Something Happened to Grandma Read online

  Something Happened to Grandma

  Elizabeth Engstrom

  The hatred of relatives is the most violent.

  —Tacitus (c. 55–117)

  Copyright

  Something Happened to Grandma

  Copyright © 2011 by Elizabeth Engstrom

  Foreword copyright © 2011 by Marilyn Bardsley

  Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2011 by DarkHorse Multimedia, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  See full line of true crime eBook originals at www.crimescape.com.

  Electronic edition published 2011 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.

  ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795323126

  Contents

  Foreword by Marilyn Bardsley

  Chapter 1—One February Night

  Chapter 2—The Pressure Cooker

  Chapter 3—A Fresh Start

  Chapter 4—On the Run

  Chapter 5—The Manhunt

  Chapter 6—The Capture

  Chapter 7—The Trial

  Chapter 8—Conclusion

  Photo Index/Credits

  Resources

  About the Author

  Foreword by Marilyn Bardsley

  Gabriel Morris was a rambunctious but adorable child who was probably sexually abused by his father while his mother tried to win custody of him. He grew into an intelligent and gifted adult, but something was very wrong. As he grew older, he exhibited serious character flaws and emotional problems that made it impossible for him to hold a job for any length of time. Eventually, his deceptions and deep-seated anger caught up with him, precipitating a tragic family crisis.

  Elizabeth Engstrom is uniquely positioned to write this story. She lives in Oregon and attended Gabriel Morris’ recent trial, observing both his behavior and the impact that his crimes had upon his family. Engstrom is known primarily as a novelist of mystery books with dark psychological landscapes. The chilling story of Gabriel Morris is one that dovetails with both Engstrom’s fiction and nonfiction accomplishments.

  Engstrom is the author of 13 books and more than 250 published short stories, articles and essays. Her most recent book is York’s Moon, a critically acclaimed mystery, a wonderful tale of dark fantasy. An author, teacher, editor and former publisher, she is a sought-after panelist, keynote speaker and instructor at writing conferences and conventions around the world. Since she completed her master’s degree in applied theology, she has begun a small interfaith ministry called Love and Mercy Ministries. She is on faculty at the University of Phoenix.

  www.elizabethengstrom.com

  Chapter 1—One February Night

  At daybreak on February 8, 2010, in a borrowed red GMC pickup truck, 33-year-old Gabriel Morris drove his wife Jessica and their 4-year-old daughter Kalea up the long tree-lined driveway toward the house where Gabe’s mother lived with her boyfriend. The clutch was almost gone and they were running on fumes.

  Gabe parked and handed his wife one of the walkie-talkies. He took the other and a pair of binoculars, then stealthily walked around the back of the property to the tree line, where he waited to see activity in the house. He looked for a sign that his mother and her boyfriend were up and about on this Monday morning.

  Jessica, misunderstanding a radio transmission from her husband, started the truck and drove up toward the house. Gabe angrily directed her to instead drive down a spur road that wound around and ended up behind the garage, a parking area that was not visible from the house. Gabe went back to his surveillance while Jessica spent more than six hours in the cab of the truck trying to entertain their 4-year-old. Gabe didn’t want to see his mother, Robin Anstey, or her boyfriend, Bob Kennelly, at least not on their terms. When that meeting took place, Gabe wanted to be in control. He needed to have the upper hand for the little chat he told his wife that he intended to have with them.

  Gabe and his family had been living in Kennelly’s nicely appointed two-story home that faced the river since September, but tensions had ratcheted up until Gabe and Jessica took off on a spontaneous road trip for about a week to escape what they perceived as a dangerous situation. They wanted to clear their heads, think through their options, and decide what their next steps ought to be.

  But on February 8, they were back, weary from traveling and needing both food and sleep.

  Gabe didn’t like the way his mother and her boyfriend treated him and his family, and he told Jessica that their next step was to air out the issues. Have a chat. Get everything out in the open.

  When that meeting took place, he’d be in complete control of it.

  So he waited in the woods and his wife waited in the truck for his mother and her boyfriend to leave the house.

  Kennelly’s Home in Bandon, OR

  Police Evidence Photo

  Eventually, Robin and Bob left, and Gabe went inside. He got Bob Kennelly’s .40 Magnum Heckler & Koch semi-automatic handgun from the safe inside the walk-in closet of the bedroom he had been sharing with his wife, indicating that he anticipated something other than a friendly chat or family meeting with his mom and her boyfriend. After a few more hours, he told Jessica that he’d be more comfortable if she was in the house too, so she and their little girl went inside and got something to eat. Then Jessica and Kalea put on their pajamas and went upstairs to bed.

  Around 8:30 that evening, after having dinner with friends, Bob and Robin returned home and walked through the French doors into the house. Robin set her purse and packages down on the couch, and from the upstairs balcony, Gabe, the devoted husband, devout Mormon, ex-police officer and former missionary, opened fire.

  There was no discussion about money. There was no little chat about how they’d been treated. There were no accusations or defenses; there was only an ambush and a rain of gunfire.

  Gabe continued to shoot as he walked along the balcony and down the stairs. Bob fell just inside the door. Gabe’s mother made it out the door, screaming, before a bullet went through her buttocks, shattering her hip. He ended Bob’s pain, as he later described it. Then, when he got to his mother, he was out of ammunition, so he dropped the empty clip, as he was trained to do as a police officer. He reloaded and put a bullet in her head, spraying her molars onto the deck.

  When Gabe was finished, his 62-year-old mother and her 48-year-old boyfriend were dead. Gabe turned his mother over, just to make sure.

  Robert Kennelly and Robin Anstey

  Family photo

  Gabe ran back upstairs into the bedroom and merely said, “Let’s go.” He hustled his terrified wife and screaming child down the stairs. He stopped to go through the dead man’s pants pockets for the keys to Bob Kennelly’s car and his wallet. Then, all of them shoeless, two of them in their pajamas, they stepped over the bodies and walked out into the February night. They got into Bob’s white Dodge truck, which spit gravel as Gabe sped recklessly down the steep driveway and into town.

  The Narrow Driveway

  Police Evidence Photo

  Gabe knew exactly where to go. He knew precisely who to contact and what to ask for once he got there. He knew exactly how to ask for it, and he knew that he’d get it, too. It appears as if those plans had been very carefully laid well in advance.

  Strangely, none of this information was ever in dispute, not even by Gabe Morris himself. What was in question was his state of mind for the two weeks leading up to the murders and, indeed, events in his life that molded him into the person who could behave in
such a manner.

  Was Gabe Morris a cold-hearted killer, or a good man who fell victim to a progressive, debilitating mental illness?

  www.crimescape.com

  Chapter 2—The Pressure Cooker

  Gabriel Christian Morris began life on September 22, 1976, in San Diego, California. His mother, Robin, already had a 6-year-old son, Jesse, when she hooked up with and married Gabe’s father, Danny Morris. Jesse was an easy baby, a delightful child who grew to be a compassionate man without a jealous, angry or vindictive bone in his body, but Gabe was a difficult child, a terror, even described as a maniac, at 2 years old. He broke toys just to break them. As he grew older, he was a loving boy, but needed a disproportionate amount of attention from his mother. He was also quick to take roughhousing to the level of pain. “Mom called Gabe ‘the devil child,’” Jesse McCoy said.

  Jesse, Robin and Gabe about 1984

  Family Photo

  Both Gabe and his father have been described as “scary smart.” According to family members, Danny Morris was kind of strange, intense, nervous and twitchy. He wasn’t offensive or frightening, but he was tough on his stepson Jesse and overly devoted to Gabe. He loved playing Dungeons and Dragons and introduced Gabe to gaming. Gabe called him “insanely intelligent,” but manipulative, persuasive, controlling, cruel, and abusive. He took offense at every slight. Danny worked a variety of jobs, including in a bakery and at a sheet-metal plant, and for a while he dealt drugs. When Danny and Robin began to have marital problems, Danny moved out, then filed for custody, lying about Robin being a drug-dealing addict and an unfit mother. He was granted custody and Gabe was removed from her home and sent to live with Danny. Gabe said Danny sexually abused him. Jesse, out of concern for Gabe’s safety, went to live with his brother as well.

  Danny frequently told Gabe that his mother had just gone off and left him, continuously reinforcing those deep, dark feelings of abandonment. Gabe never knew of her fight to regain custody. In return, Gabe wrote long Mother’s Day cards to Robin and professed his love for her with a fierce intensity that his brother, Jesse, thought made his own devotion to his mother pale in comparison. Were these the desperate cries for acceptance from a child who felt abandoned? That ferocious adoration continued throughout his life. Everyone says Gabe adored his mother, but it went much further than that. He wanted her to adore him. He wanted her to love him enough to compensate him for the years he spent at his father’s abusive hands.

  She never could.

  Gabe says his father abused him. Because Danny is now deceased, this information is difficult to corroborate, although some family members are convinced that it is true. At one point, Danny cried because Gabe wanted to spend the night with a neighborhood friend instead of being at home with him. Even Gabe’s brother, Jesse, said that Danny obsessed over Gabe, loving him way too much. During those summers, Gabe went to stay with his grandmother in Silverton, Oregon, and she said that Danny sent Gabe long love letters more suitable for a spouse than for a child. Pretty little blond Gabe, who spoke with an adorable lisp, was not allowed to wear underwear, and was required to sleep nude in his father’s bed at night.

  Later, Gabe raged about his mother abandoning him and leaving him in the hands of an abuser, calling her evil. Yet, to all outward appearances, Gabe adored his mother and constantly worried about her safety.

  Robin had her issues. She was born to Lynn and Martin Walsh in 1947 in Pontiac, Michigan. She had an older half-sister, Laurie, and a younger brother, Scott, born in 1958 after the family moved to California. Robin’s relationship with her father was always strained. He was a highly regimented pilot in World War II who demanded certain standards from his family members, and she was a young, carefree hippie girl in the ’60s. When she was a teenager, she ran off and married John McCoy, who was in the Navy. After John was discharged, the couple was footloose and fun-loving. Robin’s parents bought their young grandson Jesse his first pair of shoes and gave him his first haircut, two things Robin didn’t think were really very necessary at the time, but served to distance even her further from her disapproving father. Robin was talented and artistic, earthy and sexy, but perhaps because of her difficult relationship with her harsh, alcoholic father, who always thought she should have done more with her life, she had serious problems with self-esteem.

  Jesse, Robin and Gabe circa 2009

  Family Photo

  When Robin and John McCoy’s marriage began to disintegrate, Robin immediately found another man. Almost as quickly, that relationship failed and she met and married Danny Morris. When that fell apart, she moved to Coquille, Oregon, and lived with John Lindegren, “Big John,” a smart, witty carpenter and American-history buff who helped raise Gabe until he finished high school. Then she met and married James Anstey. Together, they owned a gift and antiques shop in Bandon, Oregon, a small coastal community that relies heavily on seasonal tourism. Robin had the ability to turn trash into treasure, and the artistically displayed items they sold made “Hidden Treasures” a financial success.

  Gabe referred to James Anstey as “the father he never had.” After Robin and James’ 10-year marriage ended, Robin immediately moved in with Bob Kennelly. In Bob’s Bandon home, she met her death.

  Robin always needed to have a man in her life and went from one man’s home and bed to the next in rapid succession. Perhaps her lack of discrimination gave Gabe reason to fear for her safety. Perhaps Gabe’s perception that her choice of the man of the hour over his welfare gave him reason to rage against her.

  Robin regained custody of Gabe from Danny in time for Gabe to begin high school in Bandon, Oregon, where she lived with Lindegren. In school, Gabe met and began dating Esther Eschler, a Mormon girl with eight siblings whose parents both worked in the school system. Gabe found a stable, loving family structure he could relax into. He and Esther dated for several years while he studied and ultimately converted to the Mormon faith. Fred Eschler, Esther’s father, baptized him into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and welcomed Gabe into the family, gave him the run of the house, took him on family vacations with them, and generally treated him as one of his own. Before Esther, Gabe smoked a little dope, but once he embraced the Mormon faith, he gave that up.

  After high school graduation in 1996, Gabe moved in with his grandmother in Silverton, Oregon, and went through the automotive program at Mt. Hood Community College, where he worked part time at the BMW dealership as a part of the curriculum. He completed the two-year program in 1998, then applied and was accepted for a mission to spread the gospel of Jesus and the tenets of the Mormon Church in Australia. He was, according to Dr. Barry, the mission president, an “exceptional young man among exceptional young men.” This theme runs through the memories of everyone who knew Gabe as a youth. They said he was kind-hearted, sincere, helpful, honest, and incredibly smart—a good boy who grew to become a good kid, and finally, a fine young man with excellent prospects for his future. Gabe seemed to take his faith seriously—a little too seriously for some in his family, but hey, there were worse things he could be into. If asked, he’d say, “All I want to do is help people.” These are golden words to those in the Mormon community, where helping people is a way of life.

  Things were not always as they seemed, however. Dark storm clouds were brewing behind young Gabe Morris’ eyes. Over the years, the compliments turned sour. He became known as “a real bullshitter,” a gifted salesman who could talk for hours and never really say anything. Eventually, the descriptive terms others used to describe him changed to “con artist,” “video game junkie,” “pothead,” “religious fanatic,” “manipulative,” “braggart,” and “volatile.”

  After returning from his two-year mission in Australia in 2001, Gabe lived with his mother and James Anstey and worked as a waiter and bartender in a local restaurant. He eventually applied to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and was accepted into the Air Force ROTC program. At first, he roomed with Carl Eschler, Esther’s brothe
r.

  Then he met Jessica Pope.

  Never a womanizer, good-looking Gabe Morris was attracted to the company of more intellectual women, so it was somewhat of a surprise when he hooked up with sweet Jessica Pope. Jessica was devoutly Mormon, from a nice family in Blackfoot, Idaho. She was a dedicated English major, and oh, by the way, she had $100,000 in cash in the bank as a settlement from an accident. Gabe and Jessica quickly married in the Mormon Temple and used her money to buy a house. While both Gabe and Jessica were in school at BYU, they invited Gabe’s older brother, Jesse, and his wife to live with them.

  Gabe’s attendance at school eventually began to wane. While Jessica completed her studies, Gabe exited the Air Force ROTC program from which he had taken scholarship money. In ROTC, the four-year college degree is funded by scholarships and repaid through service as an officer in the Air Force upon graduation. Because Gabe dropped out of the program without finishing, that scholarship money now needed to be repaid. Instead of studying, Gabe went back to his adolescent habit of playing video games and trading one-upmanship stories with his brother, who had been in and out of the Army for 12 years. Jesse had experience with top-secret “special ops” missions, and he and Gabe loved to talk about it. Gabe drank a little beer as they chatted, and he told Jesse that it would be better if his wife didn’t know about that part, as drinking beer wasn’t in line with the Mormon faith.

  Gabe spent a year in ROTC. Cadets get their assignments after three years. Gabe wanted to go to pilot school and told everyone that he had been accepted into pilot training. This claim wasn’t true, and as his lies began to catch up with him, he quit the program, telling Jessica’s family that he didn’t want to subject his wife to the stresses and rigors of being a military wife. He told his colonel that he had to leave the program to protect his mother in a way that law enforcement could not. Jessica graduated, and in 2005, they sold the house at a loss, having frittered away the rest of her cash.