Two Marys, Two Murders: A Houston Cold Case

In 2000, two Houston-area women named Mary Morris were murdered in their cars within a few days of each other. 23 years later, it's still not certain if the two were connected.

If you have any information about the deaths of either Mary Henderson Morris or Mary McGinness Morris, you can contact Harris County Sheriff's Homicide Detective, Jeff Thomas (Jeff.Thomas@hctx.net). You can also call Crimestoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS.

 Have your own story to share? Contact us.

SOURCES

https://newspaperarchive.com/baytown-sun-oct-14-2001-p-7/

Episode 16 The Mary Morris Murders — AbJack Entertainment

Mary Lou & Mary Mcginnis Morris - Unsolved Mysteries

Two Women, Same Name Slain in Houston - ABC News (go.com)

Pennsylvania contract killer gets 5 life sentences for six murders | WTAJ - www.wtaj.com

Contract killings in Australia (aic.gov.au)

Hit Man Killed Wrong 'Daniel Ott' in 2006, Ohio Police Say (nbcnews.com)

Killings of 2 Mary Morrises prompt questions (chron.com)

TRANSCRIPT

On October 16th, 2000, Marilyn Blaloc had to make one of the worst phone calls of her life. She placed a call to the Houston, Texas medical examiner who was handling the body of her Mother, Mary Morris. Marilyn and her stepfather had just recently held the funeral for mary, and now, she needed to call the medical examiner to pick up the jewelry that was collected from her mother the day she died. Or, rather, the day she was found.

The medical examiner's office picked up on the other end, and assured Marilyn that the jewelry would be ready soon, but not before her mothers body was ready for pickup. There was a pause. Her mothers body had already been picked up, Marilyn reminded the front desk, she had just buried her mother, so the jewelry should be ready to collect.

But the person on the phone insists that can’t be possible, Mary Morris is still in the morgue.

Marilyn’s first thought, which I should admit would also be my first thought, was that there was a horrible mistake. Her mother had been unrecognizable when she was found, her body was so badly burned they needed to use dental records to identify her. Perhaps she had accidentally been switched with someone else and they had just held a funeral for, well, a stranger.

Marilyn was transferred to multiple individuals within the medical examiner's office, all of whom are trying to help figure out what went wrong. 

And that’s when they figure it out. Mary Morris was still in the morgue. But it was a different Mary Morris. A Mary Morris who, like the first one, was killed in her car in the Houston area just three days after Marilyn’s mother was killed. 

This alarms the community immediately. Investigators start reporting on the case, How do two women, with the same name, near the same city, get killed in their car just days apart from each other? Was this a hit gone wrong, a pure coincidence, or something else?

Today we’re going to look into all the twists and turns of this case; a case that is still unsolved, open and accepting tips. It’s something that Marilyn doesn’t want to fade from the public’s mind in hopes that she’ll one day find answers. I’ll include the information for tip lines in the show notes and at the end of the episode. As usual, listener discretion is advised.

Welcome to heart starts pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore

Today’s episode is full of twists and turns, and I’m really eager to dive in, but first I just have a few notes.

If you’re listening to the ad supported version of the show, just know I really appreciate you. Our sponsors make the show possible. If you’re listening to the show on Patreon, you’ll have access to ad free listening on top of your other perks, like the bonus episode I did recently on celebrity ghost stories featuring a story about miley cyrus, and another about one of the most famous hollywood mansions. 

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Also, I can not get over how many of you reached out saying you also saw heart starts pounding featured on screen at your gym. If you’re joining us after seeing us at the gym, I think now we’re in at least 3, welcome, we are so happy to have you. And welcome again to listeners who found us through the Psychopedia podcast. This is a community of people who follow their dark curiosity, and the show is 100% home grown from inside my closet. 

And lastly, I recently realized that I can only see the US reviews on Apple podcast, but I figured out a way to be able to read the global ones. So shout out to user D131217 from India who wrote: Today only I just started listening and is completely hooked. What I love the most is mixed genre. Keep going!!! Thank you for the words of encouragement, i thought that was really sweet.

Ok. This case has really consumed me for the last few weeks, and I have a feeling this episode is going to end up being longer than most ones I do. It’s so bizarre, there’s a lot that’s going on behind the scenes that’s not really obvious, and, most importantly, it’s still open. Sure, you may have heard this case talked about on another podcast, but as long as we’re getting the details right, that’s a good thing. Public awareness on this case could lead to a conviction.

We’re going to take a short break, and when we get back, we’re going to dive into what happened the day that Marilyn lost her mother, the day the first Mary Morris died. 

On the morning of October 12th, 2000, Mary Lou Henderson Morris left her ranch in Baytown, just outside of Houson earlier than she did most days. This morning, she was out the door at around 6am. She wanted to get a head start on some work, at Chase bank, where she had worked as a loan officer for 15 years. 

At just 48 years old, you may be surprised to learn that Mary was already a grandmother. She had her daughter, Marilyn, young, and after she separated from Marilyn’s father, she married a man named Jay. They had been together for 5 years when our story starts, and they recently had moved to the suburbs of Houston and built a ranch in Baytown. 

Marilyn described her mother as sweet, hard working, and non confrontational. She never argued with anyone. Even when Jay and her didn’t see eye to eye on something she was never one to raise her voice. She was also old school. Cell phones were relatively new in 2000, and Mary used hers similar to how she used a landline. Sure, she always kept it on her, but it was for emergencies only. 

So, Despite how early it was that morning, Jay still walked Mary to her Chevrolet Lumina. He watched as she pulled out of their driveway and turned onto the main road in the direction of the gas station she typically frequented.

as her car faded from Jay’s view, he figured that wouldn’t be the last time he spoke to mary that morning. Typically, the two would communicate throughout the day while she was at work. 

And around noon, it appears from phone logs that Jay called his wife’s cell phone but got her voicemail. He didn’t think much of that, she could have had a meeting or something. 

But then at 2pm Mary’s supervisor called Jay and asked for Mary. He didn’t know it was her supervisor, so told them that Mary was at work. The person on the other end just hung up, didn’t say anything else. That was a little peculiar, but Jay still didn’t give it much thought.

Around 4pm, Jay starts wondering why he hasn’t heard from Mary at all that day, and so he calls the Chase bank she works at just to make sure everything is ok. And that’s when he’s told that Mary never made it into work that day. 

According to Jay “That’s when I knew immediately that there was something wrong, ’cause she didn’t miss work.””

 He goes ahead and calls police to file a missing persons report, and immediately afterwards calls Mary’s daughter Marilyn. Together, the two start retracing Mary’s footsteps.

Thats when they see the first strange thing. They realize Mary had forgotten her cellphone at home that day. They started to get even more panicked. What if she had gotten into an accident on the way to work? What if she was stranded somewhere and couldn’t call?

That panic, soon turned to dread. Around 5pm, the police got word that a burned out car had been found by an off roader in a remote area protected by a gate and dense trees. The area was 3 miles from Mary’s home, and was just off of a main road in the opposite direction of her job. It turns out, Earlier that day, around 10:20 am, the fire department had gotten a phone call about smoke coming from that area, but it was dismissed as burning leaves and not investigated further. It wasn’t until 7 hours later that the off roaded saw the charred car and called.

Within a few hours of the  police arriving at the scene, they were able to identify the car as Mary Henderson Morris’s Chevrolet. The reason it took so long was how badly burned the car was. The tires, interior, and engine had all started melting, that’s how hot the fire burned. There was one part of the scene that they weren’t able to identity as quickly. Inside the car, in the passenger seat, were human remains. According to police, they were so badly burned they could only be identified by dental records. Three days after the car was found, the remains were identified as Mary’s -music-

exactly what happened, and more importantly why this happened, was going to prove incredibly difficult to figure out. 

Because for starters, there wasn’t much information about what Mary did that day after she left her home, since she never made it to work. Jay said he assumed based on the direction she was heading that she was going to the gas station, and an attendant at the gas station Mary frequented did say they thought someone came in that morning matching Mary’s description. But by the time the police wanted to check the security footage, the tapes had all already been taped over. police started thinking that maybe someone approached her at the gas station, perhaps to rob or carjack her, but any hope they had of seeing that happen on the cameras was gone.

It was hard to believe that this was a carjacking though, when the person responsible had burned the car to near ash. And if it was a robbery, it also wasn’t a very good one. A few of mary’s belongings were missing, but she still had diamond jewelry on her. And though her purse had been taken, her credit cards were never used. 

On top of that,The fire that consumed Mary’s car was not a typical fire. It was so hot that much of Mary’s remains had been turned to ash, the tires glass and engine had melted, even the trees outside of the car had all been singed.  It didn’t seem like someone had just poured gasoline all over her car. No, a different accelerant would have been needed to get the fire to be as hot as it was. 

Police couldn’t even initially tell if the body was male or female, they just made an assumption because of a few melted pieces of jewelry that were found at the scene. Notably, however, Mary’s wedding ring was missing. If this were a robbery, why leave behind the other diamond jewelry she had on and just take the wedding ring?

Also missing, was any indication of how Mary died, and any evidence that anyone else had been there. There were no fingerprints, no bullet casings, nothing. Whoever did this clearly wanted to cover their tracks.  According to Houston Sheriff’s Detective Robert Tonry, “"Whoever did this took a great deal of time to seclude her in that area. If you get someone (out for drug money), he may kill her and try to wipe off the prints. But someone went to the trouble to make sure there was absolutely no evidence left.””

So that’s at least a clue. Whoever did this knew to use something stronger than gasoline to make sure that all the evidence was burned away. They seemed to not be trying to steal her car or trying to rob her. They were trying to kill her and get away with it. 

But who would have done this? Police started poking around Mary’s life, did she have any enemies, anyone that would have wanted her dead. But they kept coming up short. Her and Jay seemed to have a fine marriage and Jay had an alibi for that day. He had traveled a few towns over to talk to someone about buying a horse. Interestingly enough, however, the direction Jay would have traveled to go to that town, would have brought him right past Mary’s smoldering car, which he told police he did not see when he was driving. In theory, he would have passed Mary’s car right around the time the initial call was made about the smoke coming from the forest, but he insisted he didn’t see it. 

Still, Jay was cleared almost immediately by police, they ruled that no one else in her life was suspect, and the case started rapidly cooling off. Marilyn Blalock, Henderson Morris’s daughter, remembers being frustrated with how the investigation into her mother’s death went. She didn’t have much of a relationship with Jay, her mother had married him when she was an adult and out of the house, and after her mother’s death they didn’t keep in touch. She was shocked to learn that within a few months Jay had already married a Russian woman she believed to be a mail order bride. 

Marilyn was upset that the police didn’t ask more questions about what happened the day before Mary was murdered. They had blindly believed Jay’s story that he watched her get into her car and drive off that morning, but what if she had been killed before that morning, put in the car, and then driven to a remote location. She was found in the passenger's seat, after all. Didn’t they think that was strange? The car needed to be searched more, there must be more they could find. But before police could get to it, Jay had it sent to the scrapyard to be destroyed. -music- 

Though the case was already taking over news coverage, even before Mary’s remains were identified, Marilyn could already feel the investigation cooling off on her mother. She felt that Jay was being flippant and the police had given up. There was no obvious answer and now some of the key piece of evidence, the car, had been destroyed. 

But then, three days after Mary Henderson Morris was found inside of her car, another Mary Morris would be found dead in her car as well in the same metro area. And that added a whole new spin on the case. One that Marilyn hoped would help solve her mother’s murder. After the break.

So, we discussed the mysterious death of Mary Henderson Morris, but the investigation took a curious turn a few days after she was first reported missing. 

On Monday, October 17th, 2000, The body of Mary McGuinness Morris, another Mary Morris who had short, dark brown curly hair, was found dead inside of a car in Houston. 

The day before, the 39 year old nurse practitioner had been out running errands. She had administered a flu shot to her friend Laurie Gemmell, then gone to the post office, grocery store and Eckerd, which was the Texas version of CVS at the time.

While at Eckerd, the drug store, McGinnis Morris called her friend Laure who she had just given the flu shot to. According to Laurie, there was a man there who was making Mary feel uneasy. Gemmel said “She said it matter-of-factly. She did not sound scared. She was aware that she was uncomfortable and was going to head home” Mary then told Laruie she was going to make a quick stop to work to turn off her computer first.

But less than 15 minutes later, McGinnis Morris called 911. The content of these tapes have never been released, but we know that by the end of the phone call, Mary was dead. 

When Mary didn’t make it home that evening, her husband, Mike Morris, called the police. First, however, he called Mary’s cell phone, about an hour and a half after she had called 9-11. Mary’s phone records show a 4 minute incoming call from Mike, who had been at the movies with their teenage daughter Katy at the time of the murder. Mike insists that he never reached his wife, it just rang and rang, however, the phone company insisted that the call was connected.

 Mary was found the next morning by a wrecker driver with a single gunshot wound to the head and just one ring missing. It appeared as if she had been beaten badly and gagged.

I’m going to talk about some of the contents of the call according to one of the only people to ever have listened to it, Mary’s daughter Katy. But first, let’s talk about what happened to McGinnis Morris leading up to her death, because unlike Henderson Morris, who police say left them with no leads to follow, a few suspects popped up almost immediately.

So According to her husband, Mike, Mary McGuinness Morris had been keeping the gun that was used to kill her in her car for two weeks, and for a good reason. There was another nurse who worked for Mary, a man named Duane Young, who made her uncomfortable. Mary’s friend, Laurie Gemmell said that Duane quote “complained to her superiors, questioned her authority and often seemed agitated”.

Laruie Also said “ I said, ‘Do you really think he could hurt you?’ And she said, ‘Yes, I do, and I think he could do worse.’”

Things did get worse at work with Duane, but there are some conflicting reports as to what happened next. The consistent piece is that there was a note found in Mary’s office that said “death to her” and that Mary believed it was from Duane and written about her. The Houston Chronicle claimed it was found on Mary’s desk calendar on Thursday the 12th, but Unsolved Mysteries claimed it was two weeks prior to the murder and included this quote from Laurie 

“She found things out of place on her desk, pictures turned to face the wrong direction. On Duane’s desk was written the words “death to her” which she assumed was written about her.”

Unsolved mysteries also has this quote from her husband Mike after the note was found 

“She made a phone call to me on her way home and I could tell that she was shaken. She got home and she asked me if I would provide her with a gun to carry with her for her own protection. She asked me to go over the handling and use of the gun. When we were finished, she asked me to place the gun in her car under the driver’s seat.”

Regardless of when and where the note was found, Mary took the note to her superiors and they advised her to not come into work on Friday the 13th. When Mary didn’t show up to work that day, the houston Chronicle reported that Duane started asking where she was. Laurie Gemmel reported that Duane was banging on the windows asking for her. He eventually was escorted out of the building. 

That sunday, Mary was dead. And while police had no leads at first, Laurie Gemmel remembered another piece of evidence from her phone call with McGuinness Morris, 15 minutes before she was shot with the gun she kept in her car. She told the Houston Chronicle that on the call, Mary told her she thought she recognized the creepy man following her as someone she had met through Duane Young. 

Apparently, though Duane had been a problem, Mary and her husband had attended events at his home, and he had been to theirs. So it is possible that Mary had met other people through him. 

As for Duane himself, however, there was no physical evidence that put him at the scene, nothing to actually charge him on. The gun in Mary’s car only had her and her husband’s fingerprints on it, which was expected based on the story Mike had given them.

And before police looked into who this mysterious, creepy man following Mary was, they wanted to look into Mike Morris, Mary’s husband. Because right after the murder, he lawyered up. Making authorities wonder if he had something to hide.

One thing police quickly realized about Mike and Mary Morris, was they didn’t have a perfect marriage. -music-

The problems seemed to start when the couple had moved to Houston. At one point, Mike felt that Mary might be cheating on him. He went so far as to confront her and the person who he believed to be her lover. Both of them denied the accusations, however. And according to mike, he chose to believe his wife. He said that things had dramatically improved since then and at the time of his wife’s death, they were nearly best friends again. 

Some people say otherwise, however. Friends and family said that mike remained distrustful, and at times would follow his wife around.

Surprisingly, His accusations may not have been baselessStephanie Loar, Mary McGinnis Morris’s sister, told the Houston chronicle that Mary had confessed to her that at one point she had fallen in love with another man. She said that Mary didn’t want to leave Mike and was trying to work through the issues with him, but after going through a few different marriage counselors and no improvement she was thinking about divorce. 

According to Mary’s daughter, Katy, the man that Mary supposedly had fallen in love with was questioned, but he was never considered a suspect.

Mike Morris, however, was considered a suspect immediately, and so he prepared himself. He asked for an attorney, and refused to take a polygraph test. He also wouldn’t let the cops talk to their daughter, Katy. 

Police thought this was suspicious, and they had no issue with telling the press this. Only guilty people ask for attorneys, They’d say. Which, we all know is not true. But Mike was cooperative in other ways, he submitted blood samples, finger prints, and allowed the police access to their living space. And eventually, it was decided that there just wasn’t enough physical evidence to charge him with her murder.

So even though Mary McGuinness Morris’s case had more suspects, eventually police ruled that there just wasn’t enough evidence to charge anyone, and her case, like that of Mary Henderson Morris remained unsolved.

*

Police figured it was maybe a carjacking or robbery, even though the car was not jacked and the only thing missing from Mary was her ring. 

A ring, actually, that didn’t stay missing for long. Months after the murder, one of Mary’s friends noticed that her daughter Katy was wearing the ring that Mike had told police was missing. The friend contacted authorities and told them, but when police questioned mike he told them he found the ring in the house. Mary must have not worn it that day.

And so, just like the case of Mary Henderson Morris, the murder of Mary McGuinness Morris went cold. Both cases were initially high profile because of the shocking coincidences, but after the investigation didn’t solve them, they seemed to not be priority anymore. -music-

But that just doesn’t sit right with me. And judging by the amount of retellings of this case, it doesn’t sit right with others, either. No one wants to live in a world where two women going about their day can be killed in cold blood and their cases are just given up on. 

So I want to talk about some of the theories that cropped up afterwards, mostly by web sleuths and rogue detectors interested in the case, as well as what the two daughters think. Marilyn and Katy are still fighting for answers and remain the biggest champions in figuring out what happened to their mothers. After a short break, we’re going to hear about the first, theory, that this was a hit gone wrong. 

So, could the fact that two women named Mary Morris, who were killed in their cars three days apart from each other in the Houston metro area mean that this was a hit gone wrong?

For that to be the case, someone would have had to have ordered a hit on Mary McGuiness Morris, the second Mary to be killed, and the hit man would have had to have killed Mary Henderson Morris by mistake. maybe her ring was brought to whoever ordered the hit, only for them to find out they killed the wrong mary. So to remedy the situation, they would have to go and kill the correct Mary.

It sounds outrageous, which is why it was never seriously considered as a theory. Typically,, when a hitman is hired, more information is given about the target than a first and last name. The people who do the hiring will talk about their targets schedule, where they work, basically when and where you can find them. BUT and this is a huge but, police say that this kind of mistake may have happened before. -music-

In 2006, a 31 year old man named Daniel Ott was gunned down in his Ohio home in what police believed was a revenge killing. 

Joseph Rosebrook was still serving time in prison when hired three men to kill the Daniel Ott who snitched to police on him and landed him in jail. Only, when the men got to the 31-year old Daniel Ott’s house, they realized they had the wrong man tied up. Daniel eventually got free and was shot in a panic.

it took Police 9 years to solve this murder, because it is incredibly hard to solve murders when the killing is done by a stranger with no motive. 

But let’s say this wasn’t a mistake. There’s also the theory that the first mary was killed as a cover up for the other mary being killed, because police believe that also happened during a hit once. 

In 2017, a hit man in Pennsylvania was hired to kill a trucker who was going to testify as a witness in an assault trial. To throw police off of his scent, however, the hit man randomly killed one of the targets coworkers the day before. He thought the other killing would make it look like there was a work feud. The hit man, Ernest Pressley, was eventually caught. 

So perhaps one Mary was the target of a hitman who wanted to cover their tracks, and did so by killing the other Mary. There are some things about the crime scenes that are consistent with hit men.

This information comes from an australian study that was done on hit men in 2003, as well as an article from the Guardian about the characteristics of hits. And the caveat with these studies is, you can only study the killings that were confirmed to be hits, which can be hard when you’re dealing with professional contract killers that have never been caught.

But according to this australian study, dissolution of relationships is the number one reason people hire hit men. And this is for various reasons, sometimes it’s so one spouse can’t take everything in a divorce, sometimes so one person can go start over with a lover, sometimes it’s for revenge. Men are more likely to hire hit men, but men and women were equally as likely to be targets of a hit.

And one really interesting fact, is that relationships had the highest amount of attempted hits compared to other reasons to hire a hitman like killing a witness, settling a money dispute, or taking out someone in a criminal organization. But relationships had the lowest percentage of completed hits compared to how many hits were ordered. And that’s because people hiring hit men to kill their spouse are typically lay people that hire bad, inexperienced hit men. And this is compared to like,  a mafioso hiring someone to settle a money dispute, which had a much higher completion rate.

This fact also surprised me, but Hit men are likely to carry out hits in public in the middle of the day. The Guardian in 2014 found that most hits in Britain were “ carried out in the open, on pavements, sometimes as the target was out walking their dog, or going shopping, with passersby watching on in horror."

I hope you enjoyed learning these facts about hit men, because I’m probably going to go to jail for my search history. -music-

Mary McGuinness Morris was killed in the middle of the afternoon next to a construction site while out running errands. She had martial trouble to begin with. Her ring was the only thing missing, just like with Henderson Morris, and it mysteriously showed up in her husband's possession months later. These things can be considered consistent with it being a contract kill. And what about that 4 minute phone call Mike made after Mary was supposedly dead? Was that him contacting her killer to confirm the hit?

There’s also how, after Henderson Morrison’s death but before McGinness Morris’s, Laurie Gemmel, remember, McGiness Morris’s friend from work, claimed she had heard that someone had called the Houston Chronicle claiming that the murder of Henderson Morris was a mistake. Laurie also said that she called and had this piece of evidence confirmed by the Houston Chronicle. 

Personally I could not find anything that corroborated that. There’s nothing that says the Houston Chronicle knew the murder of mary henderson morris was a mistake, and also, that doesn’t really make any sense? Why would someone call the paper to tell them they messed up but would be killing the correct Mary Morris later? There’s a lot that Laurie says that I don’t like, which I’ll get into later, but this one seems the most unbelievable.

So some of this stuff sounds like a hit But Mary McGuinness morris was killed by her husband's gun, one that was under her seat. Hits tend to be a bring your own weapon kind of job. It seemed unlikely to authorities that a hitman would have shown up empty handed and then used the gun mary had on her.  -music-

There is, however, one other piece of information that makes it seem like Mary couldn’t identify who the person following her was. But it’s also evidence that this mysterious person knew Mary, or at least knew someone who knew Mary. 

This piece of evidence comes from the Cititzen detective podcast, which aired an episode on these two murders earlier this year, and included conversations with both Marilyn and Katy, the daughters of the Mary Morris’s. 

In that Podcast, one of the hosts shares that Katy was one of the only people to hear the 9-11 phone call her mother made as she was killed. A call described as very disturbing and chilling by the Harris County Sheriff's department. 

In that call, according to Katy, whoever was approaching Mary’s car had a clicker that controlled the locks. Mary can be heard locking her car while the assailant is using a remote to continually unlock the car every time Mary locks it. 

That’s a very important detail. Whoever did this had access to Mary’s car’s clicker. And remember, this was a company car, not just her personal car. What’s even more important, however, is mary never says who this person is. If it were her husband or Duane from work, wouldn’t she have told the dispatcher? So either this person was unknown to Mary, or they were wearing a mask. I’m not sure if she said that during the call, I havent’ heard it. 

What about Mary Henderson Morris, though? Was a hit the most likely explanation for her murder?

Though her ring was missing, it was hard to definitely say it was a stranger that killed her. If hit men aren’t afraid to kill in the middle of street, why did the person take Mary to a secluded spot, potentially from the gas station? And then there was the fire. While a fire burning that hot is a good way to cover your tracks, something a hit man would have been thinking about, it’s also deeply personal. Some authorities theorized that a fire that destructive would have been started by someone with a conscience, someone who knew they were going to spend the rest of their lives wondering if they would be caught. Perhaps someone close to the murdered person. So they burned the car to hide any evidence. -music-

The case took a strange turn when the following April, Jay, Henderson Morris’s husband got two bills in the mail for $2,000. Someone had been using his late wife’s phone card. It was traced back to a teen girl nearby, who claimed she got it from a purse she found sitting outside of a convenience store in Galveston. When investigators located the purse,it’s contents had already been thrown out. However, Jay claimed that he didn’t recognize the purse itself. It wasn’t the one that Mary had taken that day. 

Then, a few weeks later, in the dead of night, an unknown caller started calling Jay’s private phone line which wasn’t listed in any phone book. The caller would ask for Mary, and when Jay said she wasn’t home, the caller would hang up. After multiple calls, Jay eventually told the caller that Mary could be reached at a different phone number, and then gave the caller the sheriff’s number. Before Jay even finished reciting the number, the caller said “yea sure” and hung up. They never called back. The phone number was traced to a pay phone outside of an apartment complex in Baytown, but the caller was never identified. -music-

Marilyn Blalock, Mary Henderson Morris’s daughter, thinks she has an idea of what happened to her mother. She doesn’t think it was a hit. If anything, she thinks that news of her mothers death encouraged Mary McGuinness Morris’s killer. As in, someone wanted to take advantage of the fact that another Mary Morris was killed to throw off police.

According to Marilyn in interviews she’s given, she’s always been suspicious of her step-father, Jay. Jay, the doting husband that woke up with his wife and watched her drive allllll the way to the end of the street before turning on the main road. Marilyn doesn’t buy that, who watches their spouse drive off on a normal day, it’s too rom-com, too convenient. 

Marilyn didn’t like how Jay got married within a few months of her mother’s passing, and she didn’t like how he behaved in the days after her death. 

Jay wanted Mary’s car gone. He didn’t want to keep it even though the police could have kept sorting through it for evidence. As soon as he could send her car to a junkyard to be crushed, he did. 

Then there was the day of Mary Henderson Morris’s murder. Marilyn described this day in interviews. She remembered getting a phone call from her biological father while they were looking for Mary, where he told her there was a burning car found near I-10. Marilyn jumped in the car to go see the scene, and Jay tagged along with her. In her panic, she couldn’t remember how to get to this one cross road on I-10 where her father told her the car was, so Jay was directing her. But Jay didn’t bring Marilyn to the cross road. He brought her straight to Mary’s car, which was positioned off the road. Emergency services had only released the intersection the car was at, not the exact location, yet Jay was able to guide them to exactly where the car was. 

Jay’s alibi also didn’t make a ton of sense to Marilyn. She had never heard him talk about the farm or the horse he was going to see. This horse was also in a town 2 hours away, yet he was only seen there for a moment. Why would he drive all that way to only be there for such a short amount of time. 

And think about the timing. The smoke was first reported at 10:20am, and Jay was then seen in a town, 2 hours away, 2 hours later. His alibi doesn’t necessarily cover the time that the car would have been set on fire. It was about an hour walk from where Mary’s car was found to his home. He could have set the car on fire, walked back, and then driven to the farm for an alibi.

Jay also worked at a chemical plant. And when Marilyn heard that a chemical accelerant was probably used for the fire, bells started going off in her head.

Though Jay and Marilyn had only known each other a short while, Marilyn thought they had a warm relationship. She figured after her mom died they’d work together to settle her estate and go through her things. But Jay immediately got an attorney. All communication from Marilyn had to go through Lawyers, and he started getting rid of Mary’s things without Marilyn’s input. It was heartbreaking for her that after losing her mother, she was also being treated like a criminal by her step father. -music-

These suspicions still have not surmounted to anything, even 23 years later. Her mother’s case is still unsolved. And without the car, it doesn’t seem likely that any more physical evidence will present itself in the case. 

But Marilyn wont give up. She’s speaking out now more than ever on her mothers case to make sure the coverage doesn’t die down. She even has been in touch with Katy to make sure that progress is being made on the case of the other mary morris as well.

And Marilyn asks us to do something that I agree is important when thinking through this case. She asks for people to think about how the story changes if Jay is lying. If Jay wasn’t telling the truth, then no one saw Mary Henderson Morris the day her car was found. She could have been killed at a different time and brought to the scene. 

What happens when we go through the case of Mary McGinnis Morris with that same level of skepticism. Much of her case is also told to us from one persons perspective. No one but Laurie heard the phone call where Mary McGinnis Morris said she was being followed by a creepy man. Most of the accounts of Duane’s behavior only comes from Laurie. If Laurie wasn’t telling the truth, then no one called the chronicle saying they got the wrong mary, and Mary may not have known the creepy man through Duane.

And if Mike is lying, then maybe he did connect that four minute phone call after all and spoke to someone that had mary’s phone. Maybe he was more jealous than he let on. Maybe the ring was given back to him by someone, and maybe there was a reason he got a lawyer so quickly.

What I’m trying to say is, the most shocking coincidence in this case, is not that they were both named mary. It’s not that they were both found in their cars. It’s not that maybe their rings were both missing. It’s that no one close to them knows anything. That’s the one piece I keep turning over in my mind, the one coincidence that feels too strange to let go. 

And so, if you have any information about the deaths of either Mary Henderson Morris or Mary McGinness morris, you can contact Harris County Sheriff's Homicide Detective, Jeff Thomas (Jeff.Thomas@hctx.net). You can also call Crimestoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS. These will also be tagged in the shownotes. 

This has been a really long episode of Heart Starts Pounding,  written and produced by me, Kaelyn Moore. Sound design and Mix by Peachtree Sound. Thank you so much to all of our new patrons, you will be thanked by name in the monthly newsletter, and I can’t wait to discuss this case more with you on Patreon.

Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Greyson Jernigan, the team at WME and Ben Jaffe. And thank you to Audioboom as well as Hello Fresh for sponsoring this episode. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out Heart Starts Pounding.com. Until next time, stay curious.