WV WV - Kyle Jerry Dale Morgan, 15, found dead beneath a bridge, Wheeling, 2016

[nightshifty]

Kyle Jerry Dale Morgan is believed to have been running away from home on June 15th, 2016. He offered a friend money and some marijuana in exchange for a ride to the local Greyhound terminal so that he could return to his mother's home in Kentucky, where he was living a year prior. The friend convinced a relative to drive himself, Kyle, and a mutual friend to the terminal. According to the mutual friend, Kyle purposefully left his phone in the car, so that it couldn't be used to find him. They dropped him off and he wasn't seen alive again.

The next day, the body of Kyle Jerry Dale Morgan was found under the Fort Henry Bridge in Wheeling, WV. Not far at all from the terminal. He'd been beaten about the head with a rock until he died from blunt force trauma. He was then positioned on his stomach and covered with a blanket believed to have already been on scene. The area is well known as a site of multiple homeless camps, and it was a homeless man who found him.

For more about the case in general and the events leading up to Kyle's murder, here are some articles from local news sources:

Police charge woman with obstruction in connection with Moundsville teen’s death

Closing In On a Killer: A look into the homicide of Kyle Morgan

Family still searching for answers in Kyle Morgan’s death

Kyle’s Case – Unsolved One Year Later - Weelunk.

I've seen discussion of this case almost no where, so I decided to see what you folks thought about it. I wouldn't consider myself an insider but I'm a local and somewhat familiar with everyone involved in this case. I would love to hear your theories about what happened to Kyle and to raise some awareness about this case as I feel it's been neglected.

This is my first post so if there is anything I left out or need to change, please let me know!

 

[nightshifty]

Hi everyone. We're closing in on 5 years (this June) since Kyle's murder. He would have been 21 this year. If a smarter individual than I would like to do a deep dive on this case, any theories would be greatly greatly appreciated. There have been no updates since the year this case broke.

 

[Gibbo214]

Hi everyone. We're closing in on 5 years (this June) since Kyle's murder. He would have been 21 this year. If a smarter individual than I would like to do a deep dive on this case, any theories would be greatly greatly appreciated. There have been no updates since the year this case broke.

I wonder if he had money and the friend knew.

 

[nightshifty]

For some more context about this case:

I work closely with the homeless population in the area Kyle was found. While we are caught in the crossfire of the state's opioid epidemic and are a relatively high crime area, murder by a stranger is exceptionally rare here. In fact, it is so rare that I can tentatively name one that's occurred since I was born (and when I say local area, I mean spanning multiple counties, as we're very tight knit). We are most likely looking at someone who knew Kyle.

It's been theorized that Kyle could have been fatally injured during a robbery or drug deal gone wrong, but Kyle was not known to be involved in the "hard drugs" typically trafficked in this area (Kyle did smoke marijuana that day, but drugs trafficked in this area are typically meth, heroin, or pills). He didn't resemble an adult carrying an amount of money worth stealing, and he was not found in an area you would pass "on the way" to somewhere else. It was a walking trail obscured by lots of trees.

Gangs are additionally not very active in the area.

If anyone has questions I can answer, I will answer as quickly and thoroughly as possible. I did not know Kyle personally, but those close to me have been deeply affected by this crime.

 

[nightshifty]

I wonder if he had money and the friend knew.

The friend was who I originally "liked" as the perpetrator. I must say that I was probably biased, as he's well known as a...well, let's put it this way, he is a bad dude, and you could probably trust him as far as you could pick him up and throw him. I definitely felt (and still do) that his grandmother (the relative in question) would have covered for a crime he committed, especially considering she withheld so much information from the police. The mutual friend, however, a minor female, reported that Kyle was alive and well when the group dropped him off. I'm willing to believe this now, because someone brought up a good point to me. The friend is well known for punching down, not for "picking on" someone his own size.

I would also like to point out that the location Kyle was found at is not well accessible by road. If Kyle was not lured to and/or killed at location, the individual(s) would need to carry his body *pretty* far, dead weight. The blanket found at the scene was believed to have already been there, so it was likely not used for carrying him. I would say that it would be next to impossible to do this in broad daylight. If you believe the timeline laid out by the police, this mostly (if not completely) rules out the friend.

 

[TGIRecovered]

I think you were right the first time, Nightshift. The answer to this puzzle lies with the three people known to have been with him that night: the friend, the friend’s relative with the car, and the mutual friend.

I’m thinking that the first friend asked the relative if the mutual friend could come along because he needed someone to help him mug Kyle, or maybe he invited the mutual friend so he wouldn’t have to ride back home alone with the relative, (which would make me suspicious of the relative.) At least two of them, (probably all three), know what happened to Kyle. As long as they all keep their story straight no one will be held responsible unless the police have some other type of evidence. And I doubt that they do, considering that it’s been five years.

In places where murder is uncommon, murders often go unsolved because law enforcement in the area is not used to dealing with that type of crime. I hope that there was proper preservation of the crime scene, collection and documentation of evidence and an autopsy. Is there any interest on their part in assigning someone new to take a look at it case?

MOO ( my opinion only)

 

[nightshifty]

I think you were right the first time, Nightshift. The answer to this puzzle lies with the three people known to have been with him that night: the friend, the friend’s relative with the car, and the mutual friend.

I’m thinking that the first friend asked the relative if the mutual friend could come along because he needed someone to help him mug Kyle, or maybe he invited the mutual friend so he wouldn’t have to ride back home alone with the relative, (which would make me suspicious of the relative.) At least two of them, (probably all three), know what happened to Kyle. As long as they all keep their story straight no one will be held responsible unless the police have some other type of evidence. And I doubt that they do, considering that it’s been five years.

In places where murder is uncommon, murders often go unsolved because law enforcement in the area is not used to dealing with that type of crime. I hope that there was proper preservation of the crime scene, collection and documentation of evidence and an autopsy. Is there any interest on their part in assigning someone new to take a look at it case?

MOO ( my opinion only)

We likely won't know of any new progress until the anniversary. Typically, though, these are "non-updates" consisting of just a summary of public knowledge and contact info for detectives. I expect it will be just as disappointing as last year, but will keep you folks updated just in case it offers something new.

I'm glad that I'm not the only one who sees/saw that ride as shady. The thing about your theory, though, is that the mutual friend was a girl their age (14 or 15 years old) and the relative was the friend's (elderly) grandmother. The friend was, by far, the most physically intimidating one present. That doesn't mean, however, that they didn't help conceal a crime. The friend in question, in fact, has since been arrested on 3 separate occasions since hitting adulthood on charges including several accounts of Domestic Battery and Battery, in addition to at least one count of Malicious Wounding, Strangulation, and Battery on an Officer.

The only thing that makes me question their involvement is that I've been in contact with a real insider who claims they know who is responsible and that the group who drove Kyle were not involved. They claim that Kyle's murderer was yet another teenage male (an individual that, while attending a different high school than those mentioned previously, was a local to the area and relatively familiar to Kyle).

This is all information, of course, that the police already have and have had since the case broke.

In my opinion, though, one can reasonably assume that if there were any known evidence to suggest this other teenage male were the perpetrator, the individual would have already been arrested. As far as I know, he's not even been questioned. I'd say that, considering all of this, it's certainly possible that the guilt of this other teenage male is just speculation on part of Kyle's friends and classmates, or that this other teenage male said some incriminating things that spread like wildfire in an attempt to seem "tough." There was, after all, a teenage male the next town over who did exactly this. It could have even been the same individual for all I know.

I apologize if this was confusing at all, but the names and identities of many involved were never released due to their age at the time of the crime.

 

[Beccalicious]

Bumping