March 4, 2025 • 19 mins
The often covered, discussed, and scrutinized death of Charles Morgan. The story is too odd and mysterious to not record our own retelling of his story. In March 1977, escrow agent Charles C. Morgan went missing. Three days later he turns up in the middle of the night with plastic handcuffs on his wrists and ankles and unable to speak. Just weeks later, he turns up dead, shot in the back of the head with his own gun. There were no finger prints on the gun, and he hid a strange coded message on a two dollar bill in his underwear. And those are just two of the plethera of strange details about this "suicide". Theme Music by Matt Glass https://www.glassbrain.com/ Instagram: @astudyofstrange Support the Show! astudyofstrange.substack.com/ Website: www.astudyofstrange.com Hosted by Michael May Email stories, comments, or ideas to astudyofstrange@gmail.com! ©2022 Convergent Content, LLC
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Warning.
This episode contains detailsthat some listeners
may find disturbing.
March 22nd, 1997.
Tucson, Arizona.
Charles C Morgan,a 39 year old escrow agent,
left his home in the morningto go about his usual day.
But Charles never came home.
(00:21):
His family was left worried.
Then on March 25th, three dayslater, at two
in the morning at the Morgan household,the dog began barking.
Someone was at the doorand it was Charles.
And he looked like he was in distress.
He was missing a shoe.
His hands were handcuffed and he motionedto his throat, but he didn't say a word.
(00:43):
His wife got him a notepad and a pen,And Charles wrote that he had been given
a hallucinogenic drugthat could kill him if he talked.
If I told you that this was the strangestpart of the story, I'd be lying.
This is a study of strange.
(01:15):
If you like strange
mysteries, if you like true crime,if you love to speculate
about these kind of unsolved tales,this one is one you have to listen to.
I covered this story as a guest onanother podcast called A Study of Crime.
Go check out that podcast.
It's really great and it's one ofthe most interesting true crime cases
I've ever come across,and I wanted to share it
(01:36):
with my own listenershere on a study of strange.
And if I forgot to introduce myself,I'm Michael May.
Before we go any further.
If you're new to the show,
take a quick secondand hit that subscribe or follow button.
And if you get a chance, leavea rating or review on Apple or Spotify.
If you use those apps, it goes a very longway to helping others find our show.
(01:59):
All right, so
who is Charles C Morgan, aka Chuck?
He was 39 years oldat the time of this story.
In 1977, he worked as an escrow agent.
Some newspapers from the time refer to himas an insurance executive.
And for those that don't knowwhat an escrow agent is,
you've probably heard the termbefore at least.
(02:19):
But it's a neutral party that holds onto funds related to a transaction.
So you typically hear thisin real estate transactions.
And our storytoday takes place in Tucson Arizona.
Now let me fill you in on some detailshere about Arizona in 1977.
Because this is really importantto the story.
(02:41):
At that time there was a lotof organized crime in Arizona.
You're near the southern border.
There's a lot of narcoticsflowing across the border.
And related to that, there's moneylaundering.
And what made Arizona attractiveto crime syndicates and organized crime
was that there was a state lawwhich allowed anyone to buy up
(03:02):
land through a numbered blindtrust account.
And this meant, essentially,
that you can just launder moneyand it can never be traced.
It is completely private.
So here'sthis peaceful conservative state.
But it has a problem
with dangerous organized crimebecause of the nature of these laws.
And if you're already sort of hip
to the connection here, an escrow agentor an insurance executive
(03:26):
like Charles C Morgan,you're in a prime position in that job
to come across people buying landand or looking to money launder.
And so that brings us to March 22nd, 1977.
Charles took his daughters to school.
He had four daughters.
He dropped them off and then went to work.
(03:48):
But he never made it to his officeand he never made it back home.
that evening, when he didn't return home,his family began to worry.
But there's not really muchthey could do besides call and ask around,
and they can't find him.
at 2 a.m.
March 25th, the dog starts barking.
There's a knock at the door.
Ruth, his wife goes to the door, opens itand there's Chuck.
(04:10):
He had come home, but he was hurt.
He was disheveled.
He was missing a shoe.
He had plastic cuffs on his ankles.
Some accounts say he had one cuff on oneankle.
Some accounts sayhe just had cuffs on both ankles.
And his hands were tied with a zip tie,and he wouldn't talk.
And Ruth is asking him relentlessly,where were you?
What's wrong?
(04:30):
Oh my God, what's happened to you?
But he's he's not talking.
And here's a quote from his wife, Ruth,from Unsolved Mysteries.
When he motioned to his throat and didn'tsay a word, I asked him, can you talk?
He couldn't.
Can you write?
He shook his head. Yes, so I went.
Got a tablet and a pen.
He wrote that his throat had been painted
with a hallucinogenic drug,and that the drug could drive him
(04:51):
irrevocably insane, or destroyhis nervous system and kill him.
I wanted to call a doctor in the police,but he was adamant
that that would be signinga death warrant for the entire family.
so as I imagine this scene,
what this looks like to meis that Chuck had escaped or was
let go from someonethat had obviously kidnaped him.
(05:12):
Assaulted him, tied him up.
And that someone is likely very dangerous.
Especially if this drug sayinghe talked about on his throat is real.
So Ruth is very worriedshe wants to call the cops.
But again he reiterates,you know, don't do that.
That's like signing a death warrant.
That's too dangerous.
So they're scared.
There's not really anything they can doexcept for nursing him back to health.
(05:34):
And that's what Ruth did.
So here's where things get even stranger.
I'm probably going to say that3 or 4 times today, Chuck claimed
that he was a secret agentfor the Treasury Department.
He claims his ID,which sort of proof that had been stolen,
He didn't really talk about this muchwith his family outside of those details,
because allegedly,that could put them in danger.
(05:56):
And, you know, ignorance is bliss,so to speak.
Also, it is worth notingthe Treasury Department,
the Secret Service is partof the Treasury Department,
and we think of the secret Serviceas protecting the president.
But part of the Secret Service
mandate is they do investigatecounterfeiting, fraud, money laundering.
So theoretically, whether you believeCharles was abducted or not,
(06:17):
it does connect to some dotsabout where they live,
type of businesshe is in and that sort of thing.
In the
meantime,Chuck got back to his normal routine.
But there was one big difference.
He wore a bulletproof vesteverywhere he went.
He was also adamant that he take the kidsto and from school himself.
(06:40):
He also kept being somewhat elusiveabout the details of
what's going on in his backgroundwith his wife.
And allegedly, he told his father
that he hid a letter in the housethat explained everything,
and he didn't want Ruth to findthis letter while he was still alive.
That letter, by the way,has never been found.
So two months later, things,they're starting
(07:03):
to feel more normal, with the exceptionof the bulletproof vest.
Every day and it's June 7th and Chuckdidn't come home again.
In this time, two days, three days pass.
Still nothing.
He doesn't come back home.
He doesn't knock on the doorlooking all disheveled.
It's nine full days later when a callcomes in to the Morgan household,
(07:25):
and Ruth answered the phoneand a woman was on the other line
and the woman said, Ruthie.
And Ruth responded, yes, this is her.
and the woman on linesaid, Chuck is all right.
Ecclesiastics 12 one through eight.
And then she hung up.
So that is in reference, obviously,to a Bible verse.
And the passage reads in part,and I am not a Bible scholar.
(07:49):
I actually don't knowmuch about the Bible.
I did go to Sunday school growing up,but when I researched this
and I was looking up with this
passage, actually is and read it, itdepends on the translation.
So I'm just going to give you
a couple little bits heredepending on the translation.
But essentially it's referringto remember your creator.
and it also says meaningless meaningless.
(08:10):
Everything is meaningless.
Or if you look at a different translation,
vanity of vanities,says the preacher, all his vanity.
if you listenersknow more about the reasons ecclesiastics
12 one through 8th May have been mentionedin this story, I would love to hear it.
Send me a message.
A study of strange at gmail.com.
(08:31):
Again, I'm not a Bible scholar,so I could use your help
trying to put somemeaning to what this meant.
So anyway,
a few days later, Chuck's deadbody is found
It was near San Juan Springs,about 40 miles west of Tucson.
He had been dead for about 12 hours.
The most interesting part of thisis that he was still wearing
(08:53):
his bulletproof vest,
but he was killed from a bullet woundin the back of the head.
Now, there's a lot of strange detailsabout where they found his body.
The scene, so to speak.
And I'm going to list them out in really?
In no particular order,because there's not really
an appropriate order to go through.
But all these detailscould be important clues.
(09:13):
So here it goes.
He was shot by his own gun,and his gun was nearby.
But on the gun,there were no fingerprints.
The car was nearby.
He drove a mercury.
Cougar was right there by his body.
On his person, he wore a belt.
And in the beltthere was a sort of a hidden blade.
In the car, sunglasses were foundthat apparently did not belong to Charles.
(09:35):
There was a box of ammothere was a CB radio show.
And probably the most interesting, weirdaspect of this is there was a handkerchief
in the backseat, I believe,and it had a partial tooth in it.
This is one of Charles teeth.
So a partial tooth and a handkerchief.
And then comes what the investigatorsfound is they dressed
(09:56):
the body as they do with a dead body,and go through that process.
They found a $2 billclipped inside his underwear.
And on that $2 bill was written sevennames, seven Spanish names.
And at the top was written Ecclesiastes,with little lines
or arrows, kind of pointing to a oneand a eight on the bill.
So it's a reference to that same Bibleverse that the woman who called Ruth left.
(10:23):
And then on the back of this bill,there was more there was a weird map,
and the map suggestedan area between Tucson and Mexico, in
between the towns of RoblesJunction in Silver City or Lake City.
I don't know how to pronounce that.
Both of these
areas were known at the timefor smuggling, and then where it has, like
the signers of the declaration and stuff,were the numbers one through seven.
(10:48):
Here we are, 40 some odd years later,and there is still
a ton of debate about whatany of this means.
But even with all these strange things,this weird dollar bill,
a tooth and a handkerchief, etc. etc.
investigators suggest that Charles Morgan
committed suicide.
(11:11):
two days after the Pima County Sheriff'sDepartment had found his body,
a woman called authoritiesan anonymous woman, and she referred
to herself as green eyes andit was the same woman that called Ruth.
she told the authorities
that Chuck had been hiding out in a motel,and she had been visiting him.
And with him he had a suitcase
that was full of of cash,thousands of dollars of cash.
(11:34):
And he supposedly told Green Eyesthat this was to pay off
an assassin who was coming after him.
He was going to meet with this hitmanand buy back his life.
if we are to believe this anonymous woman.
This gives us a pretty solid theorywhere an assassin was coming after Charles
Morgan, probably due to himworking with organized crime, money
(11:57):
laundering, or potentially even workingfor the government like he suggested.
And, you know, bad guysfound out that he was undercover
and they wanted to kill him.
And Charles knew this somehow
and and wanted to pay off this assassin.
No one, to this day knows whoGreen Eyes is.
(12:17):
After Charles's death, Ruth Morgan,his wife, was visited
by two menthat claimed to be from the FBI.
She claims that they showed up.
They flashed their identifications reallyquickly, went inside and sort of rummaged
through the house and tore things apartlooking for something.
She was never toldwhat they were looking for.
She even also mentionedthat she was a little too rattled
(12:37):
to even askto see their identifications more closely.
And then they left,and she never heard from them again.
And some even askif these men were really from the FBI.
So years later,
this case goes unsolvedand it's about 13 years later.
This story runs on Unsolved Mysteries,and some tips are called in that,
(12:59):
as far as I can tell,didn't lead to anything super specific.
But around the same time,investigative journalist Don Devereaux
starts investigating this case And DonDevereaux contacted the FBI
to get more information.
And this is a quote from Don Devereaux.
When I made a Freedom of Information Actrequest to the FBI.
They had never heard of Mr.
Morgan,despite the fact that they obviously
(13:20):
opened an investigation, despitethe fact that the FBI interviewed Mr.
Morgan's attorney.
They were all over this thinglike a blanket for a while,
but now they've never heard of the guy.
He never existed.
No card, no file,no nothing. End of quote.
All of that is really suspicious.
Maybe they threw the file away.
Maybe it's missing.
(13:41):
Things weren't digitized back then.
Or maybe he his involvement withthe government
was being actually kept secret.
Maybe he really had been undercoverand it was still important
for the governmentto kind of keep that secret.
But I don't know,
maybe that would still come out partiallyredacted in a Freedom of Information Act.
I'm not sure.
So if Chuck Morgan was doing undercoverwork for the government, Don
(14:04):
Devereaux believes that the clueshe wrote on the $2 bill might have been
an attempt to pass some sort of codedmessage on to the authorities.
But we're missing the key to that code.
We don't know, actually whatthe code under the dollar bill leads to.
There is some more informationthat we do know now that I don't think
they knew back thenwhen the story first ran in the early 90s.
(14:26):
Chuck did real
estate escrow work for at least oneMafia family, and it's suspected
that he helped with the purchase of goldbullion and platinum,
which these are sort of easyways, convenient ways to launder money.
And after Devereaux had been digginginto the case, after Unsolved Mysteries
ran the story, it came outthat Chuck had been a secret witness
(14:48):
in a fraud investigation,a land fraud investigation,
and he had been interviewed about itjust a handful of months before he died.
It's also worth mentioning that Chuck
had been seen at several restaurantsand motels in the west side of Tucson
after his disappearance,but right before his death.
Now, there's a few footnoteshere to this case.
(15:08):
A man named Doug Johnson was shot
and killed in his car,and his office is parking lot.
This is also in the early 90s.
Doug Johnson is not a nameyou should remember.
For me,blabbering on about this story at all.
This is a random person,an innocent man, a terrible situation.
the person who killed himwas never caught.
(15:28):
And in fact,it was made to look like a suicide.
But it wasn't.
Now why am I bringing Doug Johnson up?
Well, it's so happenedthat he worked right across the street
from Don Devereaux,and they drove station wagons.
so there is a theory here. Just a theory.
It's unproven, but a lot of people suspectthat Devereaux was the target.
Since he was digging into this case.
(15:51):
And the killer got the cars mixed up.
tied into that.
A CIA agent had mentioned to Devereauxthat he was
an intended targetbecause of his work on this story.
One final little footnote here.
That's interesting.
A gentleman named Danny Castellanowho was an investigative reporter.
He died under mysterious circumstancesthat we think
(16:13):
is related to an entirely different case.
There's a documentary about him on Netflixright now that I started watching,
which is really good.
He was looking into some other corruption
type thingsand was found dead in mysterious ways.
But because he diedafter contacting Devereaux.
Because he wanted to know moreabout the Charles Martin case
that is also, in and of itself,another strange spider web.
(16:37):
So there's the story as best as I cansort of tell it.
Just going through my notes hereof The Strange case of Charles C Morgan,
The Prime series in this caseI already mentioned one
is that he was caught up in some sortof fraud, money laundering situation
and the criminals he was dealing withwanted to kill him for either.
(17:01):
They either they were afraidhe was going to say something,
or they found out he was working forthe government and they had him killed.
Another theory is that he committed
suicide,just like the authorities first suspected.
I don't buy much into the suicide theorybecause of all of these strange things
in this case, no coincidencescould just be coincidences.
(17:24):
I did read. These are not.
I hate using something like Reddit andcomments on YouTube and stuff as sources.
That is not what you should do
to confirm or validateanything when you're researching.
But some people on places like thatbrought up
that this is the behavior of someonethat might be dealing with schizophrenia,
and he almost was creatingthis kind of fake world.
(17:45):
And it could have been in a way, too.
He didn't want to admit that he wantedto kill himself to his family.
So this is kind of a way to hide that,even though he was probably dealing with,
you know, money troubles and strangepeople and decided to end his life.
To me, there's just almost too manycoincidences for it to be a suicide.
but it is a valid theory and,and one of the main prominent theories
(18:08):
that are out there, We do not know
if Charles C Morgan did workfor the Treasury Department,
but we do know that he had theseperipheral connections
to money laundering and organized crimein Tucson.
This strange case of CharlesC Morgan is so interesting, so intriguing.
And every turn you make, there's anotherconnection to something mysterious.
(18:31):
And it very muchfeels like a real version of a 1970s
political thriller moviewhere a conspiracy is unfolding.
You know, the low sort of normalman is unfolding, this conspiracy,
and there's so many parts to the webthat you just get overwhelmed.
And to this day,no one is certain why Morgan died.
(18:55):
And on
that note, that'll do it for today'sepisode of A Study of Strange.
Thank you for listeningto one of my favorite true crime stories.
and again, if you're new to
the show, make sure to hit that subscribeor follow button.
Coming up on the futureof study of Strange.
I'm not sure which order these episodeswill come out, because it depends on on
some schedules with some potential guests,but I am going to cover some legends
(19:19):
around Nazis in Los Angelesaround the time of of World War two.
I've got some UFO stories comingup, some true crime, a lot of good stuff.
It's already been a great yearso far for the podcast.
Thank you for listening. and good night.
Warning.
This episode contains detailsthat some listeners
may find disturbing.
March 22nd, 1997.
Tucson, Arizona.
Charles C Morgan,a 39 year old escrow agent,
left his home in the morningto go about his usual day.
But Charles never came home.
(00:21):
His family was left worried.
Then on March 25th, three dayslater, at two
in the morning at the Morgan household,the dog began barking.
Someone was at the doorand it was Charles.
And he looked like he was in distress.
He was missing a shoe.
His hands were handcuffed and he motionedto his throat, but he didn't say a word.
(00:43):
His wife got him a notepad and a pen,And Charles wrote that he had been given
a hallucinogenic drugthat could kill him if he talked.
If I told you that this was the strangestpart of the story, I'd be lying.
This is a study of strange.
(01:15):
If you like strange
mysteries, if you like true crime,if you love to speculate
about these kind of unsolved tales,this one is one you have to listen to.
I covered this story as a guest onanother podcast called A Study of Crime.
Go check out that podcast.
It's really great and it's one ofthe most interesting true crime cases
I've ever come across,and I wanted to share it
(01:36):
with my own listenershere on a study of strange.
And if I forgot to introduce myself,I'm Michael May.
Before we go any further.
If you're new to the show,
take a quick secondand hit that subscribe or follow button.
And if you get a chance, leavea rating or review on Apple or Spotify.
If you use those apps, it goes a very longway to helping others find our show.
(01:59):
All right, so
who is Charles C Morgan, aka Chuck?
He was 39 years oldat the time of this story.
In 1977, he worked as an escrow agent.
Some newspapers from the time refer to himas an insurance executive.
And for those that don't knowwhat an escrow agent is,
you've probably heard the termbefore at least.
(02:19):
But it's a neutral party that holds onto funds related to a transaction.
So you typically hear thisin real estate transactions.
And our storytoday takes place in Tucson Arizona.
Now let me fill you in on some detailshere about Arizona in 1977.
Because this is really importantto the story.
(02:41):
At that time there was a lotof organized crime in Arizona.
You're near the southern border.
There's a lot of narcoticsflowing across the border.
And related to that, there's moneylaundering.
And what made Arizona attractiveto crime syndicates and organized crime
was that there was a state lawwhich allowed anyone to buy up
(03:02):
land through a numbered blindtrust account.
And this meant, essentially,
that you can just launder moneyand it can never be traced.
It is completely private.
So here'sthis peaceful conservative state.
But it has a problem
with dangerous organized crimebecause of the nature of these laws.
And if you're already sort of hip
to the connection here, an escrow agentor an insurance executive
(03:26):
like Charles C Morgan,you're in a prime position in that job
to come across people buying landand or looking to money launder.
And so that brings us to March 22nd, 1977.
Charles took his daughters to school.
He had four daughters.
He dropped them off and then went to work.
(03:48):
But he never made it to his officeand he never made it back home.
that evening, when he didn't return home,his family began to worry.
But there's not really muchthey could do besides call and ask around,
and they can't find him.
at 2 a.m.
March 25th, the dog starts barking.
There's a knock at the door.
Ruth, his wife goes to the door, opens itand there's Chuck.
(04:10):
He had come home, but he was hurt.
He was disheveled.
He was missing a shoe.
He had plastic cuffs on his ankles.
Some accounts say he had one cuff on oneankle.
Some accounts sayhe just had cuffs on both ankles.
And his hands were tied with a zip tie,and he wouldn't talk.
And Ruth is asking him relentlessly,where were you?
What's wrong?
(04:30):
Oh my God, what's happened to you?
But he's he's not talking.
And here's a quote from his wife, Ruth,from Unsolved Mysteries.
When he motioned to his throat and didn'tsay a word, I asked him, can you talk?
He couldn't.
Can you write?
He shook his head. Yes, so I went.
Got a tablet and a pen.
He wrote that his throat had been painted
with a hallucinogenic drug,and that the drug could drive him
(04:51):
irrevocably insane, or destroyhis nervous system and kill him.
I wanted to call a doctor in the police,but he was adamant
that that would be signinga death warrant for the entire family.
so as I imagine this scene,
what this looks like to meis that Chuck had escaped or was
let go from someonethat had obviously kidnaped him.
(05:12):
Assaulted him, tied him up.
And that someone is likely very dangerous.
Especially if this drug sayinghe talked about on his throat is real.
So Ruth is very worriedshe wants to call the cops.
But again he reiterates,you know, don't do that.
That's like signing a death warrant.
That's too dangerous.
So they're scared.
There's not really anything they can doexcept for nursing him back to health.
(05:34):
And that's what Ruth did.
So here's where things get even stranger.
I'm probably going to say that3 or 4 times today, Chuck claimed
that he was a secret agentfor the Treasury Department.
He claims his ID,which sort of proof that had been stolen,
He didn't really talk about this muchwith his family outside of those details,
because allegedly,that could put them in danger.
(05:56):
And, you know, ignorance is bliss,so to speak.
Also, it is worth notingthe Treasury Department,
the Secret Service is partof the Treasury Department,
and we think of the secret Serviceas protecting the president.
But part of the Secret Service
mandate is they do investigatecounterfeiting, fraud, money laundering.
So theoretically, whether you believeCharles was abducted or not,
(06:17):
it does connect to some dotsabout where they live,
type of businesshe is in and that sort of thing.
In the
meantime,Chuck got back to his normal routine.
But there was one big difference.
He wore a bulletproof vesteverywhere he went.
He was also adamant that he take the kidsto and from school himself.
(06:40):
He also kept being somewhat elusiveabout the details of
what's going on in his backgroundwith his wife.
And allegedly, he told his father
that he hid a letter in the housethat explained everything,
and he didn't want Ruth to findthis letter while he was still alive.
That letter, by the way,has never been found.
So two months later, things,they're starting
(07:03):
to feel more normal, with the exceptionof the bulletproof vest.
Every day and it's June 7th and Chuckdidn't come home again.
In this time, two days, three days pass.
Still nothing.
He doesn't come back home.
He doesn't knock on the doorlooking all disheveled.
It's nine full days later when a callcomes in to the Morgan household,
(07:25):
and Ruth answered the phoneand a woman was on the other line
and the woman said, Ruthie.
And Ruth responded, yes, this is her.
and the woman on linesaid, Chuck is all right.
Ecclesiastics 12 one through eight.
And then she hung up.
So that is in reference, obviously,to a Bible verse.
And the passage reads in part,and I am not a Bible scholar.
(07:49):
I actually don't knowmuch about the Bible.
I did go to Sunday school growing up,but when I researched this
and I was looking up with this
passage, actually is and read it, itdepends on the translation.
So I'm just going to give you
a couple little bits heredepending on the translation.
But essentially it's referringto remember your creator.
and it also says meaningless meaningless.
(08:10):
Everything is meaningless.
Or if you look at a different translation,
vanity of vanities,says the preacher, all his vanity.
if you listenersknow more about the reasons ecclesiastics
12 one through 8th May have been mentionedin this story, I would love to hear it.
Send me a message.
A study of strange at gmail.com.
(08:31):
Again, I'm not a Bible scholar,so I could use your help
trying to put somemeaning to what this meant.
So anyway,
a few days later, Chuck's deadbody is found
It was near San Juan Springs,about 40 miles west of Tucson.
He had been dead for about 12 hours.
The most interesting part of thisis that he was still wearing
(08:53):
his bulletproof vest,
but he was killed from a bullet woundin the back of the head.
Now, there's a lot of strange detailsabout where they found his body.
The scene, so to speak.
And I'm going to list them out in really?
In no particular order,because there's not really
an appropriate order to go through.
But all these detailscould be important clues.
(09:13):
So here it goes.
He was shot by his own gun,and his gun was nearby.
But on the gun,there were no fingerprints.
The car was nearby.
He drove a mercury.
Cougar was right there by his body.
On his person, he wore a belt.
And in the beltthere was a sort of a hidden blade.
In the car, sunglasses were foundthat apparently did not belong to Charles.
(09:35):
There was a box of ammothere was a CB radio show.
And probably the most interesting, weirdaspect of this is there was a handkerchief
in the backseat, I believe,and it had a partial tooth in it.
This is one of Charles teeth.
So a partial tooth and a handkerchief.
And then comes what the investigatorsfound is they dressed
(09:56):
the body as they do with a dead body,and go through that process.
They found a $2 billclipped inside his underwear.
And on that $2 bill was written sevennames, seven Spanish names.
And at the top was written Ecclesiastes,with little lines
or arrows, kind of pointing to a oneand a eight on the bill.
So it's a reference to that same Bibleverse that the woman who called Ruth left.
(10:23):
And then on the back of this bill,there was more there was a weird map,
and the map suggestedan area between Tucson and Mexico, in
between the towns of RoblesJunction in Silver City or Lake City.
I don't know how to pronounce that.
Both of these
areas were known at the timefor smuggling, and then where it has, like
the signers of the declaration and stuff,were the numbers one through seven.
(10:48):
Here we are, 40 some odd years later,and there is still
a ton of debate about whatany of this means.
But even with all these strange things,this weird dollar bill,
a tooth and a handkerchief, etc. etc.
investigators suggest that Charles Morgan
committed suicide.
(11:11):
two days after the Pima County Sheriff'sDepartment had found his body,
a woman called authoritiesan anonymous woman, and she referred
to herself as green eyes andit was the same woman that called Ruth.
she told the authorities
that Chuck had been hiding out in a motel,and she had been visiting him.
And with him he had a suitcase
that was full of of cash,thousands of dollars of cash.
(11:34):
And he supposedly told Green Eyesthat this was to pay off
an assassin who was coming after him.
He was going to meet with this hitmanand buy back his life.
if we are to believe this anonymous woman.
This gives us a pretty solid theorywhere an assassin was coming after Charles
Morgan, probably due to himworking with organized crime, money
(11:57):
laundering, or potentially even workingfor the government like he suggested.
And, you know, bad guysfound out that he was undercover
and they wanted to kill him.
And Charles knew this somehow
and and wanted to pay off this assassin.
No one, to this day knows whoGreen Eyes is.
(12:17):
After Charles's death, Ruth Morgan,his wife, was visited
by two menthat claimed to be from the FBI.
She claims that they showed up.
They flashed their identifications reallyquickly, went inside and sort of rummaged
through the house and tore things apartlooking for something.
She was never toldwhat they were looking for.
She even also mentionedthat she was a little too rattled
(12:37):
to even askto see their identifications more closely.
And then they left,and she never heard from them again.
And some even askif these men were really from the FBI.
So years later,
this case goes unsolvedand it's about 13 years later.
This story runs on Unsolved Mysteries,and some tips are called in that,
(12:59):
as far as I can tell,didn't lead to anything super specific.
But around the same time,investigative journalist Don Devereaux
starts investigating this case And DonDevereaux contacted the FBI
to get more information.
And this is a quote from Don Devereaux.
When I made a Freedom of Information Actrequest to the FBI.
They had never heard of Mr.
Morgan,despite the fact that they obviously
(13:20):
opened an investigation, despitethe fact that the FBI interviewed Mr.
Morgan's attorney.
They were all over this thinglike a blanket for a while,
but now they've never heard of the guy.
He never existed.
No card, no file,no nothing. End of quote.
All of that is really suspicious.
Maybe they threw the file away.
Maybe it's missing.
(13:41):
Things weren't digitized back then.
Or maybe he his involvement withthe government
was being actually kept secret.
Maybe he really had been undercoverand it was still important
for the governmentto kind of keep that secret.
But I don't know,
maybe that would still come out partiallyredacted in a Freedom of Information Act.
I'm not sure.
So if Chuck Morgan was doing undercoverwork for the government, Don
(14:04):
Devereaux believes that the clueshe wrote on the $2 bill might have been
an attempt to pass some sort of codedmessage on to the authorities.
But we're missing the key to that code.
We don't know, actually whatthe code under the dollar bill leads to.
There is some more informationthat we do know now that I don't think
they knew back thenwhen the story first ran in the early 90s.
(14:26):
Chuck did real
estate escrow work for at least oneMafia family, and it's suspected
that he helped with the purchase of goldbullion and platinum,
which these are sort of easyways, convenient ways to launder money.
And after Devereaux had been digginginto the case, after Unsolved Mysteries
ran the story, it came outthat Chuck had been a secret witness
(14:48):
in a fraud investigation,a land fraud investigation,
and he had been interviewed about itjust a handful of months before he died.
It's also worth mentioning that Chuck
had been seen at several restaurantsand motels in the west side of Tucson
after his disappearance,but right before his death.
Now, there's a few footnoteshere to this case.
(15:08):
A man named Doug Johnson was shot
and killed in his car,and his office is parking lot.
This is also in the early 90s.
Doug Johnson is not a nameyou should remember.
For me,blabbering on about this story at all.
This is a random person,an innocent man, a terrible situation.
the person who killed himwas never caught.
(15:28):
And in fact,it was made to look like a suicide.
But it wasn't.
Now why am I bringing Doug Johnson up?
Well, it's so happenedthat he worked right across the street
from Don Devereaux,and they drove station wagons.
so there is a theory here. Just a theory.
It's unproven, but a lot of people suspectthat Devereaux was the target.
Since he was digging into this case.
(15:51):
And the killer got the cars mixed up.
tied into that.
A CIA agent had mentioned to Devereauxthat he was
an intended targetbecause of his work on this story.
One final little footnote here.
That's interesting.
A gentleman named Danny Castellanowho was an investigative reporter.
He died under mysterious circumstancesthat we think
(16:13):
is related to an entirely different case.
There's a documentary about him on Netflixright now that I started watching,
which is really good.
He was looking into some other corruption
type thingsand was found dead in mysterious ways.
But because he diedafter contacting Devereaux.
Because he wanted to know moreabout the Charles Martin case
that is also, in and of itself,another strange spider web.
(16:37):
So there's the story as best as I cansort of tell it.
Just going through my notes hereof The Strange case of Charles C Morgan,
The Prime series in this caseI already mentioned one
is that he was caught up in some sortof fraud, money laundering situation
and the criminals he was dealing withwanted to kill him for either.
(17:01):
They either they were afraidhe was going to say something,
or they found out he was working forthe government and they had him killed.
Another theory is that he committed
suicide,just like the authorities first suspected.
I don't buy much into the suicide theorybecause of all of these strange things
in this case, no coincidencescould just be coincidences.
(17:24):
I did read. These are not.
I hate using something like Reddit andcomments on YouTube and stuff as sources.
That is not what you should do
to confirm or validateanything when you're researching.
But some people on places like thatbrought up
that this is the behavior of someonethat might be dealing with schizophrenia,
and he almost was creatingthis kind of fake world.
(17:45):
And it could have been in a way, too.
He didn't want to admit that he wantedto kill himself to his family.
So this is kind of a way to hide that,even though he was probably dealing with,
you know, money troubles and strangepeople and decided to end his life.
To me, there's just almost too manycoincidences for it to be a suicide.
but it is a valid theory and,and one of the main prominent theories
(18:08):
that are out there, We do not know
if Charles C Morgan did workfor the Treasury Department,
but we do know that he had theseperipheral connections
to money laundering and organized crimein Tucson.
This strange case of CharlesC Morgan is so interesting, so intriguing.
And every turn you make, there's anotherconnection to something mysterious.
(18:31):
And it very muchfeels like a real version of a 1970s
political thriller moviewhere a conspiracy is unfolding.
You know, the low sort of normalman is unfolding, this conspiracy,
and there's so many parts to the webthat you just get overwhelmed.
And to this day,no one is certain why Morgan died.
(18:55):
And on
that note, that'll do it for today'sepisode of A Study of Strange.
Thank you for listeningto one of my favorite true crime stories.
and again, if you're new to
the show, make sure to hit that subscribeor follow button.
Coming up on the futureof study of Strange.
I'm not sure which order these episodeswill come out, because it depends on on
some schedules with some potential guests,but I am going to cover some legends
(19:19):
around Nazis in Los Angelesaround the time of of World War two.
I've got some UFO stories comingup, some true crime, a lot of good stuff.
It's already been a great yearso far for the podcast.
Thank you for listening. and good night.
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