September 4, 2024 • 28 mins
A quaint township in Pennsylvania is shaken to its core when three dead bodies are discovered lying in a perfect line in their backyard. The police don’t immediately know what happened to Elizabeth Daub and her parents but it appears to be an execution-style killing. A bullet for each of them to the back of the head. But then strange documents and the discovery of chilling YouTube videos cast a different light on the God-fearing family.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Just before midnight on January twenty fourth, twenty twenty three,
a man in West Manchester, Pennsylvania, hears what he thinks
is a gun shot. The first shot rings out, piercing
the night's silence, but it sounds muffled. He isn't really
quite sure if it's a gunshot or where it's coming from.
(00:31):
He listens with wide eyed intent. Ten maybe fifteen seconds later,
he hears a second shot. It two sounds muffled or distant,
He's not sure. Then another ten to fifteen seconds later
he hears the last shot. This last one is louder
(00:53):
and much more clear. It sounds closer. Could it be
a gun shot? He thinks. It is a freezing night,
clear and calm as he sits in his bed with
the blankets pulled up under his arms. The tranquility returns
(01:14):
as he drifts off to sleep. He doubts it could
have been gunshots in his neighborhood of cozy, modest homes.
The next morning, Wednesday, January twenty fifth, he wakes up
to a bizarre sight. In his neighbour's yard are what
looks like deflated Christmas decorations. The more he thinks about it,
(01:39):
the more odd it seems it's almost the end of January.
He thinks to himself, why have them out and why
in the backyard. As this thought crosses his mind, he
remembers the three loud booms he heard the night before
and fears the worse. They aren't deflated decorations. Instead, they're
(02:07):
dead bodies. Welcome to sword and Scale Nightmares, True crime
(02:36):
for bedtime or nightmare beginnings now. The neighbor hurries to
(03:01):
the phone and dials the police, his fingers scrambling nervously
from button to button. He isn't sure what he's seeing,
but he knows something isn't right. He relates to the
police what he heard the night before and what he's
seeing now, with a hint of panic in his voice.
(03:23):
The officer looks at his watch when he gets the call.
It's nearly ten thirty. He glances out of the window
at the snow that started to lightly fall sometime after
the sun rose and puts the car in drive. By now,
the snow is covering the ground in a sparkling white blanket.
(03:44):
He and his partner pull up to the house on
Loman Av a short time later and put the car
in park. The Brickholm looms over the officers and is
made all the more ominous by the dense fog enveloping it.
They carefully walk down the snow covered driveway and up
the steps to the front door. He raises his arm
(04:06):
and lets out a sigh that lingers in the air
like a cloud. Before he knocks. The home is quiet.
No one comes to the door. They both peek through
the windows and announce themselves again. Everything inside seems in order.
He tells his partner to head around the garage and
(04:29):
they split up, heading around the house in different directions.
They walk the perimeter of the home, snow crunching under
each step. They start peeking through the windows and look
for anything suspicious. He can hear his partner announcing himself
and calling out for anyone to respond. As he turns
(04:49):
the corner into the backyard. There, just off the back porch,
he sees what the neighbor reported, but he can immediately
tell it's not decorations. It is like no other crime
scene the officer has seen, though he can't fathom why
(05:09):
lying in the backyard in a perfect line head to
toe is an older man, an older woman, and a
young woman. He gets as close as he dares. The
snow covers their bodies and their injuries, but it is
apparent that each of them have a single bullet wound
(05:34):
to the head. The senior officer puts one hand on
his pistol and the other on his radio and reports
there has been a homicide and scurries to secure the scene.
His mind is racing to explain how this can happen
in their community. Three people murdered in the middle of
(05:55):
the night in a straight line. Could they have and executed?
He wonders. The questions flood his mind as he takes
notes of the rest of the home. He looks for
any signs of forced entry, like prid marks on the
doors or windows, or broken glass, but he finds none.
(06:19):
The front door is locked and the back door is unlocked.
He looks for signs of a struggle, an overturned chair,
scattered belongings, anything. Instead, he finds a well kept, tidy,
and put together home. The officer can't put the pieces together.
(06:41):
No forced entry, no signs of a struggle. There is
no indication that anyone other than the three people dead
in the backyard had been there at all. An eerie
fact made all the more foreboding by the peacefully sleeping
fan family dog inside. When the detective arrives, he doesn't
(07:31):
know what to make of the description of the scene.
It hardly seems believable. He walks past the crime scene
tape and toward the backyard. It's cold outside, barely above freezing.
He jams his fist into his warm coat pocket to
escape the biting sting of January. He circles the house
(07:55):
and approaches the backyard. He can see three outlines in
the no and he exclaims, in disbelief, huh, they do
kind of look like deflated Christmas decorations. He starts with
Morgan first. He immediately notices just how young she is.
(08:15):
With her blonde hair pulled back into a tight ponytail,
she looks at peace, as if she's sleeping. He takes
a step back to take in everything. Morgan is lying
closest to the porch on her back, her face a
pale blue at her feet as her mother, Deborah, lying
(08:37):
in the same position like they were making snow angels
when it happened. James is last lying down at Deborah's feet,
but strangely pointed in the opposite direction. Each one had
a bullet in the back of the head. When the
detective talked to the neighbors, he learned that the dow
(09:00):
had lived in West Manchester for twenty three years. They
elaborated that James and Deborah bought the house when their daughter,
Morgan was just three years old. Described as friendly but
deeply religious, the patriarch, James had strong ideals. He was
(09:21):
a bit of a traditionalist. He worked, but Deborah did not.
She stayed home and took care of Morgan. By the
time Morgan was school aged, the Dobbs decided to homeschool her.
This led to Morgan not having many friends other than
kids from the neighborhood or church. They mostly kept to themselves,
(09:44):
but on occasion would go door to door spreading the
word of Christianity. And because her father didn't allow her
to use social media and she was pretty much supervised
all the time, she became a bit secluded. Deborah was
a bit of a helicopter mom, always hovering around Morgan
(10:05):
and just generally overly concerned that she would get hurt
or sick. Anywhere Morgan went, Deborah was sure to be nearby.
With strict parental supervision. One of Morgan's few outlets was bowling.
She got involved in a youth league when she was
just eight or nine. She was described as shy, but
(10:28):
happy and always wanted to learn more about bowling, and
she got really good too. She competed in youth tournaments
and won several scholarships. After her youth career, she moved
to an adult league and played doubles with her mom.
At the same time, she started attending Messiah University in
(10:50):
nearby Mechanicsburg. By the time she was in her early twenties,
she had bowled two perfect games, a feat reveal even
by world professionals. After twenty twenty, the neighbors said she
didn't see the family much with the onset of the pandemic,
(11:10):
and all the bowling alleys were closed and Morgan lost
her most beloved outlet. Back at the crime scene, the
detective scratches his head as he walks into the Daubs home.
There must be some kind of indication as to what
happened here, he thinks, as he feels the warmth coming
(11:30):
from the inside of the home washing over him. He
walks down the hall and enters Morgan's room. It's far
from the kind of room he expects for a twenty
six year old woman. The off white walls are sparsely decorated.
The room is drab, to say the least. The image
(11:52):
of Morgan lying dead and the snow flashes in his
mind as he notices a piece of paper on her
bedroom table. He walks over, picks it up, and begins
to read. It seems like a checklist. He reads down
the list, Speak to dad, clip the dog's nails, write
(12:14):
letters to family. The list seems a bit odd, but
not all that unusual. He looks around for anything else,
any other evidence, but he doesn't see anything. He starts
to leave when he bumps into Morgan's table and her
computer wakes up. An image shows on the screen. The
(12:36):
words follow me as I follow christ are in white
font on a black background. His eyes dart to the
top of the screen. He realizes it's a video posted
on YouTube just hours earlier by someone using the screen
name Lioness Arising. He grabs the mouse and clicks on
(13:01):
the user. The webpage reloads to show all the user's uploads.
He notices another video titled potential human rights abuses by
the US military. Let there be Light. He sees that
it was posted just four months earlier. He clicks the
(13:24):
video in it begins to play. It opens with a
still frame of a PowerPoint presentation with the words behold,
the days are coming and white on a blue background.
Then he hears the voice of a young woman begin
to speak. She says, God is going to introduce me
(13:46):
to you, and he's going to use some evil and
wicked people to do so, and then he's going to
destroy those evil and wicked people. A sense of surprise
jolts him when he realizes that the speaking in a
serious tone is Morgan. She continues, first name is Morgan.
(14:09):
It means great Sea. I am a seer. I'm a
prophet of the Most High God. I am filled with
power and justice and might to declare to people how
they have transgressed God's law. The detective shakes his head
in confusion. This doesn't seem like the Morgan everyone described.
(14:32):
She goes on to say, yeah, there are hundreds of
millions of people after me, including the United States military,
and that's under Donald John Trump, forty fifth and current
President of the United States. When she talks, her voice
trembles with anger. A chill runs down his spine. Morgan
(14:55):
seems to be suffering some sort of religious delusion, he thinks.
She persists, Behold, the days are coming that I show
this world who is God. Behold the days are coming
when I will put the nations in fear that they
may know themselves to be But men, behold, the days
(15:19):
are coming when my people, my oppressed, persecuted, tiny faithful remnant,
rise up and I put them on top. I flip
things completely upside down, and I put them on top.
And nothing will be able to stop it. Nothing, no
one ever will be able to stop me, Because I
(15:41):
am the most high God, l a lion God is
going to unleash me fully, and I'm going to burst
upon the head of the wicked. Behold, the Lord is
a mighty and strong one, like a tempest of hail,
a destroying storm, with a flood of mighty waters overflowing.
(16:04):
This world is so much more evil than anyone ever imagined.
I'm not the crazy one. Everybody out here thinking that
the world is normal, You're the crazy ones. While I
do empathize with at least some of her thoughts, what
is it about religion that gives us this inflated sense
(16:26):
of grandiosity and what is it about mental illness that
heightens it? Anyway, The detective is perplexed at this point.
When she wasn't claiming to have the power of God,
she was spouting political conspiracies. It's almost like she's going
to start talking about raising goats and how flat the
earth is at any moment. She continues to rant. Everyone
(16:50):
thinking that what's on the fake news is what's really happening.
You're the crazy ones. Okay, if you're that awake, you
know there's a deep state. Nothing is normal. If you're
still thinking life is normal after two and a half
plus years of DVOC, that's COVID. By the way, DVOC,
(17:15):
it's backwards because everything's upside down and backwards. There's all
manner of evil weaponry and technology being used on us,
from the military under Trump to the military under Hussein.
The detective pensively stares at the screen and watches twenty
(17:36):
eight minutes of Morgan ranting about her religious authority and
politicians lies. I mean, she's not wrong, but what are
you gonna do about it? Certainly not what it seems
like she chose to do. He removes his hand from
his chin and clicks to stop the video. He clicks
(17:57):
on the third and last video, titled Abdicating the Throne
of England slash United Kingdom, uploaded just a couple months before.
The video starts, and the detective is surprised to see
Morgan smiling back at him. She begins, I was next
(18:20):
in line to the throne of England, United Kingdom, not anymore.
For all intents and purposes, I have formally abdicated. I
refuse to be queen. I will not be crowned. It
will force me to be crowned. A sense of dread
(18:40):
fills the pit of the detective's stomach. He covers his
slightly ajar mouth as Morgan speaks, this time in a
mocking British accent, which I'll spare you from. She continues,
somebody somewhere down the line and decided they were going
(19:01):
to be royal, nobody was actually born royal, and then
somebody else went along with it. We're all made in
the image of God. This was the ultimate plan against
me and against God. I didn't know I was the
ideal pick for the Antichrist, the devil. At this point,
(19:24):
the detective is noticing a disturbing trend in these videos
listening to Morgan's voice, he can tell she believes every
single word she's saying. She finishes, no one will ever
force me, or trick me, or manipulate me into accepting
the throne. The Antichrist will seize seize it by intrigue,
(19:50):
and then set himself up as king. I am a
daughter of the Most God. I am royalty in Jesus.
I am a royal priesthood. And they fucked with the
wrong family. They really fucked with the wrong family. God
will give me royal authority. I'm a king and a
(20:14):
priest under my God Yahweh Elohim, and a lion. I
am not the Christ, I am not Antichrist. No, I
am not a false prophet. But i am prophet of
the Most High God, and I'm ready to roar for him.
(20:34):
It's time for the king to roar, the one True King,
King of Kings, Lord of lords, King Jesus, the one
True Amen. Before the video suddenly ends, the detective notices
Morgan glancing several times off camera, as if someone is
approaching or she hears someone calling her. He stands up
(20:59):
from the computer and walks away with a heavy heart.
After watching all that, he can't help but feel that
Morgan was quite sad. He returns to the backyard, where
the snow has started to melt. Then he notices something
new about the family. This time they are dressed for
(21:23):
the cold. How strange, he thinks. As to the snow melts,
more of the three bodies emerge from beneath it. Something
on Morgan's hip catches his eye. She's wearing an empty
holster on her belt. He quickly checks the other two
and sees that so is Deborah. The heat of the
(21:46):
sun and time will eventually melt away all the snow
from the morning and reveal even more clues. The detective
is beginning to put together a theory as he finds
two pairs of shooting earmuffs lying in between Deborah and James.
(22:07):
He sees Morgan is still wearing a third pair. The
sun glints off something to the left of Morgan. The
detective leans down and finds two shell casings. To the
left of Debrah, he finds another one. As the last
of the snow finally melts away, they find not one,
(22:28):
but two guns, one to the left of Deborah and
one to the right of Morgan. They also find the
most peculiar of things. Gripton Morgan's left hand is a
sword inscribed with the words sword of the Lord. The
(22:50):
detective is reminded of something Morgan said in one of
her videos. She said, I don't care about America anymore.
I would say country, but this country has proven itself
to be so depraved it's past saving. It's past worthy
of being saved. The detective had a theory of what happened,
(23:42):
and it was confirmed when officers found a written document
taped to a door in the home. It was from Deborah.
In the document, she explained that Morgan had been complaining
of persistent audible hallucinations and they were only getting worse.
She spoke to an unnamed evil that has mounted against
(24:05):
Morgan and the family. She wrote that Morgan didn't want
to live like this and that she wanted to commit suicide.
Deborah lamented that she didn't want her daughter to die alone,
and she decided to join her. The detective feels the
hair on the back of his neck standing up, reminded
(24:29):
of Morgan's checklist. With new context. Shuffling through the document,
he realizes that the way Deborah writes is as if
she expects James to be alive. Then he sees a
series of handwritten letters from James. They read like several
days of journal entries. The first one begins with him
(24:52):
expressing how crushed he was when Morgan told him her plans.
The detective pours over James's words. It's clear in the
first journal entry that he's not ready to end his life,
but by the end, after contemplating the void that would
be left behind, he decides to do so. With the
(25:17):
documents left behind, the Doubs' bodies in the backyard, and
Morgan's YouTube videos, the West Manchester Police, along with the coroner,
came to a conclusion, a very dark one. Morgan wanted
to commit suicide, and one by one, her parents, unable
(25:40):
to imagine life without her, agreed to kill themselves as well.
They prepared a document outlining the disposition of their assets,
locations and important documents and keys, and even instructions for
what to do with the family dog. They sedated the
(26:01):
dog so that he wouldn't interfere with first responders. Then
together they put on their winter coats. Deborah and Morgan
holstered their guns. Morgan grasped her sword and the trio
marched into the cold night air. James went first, but
(26:25):
because of his shaky hands, Deborah pulled the trigger. He
fell forward and landed with a thud. Then Deborah went,
She too had an unsure grip, so Morgan pulled the trigger.
She caught her mother's body and slowly lowered it to
(26:46):
the ground. Lastly, with the sword in hand, Morgan placed
the gun to her head, looked up at the night sky,
said a little prayer, and ended her life. Sometimes there
(27:06):
isn't more to the story. Sometimes there isn't some vast
mystery to solve, some cold case to crack open. Sometimes
depression takes what it wants and discriminately, even the satisfying
(27:28):
ending to a story. Sometimes it can take everything, including
an entire family, even those not suffering from it. So
I wish there was more to this story, But that
very dark plague that surrounds us, all called depression, has
(27:55):
taken it from us as well. If you enjoyed the show,
please consider joining plus at Sword and Scale dot com
slash plus. But if you can't, consider leaving us a
positive review on your preferred listening platform. Sweet Dreams and
(28:18):
Goodnight
Just before midnight on January twenty fourth, twenty twenty three,
a man in West Manchester, Pennsylvania, hears what he thinks
is a gun shot. The first shot rings out, piercing
the night's silence, but it sounds muffled. He isn't really
quite sure if it's a gunshot or where it's coming from.
(00:31):
He listens with wide eyed intent. Ten maybe fifteen seconds later,
he hears a second shot. It two sounds muffled or distant,
He's not sure. Then another ten to fifteen seconds later
he hears the last shot. This last one is louder
(00:53):
and much more clear. It sounds closer. Could it be
a gun shot? He thinks. It is a freezing night,
clear and calm as he sits in his bed with
the blankets pulled up under his arms. The tranquility returns
(01:14):
as he drifts off to sleep. He doubts it could
have been gunshots in his neighborhood of cozy, modest homes.
The next morning, Wednesday, January twenty fifth, he wakes up
to a bizarre sight. In his neighbour's yard are what
looks like deflated Christmas decorations. The more he thinks about it,
(01:39):
the more odd it seems it's almost the end of January.
He thinks to himself, why have them out and why
in the backyard. As this thought crosses his mind, he
remembers the three loud booms he heard the night before
and fears the worse. They aren't deflated decorations. Instead, they're
(02:07):
dead bodies. Welcome to sword and Scale Nightmares, True crime
(02:36):
for bedtime or nightmare beginnings now. The neighbor hurries to
(03:01):
the phone and dials the police, his fingers scrambling nervously
from button to button. He isn't sure what he's seeing,
but he knows something isn't right. He relates to the
police what he heard the night before and what he's
seeing now, with a hint of panic in his voice.
(03:23):
The officer looks at his watch when he gets the call.
It's nearly ten thirty. He glances out of the window
at the snow that started to lightly fall sometime after
the sun rose and puts the car in drive. By now,
the snow is covering the ground in a sparkling white blanket.
(03:44):
He and his partner pull up to the house on
Loman Av a short time later and put the car
in park. The Brickholm looms over the officers and is
made all the more ominous by the dense fog enveloping it.
They carefully walk down the snow covered driveway and up
the steps to the front door. He raises his arm
(04:06):
and lets out a sigh that lingers in the air
like a cloud. Before he knocks. The home is quiet.
No one comes to the door. They both peek through
the windows and announce themselves again. Everything inside seems in order.
He tells his partner to head around the garage and
(04:29):
they split up, heading around the house in different directions.
They walk the perimeter of the home, snow crunching under
each step. They start peeking through the windows and look
for anything suspicious. He can hear his partner announcing himself
and calling out for anyone to respond. As he turns
(04:49):
the corner into the backyard. There, just off the back porch,
he sees what the neighbor reported, but he can immediately
tell it's not decorations. It is like no other crime
scene the officer has seen, though he can't fathom why
(05:09):
lying in the backyard in a perfect line head to
toe is an older man, an older woman, and a
young woman. He gets as close as he dares. The
snow covers their bodies and their injuries, but it is
apparent that each of them have a single bullet wound
(05:34):
to the head. The senior officer puts one hand on
his pistol and the other on his radio and reports
there has been a homicide and scurries to secure the scene.
His mind is racing to explain how this can happen
in their community. Three people murdered in the middle of
(05:55):
the night in a straight line. Could they have and executed?
He wonders. The questions flood his mind as he takes
notes of the rest of the home. He looks for
any signs of forced entry, like prid marks on the
doors or windows, or broken glass, but he finds none.
(06:19):
The front door is locked and the back door is unlocked.
He looks for signs of a struggle, an overturned chair,
scattered belongings, anything. Instead, he finds a well kept, tidy,
and put together home. The officer can't put the pieces together.
(06:41):
No forced entry, no signs of a struggle. There is
no indication that anyone other than the three people dead
in the backyard had been there at all. An eerie
fact made all the more foreboding by the peacefully sleeping
fan family dog inside. When the detective arrives, he doesn't
(07:31):
know what to make of the description of the scene.
It hardly seems believable. He walks past the crime scene
tape and toward the backyard. It's cold outside, barely above freezing.
He jams his fist into his warm coat pocket to
escape the biting sting of January. He circles the house
(07:55):
and approaches the backyard. He can see three outlines in
the no and he exclaims, in disbelief, huh, they do
kind of look like deflated Christmas decorations. He starts with
Morgan first. He immediately notices just how young she is.
(08:15):
With her blonde hair pulled back into a tight ponytail,
she looks at peace, as if she's sleeping. He takes
a step back to take in everything. Morgan is lying
closest to the porch on her back, her face a
pale blue at her feet as her mother, Deborah, lying
(08:37):
in the same position like they were making snow angels
when it happened. James is last lying down at Deborah's feet,
but strangely pointed in the opposite direction. Each one had
a bullet in the back of the head. When the
detective talked to the neighbors, he learned that the dow
(09:00):
had lived in West Manchester for twenty three years. They
elaborated that James and Deborah bought the house when their daughter,
Morgan was just three years old. Described as friendly but
deeply religious, the patriarch, James had strong ideals. He was
(09:21):
a bit of a traditionalist. He worked, but Deborah did not.
She stayed home and took care of Morgan. By the
time Morgan was school aged, the Dobbs decided to homeschool her.
This led to Morgan not having many friends other than
kids from the neighborhood or church. They mostly kept to themselves,
(09:44):
but on occasion would go door to door spreading the
word of Christianity. And because her father didn't allow her
to use social media and she was pretty much supervised
all the time, she became a bit secluded. Deborah was
a bit of a helicopter mom, always hovering around Morgan
(10:05):
and just generally overly concerned that she would get hurt
or sick. Anywhere Morgan went, Deborah was sure to be nearby.
With strict parental supervision. One of Morgan's few outlets was bowling.
She got involved in a youth league when she was
just eight or nine. She was described as shy, but
(10:28):
happy and always wanted to learn more about bowling, and
she got really good too. She competed in youth tournaments
and won several scholarships. After her youth career, she moved
to an adult league and played doubles with her mom.
At the same time, she started attending Messiah University in
(10:50):
nearby Mechanicsburg. By the time she was in her early twenties,
she had bowled two perfect games, a feat reveal even
by world professionals. After twenty twenty, the neighbors said she
didn't see the family much with the onset of the pandemic,
(11:10):
and all the bowling alleys were closed and Morgan lost
her most beloved outlet. Back at the crime scene, the
detective scratches his head as he walks into the Daubs home.
There must be some kind of indication as to what
happened here, he thinks, as he feels the warmth coming
(11:30):
from the inside of the home washing over him. He
walks down the hall and enters Morgan's room. It's far
from the kind of room he expects for a twenty
six year old woman. The off white walls are sparsely decorated.
The room is drab, to say the least. The image
(11:52):
of Morgan lying dead and the snow flashes in his
mind as he notices a piece of paper on her
bedroom table. He walks over, picks it up, and begins
to read. It seems like a checklist. He reads down
the list, Speak to dad, clip the dog's nails, write
(12:14):
letters to family. The list seems a bit odd, but
not all that unusual. He looks around for anything else,
any other evidence, but he doesn't see anything. He starts
to leave when he bumps into Morgan's table and her
computer wakes up. An image shows on the screen. The
(12:36):
words follow me as I follow christ are in white
font on a black background. His eyes dart to the
top of the screen. He realizes it's a video posted
on YouTube just hours earlier by someone using the screen
name Lioness Arising. He grabs the mouse and clicks on
(13:01):
the user. The webpage reloads to show all the user's uploads.
He notices another video titled potential human rights abuses by
the US military. Let there be Light. He sees that
it was posted just four months earlier. He clicks the
(13:24):
video in it begins to play. It opens with a
still frame of a PowerPoint presentation with the words behold,
the days are coming and white on a blue background.
Then he hears the voice of a young woman begin
to speak. She says, God is going to introduce me
(13:46):
to you, and he's going to use some evil and
wicked people to do so, and then he's going to
destroy those evil and wicked people. A sense of surprise
jolts him when he realizes that the speaking in a
serious tone is Morgan. She continues, first name is Morgan.
(14:09):
It means great Sea. I am a seer. I'm a
prophet of the Most High God. I am filled with
power and justice and might to declare to people how
they have transgressed God's law. The detective shakes his head
in confusion. This doesn't seem like the Morgan everyone described.
(14:32):
She goes on to say, yeah, there are hundreds of
millions of people after me, including the United States military,
and that's under Donald John Trump, forty fifth and current
President of the United States. When she talks, her voice
trembles with anger. A chill runs down his spine. Morgan
(14:55):
seems to be suffering some sort of religious delusion, he thinks.
She persists, Behold, the days are coming that I show
this world who is God. Behold the days are coming
when I will put the nations in fear that they
may know themselves to be But men, behold, the days
(15:19):
are coming when my people, my oppressed, persecuted, tiny faithful remnant,
rise up and I put them on top. I flip
things completely upside down, and I put them on top.
And nothing will be able to stop it. Nothing, no
one ever will be able to stop me, Because I
(15:41):
am the most high God, l a lion God is
going to unleash me fully, and I'm going to burst
upon the head of the wicked. Behold, the Lord is
a mighty and strong one, like a tempest of hail,
a destroying storm, with a flood of mighty waters overflowing.
(16:04):
This world is so much more evil than anyone ever imagined.
I'm not the crazy one. Everybody out here thinking that
the world is normal, You're the crazy ones. While I
do empathize with at least some of her thoughts, what
is it about religion that gives us this inflated sense
(16:26):
of grandiosity and what is it about mental illness that
heightens it? Anyway, The detective is perplexed at this point.
When she wasn't claiming to have the power of God,
she was spouting political conspiracies. It's almost like she's going
to start talking about raising goats and how flat the
earth is at any moment. She continues to rant. Everyone
(16:50):
thinking that what's on the fake news is what's really happening.
You're the crazy ones. Okay, if you're that awake, you
know there's a deep state. Nothing is normal. If you're
still thinking life is normal after two and a half
plus years of DVOC, that's COVID. By the way, DVOC,
(17:15):
it's backwards because everything's upside down and backwards. There's all
manner of evil weaponry and technology being used on us,
from the military under Trump to the military under Hussein.
The detective pensively stares at the screen and watches twenty
(17:36):
eight minutes of Morgan ranting about her religious authority and
politicians lies. I mean, she's not wrong, but what are
you gonna do about it? Certainly not what it seems
like she chose to do. He removes his hand from
his chin and clicks to stop the video. He clicks
(17:57):
on the third and last video, titled Abdicating the Throne
of England slash United Kingdom, uploaded just a couple months before.
The video starts, and the detective is surprised to see
Morgan smiling back at him. She begins, I was next
(18:20):
in line to the throne of England, United Kingdom, not anymore.
For all intents and purposes, I have formally abdicated. I
refuse to be queen. I will not be crowned. It
will force me to be crowned. A sense of dread
(18:40):
fills the pit of the detective's stomach. He covers his
slightly ajar mouth as Morgan speaks, this time in a
mocking British accent, which I'll spare you from. She continues,
somebody somewhere down the line and decided they were going
(19:01):
to be royal, nobody was actually born royal, and then
somebody else went along with it. We're all made in
the image of God. This was the ultimate plan against
me and against God. I didn't know I was the
ideal pick for the Antichrist, the devil. At this point,
(19:24):
the detective is noticing a disturbing trend in these videos
listening to Morgan's voice, he can tell she believes every
single word she's saying. She finishes, no one will ever
force me, or trick me, or manipulate me into accepting
the throne. The Antichrist will seize seize it by intrigue,
(19:50):
and then set himself up as king. I am a
daughter of the Most God. I am royalty in Jesus.
I am a royal priesthood. And they fucked with the
wrong family. They really fucked with the wrong family. God
will give me royal authority. I'm a king and a
(20:14):
priest under my God Yahweh Elohim, and a lion. I
am not the Christ, I am not Antichrist. No, I
am not a false prophet. But i am prophet of
the Most High God, and I'm ready to roar for him.
(20:34):
It's time for the king to roar, the one True King,
King of Kings, Lord of lords, King Jesus, the one
True Amen. Before the video suddenly ends, the detective notices
Morgan glancing several times off camera, as if someone is
approaching or she hears someone calling her. He stands up
(20:59):
from the computer and walks away with a heavy heart.
After watching all that, he can't help but feel that
Morgan was quite sad. He returns to the backyard, where
the snow has started to melt. Then he notices something
new about the family. This time they are dressed for
(21:23):
the cold. How strange, he thinks. As to the snow melts,
more of the three bodies emerge from beneath it. Something
on Morgan's hip catches his eye. She's wearing an empty
holster on her belt. He quickly checks the other two
and sees that so is Deborah. The heat of the
(21:46):
sun and time will eventually melt away all the snow
from the morning and reveal even more clues. The detective
is beginning to put together a theory as he finds
two pairs of shooting earmuffs lying in between Deborah and James.
(22:07):
He sees Morgan is still wearing a third pair. The
sun glints off something to the left of Morgan. The
detective leans down and finds two shell casings. To the
left of Debrah, he finds another one. As the last
of the snow finally melts away, they find not one,
(22:28):
but two guns, one to the left of Deborah and
one to the right of Morgan. They also find the
most peculiar of things. Gripton Morgan's left hand is a
sword inscribed with the words sword of the Lord. The
(22:50):
detective is reminded of something Morgan said in one of
her videos. She said, I don't care about America anymore.
I would say country, but this country has proven itself
to be so depraved it's past saving. It's past worthy
of being saved. The detective had a theory of what happened,
(23:42):
and it was confirmed when officers found a written document
taped to a door in the home. It was from Deborah.
In the document, she explained that Morgan had been complaining
of persistent audible hallucinations and they were only getting worse.
She spoke to an unnamed evil that has mounted against
(24:05):
Morgan and the family. She wrote that Morgan didn't want
to live like this and that she wanted to commit suicide.
Deborah lamented that she didn't want her daughter to die alone,
and she decided to join her. The detective feels the
hair on the back of his neck standing up, reminded
(24:29):
of Morgan's checklist. With new context. Shuffling through the document,
he realizes that the way Deborah writes is as if
she expects James to be alive. Then he sees a
series of handwritten letters from James. They read like several
days of journal entries. The first one begins with him
(24:52):
expressing how crushed he was when Morgan told him her plans.
The detective pours over James's words. It's clear in the
first journal entry that he's not ready to end his life,
but by the end, after contemplating the void that would
be left behind, he decides to do so. With the
(25:17):
documents left behind, the Doubs' bodies in the backyard, and
Morgan's YouTube videos, the West Manchester Police, along with the coroner,
came to a conclusion, a very dark one. Morgan wanted
to commit suicide, and one by one, her parents, unable
(25:40):
to imagine life without her, agreed to kill themselves as well.
They prepared a document outlining the disposition of their assets,
locations and important documents and keys, and even instructions for
what to do with the family dog. They sedated the
(26:01):
dog so that he wouldn't interfere with first responders. Then
together they put on their winter coats. Deborah and Morgan
holstered their guns. Morgan grasped her sword and the trio
marched into the cold night air. James went first, but
(26:25):
because of his shaky hands, Deborah pulled the trigger. He
fell forward and landed with a thud. Then Deborah went,
She too had an unsure grip, so Morgan pulled the trigger.
She caught her mother's body and slowly lowered it to
(26:46):
the ground. Lastly, with the sword in hand, Morgan placed
the gun to her head, looked up at the night sky,
said a little prayer, and ended her life. Sometimes there
(27:06):
isn't more to the story. Sometimes there isn't some vast
mystery to solve, some cold case to crack open. Sometimes
depression takes what it wants and discriminately, even the satisfying
(27:28):
ending to a story. Sometimes it can take everything, including
an entire family, even those not suffering from it. So
I wish there was more to this story, But that
very dark plague that surrounds us, all called depression, has
(27:55):
taken it from us as well. If you enjoyed the show,
please consider joining plus at Sword and Scale dot com
slash plus. But if you can't, consider leaving us a
positive review on your preferred listening platform. Sweet Dreams and
(28:18):
Goodnight
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