The Odd Death of Charles C. Morgan

**"The Odd Death of Charles C. Morgan"** is a video made by Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej, uploaded onto YouTube on August 17, 2018. It was the sixth episode of the fourth season of *BuzzFeed Unsolved: True Crime*, and the seventy-second episode overall. You can find it here.

## Description

Secret agent, criminal or something more sinister?

## Background

On March 22, 1977, Charles morgan, a 29 year-old escrow agent in Tucson, Arizona, went missing after leaving his home, seemingly abducted on the way to his escrow company. Three days later, at 2:00am, he finally returned home. His wife, Ruth Morgan reported that he had a plastic handcuff around one ankle, and handcuffs around his hands. He pointed to indicate that he couldn't speak. Ruth gave him a pen and paper, and wrote that there was a hallucinogenic drug in his throat that could destroy his nervous system.

Ruth wanted to call the police or get in contact with a physician, but Charles told her not to, and said it would put their family in danger. Ruth resigned to nursing him back to health, after which he told her that for the past two or three years, he had been working as a secret agent for the Treasury Department. He claimed his abductors took his treasury ID, giving her no more details.

On July 5, 1865, the US Secret Service was formed to catch counterfeiters. In 1867, the mission of the Secret Service broadened to, "detecting persons perpetrating frauds against the government." It was part of the Department of Treasury until 2003, and is now part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Two months after Charles' disappearance, he is reported missing again. After nine days, Ruth receives a phone call. An unidentified woman tells Ruth, "Chuck is all right, Ecclesiastes 12, one through eight," and then hangs up. Two days later, on June 18th, his body is discovered lying 40 miles west of Tucson, near his Mercury Cougar. Charles C. Morgan had been shot in the back of the head by his own gun, a 357 caliber magnum revolver. He was found wearing a bulletproof vest that he reportedly had been wearing after his first disappearance, a belt buckle that concealed a knife, and a holster. A pair of sunglasses found at the scene were not his. Pima County sheriff investigators searched his car, and found several weapons and a cache of ammunition. The car had reportedly been altered so that it could be unlocked from the fender. On the rear seat of the car, Morgan's tooth was discovered, wrapped up in a white handkerchief, and yet, that isn't the strangest thing investigators found at the scene.

Bizarrely, there was also an item pinned to Morgan's underwear, a two dollar bill, with seven Spanish surnames and a map of the border area. The map led to the towns Robles Junction and Salacity, an area between Tucson and Mexico. Those towns had a reputation for smuggling at the time, a fact that will become important later. Above the list of surnames was the note, "Ecclesiastes 12," and arrows pointing to the numbers one and eight within the bill's serial number. Some of the writings on the bill had alleged Masonic references. Charles also had a piece of paper with directions to the site where he was found. The directions were in his handwriting.

Medical investigators say he had been dead for only 12 hours when he was found. Strangely, there were no fingerprint found at the scene, not even on the gun. On Morgan's hand, they found gunpowder and residue. It is likely for this reason the sheriff's department labeled it as a suicide, and for years, that seemed to be the end of the Charles C. Morgan case, a supposed suicide with twisted clues that seemed to suggest otherwise.

## Theories

* **Morgan's death was, in fact, a suicide.** There was gunpowder on his hand, and the gun used was his own, yet, Morgan was right handed, and the gunpowder and residue was on his left hand. It doesn't make sense for him to use his left hand to shoot himself in the back of the head, let alone use such an awkward position to kill himself.
	+ Furthermore, the crime scene suggests the presence of someone else, such as Morgan's tooth, the pair of sunglasses that didn't belong to him, and the bizarre two dollar bill.
* **Morgan was killed due to being in the Secret Service.** It should be noted that Morgan was not definitively in the Secret Service, but if he was, as he said to his wife, it's possible that this led to his murder. Morgan allegedly had done escrow work for organized crime families.
	+ Shortly before his death, Morgan had also testified in a secret state investigation on illegal activity on both sides of the Arizona-Mexico border. He was a reluctant witness for the Arizona Attorney General's office in the questioning of a now closed Tucson bank. Was Morgan alluding to this case when he told his wife he had been undercover with the Treasury Department?
	+ One of Morgan's daughters, Megan Hidey, has stated, "my father had a lot of information about people here in Tucson that could've been very detrimental. There was a lot of information about politicians, people who are still alive that work in our government. He had that information, and they wanted to silence him."
* **Morgan was murdered due to other illicit activity.** Two days after Morgan's death, a woman who called herself Green Eyes called the Pima County sheriff's department and claimed to be the same woman who had contacted Morgan's wife before. Green Eyes said that she had met Morgan in a motel before he died. The Pima County sheriff's department had confirmed that Morgan had been staying in a West-Side Motel for over a week before he was shot. Green Eyes said that Charles showed her a briefcase full of thousands in cash, which he claimed was to buy him out of a contract the Mob put on his life.
	+ Following her husband's death, Ruth had a visit from two men claiming to be the FBI. She said that they flashed their identification quickly and "tore the house apart and left". But she never learned what they were looking for or if they found it.
	+ Almost 13 years after his death, on February 7th, 1990, an episode of NBC's *Unsolved Mysteries*, covering the Charles C. Morgan case aired. This sparked a flux of incoming calls that helped Don Devereux, a journalist for Unsolved Mysteries, piecedtogether that Morgan had been involved in money laundering and large transactions with gold and platinum, that would occur regularly between the years of 1973 and his death in 1977.
	+ Morgan was dealing with upwards of a billion dollars worth of gold alone. There were also, perhaps, undercover CIA agents involved, most likely to pocket money for themselves. Allegedly, exiled Vietnamese government officials were involved, as well as people from the Department of Defense. Morgan was also linked to a money laundering scheme with fraudulent real estate, and one of Morgan's clients was a Mafia crew, centered around Joseph Bonanno, Senior. Devereux also found that Morgan kept copies of all of the illicit transactions made, thinking they could save him in the future. Were these paper trails of illegal transactions the reason why Morgan was killed?
	+ Perhaps lending credence to the idea that Morgan was silenced, a similar crime occurred around the airing of the *Unsolved Mysteries* episode that exposed most of Morgan's criminal activity. On May 14th, 1990, at 11:00 PM, Phoenix, Arizona resident, Doug Johnston, left for his night shift at a computer graphics company. He was found dead an hour later in his company's parking lot, slumped in the front seat of his car, having been shot once behind the left ear.
		- It was determined that the gun had been at least 12 inches away from Doug when it went off. Like Morgan, authorities believed that Doug committed suicide, however, Doug was right handed, and the bullet was behind the left ear. No gun or gun residue was found at the scene of the crime but a 25 caliber bullet casing was found. The medical examiner said the shot could've been self inflicted or the work of someone else. Doug's widow said he would have never committed suicide.
		- Curiously, Don Devereux, the journalist who previously investigated Charles Morgan's case for *Unsolved Mysteries* lived across the street from the site where Doug Johnston was found. Another interesting shared aspect between the two, Johnston's car, a Toyota station wagon, was very similar to Devereux's. Around this time, Devereux had a conversation with another journalist, who had received a warning from the CIA. This journalist learned from a trusted CIA source that the killing of Doug Johnston was a botch job, and that the bullet was meant for Devereux. This CIA authority had also claimed that there were still contracts out for Devereux's death. These threats may have occurred because of Devereux looking into the death of Charles C. Morgan.
	+ Further backing up the idea that people looking into Morgan were being silenced, a writer from Washington, D.C. named Dan Casalero, had reached out to Devereux, asking for information on Morgan's gold transactions. Before Devereux could send the information, Casalero was found dead in a hotel room in the bathtub, with his wrist cut deeply approximately a dozen times. Police ruled it a suicide. Dan Casalero's brother, a doctor, said that Dan was so squeamish he would barely let his brother prick his finger for any blood work, which does not add up with Dan Casalero's method of suicide. Devereux believes the same people involved in 1970s activities are still out there. They perhaps silenced Morgan, and writer Dan Casalero, and perhaps, tried and failed to silence Devereux.