Two Queens True Crime

Charles ‘Chuck’ Morgan

Charles ‘Chuck’ Morgan went missing on 22nd March 1977 after dropping his daughters off at school. It would be three days before he eventually showed back up at home with, according to his wife, a plastic zip tie around his wrists and a plastic handcuff around one ankle; Chuck was also missing a shoe. Unable to speak, he used a pen and paper to communicate with his wife, telling her that he had been kidnapped and tortured. His lack of voice, he claimed, was due to a hallucinogenic drug that had been painted on his throat.

After complying with her husband’s requests to firstly move his car so that ‘they’ didn’t know he was home and secondly to not call the police, Ruth then spent the next week caring for her husband. Chuck would never reveal who ‘they’ were, but he did allude to a secret identity and working for the government as an agent. He claimed that ‘they’ had taken his identification before he had managed to escape from them.

Following his kidnapping Chuck, somewhat understandably, began to display signs of paranoia. These included wearing a bulletproof vest and growing a beard to help hide his identity. He also started to drive his children to and from school every day, instructing their teachers that nobody else should be allowed to pick them up.

Despite his efforts, Chuck would go missing again on June 7th 1977, two months after his initial disappearance. This time, sadly, he would be found 11 days later in the desert, just off the highway in San Juan Springs, shot in the back of the head with his own gun. At the crime scene, in his car, police found a note which held directions to the murder site, several weapons, ammunition, a CB radio, a pair of sunglasses that did not belong to him and a piece of one of his teeth wrapped in a white handkerchief. Upon later examination of the body a $2 bill was discovered pinned inside Chuck’s underwear, on both sides of this were scribbled seven Spanish names, Ecclesiastics 12 with its verses marked out by arrows pointing to the serial number, the signers of the Declaration of Independence and a map showing several roads between Tucson and the Mexican border.

Ecclesiastics 12, 1 through 8; “Men are afraid of a high place and of terrors on the road. Remember him before the silver cord is broken and the golden bowl is crushed. Then the dust will return to the earth as it was and the spirit will return to God who gave it.”

During the following forensic investigation it was discovered that his left hand did indeed have gunshot residue on it, however no fingerprints could be found on the gun itself. Even with this piece of evidence pointing to the gun having been wiped clean after his shooting (plus many others strange occurrences surrounding the case) authorities would go on to rule Chuck’s death as a suicide.

Whilst looking into the case some time later, Don Deveraux, an investigative reporter, would state;

‘I’ve never seen, in all my years as a journalist, a fellow take himself out in the desert wearing a bulletproof vest and shoot himself in the back of the head’.

Following the verdict, his wife, Ruth, spoke out against the suicide ruling, stating that even if he had decided to take his own life, which she was sure he would not, Chuck would have left her and their children a note.

‘There is no way Chuck would’ve committed suicide, and if he had even contemplated suicide, he would’ve left a letter for his girls and for me’.

Chuck’s Father would also reveal that shortly before his second disappearance he (Chuck) had spoken to him, telling him that if anything ever happened there was a letter which would explain who was responsible; the letter was never found.

There was also a mysterious, and still unidentified, woman who referred to herself as ‘Green Eyes’, who made contact with both Ruth and the police. She too would quote Ecclesiastic 12 in her conversations, seemingly as a way to identify herself. Her first contact came through a phone call to Ruth nine days after Chuck’s second disappearance;

‘This woman said “Ruthie?” I said “Yes”. She said “Chuck is alright. Ecclesiastics 12, 1 through 8”. And then she hung up.

Two days after Chuck’s body was found ‘Green Eyes’ would contact the police directly, informing them that she had seen him just before his death. According to her, they had met at a motel and Chuck had shown her a suitcase full of money which he was apparently using to pay off a hit man that had been sent after him. Many theorise that the hitman double crossed Chuck, killing him and taking the money, plus getting paid for the ‘job’ by whomever had initially hired him.

If ‘Green Eyes’ and the collection of bizarre crime scene evidence wasn’t enough to raise questions about his death, Chuck’s car would then be broken into whilst locked up at the police impound, and his office was ransacked. However, authorities could not be budged from their suicide ruling.

Ruth also claims that after Chuck’s death two men identifying themselves as FBI agents visited the Morgan’s home and demanded to search the house. They never told her what they were looking for but they apparently spent several hours there, during which time they tore it apart.

“They opened and closed their identification very fast. They said they wanted to come in and look through the house. They never said what they were looking for. And to this day, I don’t even know what they were looking for.”

Don Deveraux, the journalist who is quoted above, continued to investigate the case for many years and did contact the FBI in the hopes of finding out more regarding Chuck Morgan and the mysterious visit to his home by two of their agents. Unfortunately this would be a dead end, with the Agency denying any knowledge of Chuck or his case.

“When I made a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI, they had never heard of Mr. Morgan, despite the fact that they obviously opened an investigation, despite the fact the FBI interviewed Mr. Morgan’s attorney. They were all over this thing like a blanket for a while. But now they’ve never heard of the guy. He never existed. No card, no file, no nothing.”

Don eventually learned that Chuck had been using his escrow company to launder money through large gold and platinum transactions with possible links to the Mafia and Southeast Asia. Deveraux believes that Chuck was murdered due to keeping duplicate records of these transactions. Why he was doing this is uncertain; he could have been a legitimate businessman who didn’t understand quite what he was getting into, they could have been for security (for his wife and children’s safety) or, as he hinted to his wife, he could have been working for the government. Don certainly seems to believe the latter stating;

“I think the $2 bill provided the basis for some kind of a code. What seemed to be missing, however, was the document that the $2 bill would unlock. If he was quietly providing assistance to the U.S. government and monitoring the activities of one or more major organized crime families, then he wasn’t a villain. He was a good guy. And they need to know that.”

And it seems that perhaps he (Deveraux) may well be right or was at least getting close to the truth as, on May 14th 1990, a man named Doug Johnston was found shot to death in his car outside of his office. At first, authorities believed it to be suicide however Doug was right-handed and had been shot behind his left ear; his family also spoke of how he had just finished school and gotten a new job. So, what has this got to do with Don and the Chuck Morgan case? Well, Deveraux has always maintained that the shot was meant for him, pointing out that Doug worked across the street from Don and drove a very similar car. Tenuous? Perhaps. Paranoid? Maybe. But when you investigate organised crime and government corruption for a living I suspect you need to become a little paranoid.

A year on from Doug’s shooting, a writer from D.C. named Danny Casolaro contacted Don and offered to share information about gold transactions, alluding to a possible connection to the Morgan case that he (Deveraux) was still working on. At this time Joseph ‘Danny’ Daniel Casolaro happened to be investigating his own, potentially dangerous, story involving the Iran Hostage Crisis and Ronald Reagan’s election win. Danny told Don that before they could talk he had to take a trip to Martinsburg, West Virginia, to meet with a source.

On August 6th 1991, before leaving home, Danny would confide in his brother about receiving harassing phone calls and even death threats. He [Danny] would tell him that if something happened to him whilst in Martinsburg, it would not be an accident. On August 10th, Danny would be found in a bathtub in room 517 at the Sheraton Hotel in Martinsburg, his wrists slashed 10 to 12 times. The bathroom scene was gruesome but the rest of the hotel suite was neat and orderly, allowing for the easy discovery of a suicide note laid out on the desk; Danny’s family have always strongly opposed the suicide verdict. Now, it is more than likely that it was Danny’s own investigations that led to his apparent suicide but whatever secrets he had to share regarding the murder of Chuck Morgan continue to remain hidden.

Whilst both Chuck’s and Danny’s cases have been officially closed, with a verdict of suicide, many believe that they are still unsolved. Doug Johnston’s death remains an open case.

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