An Accountant Murders His Wife and Burns His Boat
(‘Sex, Lies, and DNA,’ Forensic Files)
Ruby Morris survived childhood trauma and fell into the arms of someone who seemed like a great catch.
She met Gaylynn Earl Morris, known as Earl, at a Memphis bar in 1959, and he adopted Ruby’s little son, Randy, when they married.
Happy home. After moving to Arizona, Ruby and Earl built an accounting business successful enough to land them in Cave Creek, a Phoenix suburb where school kids score above average on college admissions tests and zoning rules prevent Walmarts and Burger Kings from sullying the landscape.
By 1989, in addition to their sprawling house on five acres, the couple had acquired a cabin cruiser docked in San Diego and a motor home.
They had also added two daughters to their family.
Dawna, 28, was an aspiring country and western singer who used the name Dawna Kay Wells professionally. Her dad was managing her career. Cyndi, 23, worked as a waitress and lived near her parents.
Their son, Randy, 32, had a wife and three kids by then and worked in the service industry.
House of cards. The Morrises looked happy and well-adjusted on the surface, but in reality, the family was a volcano waiting to erupt.
Things started to rumble on June 3, 1989, when Ruby, 47, didn’t show up for a shopping trip she had planned with Cyndi — and Earl was nowhere in sight either.
He soon materialized, but the kids never saw their mother again.
Like lava, lurid stuff started spewing out. The case soon included a burning pleasure boat, an affair with an in-law, and DNA evidence that revealed the existence of an additional bad guy — someone almost as bad as the killer.
Missing mom and dad. “Sex, Lies, and DNA,” the Forensic Files episode about the case, dates back to the 1997 season so, for this week, I looked around for information about where wife-killer Earl Morris is today and what happened to the children.
So let’s get started on the recap along with additional information drawn from internet research:
On June 4, 1989, Cyndi Morris summoned police to her parents’ house when she couldn’t find her mother or father.
Suspect scene. Ruby’s yellow 1984 Cadillac was still in the driveway.
Her purse and a gun the Morrises kept in their house had disappeared, but there was no sign of a struggle or anything else valuable missing.
As soon as he heard his mother was missing, Randy jumped on an all-terrain vehicle and desperately searched for her in the desert, according to an Arizona Republic column by E.J. Montini from March 21, 1990. Cyndi went out on foot and looked for her mother in the hills around her parents’ house.
Dawna distributed leaflets asking for help finding Ruby and offering a $1,000 reward.
Blood evidence. Meanwhile, word got to Earl, 48, that his wife was missing, and he headed home from a Los Angeles trip related to Dawna’s music career. He said his car had broken down on the way back from LA and he hitchhiked the rest of the distance back to Arizona.
Police didn’t see any blood in the house, so they sprayed luminal.
The carpet and headboard in Ruby and Earl’s bedroom lit up like Times Square at night.
To find out whether the blood came from Ruby, a lab studied samples from each family member. The report confirmed it was Ruby’s blood.
Ill-fitting genes. There was more bad news. Randy, whose parents had never told him he was half-adopted, learned for the first time that not only was Earl not his biological dad but also that his real father was a sex criminal. DNA revealed that Ruby had been the victim of incest — raped and impregnated at age 14 by her own father.
After giving birth to Randy, Ruby passed him off as her little brother until she married Earl. He brought up the little boy as his own, according to Earl’s defense lawyer, as reported by the Arizona Republic on January 23, 1992.
And there was another jolt for the family: Cyndi’s DNA proved that Earl wasn’t her real father either.
What a mess.
Sordid doings. Meanwhile, detectives searched Earl’s El Camino and found more of Ruby’s blood, enough to conclude that she’d been injured too greatly to survive.
With a confirmed murder case on their hands, police dug deeper into the family’s life and found that Earl had been having an affair with Ruby’s sister, Peggy Williams Hinton.
There had reportedly been an ugly incident at an airport where Ruby confronted her husband and Peggy. Ruby threatened to reveal that Earl had been skimming money from the accounting business. She demanded a divorce and a hefty portion of the marital assets.
Fake alibi. The couple’s fortune totaled $1 million to $2.1 million, according to various media accounts.
By the October following Ruby’s disappearance, Earl had stopped talking to police without a lawyer present.
Investigators soon discovered that Earl hadn’t actually been on a trip to Los Angeles, as he claimed, around the time Ruby died. He had gone to San Diego, where his boat was docked, and returned to Phoenix via an airline. He used the pseudonym G. Norris on the ticket, but the flight crew picked his photo out of a lineup and “one of the flight attendants remembered him distinctly because of the poor quality of his toupee” (not sure how Peter Thomas read that part without snickering).
San Diego surprise. Dawna, the musical daughter who once “idolized” her father, ended up helping the police find evidence to convict him, according to a People story from May 11, 1992.
She headed to San Diego, where news crews had recently spotted a burning cabin cruiser more than 10 miles from shore. After asking around, Dawna learned that Earl had rented a speedboat on June 4, 1989.
The authorities theorized that Earl shot Ruby to death in the couple’s bedroom, loaded her body into his El Camino, then headed to San Diego, where he transferred the body to the Hi Lo, the family’s cabin cruiser, and set it on fire to destroy the evidence. (It worked — no one ever found Ruby’s body or recovered the boat). Then he fled the fire scene in the rented boat and flew back to Phoenix.
Revised script. Earl was indicted in March 1990.
The prosecution, led by Maricopa County Deputy Attorney William Clayton, contended that the couple had argued about his affair and his alleged shady business practices — and then Earl killed her. Blood spatter patterns on the headboard proved that Earl shot Ruby twice in the head, the prosecution contended.
At the trial in 1992, Earl Morris changed his story. He acknowledged transporting Ruby’s body to San Diego by propping it up in the passenger seat of his vehicle, but claimed that he had found Ruby dead from suicide (Cynthia McDonnell) in their Arizona house. He covered it up because he feared police would mistakenly blame him for her death (Brad Jackson), he said.
Killer takes the stand. Defense lawyer Tom Henze suggested that horrible memories of sexual abuse in her youth and financial worries — Henze contended the couple had spent a fortune promoting Dawna’s singing career — pushed Ruby to the edge and she shot herself.
Earl Morris, who remained free on $548,000 bond during the trial, held himself together in the courtroom. As the Phoenix New Times reported on February 26, 1992:
“A former Marine pilot, the six-foot-tall Morris dresses neatly, has good posture and a sense of timing. His taste in some areas is questionable. His jet-black toupee, for example, is much too obvious … On the witness stand, Morris often hesitates briefly before answering … It never fails to bring the jurors into a forward lean, awaiting his answers.”
Spectators might have enjoyed hearing Earl Morris tell his side of the story, but that didn’t mean they bought it.
Macabre trip. Meanwhile, newspapers around the U.S. ran the AP story about the man who drove 300 miles from Arizona to California with his late wife riding shotgun with a baseball cap pulled over her eyes.
After a six-week trial, the jury found Earl guilty of murder.
Judge Brown gave him a minimum of 25 years and fined him $205,500 for court and investigative costs.
“There’s really no winners or losers in a situation like this,” Dawna Kay Wells said, as reported by the AP. “I’m relieved that it’s finally done. We’ve gotten through this.”
Slight pay cut. Today, Earl Morris occupies a cell in the Stiner Unit of the Arizona State Prison Complex in Lewis.
The once-prosperous accountant appears to have worked hard during his long incarceration, occupying such positions as food service worker and painter, with pay ranging from 20 cents to 50 cents an hour.
The Arizona Department of Corrections notes that Earl has committed no infractions while behind razor wire.
Not daddy’s girl. Nonetheless, he was denied parole in July 2018.
He has outlived Peggy Hinton, the sister-in-law who went to her grave denying that she ever had an affair with him. She was buried next to Ruby in Bellevernon Cemetery in Friendship, Tennessee, 2003.
As far as the children, Cyndi Morris appears to be married and still living in Cave Creek. Randy Morris has also remained in Arizona.
Randy told columnist E.J. Montini that Earl Morris had never cared much about him and Cyndi because they weren’t pursuing high-paying professions — Dawna was their dad’s favorite.
But Dawna remained faithful to her mother. She appeared on the Maury Povich show to talk about the murder case in 1992 and also gave the People interview. (You can see the accompanying People magazine pictures in a pdf.)
Grandparent a sex criminal. No recent information about Dawna or her career turned up on the internet. She has probably changed her name (or maybe Dawna Kay Wells was just a pseudonym used in the media).
In addition to watching as their father was made to pay for Ruby’s death, the children saw charges brought against their grandfather, Clyde B. Williams, for raping Ruby, according to Forensic Files.
It’s not clear whether or not he was convicted and served jail time.
But it was a little bit more justice for Ruby Charlene Williams Morris, who despite being saddled with a disloyal sister, depraved father, and sleazy husband, achieved success as an entrepreneur and brought up three nice children who loved her.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Tubi or Amazon Prime
P.S. The story became the basis of a 1997 made-for TV movie called “Deep Family Secrets.” It got mediocre IMDB reviews, but you can watch it on YouTube and form your own opinion.
Thanks, Rebecca. I saw this ep a long time ago and recall being rapt (they’re all engaging – some more than others).
Impressions:
Ruby was treated appallingly by men close to her, and very shabbily by her sister. Could she have been more unfortunate? At least her children cared;
I was expecting a 25-to-life sentence. How could Morris POSSIBLY merit parole for complex, scheming premeditated murder (inc body-disposing arson)? A life sentence surely should’ve been awarded;
I can’t discern who Cynthia is…;
If Ruby KNEW her sister, Hinton, had indeed had the affair she denied, and if Hinton defended her lover (?), I’m not sure the adjacent graves would be approved by Ruby… How do we know they were lovers?
Viz Arizona corrections, it just happened that on tv today here in UK was the ’83 film about Tison v Arizona: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tison_v._Arizona
Not a ‘forensic’ case, and before FF’s time, but engaging. Late 70s, a ghastly murdering father, sprung from an Arizona prison by his three sons, murders again on the run with them. One son’s killed by the police, the father escapes but dies of exposure in the desert – and the other two sons are in the prison they sprang their dad from to this day on life sentences. Apparently a very well-known case…
Thanks for the film link. I’ll tune-in.
Thanks for sending the link — a picnic chest filled with firearms, wow. Time to tighten up the rules on visitors bearing food.
The then-warden was heavily criticised for running a ‘holiday camp,’ allowing the ‘trusty’ inmates a very free hand. I think he was likely fired after this incident. It’s indeed worrying that you could get into a prison with an arsenal of weapons. A tragic and extraordinary story for the innocent people murdered.
How does Ruby have a grave at all since she sank with the burned boat?
Great write up; you sure made it a lot more lurid than Forensic Files did and it was already sleazy to begin with as you said. The toupee was so bad that it was mentioned twice!
Even with all the investigations there are still secrets; such is who was really sleeping with whom.
I just found out that my mother had me legally adopted but she failed to get my birth father‘s approval so she must have lied to the authorities back in 1969. She’s kept a lot of secrets over the years and it pisses me off. I don’t know why families do this to their children.
Things were even more secretive in the decades before the 1960s. One of my parents’ friends wasn’t told she was adopted, and her parents moved anytime they were afraid the secret would come out.
A few decades and more ago adoptive parents I think received the view that there was no need to apprise the child of its history – that it could cause them heartache. Notions of the ‘right to know’ came later – though quite how deceit (usually well-intentioned) could be avoided later on was the elephant in the room… In most cases, then, the intentions were good, if likely misguided. If I were such a parent I would worry about when, how and what to tell my child but think that it had to be done. ‘Love-lies’ – ‘Your mother DID want and love you, but she wasn’t well enough to raise you’, as opposed to brutal reality – she was raped/a drug addict/left you on a doorstep – are entirely understandable, if not the reality that an adoptee may want to know…
I have never tried to engineer a crime of any kind, but it seems to me that any plan that involves transporting a dead body hundreds of miles, taking it to sea and then burning the boat could easily fall apart at a multitude of points. I guess Earl Morris’s toupee wasn’t his only unconvincing cover-up.
A none-too-neat plan — by an accountant, no less.
Terrie: You say that, but the stages of the crime you discuss were seemingly largely the successful ones: the body was effectively disposed of and it didn’t fall apart except in mundane, foolish error: he murdered Ruby in a bloody, messy manner in the bedroom, guaranteeing gross forensic evidence (like the perp who takes a chainsaw to the body guarantees thousands of invisible blood drops/spray throughout a room), and that mess was transported to the vehicle, as he failed to wrap the body and make it leak-proof.
Had those two stages of the crime been better executed (easier said than done), any case would have been much weaker, being weakly circumstantial. His mistake was in killing Ruby at home, not having got her somewhere on pretext, murdering her ideally al fresco, and transporting her body securely.
Grave suspicion would’ve been unavoidable given the circumstances – but that couldn’t convict in the absence of forensic, and/or solid circumstantial, evidence.
Good points. I was really just looking for a way to work in the toupee pun.
You’d have thought a wealthy man would’ve bought something better than an offcut from a black carpet, to be sure!
Arizona to California with his dead wife in the passenger seat – that beats Weekend at Bernie’s.
According to your story, Ruby was no angel either ! Earl is not Cindy’s father. So who is Cindy’s father ?
Greg,
Ruby was raped and impregnated by her father when she was 14. Cindy and Randy’s father is Ruby’s father.
You mean as a grown woman she was raped by her father? Yikes.
She was 14 when raped and impregnated by her dad.
That’s not stated or implied anywhere, and I sincerely doubt her father raped her after she was married and moved away.
That’s a nice fairy world you live in. Ten seconds of googling could lead you to other cases in which that exact thing did occur.
Morris’s parole was denied in Jul ’19; he remains incarcerated today. Aged c 78, he’s unlikely to see freedom…