THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 23, 1996 TAG: 9603230246
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LYNN WALTZ, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
A Hampton woman who authorities said orchestrated an elaborate scheme with her brother to murder her elderly husband nine years ago and share his retirement benefits was sentenced Friday in federal court to 15 years in prison.
In an unusual move by prosecutors, Deborah Lynn Morris, 45, was charged with fraud rather than murder because authorities never located the body of her husband, Eugene Bryce Morris. Authorities will conduct another search for the body this spring, and Morris could still be charged with murder in state court.
U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson, in sentencing Morris, departed from the sentencing guidelines for fraud, which called for a maximum of 46 months. Prosecutors argued that circumstances of the case were ``exceptional,'' and the judge apparently agreed.
Morris was arrested in September after authorities learned that the city of Newport News was still paying benefits to her husband, who disappeared in 1987, and that Deborah Morris was receiving those benefits.
Darryl Daniels, a Secret Service agent who helped break the case, called it ``the most bizarre'' he had worked on in 20 years, and called Morris ``the most cold-hearted person I've ever dealt with.''
Testimony Friday indicated that on May 27, 1987, Deborah Morris' brother, Michael Russell, bought three handguns. Deborah Morris then called her husband and asked him to meet her. Her car had broken down, she told him.
After Morris lured her husband out of the house, Russell shot him in the back of the head and dumped his body for the ``dogs to eat,'' testimony Friday revealed. Russell died in a September 1995 fishing accident when he was mangled in a winch.
The Morrises had been married less than two months.
Deborah Morris wanted more than just companionship when she married Eugene Morris, a retired man nearly twice her age. She wanted financial security and, ultimately, the freedom to enjoy it.
Morris won the heart of 73-year-old Eugene Morris, a World War II Navy veteran, in order to bilk him of everything he had worked for - $95,000 in retirement benefits. They married April 1, 1987.
The next day, she obtained signature authority over her husband's bank account into which his Newport News retirement benefits, Social Security payments and veterans benefits were routinely deposited.
Within three weeks, Deborah Morris became beneficiary to a group insurance policy her husband had.
Less than a month after their marriage, Deborah Morris petitioned to have Eugene Morris involuntarily committed to a hospital, claiming he was suicidal and homicidal.
The petition was denied April 29, 1987, after a commitment hearing.
In May 1987, after moving her husband into a rooming house by himself, Deborah Morris obtained a power of attorney from him.
Then, she arranged to have him killed, prosecutors said.
For the next eight years, Morris collected her husband's benefits. When the city of Newport News inquired about Eugene Morris earlier in 1995, Deborah Morris responded by forging her husband's signature on letters to the city.
In the letters, she told the city her husband was dying of liver cancer and was living with her and in desperate need of his pension money.
Four charges of mail fraud stemmed from the letters.
In September, investigators moved swiftly after learning that Deborah Morris had taken up with another elderly man. They got a sealed indictment and arrested Morris at a Buckroe Beach motel, where she was living with her new boyfriend.
The motel owner said the man, like Eugene Morris, was a retired veteran getting benefits. ILLUSTRATION: Deborah Lynn Morris
Eugene Bryce Morris
Darryl Daniels, a Secret Service agent who helped break the case,
called it ``the most bizarre'' he had worked on in 20 years and
called Deborah Morris ``the most cold-hearted person I've ever dealt
with.''
KEYWORDS: FRAUD MURDER SENTENCING by CNB