Crime story

Crime story

On the morning of October 12, 2000, 48-year-old Mary Henderson Morris left her Houston home. Later that day, her burned car was found in a remote area with Mary’s torched body inside. Curiously, the victim’s wedding ring was missing. By all accounts, Mary was a loving wife and mother without any enemies, so no one could figure out why she was murdered in such a horrific fashion.

However, the case took a surprising turn three days later when a 39-year-old woman was found dead inside her car in the same vicinity. She had been beaten and shot with her own gun in a failed attempt to make her death look like suicide. The victim’s name: Mary McGinnis Morris.

Shortly before her death, Mary McGinnis Morris had made a frantic phone call to 911 while she was being attacked. Attention soon turned toward Mary’s husband, Mike Morris, who stood to collect a substantial life insurance policy from his wife’s death. While Mike had an alibi during thetime of Mary’s murder, phone records showed that he made a four-minute call to Mary’s cell phone two hours after her frantic call to 911.

Mike claimed that no one answered the call, and that he let Mary’s phone ring for four straight minutes. This led to a theory that Mike hired someone to murder his wife but that they killed another person named Mary Morris by mistake. Mary Henderson Morris’s missing wedding ring may have been taken by a contract killer as proof that they completed the job. However, police have since leaned toward the position that the two Mary Morris murders are nothing than more than a bizarre coincidence and have no connection to each other. Nevertheless, they both remain unsolved.