Morgan’s name through the Theatre Department. This past Spring the first student received the first award of the Morgan Ingram Scholarship. Morgan would be so very happy – she was always trying to get her friends to go to College.