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THIS IS WHAT COLORADO NEEDS – A criminal justice revolution!
Transparency that will lead to accountability – no more flying-blind…victims will see more justice.
The Florida Legislature has passed a bill that would bring unprecedented levels of transparency to the criminal justice system.
https://www.wired.com/story/florida-criminal-justice-data-sharing/
On December 2, six years ago, I found Morgan’s lifeless body in her room. She had been relentlessly stalked and terrorized for four months straight, before she was murdered. Steve and I both lived through those four months of stalking, right along with her, and we would both have given up our lives to keep her safe, but we were not given that chance. This was the one-story house we lived in at the time:
My mind keeps bringing me back to this house – we moved out less than 2 months after her murder…and yet, because Morgan has still not received justice, everything that happened during the stalking, and leading up to her murder, keeps playing over and over again in my mind. My thoughts are still “trapped” in that house. Her stalkers lived only three houses down from us. They were obsessed and relentless. Morgan had identified her stalkers and was scheduled to do an on-camera interview for the sheriffs just five days later – they killed the witness. The felony stalking detective, assigned to our case, told me, only three days earlier, that he believed the stalking was going to escalate – and it did…ending in Morgan’s murder.
What we do know about the sheriff’s response to Morgan’s stalking certainly could never be called, “effective intervention.” And ignoring the predicted escalation of her case, that ended with her murder, can never be changed. As for suspects in Morgan’s stalking and death, in September of 2012 a local radio station was doing a story, and requested the files – for the “person named in the report: Morgan Ingram”. This is the first set of files given in response to that request…
Activity reports on Keenan Vanginkel and Brooke Harris were given to the radio station without asking, in response to the request for reports in which the person named was Morgan Ingram. The 2 perpetrators known by the sheriffs in Morgan’s stalking.
When Keenan and Brooke became possible suspects, the deputies were quick to comment on the lengthy and troubling history with the law they both had. The deputy in charge of reports knew, as well as all the deputies knew that Keenan and Brooke were the only suspects.
We believe Detective Glassmire wanted to enforce the law and end Morgan’s stalking, but he was restrained by unnamed superiors in his GarCo sheriff’s department. He confided this fact with us more than once. His narratives in Morgan’s reports are vague and omit entire stalking events, such as repeated confrontations by Keenan at the Thunder River intersection. Morgan was faced with Keenan escalating his stalking of Morgan on the way home from her school. She was afraid to go out into the parking lot after class alone.
Incredibly, Glassmire dismissed this new emotional distress for Morgan. In fact, on one of the following emails he reasoned, “a little over a year ago Keenan’s father did have an address over in that area.” As if Keenan could be just visiting his dad and managed to meet Morgan at the traffic light controlled intersection 4 or 5 times in a few weeks just by chance. A professional engineer estimated, and believes the odds of this are easily in the order of 1 in a million or more. We were later told that Keenan and his dad Wade Vanginkel had lived in New Castle, Colorado at the time, far from this intersection. See the Wildlife Cam exhibit for far more detail on this escalation.
The sheriffs knew who was involved in the stalking – the suspect(s) had been identified and were in the police reports, and yet this very morning, December 2, 2011, the detective looked me straight in my eyes and said, “I can assure you the stalking had nothing to do with this…Morgan’s death is a mystery until we hear from the pathologist.” I was in shock! With absolutely no fingerprints taken, no DNA taken, and knowing her body was found in an entirely different position than she had died in (her body had been moved postmortem and staged) all I can ask now is WHY? Why did he say that? Why did the sheriffs not want to investigate what was an obvious crime scene?
Here is a crime scene photo of her room, taken by the deputy coroner (we did not get to see the crime scene photos until almost 2 years after her murder, and they were not given to us by the sheriffs)…this was the scene of a struggle! I was in her room the night before at ~8:00 pm, and her room did not look like this. The vacuum had been upright and I had walked through her room, all the way to the window to the left of her bed (pictured here) and her floor was clear – not covered in clothes and other items. There were no clothes on the floor – freshly washed and folded clothes were on her desk, they were folded neatly on the end of her bed, before she said goodnight – she had done her wash earlier in the day, as she was planning on going out of town for the weekend.
Can you see in the picture that her bottom sheet is missing? It was never found – the white mattress cover can be seen in the picture, but the fitted bottom sheet that had been over it is gone, and the sheriffs knew – they mentioned the sheet being gone to us that very morning. Many other things were missing, as were the p.j.’s she was wearing when Steve said goodnight to her. They were never found either…and can you see in the picture, the left side of the bed is covered with clothes, etc.? That is exactly where we found her body, on her left side, head on her pillow, with the blanket pulled up to her shoulder…there were no clothes on the bed when we found her…who piled those clothes on her bed, in the exact place we found her body, before the deputy coroner got there and took the pictures, and why? Instead of an investigation, we read that a sheriff made a note on the police report that her room looking “slovenly” kept – seriously! I know it is called the “CSI effect” when people think that the police and CSI come in on every crime scene, and really “investigate,” but that is so far from the truth in most places. This was a complete sham of an investigation!
Am I angry? You better believe it! Have I lived in pain every day since? More than you will ever know. It is horrific when your child is violently taken, and then when you are then let down by law enforcement, it just heaps on more pain and anger. I would never want what happened to our daughter Morgan to happen to another young woman. Morgan’s stalking and murder was “swept under the rug” as soon as her body was found, and then followed up by the false conclusion by the contracted pathologist, Dr. Kurtzman, who said she had died from Natural Causes for the first 9 months, when the scientific certainty showed that was not true. He then changed her manner of death to suicide after that – after more scientific certainty and medical facts showed that was not true either…but both of these manners of death allowed Sheriff Lou Vallario to keep Morgan’s case from ever being investigated.
As Rhonda Saunders said, “One thing I know about stalkers is they never stop.” http://www.stalkingalert.com/biography.htm
And I believe the suspect(s) in Morgan’s case will not stop either. Our family will never give up until Morgan receives justice…we know we can never get Morgan back, and we know we will never have closure, but we also know that we will never give up until those responsible for Morgan’s stalking, and murder are punished – never again walking free among us, we never want them to prey on another innocent soul.
We love you, and miss you Morgan…forever and a day!
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