IN IN - Scott Morris, 14, Indianapolis, 14 Aug 1978

Kymistry35

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Moderator note: The john doe was falsely identified as Scott Michael Morris. Scott is still listed as missing.

Charley project link for Scott's case
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/m/morris_scott.html



Scott Michael Morris
The victim was located January 7, 1990 near Owensboro in rural Daviess County, Kentucky. He was identified in September 2007 as Scott Michael Morris, who was last seen leaving a convenience store in Indianapolis in 1978 when he was 14. Morris' family at the time told police that the boy frequently ran away from home but usually returned. His grandmother reported him missing, but it was not until 1989 that the family filed a formal missing persons report. The body was identified after Indianapolis police contacted Kentucky investigators to share a cold case. A description of the missing boy matched the body, and tests on DNA samples from Morris' relatives confirmed his identity.


How does a child disappear and manage to survive on the street all those years? At least now he can be buried with a name. I was hoping to find a picture to compare to the recon, but came up with nothing.
 
Scott Michael Morris
The victim was located January 7, 1990 near Owensboro in rural Daviess County, Kentucky. He was identified in September 2007 as Scott Michael Morris, who was last seen leaving a convenience store in Indianapolis in 1978 when he was 14. Morris' family at the time told police that the boy frequently ran away from home but usually returned. His grandmother reported him missing, but it was not until 1989 that the family filed a formal missing persons report. The body was identified after Indianapolis police contacted Kentucky investigators to share a cold case. A description of the missing boy matched the body, and tests on DNA samples from Morris' relatives confirmed his identity.


How does a child disappear and manage to survive on the street all those years? At least now he can be buried with a name. I was hoping to find a picture to compare to the recon, but came up with nothing.

It doesn't specifically say how long he'd been deceased when located. Maybe it just took that long to find his remains? Just a thought....
 
Yes I was thinking the same thing. If he was found in quite a rural area he could have been deceased for all that time.

What a length of time it took for the parents to file that report!
 
I think I read in another article that they determined he was in his twenties when he died. I will see if I can find a link.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20747268/

It says a "man was found nude,beaten." If his body had been there since he went missing, wouldn't it have said skeletal remains found instead?
 
In late 1989, a friend of the family received a strange phone call from him. "He said he was working for a carnival. He didn't say where. They asked if he was okay. He said he was okay. Real brief, he said, 'I got to go,'" said Morris.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20747268

So he was alive up until 1989...wonder what happened after that call.
 
How intriguing that he was alive all that time then! It seems strange that he would have just called one family friend put of the blue if he hadnt been in touch with them all that time.
 
Further testing has revealed the victim is not related to the Morris family, and is in fact not Scott Michael Morris.
 
Why? What happened? If he was originally identified by DNA, what further testing could they do to rule the DNA out? Do you have a link, Green Hornet?

I don't like it that the family waited 11 years to file a missing person's report.

ETA: his Charley page says DNA analysis was done in January 2009
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/m/morris_scott.html

I wonder if he was healthy. Is he really 14 in the photo?

Here's a link about the mistaken identification
http://www.14wfie.com/Global/story.asp?s=7059575
It doesn't say how the lab ID was done but the family identified him from sketches and similarity to his brothers.

What law enforcement didn't realize was there was a family looking just as hard for their loved one some 200 miles away. Only he had vanished 12 years before the murder took place.

James Morris' older brother, Scott, was just 14 when he went to a market down the street in Indianapolis where they lived, and never came home.

That is until late 1989, when a friend of the family received a strange phone call from him.

Morris says, "He said he was working for a carnival, he didn't say where, they asked if he was okay, he said he was okay. Real brief, he said I got to go."

That day, his grandmother went to Indianapolis Police and insisted he again be put in the missing person data base, but for some reason it wasn't done until years later.

Very strange. I wonder how they know it was really him. Did anyone follow up on the carnivals? Could they have traced the call?

The article also says the family has a suspect.

When Kentucky State Police Detective, Juan Moorman, was assigned to the case earlier this year, he ran another national check of John Doe, even though it had been done in years past with no matches.

Moorman says this time was different, "I got a hit confirmation from Indianapolis, Indiana."

He immediately called the family and sent them pictures. Moorman says, "They were 99 percent sure it was their brother, Scott Michael. Chills went up my spine when they told me that."

Because Scott left home at such an early age, the family has very few pictures of him, but if you compare pictures of his brothers to sketches drawn of John Doe, the resemblance is uncanny.

His family felt so confident it was him, they immediately made a trip to the location where his body was found.

As sure as they were about his identity, they feel equally confident they know who killed him.

A man who they say took an unhealthy interest in Scott as a child, a man they suspected in his disappearance, and now later in his death.

Morris says, "You might have done this to him, but don't think you are going to get away with this because we know who you are and we will make sure you are caught and that I guarantee if it takes the last breath out of my body."

I don't want to cast any stones but this is a bit hinky to me. A family that has a potential suspect who has taken an unhealthy interest in their missing child and waits for years to get the child on missing persons lists? And even then it's not the parents who contact the police, it's a grandmother.


Edit 2:

Here's a link to police press release describing the identification process:

http://www.kentuckystatepolice.org/posts/press/2009/post16_pr04_21_09.htm
 
Another link about the family reaction to the news that it's not Scott

http://www.theindychannel.com/news/19463910/detail.html

Family members said that Scott Michael Morris' grandmother -- now 102 years old -- hasn't changed her phone number since the disappearance in hopes her missing grandson will eventually call home.

The case is still open and is currently on its third detective. Police said they don't have any solid leads.


This explains that there was a delay in between the stages of DNA identification:

Woo said a detective on the case involving the remains of the body in Daviess County had received verbal confirmation that the body was Morris’. That information was released to the media in September 2007, and it fit with the police’s initial belief that the body was not that of someone from this area.

But in January of this year, that same detective told Woo that he had received written confirmation that two more steps in the DNA identification process had determined that the body was not in fact that of Morris.

Woo did not know why it took more than a year for the final portions of the DNA analysis to be completed. The agency performing the analysis is in Texas, he said, adding that there is one benefit to the recent results of the DNA tests.

“We can definitely identify (the body) as not being that missing person from Indianapolis,” he said.

http://www.courierpress.com/news/2009/apr/22/body-found-2007-remains-unidentified/
 
Wow, this story can't possibly get any stranger. That poor grandma, finally thinking she had closure only to find out it wasn't him.
 
Such a strange turn of events, the poor family being told it was him then it turning out it wasn’t.
 
I wonder why it took him so long to call ...

How intriguing that he was alive all that time then! It seems strange that he would have just called one family friend put of the blue if he hadnt been in touch with them all that time.

The Charley project page says that he also contacted his family three days after he went missing to tell them he was working for a carnival in Pennsylvania. The 1989 call to a family friend was a second call.

Hmm, Charley Project won't let me copy and paste, but here's a snip...

Three days after Scott went missing he called his family to say he was working for a carnival in Pennsylvania. In 1989, he called a family friend and said he was okay and still working for a carnival, but he wouldn't say where.

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/m/morris_scott.html

Two calls, if they were sure it was him, would lend some credence to the idea that he was a runaway, but I wonder where he is now?
 
Unidentified Person Case

I thought that this unidentified young man found in Colorado could possibly be him, but at the time i submitted I had not yet seen where he was supposed to have been in contact with friends in 1989?
The weird part was they found matchbooks with his body, and one was from Pennsylvania, and the other from a state that borders Illinois...
Which seemed at the time definitely worth submitting him. NAMUS does not mention him calling a friend in 1989, and I dont believe the doe network does either. But it was the Charley project that does.
 

Attachments

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  • NCMEC: 745741
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Scott Morris
NCMC745741c1.jpg

    • Missing Since
    • Aug 14, 1978
    • Missing From
    • Indianapolis, IN
    • DOB
    • Dec 31, 1963
    • Age Now
    • 55
    • Sex
    • Male
    • Race
    • White
    • Hair Color
    • Brown
    • Eye Color
    • Brown
    • Height
    • 5'6"
    • Weight
    • 140 lbs
Scott was last seen on August 14, 1978.

Have you seen this child? SCOTT MORRIS
 

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