December 16, 2025 • 37 mins
When Sarah Hunter, 32, doesn't show up for work at the Manchester Country Club, a coworker calls police to do a "welfare check". Nothing out of place in her rented room, and the only clue is her car found parked in an odd way at a gas station. The case goes cold but never forgotten. 39-years after she was foun dead, the investigators who never gave up, get a confession! Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack take a look at the Cold Case Murder and kidnapping and find out why it took so long to hold someone accountable for the 1986 murder of Golf Pro Sarah Hunter, and the 1981 kidnapping attempt of Laura Sheridan.David Allen Morrison, 65, has pleaded guilty to the 1986 murder of Vermont golfer Sarah Hunter and the 1981 kidnapping of a Western Massachusetts teen, Laura Sheridan. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack take a look at the Cold Case Murder and kidnapping and find out why it took so long to hold someone accountable.
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.07 Introduction - Golf
02:04.09 1986 Cold Case Murder solved
04:50.04 Investigators build timeline
10:07.19 Weapon of convenience
14:57.08 Murder of Sarah Hunter
20:05.24 Multiple Sharp force stab wounds
25:07.39 Plan was to sexually assault Hunter at gas station
29:58.05 Clothing taken off, grasping something with her hand
34:44.50 Will other victims be found?
37:43.29 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body times, but Joseph's gotten more. Some of my fondest memories,
I think probably were as a young man, We're going
to a golf course. And it wasn't just any golf course.
It was a golf course that sat right in the
center of uptown New Orleans. And it's what's referred to
as an executive golf course. And essentially what that means
(00:22):
is that instead of a standard par seventy two course,
this course was either a sixty eight or sixty nine
par and what that means is that the holes were shorter,
and that this was actually a walkable course. It was,
as I found out later, it was a great course
for an old guy, which back then, of course I
was young, but I was just learning golf, and so
(00:43):
I could just go around this thing as many times
as I wanted to, hitting the ball in the hot
South Louisiana sun, trying to avoid water, which you know,
there's no hills down there, so they built water all
over the place. I had what were called hydrophilic balls.
They seemed to find the water hall the time. But
you know, I had a lot of peace out there,
(01:04):
And the reason is is that it wasn't just the
time that I spent walking around the Autawan Park golf course.
It was the people I met. It was like back
then the World War Two veterans that were still around.
I played golf with a guy who only had one arm,
(01:25):
had lost an arm in a European theater, and was
one of the best bass strikers I've ever been around.
Couldn't hit it far, but it was always down the middle,
and of course he had a good story to go
along with it. But the person that influenced me the
most was a golf pro who was at the end
of his career. And this man would give me pointers
(01:47):
without me ever paying for a lesson though I had offered.
He just wanted to chat. The golf pros many times
are that way. Today we're going to talk about a
case that happened back in nineteen eighty six. The reason
we're talking about this is that finally, after all this time,
(02:09):
this case has in fact been resolved and the person
that is the victim in this case was a beloved
golf course pro by the name of Sarah Hunter. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body backs. Today. People say,
(02:30):
you know, certain people say, well, it's not a real sport.
Of course it is. It's a real sport. And at
Autumn I never took a cart, I never took an
electric car. I walked everywhere I went.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And it's not golf when you're riding. Golf is golf
when you walk. That's what he's thinking about it. You're
thinking about each shot and how to form a shot.
Noah played in high school and I used to tell
him when they go place, go play against other teams.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I don't know how valid this is, but I would say,
you're not playing against other team, You're playing against the course.
Oh yeah, and you know, and how how do you
understand the course? How do you read it? And it
takes and I'm certainly no golf guru, but it truly
takes a good golf coach pro to teaching on people
(03:14):
how to do this. And in this particular case today, Sarah,
who I'd mentioned just a moment ago, seems to have
been that kind of person.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Sarah was cool, man, she really was. Yeah. I was
looking at some of her background. You know, she was
from Florida and had was now at the Manchester Country Club,
and is the golf pro there a look at a
certain age, you're a great golfer, you know, amongst average golfers.
But there's that next level of pro golf, you know
when you get on the tour, and even that, there's
(03:44):
five different layers of that. Oh yeah, and then there's
the golf pro. A golf pro is somebody who is
really good at the game and can teach the game.
And that's not something every great golfer can do. But
Sarah was you mentioned at the very beginning golf pro
she was. People really thought a lot of her, and
I was looking back, she didn't show up for work
(04:07):
September nineteenth, nineteen eighty six. It's a little after eight
in the morning. Sarah is always there on time, ready
to teach, ready to golf, ready to do what they do.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Now this is in Vermont, right, yeah, yeah, state I've
always wanted to go to. By the way, I just
have to interject that I've never been to Vermont or
New Hampshire. So all of our friends out there, howdy
if you're up in Vermont, New Hampshire, one of my
dream destinations in the US.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
And this is at the Manchester Country Club, and so
you know this, it's kind of it's how many of
our stories, do we start with the welfare check? And
that's what this was. Hey, she didn't show up she
normally does. The guy goes to she actually was renting
a room at a boarding house. She did have a boyfriend,
and so you know how cops are immediately who are
(04:51):
your first who are the first people that are going
to get looked at? The spouse, significant other and in
this case, the boyfriend. And they were able to clear
him right away. She was at his house the night before,
left about ten o'clock, stopped and got to see. This
is why I say she's such a cool girl. She
stopped buying, got a six pack of cores on the
way to her to her out to her home and
(05:15):
the police go there and they find half a can
of beer inside the boarding room and the other five
cans are in her car, and that's it. She's nowhere
to be found. And as you followed this further and
further and further, it is it is her murder that
(05:38):
goes unsolved for decades that the person that eventually cops
to it, which is the reason we're doing this today,
this cold case. He was on the radar from day one. Joe,
think about that for a minute. You don't have to
show the other day where a guy had he'd been
(05:59):
a one off he killed the young man up in Shasta,
and he had does that in eighty four and then
he doesn't kill he doesn't do anything. He moved away
to the radar. Yeah, doesn't commit another crime. And that's
not the case with this guy. This guy was in
the crosshairs within forty eight hours pretty much of what
(06:20):
happened with with Sarah. So she is kidnapped and she
was taken by force. Now what's you know. I really
hate saying fascinating when we do these because I think
of family members and I'm like, I wouldn't want somebody
to talk about somebody I loved who was killed in
(06:41):
a horrible way to call it fascinating.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
No, but listen, you got to receive a special dispensation
for this. Okay. You cannot just simply you cannot say
that you hate to say it because it's a descriptor.
I mean, you know, we talk about some of the
most horrible things in the world, Dave, and this, this
case in particular, killer is is horrific in the sense
that she's minding her own right and you're thinking about
(07:07):
this location up and you know, when I think of Vermont,
I think, you know, kind of this beautiful, kind of
placid place. You think about this particular area of Vermont,
I think about lush, green, rolling hills, you know, and
you know, kind of stand offish but friendly people in
New Englanders, you know. And she's just going about her life. Man.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
I always think of the Vermont Teddy bearry that's on
back order for my wife, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yeah, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
You everr on Valentine's Day?
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yep? Yep, absolutely remember they used to have those ads,
wouldn't that that was Limbaugh that had those ads on
his show for you.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
I actually had them on my show for and over years,
no kidding, Yeah, and Harry's you know the yep.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, you think about that environment up there, and it
just goes to show you, you know, which is something
we've emphasized many times, Dave, over the years, that horror
can visit you at any any location. It doesn't make
or if it's some you know, bucolic location, and you know,
(08:05):
this is one of those cases, Dave. I have to say,
I'm glad that you brought up the boyfriend that she
had because this is a case where this was not
somebody within the intimate circle. I'll go ahead and say
that up front. This is a case involving literally a
stranger that kind of steps out from the shadows, Dave.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yeah, and steps out working at a gas station. You know,
we only know, We only know what happened in a
couple of different cases because this guy, he ends up
in California in prison for a number of kidnappings and
(08:46):
sexual assaults. They're all done pretty much the same way.
And so here we have Morrison who has gotten away
with this murder. But he's in prison. You know, he's
he's been in prison for most of his life, you know,
and he's going to be to the rest of his
life now. But to go back to this story, the
(09:12):
nuts and bolts is that Sarah goes to a gas
station and gets kidnapped, tied up, thrown into a trunk
of a car, driven out, and then is killed. Yeah,
(09:36):
the manner the way this killing happened is only is
something out of a horror movie, though.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Joe, Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
This is not something I've ever actually heard of. I've
seen it played out in movies where people grab something
off of a desk. Yeah, but come on, man, I
didn't know this was a real thing.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, and it is horrific. And again, when when I
talk about the weapon that was utilized in this case,
I think that we learn a lot about the killer.
You've heard me talk many times, Dave, about this idea
of weapons of convenience, those things you know you just
think about. Have you ever had a circumstance I don't know.
(10:16):
Your imagination is running wild. What do I have in
my house that I could use to defend myself with? Right?
You know, you look around, you think about what has
utility in here. The reality is is that there are
many things around a home, in your desk, in your office,
certainly in your kitchen, that have the potential for lethality.
(10:40):
When I tell you, my friends, what was utilized to
end this poor woman's life, it's going to completely change
your view of this item for the rest of your life. Brother, Dave.
(11:07):
You know, as you well know, our semester just ended
at Jacksonville State University, and this was the first semester
where I had human remains that I utilized as a
point of instruction for my medical legal death class that
(11:27):
I teach. And it has gone swimmingly. I had. I'm
not going to say I had all a's in the class,
but it was pretty close to it. I mean, I
was amazed. And I think that some of that linkage
has to do with the hands on experience that my
kids had that they were offered. And the reason I'm
(11:49):
mentioning this is that when because it was me doing
the dissection, okay, and the kids would gather around our
cadaver that we had, and you know, they would hold
the organs, I would allow them to assist in the
dissection of individual organs. We did everything over a twelve
(12:10):
week period essentially, and took our time. But you know,
one of the things that was really striking to this
class was the fact that I took the skull cap
off of our cadaver, which is referred to as the calvarium,
and removed removed the brain. And the brain is fascinating
(12:32):
in and of itself, you know when you're taking a
look at it, and particularly if you've never seen one
or have certainly held one in your hands, you can
imagine the shock, I think and the fascination that these
kids had when they first got the whole of human brain.
But what's even more compelling for them from a trauma standpoint, Davis,
they got to see the interior of the skull. And
(12:56):
the beauty of the interior of a skull is that
you can appreciate the thickness of a skull, or the
lack thereof. As a matter of fact, let me tell
you this. I don't think I've mentioned this to demonstrate
how thin the skull is. With these students. I had
them all stand I think it was to the left
(13:16):
side of the skull. I stood on the right side,
and I had a flashlight and I put it into
the cranial vault, and I turned the flashlight on and
pressed it against the interior table of the temporal bone. Okay,
And what do they tell you about the temporal bone?
That it is the temporal area of the skull is
(13:41):
the most fragile, right. We've heard that for years and years, Dave.
Did you know that when you take when you take
a light and put it on the inside of the skull,
it'll almost completely perfectly shine through. It'll luminus on the outside.
If we had done this in the dark room, okay,
(14:01):
there would have been a directed light. It would not
have blown it that much you could actually pick up
on detail. And on the other side of the skull
in the room, it would have illuminated a chair, a table,
or anything else that was over there. That's how thin
the skull is. The reason this is significant is that
in Sarah's case, this perpetrator, remember we talked about weapons
(14:26):
of opportunity, this perpetrator actually took a pair of scissors.
Day a pair of scissors.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Man.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
And from what we understand after this, how long did
you say this whole event essentially took place over It
was only a very short period of time.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
No.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Actually, okay, the kid you know, this is an eighties
kidnap murdered. Got case. This man that we're talking about, Morrison,
he actually pleaded guilty to an eighty one kidnapping and
that's the one lasted about twenty minutes. This murder of
our golfer of Hunter was hours she came into the Okay,
(15:10):
one thing that's kind of interesting here. I want to
point this out very very quickly. Morrison's working at a
Citgo gas station. Remember when they had gas stations, they
had garages.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Oh, they did work very well.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
That's what this was. It was. He had a rag
the killer here has a rag that he wipes windshields with.
This was a full service gas station back then. And
when she comes in to buy a pack of smokes. Okay,
remember how she'd gone and got a six pack of
beer on her way home. Yeah, well she ran back
out to get cigarettes because they found half the can
(15:43):
of beer in her room and her car was found
at a Sitgo gas station. What happened is when she
went in there to get cigarettes. Morrison says he still
doesn't know why, why he didn't plant it out. He
just did it, and he got control of her somehow.
(16:07):
He doesn't go into great detail about how he gained control.
One has to assume he took her by surprise, hit
her with something, and then tied her up and gagged
her with this rag he uses for wiping windshields and stuff,
and keeps her in the garage area, keeps her quiet
in the garage area until he finishes his shift, totally
smoked until he finishes his shift.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, I got confused, forgive me, because he had actually,
as it turns out, he had actually committed another kidnapping
back in eighty one. Thought of like a fifteen or
sixteen year old girl.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
And that's what See, that's why these two are mixed
together right now because see he's in California in prison,
and these the cases that we're talking about. The murder
here happened in eighty six, right, the kidnapping was in
eighty one. They were unsolved crimes until police finally sit down.
Morrison was always a suspect in the murder of Sarah.
(17:09):
But the thing is, see, her body wasn't found right away.
This is a really confusion and case, and it wasn't
until all these decades go by. They're sitting down with
this guy in prison and they're like, okay, man, you're
gonna have to give us the story. He's in prison
for the rest of his life. Okay, he ain't going anywhere.
And they go and talk to him one day and
he gives them part of the story and he then stops.
(17:32):
They're pushing how did you kill her? Because her body
was so degraded by the time they found her, they
couldn't tell her actual how did he kill her? And
they thought she had been strangled the police did that
was what they were trying to go, Did you strangle her?
He's not in strangler and that's where we find out
about the scissors. He actually was able to And this
(17:56):
is what gets me. You got your average thirty two
year old golf pro. Okay, a woman who's just living
life man think about living the dream, goes into a
gas station and buy some cigarettes and this guy ties
her up until he can finish his shift, throws her
into the trunk of his car and then drives And
(18:19):
when he opens the trunk, that's when he doesn't know
what else to do. You know, he just it was
alsopur of the moment. But he gagged her with a raggy,
used white windshields. And when they said we got to
know how she died, and that's when he said he
opened up the trunk. He didn't know what else to do,
(18:39):
So it was fur the moment decision to kill her.
Had a pair of scissors and he crammed them in
her ear to scramble her brain. Wow, he said, I
knew that would kill her.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Yeah, and he's right, he was.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
This sounds like shawshank, it does it?
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Does? It sounds well? Yeah, it sounds like it sounds
like a lot of these cases where you have somebody
that will use that you will make do with whatever
utility that they have. And listen, scissors, I got to
tell you, they would be a they would be a weapon.
I would probably choose, particularly an older pair of scissors
(19:24):
if you were just trying to defend yourself, because if
you whether you open them up or not. And I've
had cases day where I've had people that were stabbed
with open scissors, and what I mean by that is
where they're spread apart, and that that creates a problem
if you're trying to interpret. I had one case in
particular where had a person that was stabbed multiple times
(19:48):
with open scissors. Now just think about how complex that is,
because you're giving the impression and I'll never forget this.
This person was stabbed over the surface of their chest
and their abdomen and their shoulder. So you've got multiple
sharp force stab wounds with you know that it's a
(20:10):
single edged weapon, but yet these two you'll have them
side by side and they will be mirrors of one another. Okay,
because with a if you think about a stab wound itself,
I always say that it looks like a winking eye.
You'll have a kind of a rounder around the portion.
That's like if you imagine the rounder area of your
(20:31):
eye that is adjacent to your nose, and then kind
of the sharp edge that's on the outside. But yet
just imagine having having that kind of manifestation and it's
over and over and over again. But he's saying that
if he utilized the scissors in order to kill her,
and of course he understands as he had stated that
(20:53):
he wanted to scramble her brain. When you think about that,
When you think about that, I wonder if kept the
scissors closed, because that injury looks completely different. And it
also kind of strengthens the scissors as a weapon because
now you've got these two communicating blades that are now together.
(21:15):
It makes it much more robust anatomically. With the ear
you have. For people that don't know what, your ear
hole is referred to as you have what's referred to
as the external auditory meatus, which is the hole that
you can see that's that's visible, Okay, externally. Remember they
(21:36):
all saying, you know, when we were kids, they say,
don't stick anything in your ear larger than your elbow.
Have you heard that? You know? Uh, here I am
sticking paper clips in there and everything else.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
I don't think old guys used to use their keys.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Yeah, they used to use their keys and and any
number of things, you know, to clear their ears. And
then you know the thing about it, with the auditory meatus,
you have the internal so it literally goes in towards
the skull day anatomically, and then all of a sudden
it takes a dive. It just goes like that, almost
straight down. What I'm thinking is that if he drove
(22:14):
this through her skull, he has to penetrate that area,
probably inferior. Remember I was talking about how thin the
skull is in the temporal area, and you're down into
the area where you have what's referred to If people
will just go behind your ear right now, and you'll
feel there's a knot right behind your ear, and that's
(22:37):
called the mastoid, and it's rather robust. It's kind of
a point back here on both sides. It's bilaterally, you
can feel it. It's kind of this little hump. You
have another little hump on the back of your head.
That's called the occipital protuberance. It's also a little bump
on your on your skull that you can feel externally.
It would have taken some level of force to have
(22:58):
done this. Can you imagine her hard day. She's gagged,
she's bound, He's placed her in the trunk, and I'm thinking,
to what end are you doing this? Because is it?
You know what, there's multiple motivations in my estimation, at
least for kidnapping, right, you know, I think the classic
(23:19):
thing is, well, you know you're going to drop the
money at such and such and we're going to get
money for you. And then, of course the other extreme
of this is you have some kind of psychosexual motivation.
You can have extreme anger too, Like let's just say
you've got some guy out there that's had his heart
broken by some gal. If I can't have you, no
(23:41):
one will have you. They go and snatch them. And
it's I guess you could say it's kind of psychosexual,
but it's more for the purpose of terrorizing somebody. And
of course those end up very can end up fatally
as well. But in this case, I find it fascinating
that he would have taken taken this a pair of scissors,
(24:01):
and you know, thinking about the state he's working in
a garage. Who knows how many implements there are in
a garage that you could have chosen, and you chose
a pair of scissors.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Let me tell you why, And it actually makes sense.
I've been digging through this because I'm I'm fascinated by
people who can live with something. They've done this heinous
and Morrison has said that it truly weighed on him
that he claims this is the only murder he committed.
(24:30):
He has committed plenty of assaults, kidnappings, things like that.
He's a horrible guy. He's not saying he's a good guy.
He just thinks this is his only murder. And he
said he told those who came to interview him that
it really had weighed on him over time. He said,
you don't get away from it. You think about it
all the time. But he said that it was spur
(24:51):
of the moment. He mentions this several times over three
days of interviews. It was just for the moment. I
didn't plan it out, And he said that he didn't
know why he did it, but he was planning to
sexually assault her. But every time, you know, because he
has her in the garage, she's tied up, she's gagged
with the windshield wipers, you know, rag And every time
(25:12):
he would get ready to go back there, here comes
some of the customer wanting gas, and he said they
kept getting he kept getting interrupted. That's why he didn't
sexually assault her. And then by then his shift is over.
He's caught this thirty two year old woman that he's
had tied up for a while. Now, well he can't
just let her go, So that's when he takes her
(25:35):
in the trunk of the car and boom off. So
when we look at it and think the scissors, he
did have so many other things. Well, his intent was
not to kill her in that place. His intent was
to sexually assault her. And there he had plenty of
tools if he wanted to kill her. Could to kill
her at the gas station? He had plenty of you know,
certainly opportunity he kept her tied up, didn't get caught
(25:56):
there with her tied up, he had opportunity to kill
her if that was his original plan. And certainly I
had better equipment to kill with than a pair of scissors.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah, you know that that goes to you know, you
begin to think about this, and I use this term
a lot. I found myself using a lot more now,
the idea of menacing someone. There's an old Betty Davis
movie I don't know if it was Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte,
or if it whatever was whatever happened to Baby Jane.
(26:24):
And there's a pair of scissors that are utilized in
that movie. And for me, when I was growing up
and I would watch these old black and white horror movies,
there was nothing that was more chilling than an image
of scissors being utilized in order to bring about someone's death.
What a horrific way to die. But in the end,
(26:45):
we've got someone that has now been found out, even
by his own admission. We think about this beautiful country side, Dave.
(27:06):
You had alluded to shellshank a few moments ago, and
of course that was said in Maine, and the environment
is not too different, I think in the countryside. Certainly,
I used hero and Bucolic earlier. I just like it
makes me sound tomorrow when I say that, I don't
know if I actually know the meaning. But anyway, yeah,
I have a question for you about some of this thing. Lovely,
(27:29):
but yeah, where was she found and what was the status?
Speaker 3 (27:31):
That's why when when they were talking to Morrison, you're
talking to a convicted criminal. You're talking to somebody who,
by their very nature for their entire life. They've lied, cheat,
stolen whatever. So I don't know how much stock you
put in what a criminal is confessing to. I don't know.
I'm not that, I'm not a cop, but at some
(27:54):
point they have to vet everything. They got to verify everything.
I know that. But one of the things that he
kept saying in his interview was that it wasn't planned out,
It just happened. It was spur of the moment. And
when he was challenged on this that when Hunter was found,
when her body was finally found, she was grasping a
(28:15):
branch or a stick with her left hand. Her pants
and underwear had been taken off, and one of her
socks was on the fence. And what Morrison claimed is
that he says he killed Hunter in that trunk of
his car with the scissors, you know, jammed him in
her ear to kill her, and he thought she was dead.
(28:39):
She didn't make any motion, and he believed she was dead,
and he took her out of the car and took
her and laid her by the stone wall. And he
said he doesn't remember anything moving, not her hands, not legs,
not breathing, nothing, you know. He said that he thought
he killed her in the trunk and moved her body
(29:00):
near the brick wall. And that's there was nothing, he said,
There was nothing to lead him to believe she was
still alive. And yet there's a parent movement with her
body after she's laid by the brick wall.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Joe, the dead don't undress themselves. And again, I love
that you point out this idea. You know, where you know,
deception is normalized. I think with a lot of folks
that are institutionalized. There's another term from shaw Shank, you know,
when Morgan Freeman's character actually says, you know, I'm institutionalized.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Now.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
I couldn't make it on the outside. It's a way
of life, I think, because and give me those items again.
She's her underwear is down, obviously, her shorts, her her
underwears down. Their clothing just does not spontaneously fall off,
all right. And there's a sock over the.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
Fence, and her hand is that she was found grasping
a branch or a stick with her left hand, underwearing
pants have been taken off, and one of her socks
was on the fence.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yeah, there's a couple of things working here. First off,
let me address this idea of her grasping something. You know, Dave,
there is a term that I absolutely it makes my
skin crawl every time I hear it. That's used in
forensic science, and it's called a cadaveric spasm, and it's
associated with drowning. Will get drowned people that have drowned
(30:34):
many times out of bodies of water, or they're found
washed up and they will be clutching things in their hands.
And some people will say, well, this is as a
result of them of the body spasming underwater and they
wind up with debris in their hands. Okay, I hate
that term because it's illogical. It's saying a cadaveric spasm.
(30:58):
Cadavers cannot spasm. Okay, I think that it's for people
people might be fighting for their lives, you know, to
try to you know, and they're crawling up in branches
and all the sorts of things. But I think that
that's evidence of I don't know if I'm buying what
he's selling here, because how can her hand grasp something
in death unless he placed it in her hand, which
(31:22):
is kind of odd. Maybe just maybe the status that
she was in, she was fighting for a life. I
think that there is a possibility and no one, look, dude,
no one's ever going to know. But if she is,
if her clothing is dishevel to this extent, I think
that there's a possibility that there was a sexual assault
(31:44):
that took place out there. She's fighting for a life.
She's grabbed hold of the ground. Maybe she felt a
branch there, something that she could knock him off with,
or maybe she was in such intense pain and she
was fearful in those last moments of her life. She
may have been. In addition to that, he's got this
rag stuffed in her mouth. Now that in and of
(32:07):
an in and of itself, if you get it far
enough back in the throat is people can die from
that because the airway is blocked at that point in time.
But this sounds like she was she was in fact
fighting for her life, unless unless he had some kind
of weird, you know, necrophile streak in him where he
(32:31):
wanted to have her undressed before him. And I'm not
going to go down that dark road very far, but
you know, evidence would essentially suggest something else here. Then
you know, he opened up the trunk and he didn't
know what to do with her. Or he thought she
was already dead or something like that. I'm just not
buying it. I think. I think at the end of
(32:53):
the day, you know, when I'm hearing all this, I'm thinking, dude,
if you've opened the door and you're confessing the why
not just tell the whole truth to nothing but the truth.
I mean, again, you know that they're it's California, they're
you know, they're not well. This case is out of Vermont.
You know that you're not going to get on death row.
You know, it's just it happened, and you want to
(33:15):
completely clear your conscience or whatever. Why not just tell
the truth that this evidence that that we're mentioning here
just seems like it doesn't line up. It doesn't line
up with what he's saying, David.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Not when he's saying that the sole purpose of him
when he, at his spur of the moment, decided to
abduct her, you know, and hold her against her will,
tie her up, was to sexually assault her and tells
them that, you know, every time he thought he had
an opportunity to sexually assault her at the gas station,
somebody would drive up to get to the gas pumps.
(33:47):
So now he's off work, He's got her by himself.
She's still tied up in the trunk of his car.
So yeah, it stands the reason that he would have
done what he actually set out to do back at
the gas station, right.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, it truly does. And I've got to there's something
else to this as well, Dave, because back in nineteen
eighty one, David Allan Morrison actually he had admitted, in
addition to you know, having killed Sarah, he had admitted
that he kidnapped a fifteen year old by the name
(34:23):
of Laura Sheridan. And this is out of Lanesboro, Massachusetts.
And you know, if he is admitting to that, we
know that he counts Sarah Hunter as one of his victims.
He bounces out of there not too long after Sarah
Hunter's disappearance and death. He's headed for Cali. At that
(34:45):
point in time, David, I got to ask, I got
to ask a big question. Here are there others? That's
you know, because that's you know, when I begin to
think about this, if you'll do this twice in that
particular area, you want to be shed of these crimes
or put them behind you, you wind up in California
and all of that distance. How did he make his
(35:06):
way out there? Did he go on to killing free?
Are there other bodies out there that are in some
lonely desolate area? And I always think going back to
this idea of you can't you always have to take
everything with a grain of salt. Well, are there other
bodies out there that he could potentially roll over on
(35:26):
just so that maybe he can leverage this in some way?
He knows he's going to be in jail or protracted
for the rest of his life at this point, are
there other bodies out there where he can say? Well,
if you guys want to know about this, I'll be
glad to tell you, But this is what I expect
in return. You know, we saw this with Oddist tool.
(35:46):
Oudist tool, you know, took people all over the country,
you know, to get free trips out of course most
of those he didn't have. He didn't commit any any
are the numbers that him and Henry Lee Lucas you know,
allegedly were attached to.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
You think aud this tool got Adam.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Boy, That's a good question.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
I sorry, I apologize because I didn't have I didn't
ask you about that ahead of time. I'm sorry and
you know what, I'm going to save that for another episode.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Now I've got another great oddist tool story I can tell,
because he did wind up in New Orleans while I
was down there to come out and visit a spot
that he said he dumped a body in. All right,
so he's quite the character. But there's a line here,
I think, a thread, if you will, that when you
got a lot of time on your hands, when there's
(36:35):
nothing else left to do except wait on death, you
want to engage with somebody. I guess you have to
be grateful for small blessings and for those that remain
that were related or are related to Sarah Hunter, this
thirty two year old that died back in nineteen eighty six.
(37:00):
I hope that there is some satisfaction in the idea
that this individual finally admitted to this. There is no
such thing as closure. The horror still exists, but now,
at least in her case, we do have answers. We're
going to be following this case as things develop. You
(37:20):
never know, you never know what the police are going
to shake out with this guy. Maybe he's going to
roll over on other cases, and maybe maybe he'll add
clarity to other things. That he's been involved in over
the years. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body
Buy
Body times, but Joseph's gotten more. Some of my fondest memories,
I think probably were as a young man, We're going
to a golf course. And it wasn't just any golf course.
It was a golf course that sat right in the
center of uptown New Orleans. And it's what's referred to
as an executive golf course. And essentially what that means
(00:22):
is that instead of a standard par seventy two course,
this course was either a sixty eight or sixty nine
par and what that means is that the holes were shorter,
and that this was actually a walkable course. It was,
as I found out later, it was a great course
for an old guy, which back then, of course I
was young, but I was just learning golf, and so
(00:43):
I could just go around this thing as many times
as I wanted to, hitting the ball in the hot
South Louisiana sun, trying to avoid water, which you know,
there's no hills down there, so they built water all
over the place. I had what were called hydrophilic balls.
They seemed to find the water hall the time. But
you know, I had a lot of peace out there,
(01:04):
And the reason is is that it wasn't just the
time that I spent walking around the Autawan Park golf course.
It was the people I met. It was like back
then the World War Two veterans that were still around.
I played golf with a guy who only had one arm,
(01:25):
had lost an arm in a European theater, and was
one of the best bass strikers I've ever been around.
Couldn't hit it far, but it was always down the middle,
and of course he had a good story to go
along with it. But the person that influenced me the
most was a golf pro who was at the end
of his career. And this man would give me pointers
(01:47):
without me ever paying for a lesson though I had offered.
He just wanted to chat. The golf pros many times
are that way. Today we're going to talk about a
case that happened back in nineteen eighty six. The reason
we're talking about this is that finally, after all this time,
(02:09):
this case has in fact been resolved and the person
that is the victim in this case was a beloved
golf course pro by the name of Sarah Hunter. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body backs. Today. People say,
(02:30):
you know, certain people say, well, it's not a real sport.
Of course it is. It's a real sport. And at
Autumn I never took a cart, I never took an
electric car. I walked everywhere I went.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And it's not golf when you're riding. Golf is golf
when you walk. That's what he's thinking about it. You're
thinking about each shot and how to form a shot.
Noah played in high school and I used to tell
him when they go place, go play against other teams.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I don't know how valid this is, but I would say,
you're not playing against other team, You're playing against the course.
Oh yeah, and you know, and how how do you
understand the course? How do you read it? And it
takes and I'm certainly no golf guru, but it truly
takes a good golf coach pro to teaching on people
(03:14):
how to do this. And in this particular case today, Sarah,
who I'd mentioned just a moment ago, seems to have
been that kind of person.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Sarah was cool, man, she really was. Yeah. I was
looking at some of her background. You know, she was
from Florida and had was now at the Manchester Country Club,
and is the golf pro there a look at a
certain age, you're a great golfer, you know, amongst average golfers.
But there's that next level of pro golf, you know
when you get on the tour, and even that, there's
(03:44):
five different layers of that. Oh yeah, and then there's
the golf pro. A golf pro is somebody who is
really good at the game and can teach the game.
And that's not something every great golfer can do. But
Sarah was you mentioned at the very beginning golf pro
she was. People really thought a lot of her, and
I was looking back, she didn't show up for work
(04:07):
September nineteenth, nineteen eighty six. It's a little after eight
in the morning. Sarah is always there on time, ready
to teach, ready to golf, ready to do what they do.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Now this is in Vermont, right, yeah, yeah, state I've
always wanted to go to. By the way, I just
have to interject that I've never been to Vermont or
New Hampshire. So all of our friends out there, howdy
if you're up in Vermont, New Hampshire, one of my
dream destinations in the US.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
And this is at the Manchester Country Club, and so
you know this, it's kind of it's how many of
our stories, do we start with the welfare check? And
that's what this was. Hey, she didn't show up she
normally does. The guy goes to she actually was renting
a room at a boarding house. She did have a boyfriend,
and so you know how cops are immediately who are
(04:51):
your first who are the first people that are going
to get looked at? The spouse, significant other and in
this case, the boyfriend. And they were able to clear
him right away. She was at his house the night before,
left about ten o'clock, stopped and got to see. This
is why I say she's such a cool girl. She
stopped buying, got a six pack of cores on the
way to her to her out to her home and
(05:15):
the police go there and they find half a can
of beer inside the boarding room and the other five
cans are in her car, and that's it. She's nowhere
to be found. And as you followed this further and
further and further, it is it is her murder that
(05:38):
goes unsolved for decades that the person that eventually cops
to it, which is the reason we're doing this today,
this cold case. He was on the radar from day one. Joe,
think about that for a minute. You don't have to
show the other day where a guy had he'd been
(05:59):
a one off he killed the young man up in Shasta,
and he had does that in eighty four and then
he doesn't kill he doesn't do anything. He moved away
to the radar. Yeah, doesn't commit another crime. And that's
not the case with this guy. This guy was in
the crosshairs within forty eight hours pretty much of what
(06:20):
happened with with Sarah. So she is kidnapped and she
was taken by force. Now what's you know. I really
hate saying fascinating when we do these because I think
of family members and I'm like, I wouldn't want somebody
to talk about somebody I loved who was killed in
(06:41):
a horrible way to call it fascinating.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
No, but listen, you got to receive a special dispensation
for this. Okay. You cannot just simply you cannot say
that you hate to say it because it's a descriptor.
I mean, you know, we talk about some of the
most horrible things in the world, Dave, and this, this
case in particular, killer is is horrific in the sense
that she's minding her own right and you're thinking about
(07:07):
this location up and you know, when I think of Vermont,
I think, you know, kind of this beautiful, kind of
placid place. You think about this particular area of Vermont,
I think about lush, green, rolling hills, you know, and
you know, kind of stand offish but friendly people in
New Englanders, you know. And she's just going about her life. Man.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
I always think of the Vermont Teddy bearry that's on
back order for my wife, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yeah, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
You everr on Valentine's Day?
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yep? Yep, absolutely remember they used to have those ads,
wouldn't that that was Limbaugh that had those ads on
his show for you.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
I actually had them on my show for and over years,
no kidding, Yeah, and Harry's you know the yep.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, you think about that environment up there, and it
just goes to show you, you know, which is something
we've emphasized many times, Dave, over the years, that horror
can visit you at any any location. It doesn't make
or if it's some you know, bucolic location, and you know,
(08:05):
this is one of those cases, Dave. I have to say,
I'm glad that you brought up the boyfriend that she
had because this is a case where this was not
somebody within the intimate circle. I'll go ahead and say
that up front. This is a case involving literally a
stranger that kind of steps out from the shadows, Dave.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yeah, and steps out working at a gas station. You know,
we only know, We only know what happened in a
couple of different cases because this guy, he ends up
in California in prison for a number of kidnappings and
(08:46):
sexual assaults. They're all done pretty much the same way.
And so here we have Morrison who has gotten away
with this murder. But he's in prison. You know, he's
he's been in prison for most of his life, you know,
and he's going to be to the rest of his
life now. But to go back to this story, the
(09:12):
nuts and bolts is that Sarah goes to a gas
station and gets kidnapped, tied up, thrown into a trunk
of a car, driven out, and then is killed. Yeah,
(09:36):
the manner the way this killing happened is only is
something out of a horror movie, though.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Joe, Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
This is not something I've ever actually heard of. I've
seen it played out in movies where people grab something
off of a desk. Yeah, but come on, man, I
didn't know this was a real thing.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, and it is horrific. And again, when when I
talk about the weapon that was utilized in this case,
I think that we learn a lot about the killer.
You've heard me talk many times, Dave, about this idea
of weapons of convenience, those things you know you just
think about. Have you ever had a circumstance I don't know.
(10:16):
Your imagination is running wild. What do I have in
my house that I could use to defend myself with? Right?
You know, you look around, you think about what has
utility in here. The reality is is that there are
many things around a home, in your desk, in your office,
certainly in your kitchen, that have the potential for lethality.
(10:40):
When I tell you, my friends, what was utilized to
end this poor woman's life, it's going to completely change
your view of this item for the rest of your life. Brother, Dave.
(11:07):
You know, as you well know, our semester just ended
at Jacksonville State University, and this was the first semester
where I had human remains that I utilized as a
point of instruction for my medical legal death class that
(11:27):
I teach. And it has gone swimmingly. I had. I'm
not going to say I had all a's in the class,
but it was pretty close to it. I mean, I
was amazed. And I think that some of that linkage
has to do with the hands on experience that my
kids had that they were offered. And the reason I'm
(11:49):
mentioning this is that when because it was me doing
the dissection, okay, and the kids would gather around our
cadaver that we had, and you know, they would hold
the organs, I would allow them to assist in the
dissection of individual organs. We did everything over a twelve
(12:10):
week period essentially, and took our time. But you know,
one of the things that was really striking to this
class was the fact that I took the skull cap
off of our cadaver, which is referred to as the calvarium,
and removed removed the brain. And the brain is fascinating
(12:32):
in and of itself, you know when you're taking a
look at it, and particularly if you've never seen one
or have certainly held one in your hands, you can
imagine the shock, I think and the fascination that these
kids had when they first got the whole of human brain.
But what's even more compelling for them from a trauma standpoint, Davis,
they got to see the interior of the skull. And
(12:56):
the beauty of the interior of a skull is that
you can appreciate the thickness of a skull, or the
lack thereof. As a matter of fact, let me tell
you this. I don't think I've mentioned this to demonstrate
how thin the skull is. With these students. I had
them all stand I think it was to the left
(13:16):
side of the skull. I stood on the right side,
and I had a flashlight and I put it into
the cranial vault, and I turned the flashlight on and
pressed it against the interior table of the temporal bone. Okay,
And what do they tell you about the temporal bone?
That it is the temporal area of the skull is
(13:41):
the most fragile, right. We've heard that for years and years, Dave.
Did you know that when you take when you take
a light and put it on the inside of the skull,
it'll almost completely perfectly shine through. It'll luminus on the outside.
If we had done this in the dark room, okay,
(14:01):
there would have been a directed light. It would not
have blown it that much you could actually pick up
on detail. And on the other side of the skull
in the room, it would have illuminated a chair, a table,
or anything else that was over there. That's how thin
the skull is. The reason this is significant is that
in Sarah's case, this perpetrator, remember we talked about weapons
(14:26):
of opportunity, this perpetrator actually took a pair of scissors.
Day a pair of scissors.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Man.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
And from what we understand after this, how long did
you say this whole event essentially took place over It
was only a very short period of time.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
No.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Actually, okay, the kid you know, this is an eighties
kidnap murdered. Got case. This man that we're talking about, Morrison,
he actually pleaded guilty to an eighty one kidnapping and
that's the one lasted about twenty minutes. This murder of
our golfer of Hunter was hours she came into the Okay,
(15:10):
one thing that's kind of interesting here. I want to
point this out very very quickly. Morrison's working at a
Citgo gas station. Remember when they had gas stations, they
had garages.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Oh, they did work very well.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
That's what this was. It was. He had a rag
the killer here has a rag that he wipes windshields with.
This was a full service gas station back then. And
when she comes in to buy a pack of smokes. Okay,
remember how she'd gone and got a six pack of
beer on her way home. Yeah, well she ran back
out to get cigarettes because they found half the can
(15:43):
of beer in her room and her car was found
at a Sitgo gas station. What happened is when she
went in there to get cigarettes. Morrison says he still
doesn't know why, why he didn't plant it out. He
just did it, and he got control of her somehow.
(16:07):
He doesn't go into great detail about how he gained control.
One has to assume he took her by surprise, hit
her with something, and then tied her up and gagged
her with this rag he uses for wiping windshields and stuff,
and keeps her in the garage area, keeps her quiet
in the garage area until he finishes his shift, totally
smoked until he finishes his shift.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, I got confused, forgive me, because he had actually,
as it turns out, he had actually committed another kidnapping
back in eighty one. Thought of like a fifteen or
sixteen year old girl.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
And that's what See, that's why these two are mixed
together right now because see he's in California in prison,
and these the cases that we're talking about. The murder
here happened in eighty six, right, the kidnapping was in
eighty one. They were unsolved crimes until police finally sit down.
Morrison was always a suspect in the murder of Sarah.
(17:09):
But the thing is, see, her body wasn't found right away.
This is a really confusion and case, and it wasn't
until all these decades go by. They're sitting down with
this guy in prison and they're like, okay, man, you're
gonna have to give us the story. He's in prison
for the rest of his life. Okay, he ain't going anywhere.
And they go and talk to him one day and
he gives them part of the story and he then stops.
(17:32):
They're pushing how did you kill her? Because her body
was so degraded by the time they found her, they
couldn't tell her actual how did he kill her? And
they thought she had been strangled the police did that
was what they were trying to go, Did you strangle her?
He's not in strangler and that's where we find out
about the scissors. He actually was able to And this
(17:56):
is what gets me. You got your average thirty two
year old golf pro. Okay, a woman who's just living
life man think about living the dream, goes into a
gas station and buy some cigarettes and this guy ties
her up until he can finish his shift, throws her
into the trunk of his car and then drives And
(18:19):
when he opens the trunk, that's when he doesn't know
what else to do. You know, he just it was
alsopur of the moment. But he gagged her with a raggy,
used white windshields. And when they said we got to
know how she died, and that's when he said he
opened up the trunk. He didn't know what else to do,
(18:39):
So it was fur the moment decision to kill her.
Had a pair of scissors and he crammed them in
her ear to scramble her brain. Wow, he said, I
knew that would kill her.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Yeah, and he's right, he was.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
This sounds like shawshank, it does it?
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Does? It sounds well? Yeah, it sounds like it sounds
like a lot of these cases where you have somebody
that will use that you will make do with whatever
utility that they have. And listen, scissors, I got to
tell you, they would be a they would be a weapon.
I would probably choose, particularly an older pair of scissors
(19:24):
if you were just trying to defend yourself, because if
you whether you open them up or not. And I've
had cases day where I've had people that were stabbed
with open scissors, and what I mean by that is
where they're spread apart, and that that creates a problem
if you're trying to interpret. I had one case in
particular where had a person that was stabbed multiple times
(19:48):
with open scissors. Now just think about how complex that is,
because you're giving the impression and I'll never forget this.
This person was stabbed over the surface of their chest
and their abdomen and their shoulder. So you've got multiple
sharp force stab wounds with you know that it's a
(20:10):
single edged weapon, but yet these two you'll have them
side by side and they will be mirrors of one another. Okay,
because with a if you think about a stab wound itself,
I always say that it looks like a winking eye.
You'll have a kind of a rounder around the portion.
That's like if you imagine the rounder area of your
(20:31):
eye that is adjacent to your nose, and then kind
of the sharp edge that's on the outside. But yet
just imagine having having that kind of manifestation and it's
over and over and over again. But he's saying that
if he utilized the scissors in order to kill her,
and of course he understands as he had stated that
(20:53):
he wanted to scramble her brain. When you think about that,
When you think about that, I wonder if kept the
scissors closed, because that injury looks completely different. And it
also kind of strengthens the scissors as a weapon because
now you've got these two communicating blades that are now together.
(21:15):
It makes it much more robust anatomically. With the ear
you have. For people that don't know what, your ear
hole is referred to as you have what's referred to
as the external auditory meatus, which is the hole that
you can see that's that's visible, Okay, externally. Remember they
(21:36):
all saying, you know, when we were kids, they say,
don't stick anything in your ear larger than your elbow.
Have you heard that? You know? Uh, here I am
sticking paper clips in there and everything else.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
I don't think old guys used to use their keys.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Yeah, they used to use their keys and and any
number of things, you know, to clear their ears. And
then you know the thing about it, with the auditory meatus,
you have the internal so it literally goes in towards
the skull day anatomically, and then all of a sudden
it takes a dive. It just goes like that, almost
straight down. What I'm thinking is that if he drove
(22:14):
this through her skull, he has to penetrate that area,
probably inferior. Remember I was talking about how thin the
skull is in the temporal area, and you're down into
the area where you have what's referred to If people
will just go behind your ear right now, and you'll
feel there's a knot right behind your ear, and that's
(22:37):
called the mastoid, and it's rather robust. It's kind of
a point back here on both sides. It's bilaterally, you
can feel it. It's kind of this little hump. You
have another little hump on the back of your head.
That's called the occipital protuberance. It's also a little bump
on your on your skull that you can feel externally.
It would have taken some level of force to have
(22:58):
done this. Can you imagine her hard day. She's gagged,
she's bound, He's placed her in the trunk, and I'm thinking,
to what end are you doing this? Because is it?
You know what, there's multiple motivations in my estimation, at
least for kidnapping, right, you know, I think the classic
(23:19):
thing is, well, you know you're going to drop the
money at such and such and we're going to get
money for you. And then, of course the other extreme
of this is you have some kind of psychosexual motivation.
You can have extreme anger too, Like let's just say
you've got some guy out there that's had his heart
broken by some gal. If I can't have you, no
(23:41):
one will have you. They go and snatch them. And
it's I guess you could say it's kind of psychosexual,
but it's more for the purpose of terrorizing somebody. And
of course those end up very can end up fatally
as well. But in this case, I find it fascinating
that he would have taken taken this a pair of scissors,
(24:01):
and you know, thinking about the state he's working in
a garage. Who knows how many implements there are in
a garage that you could have chosen, and you chose
a pair of scissors.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Let me tell you why, And it actually makes sense.
I've been digging through this because I'm I'm fascinated by
people who can live with something. They've done this heinous
and Morrison has said that it truly weighed on him
that he claims this is the only murder he committed.
(24:30):
He has committed plenty of assaults, kidnappings, things like that.
He's a horrible guy. He's not saying he's a good guy.
He just thinks this is his only murder. And he
said he told those who came to interview him that
it really had weighed on him over time. He said,
you don't get away from it. You think about it
all the time. But he said that it was spur
(24:51):
of the moment. He mentions this several times over three
days of interviews. It was just for the moment. I
didn't plan it out, And he said that he didn't
know why he did it, but he was planning to
sexually assault her. But every time, you know, because he
has her in the garage, she's tied up, she's gagged
with the windshield wipers, you know, rag And every time
(25:12):
he would get ready to go back there, here comes
some of the customer wanting gas, and he said they
kept getting he kept getting interrupted. That's why he didn't
sexually assault her. And then by then his shift is over.
He's caught this thirty two year old woman that he's
had tied up for a while. Now, well he can't
just let her go, So that's when he takes her
(25:35):
in the trunk of the car and boom off. So
when we look at it and think the scissors, he
did have so many other things. Well, his intent was
not to kill her in that place. His intent was
to sexually assault her. And there he had plenty of
tools if he wanted to kill her. Could to kill
her at the gas station? He had plenty of you know,
certainly opportunity he kept her tied up, didn't get caught
(25:56):
there with her tied up, he had opportunity to kill
her if that was his original plan. And certainly I
had better equipment to kill with than a pair of scissors.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah, you know that that goes to you know, you
begin to think about this, and I use this term
a lot. I found myself using a lot more now,
the idea of menacing someone. There's an old Betty Davis
movie I don't know if it was Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte,
or if it whatever was whatever happened to Baby Jane.
(26:24):
And there's a pair of scissors that are utilized in
that movie. And for me, when I was growing up
and I would watch these old black and white horror movies,
there was nothing that was more chilling than an image
of scissors being utilized in order to bring about someone's death.
What a horrific way to die. But in the end,
(26:45):
we've got someone that has now been found out, even
by his own admission. We think about this beautiful country side, Dave.
(27:06):
You had alluded to shellshank a few moments ago, and
of course that was said in Maine, and the environment
is not too different, I think in the countryside. Certainly,
I used hero and Bucolic earlier. I just like it
makes me sound tomorrow when I say that, I don't
know if I actually know the meaning. But anyway, yeah,
I have a question for you about some of this thing. Lovely,
(27:29):
but yeah, where was she found and what was the status?
Speaker 3 (27:31):
That's why when when they were talking to Morrison, you're
talking to a convicted criminal. You're talking to somebody who,
by their very nature for their entire life. They've lied, cheat,
stolen whatever. So I don't know how much stock you
put in what a criminal is confessing to. I don't know.
I'm not that, I'm not a cop, but at some
(27:54):
point they have to vet everything. They got to verify everything.
I know that. But one of the things that he
kept saying in his interview was that it wasn't planned out,
It just happened. It was spur of the moment. And
when he was challenged on this that when Hunter was found,
when her body was finally found, she was grasping a
(28:15):
branch or a stick with her left hand. Her pants
and underwear had been taken off, and one of her
socks was on the fence. And what Morrison claimed is
that he says he killed Hunter in that trunk of
his car with the scissors, you know, jammed him in
her ear to kill her, and he thought she was dead.
(28:39):
She didn't make any motion, and he believed she was dead,
and he took her out of the car and took
her and laid her by the stone wall. And he
said he doesn't remember anything moving, not her hands, not legs,
not breathing, nothing, you know. He said that he thought
he killed her in the trunk and moved her body
(29:00):
near the brick wall. And that's there was nothing, he said,
There was nothing to lead him to believe she was
still alive. And yet there's a parent movement with her
body after she's laid by the brick wall.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Joe, the dead don't undress themselves. And again, I love
that you point out this idea. You know, where you know,
deception is normalized. I think with a lot of folks
that are institutionalized. There's another term from shaw Shank, you know,
when Morgan Freeman's character actually says, you know, I'm institutionalized.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Now.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
I couldn't make it on the outside. It's a way
of life, I think, because and give me those items again.
She's her underwear is down, obviously, her shorts, her her
underwears down. Their clothing just does not spontaneously fall off,
all right. And there's a sock over the.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
Fence, and her hand is that she was found grasping
a branch or a stick with her left hand, underwearing
pants have been taken off, and one of her socks
was on the fence.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yeah, there's a couple of things working here. First off,
let me address this idea of her grasping something. You know, Dave,
there is a term that I absolutely it makes my
skin crawl every time I hear it. That's used in
forensic science, and it's called a cadaveric spasm, and it's
associated with drowning. Will get drowned people that have drowned
(30:34):
many times out of bodies of water, or they're found
washed up and they will be clutching things in their hands.
And some people will say, well, this is as a
result of them of the body spasming underwater and they
wind up with debris in their hands. Okay, I hate
that term because it's illogical. It's saying a cadaveric spasm.
(30:58):
Cadavers cannot spasm. Okay, I think that it's for people
people might be fighting for their lives, you know, to
try to you know, and they're crawling up in branches
and all the sorts of things. But I think that
that's evidence of I don't know if I'm buying what
he's selling here, because how can her hand grasp something
in death unless he placed it in her hand, which
(31:22):
is kind of odd. Maybe just maybe the status that
she was in, she was fighting for a life. I
think that there is a possibility and no one, look, dude,
no one's ever going to know. But if she is,
if her clothing is dishevel to this extent, I think
that there's a possibility that there was a sexual assault
(31:44):
that took place out there. She's fighting for a life.
She's grabbed hold of the ground. Maybe she felt a
branch there, something that she could knock him off with,
or maybe she was in such intense pain and she
was fearful in those last moments of her life. She
may have been. In addition to that, he's got this
rag stuffed in her mouth. Now that in and of
(32:07):
an in and of itself, if you get it far
enough back in the throat is people can die from
that because the airway is blocked at that point in time.
But this sounds like she was she was in fact
fighting for her life, unless unless he had some kind
of weird, you know, necrophile streak in him where he
(32:31):
wanted to have her undressed before him. And I'm not
going to go down that dark road very far, but
you know, evidence would essentially suggest something else here. Then
you know, he opened up the trunk and he didn't
know what to do with her. Or he thought she
was already dead or something like that. I'm just not
buying it. I think. I think at the end of
(32:53):
the day, you know, when I'm hearing all this, I'm thinking, dude,
if you've opened the door and you're confessing the why
not just tell the whole truth to nothing but the truth.
I mean, again, you know that they're it's California, they're
you know, they're not well. This case is out of Vermont.
You know that you're not going to get on death row.
You know, it's just it happened, and you want to
(33:15):
completely clear your conscience or whatever. Why not just tell
the truth that this evidence that that we're mentioning here
just seems like it doesn't line up. It doesn't line
up with what he's saying, David.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Not when he's saying that the sole purpose of him
when he, at his spur of the moment, decided to
abduct her, you know, and hold her against her will,
tie her up, was to sexually assault her and tells
them that, you know, every time he thought he had
an opportunity to sexually assault her at the gas station,
somebody would drive up to get to the gas pumps.
(33:47):
So now he's off work, He's got her by himself.
She's still tied up in the trunk of his car.
So yeah, it stands the reason that he would have
done what he actually set out to do back at
the gas station, right.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, it truly does. And I've got to there's something
else to this as well, Dave, because back in nineteen
eighty one, David Allan Morrison actually he had admitted, in
addition to you know, having killed Sarah, he had admitted
that he kidnapped a fifteen year old by the name
(34:23):
of Laura Sheridan. And this is out of Lanesboro, Massachusetts.
And you know, if he is admitting to that, we
know that he counts Sarah Hunter as one of his victims.
He bounces out of there not too long after Sarah
Hunter's disappearance and death. He's headed for Cali. At that
(34:45):
point in time, David, I got to ask, I got
to ask a big question. Here are there others? That's
you know, because that's you know, when I begin to
think about this, if you'll do this twice in that
particular area, you want to be shed of these crimes
or put them behind you, you wind up in California
and all of that distance. How did he make his
(35:06):
way out there? Did he go on to killing free?
Are there other bodies out there that are in some
lonely desolate area? And I always think going back to
this idea of you can't you always have to take
everything with a grain of salt. Well, are there other
bodies out there that he could potentially roll over on
(35:26):
just so that maybe he can leverage this in some way?
He knows he's going to be in jail or protracted
for the rest of his life at this point, are
there other bodies out there where he can say? Well,
if you guys want to know about this, I'll be
glad to tell you, But this is what I expect
in return. You know, we saw this with Oddist tool.
(35:46):
Oudist tool, you know, took people all over the country,
you know, to get free trips out of course most
of those he didn't have. He didn't commit any any
are the numbers that him and Henry Lee Lucas you know,
allegedly were attached to.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
You think aud this tool got Adam.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Boy, That's a good question.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
I sorry, I apologize because I didn't have I didn't
ask you about that ahead of time. I'm sorry and
you know what, I'm going to save that for another episode.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Now I've got another great oddist tool story I can tell,
because he did wind up in New Orleans while I
was down there to come out and visit a spot
that he said he dumped a body in. All right,
so he's quite the character. But there's a line here,
I think, a thread, if you will, that when you
got a lot of time on your hands, when there's
(36:35):
nothing else left to do except wait on death, you
want to engage with somebody. I guess you have to
be grateful for small blessings and for those that remain
that were related or are related to Sarah Hunter, this
thirty two year old that died back in nineteen eighty six.
(37:00):
I hope that there is some satisfaction in the idea
that this individual finally admitted to this. There is no
such thing as closure. The horror still exists, but now,
at least in her case, we do have answers. We're
going to be following this case as things develop. You
(37:20):
never know, you never know what the police are going
to shake out with this guy. Maybe he's going to
roll over on other cases, and maybe maybe he'll add
clarity to other things. That he's been involved in over
the years. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body
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Joseph Scott Morgan
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