41: Two Marys, Two Murders: A Houston Cold Case
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On October 16th, 2000, Marilyn Blalock 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 mother's body was ready for pickup. There was a pause. Her mother's 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 was still in the morgue.

Marilyn's first thought, which I should admit would also be my first thought, was that there was some 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 just held a funeral for, well, a stranger.

Marilyn was transferred to multiple individuals within the medical examiner's office, all of whom were 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 cars 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 of 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 and hope 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. And as usual, listener discretion is advised. It's that feeling. Yeah.

When the energy in the room shifts. When the air gets sucked out of a moment and everything starts to feel wrong. It's the instinct between fight or flight. When your brain is trying to make sense of what it's seeing. It's when your heart starts pounding. It's when your heart starts pounding.

Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I'm your host, Kaylin Moore. Today's episode is full of twists and turns, and I'm really eager to dive in. But first, I have just a few notes.

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If you're joining us after seeing us at the gym, I think we're now in at least three. Welcome. I'm so happy to have you. And welcome again to listeners who found us through the Psychopedia podcast. This is a community for people who follow their dark curiosity. And the show is 100% homegrown from inside my closet. I'm literally here right now.

Lastly, I recently realized that I can only see the US reviews on Apple Podcasts, but I figured out a way to be able to read all of the ones around the world. So I want to shout out user D131217 from India who wrote, Okay.

This case has really consumed me for the last few weeks, and I have a feeling this episode is going to end up being a lot longer than most of the ones I do.

It's so bizarre. There's a lot 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 all 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 that the first Mary Morris died. COVID-19 and flu viruses disguise themselves to fool your immune system. That's why COVID-19 and flu vaccines are updated to protect you. Stay up to date on COVID-19 and flu vaccinations. Sponsored by Champions for Vaccine Education, Equity and Progress.

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On the morning of October 12, 2000, Mary Lou Henderson Morris left her ranch in Baytown just outside of Houston earlier than she did most days.

This morning, she was out the door at around 6 a.m. 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 five 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, hardworking, 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 out of the front door 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 that she typically frequented. As her car faded from Jay's view, he figured that wouldn't be the last time that 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 really think much of that. She could have had a meeting or something. But then at 2 p.m., Mary's supervisor called Jay and asked for Mary. He didn't know it was her supervisor, like the supervisor didn't introduce themselves as that. So he just told them that Mary was at work.

and the person on the other end just hung up. They didn't say anything else. That was a little peculiar, but Jay still didn't really give it much thought. Around 4 p.m., 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 okay. And that's when he's told that Mary never made it into work that day. And according to Jay, quote,

That's when I knew immediately that there was something wrong because she didn't miss work. Jay went ahead and called the police to file a missing persons report. And immediately afterwards, he calls Mary's daughter, Marilyn. Together, the two start retracing Mary's footsteps. And that's when they see the first strange thing.

They realized Mary had forgotten her cell phone at home that day. So they start getting even more panicked. What if she got into an accident on the way to work? What if she was stranded somewhere and couldn't call for help? That panic, though, soon turned to dread. At around 5 p.m., 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 three 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 a.m., the fire department had gotten a call about smoke coming from that area, but it was dismissed as burning leaves and not investigated further. It wasn't until seven hours later that the off-roader saw the charred car and called police.

Within a few hours of the police arriving at the scene, they were able to identify the car as Mary Henderson Morris' 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. One part of the scene, though, they weren't able to identify 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. 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 that gas station 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 her diamond jewelry on her. And though her purse had been taken, her credit cards were never used. On top of all of that, the fire that consumed Mary's car was not a typical fire.

If it was so hot that Mary's remains had been turned to ash, the tires, glass, an engine had melted, and even the trees outside the car had all been singed, then it didn't seem like someone had just poured gasoline all over her car. No, a chemical accelerant would have needed to be used to get the fire as hot as it was.

I mean, police couldn't even initially tell if the body was male or female. They just made an assumption because of the few melted pieces of jewelry that were found at the scene. Notably, however, Mary's wedding ring was missing. If this was 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, quote, "'Whoever did this took a great deal of time to seclude her in that area. If you got someone who was 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 all of the evidence was burned away. They seemed to not be trying to steal her car, not 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 had to travel to go to that town would have brought him right past Mary's smoldering car, which he told the police he did not see when he was driving.

In theory, he would have passed the 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 Blalick, Henderson Morris' 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. But after her mother's death, they didn't keep in touch at all. 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 about watching 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 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. 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, 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. More after a short break.

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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 McGinnis 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, Lori Gemmel, and then gone to a post office, grocery store, and Eckerd, which was the Texas version of CVS at the time.

While at the drugstore, Eckerd, McGinnis-Morris called her friend Lori, who she had just given the flu shot to. And according to Lori, there was a man there who was making Mary feel uneasy. Lori said, quote, 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 Lori she was going to make a quick stop at work to turn off her computer first.

But less than 15 minutes later, McGinnis Morris called 911. The content of this call has 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 911. Mary's phone records show a four-minute incoming call from Mike, who had been at the movies with their teenage daughter, Katie, 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 Katie.

But first, let's talk about what happened to Mary McGinnis Morris leading up to her death. Because unlike Mary 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 McGinnis 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, Lori Gemmel, said that Duane, quote, complained to her superiors, questioned her authority, and often seemed agitated. Lori also said, quote, "'Do you think he could really 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 Mary believed it was from Duane and written about her.

The Houston Chronicle claimed the note 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 Lori. Quote, 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.

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.

And when Mary didn't show up to work that day, the Houston Chronicle reported that Dwayne started asking where she was. Lori Gemmel said that Dwayne was banging on the windows and asking for her. He eventually was escorted out of the building. That Sunday, Mary was dead. And while police had no leads at first, Lori Gemmel remembered another piece of evidence from her phone call with McGinnis-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 Dwayne Young. Apparently, though Dwayne 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 Dwayne 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. The problem seemed to start when the couple 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 totally baseless. Stephanie Lohr, Mary McGinnis Morris' 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 their 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, Katie, the man that Mary had supposedly fallen in love with was questioned, but he was never considered a suspect. Mike, 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, Katie. Police did think this was suspicious, and they had no issue with telling the press this,

Only guilty people ask for attorneys, they would say, which we all know is not true. But Mike was cooperative in other ways. He submitted blood samples, fingerprints, and allowed the police to access 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 McGinnis Morris' case had more suspects, 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 did not stay missing for long. Months after the murder, one of Mary's friends noticed that her daughter Katie was wearing the ring that Mike had told police was missing. The friend contacted authorities and told them, but when police questioned Mike, he just said that he found the ring in his house. Mary must have actually not worn it that day. And so, the case of the Mary Morris murders went cold.

Both cases were initially high profile because of the shocking coincidences, but after the investigation didn't solve them, they just seemed to not be priority anymore. But that just doesn't sit right with me. And judging by the amount of retelling 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 daughters think. Marilyn and Katie 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, the theory that this was a hit gone wrong.

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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 McGinnis Morris, the second Mary to be killed, and the hitman 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 target's schedule, like where they work, basically information on where and when you can find them. But, and this is a huge but, police say this kind of mistake may have happened before.

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 he 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 nine years to solve this murder because it's incredibly hard to solve murders when the killing is done by a stranger with no motive. But let's say the two women weren't killed by 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 hitman in Pennsylvania was hired to kill a trucker who was going to testify as a witness in an assault trial. To throw police off his scent, however, the hitman randomly killed one of the target's co-workers the day before. He thought the other killing would make it look like there was a work feud. The hitman, Ernest Presley, 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 hitmen. This information comes from an Australian study that was done on hitmen 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 hitmen. And this is for various reasons. Sometimes it's so one spouse can't take everything in a divorce.

Sometimes it's 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 hit man, like killing a witness or settling a money dispute or even 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 hitmen to kill their spouse are typically just normal people that hire bad, inexperienced hitmen. 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 hitmen are likely to carry out hits in public in the

The Guardian in 2014 found that most hits in Britain were, quote, carried out in the open, on pavements, sometimes as the target was out walking their dog or going shopping, with passerbys watching on in horror. Well, I hope you enjoyed learning these facts about hitmen because I am probably going to go to jail for my search history.

Mary McGinnis Morris was killed in the middle of the afternoon next to a construction site while out running errands. She had marital 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 four-minute phone call Mike had after Mary was supposedly dead? Was that him contacting her killer to confirm the hit? There's also how, after Henderson Morris' death, but before McGinnis Morris' death, Lori Gemmel, remember, McGinnis Morris' friend from work,

claimed she had heard that someone had called the Houston Chronicle claiming that the murder of Mary Henderson Morris was a mistake. Lori said that she had called and had this piece of evidence confirmed by the Houston Chronicle.

Personally, I could not find anything that corroborated that at all. There was 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 to me. Why would someone call the paper to tell them they messed up but would be killing the correct Mary Morris later?

Honestly, there's a lot that Lori says that I don't really like, which I'll kind of get into later, but this one seems the most unbelievable.

So some of this stuff sounds like a hit, but Mary McGinnis 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.

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 Citizen Detective podcast, which aired an episode on these two murders earlier this year. And they included conversations with both Marilyn and Katie, the daughters of the Mary Morrises. In that podcast, one of the hosts shares that Katie was one of the only people to hear the 911 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 Katie, 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 on the call who this person is. If it were her husband or Dwayne 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 they were wearing a mask during the call. I, full disclosure, have not heard it. What about Mary Henderson Morris, though? Was a hit the most likely explanation for her murder? Though her ring was missing, it's hard to definitively say it was a stranger that killed her. If hitmen aren't afraid to kill in the middle of the 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 hitman 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 that 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. The case took a strange turn when the following April, Jay, Henderson Morris' 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 said she got it from a purse she found sitting outside of a convenience store in Galveston. When investigators located the purse, its 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 phone number, the caller said, yeah, sure, and hung up.

They never called back. The phone number was traced to a payphone outside of an apartment complex in Baytown, but the caller was never identified. Marilyn Blalick, Mary Henderson Morris' 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 the news of her mother's death encouraged Mary McGinnis Morris' 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 stepfather, Jay. Jay, the doting husband that woke up with his wife and watched her drive all 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 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' murder. Marilyn described this day in interviews. She remembered getting a phone call from her biological father while they were out looking for Mary. And that's where he told her that there was a burning car found near I-10. Marilyn jumped in her car to go see the scene and Jay tagged along with her. But in her panic, she couldn't remember how to get to this one crossroad on I-10 where her father told her the car was.

So Jay started directing her. But Jay didn't bring Marilyn to the crossroad. He brought her straight to Mary's car, which was positioned off of 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 go see. This horse was also in a town two hours away, yet he was only seen there for a moment. Why would he drive out all that way only to be there for such a short amount of time? And think about the timing. The smoke was first reported at 10.20 a.m.,

And Jay was then seen in a town two hours away, two hours later. His alibi doesn't necessarily cover the time that the car would have been set on fire. It was also 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 for a short while, Marilyn thought they had a warm relationship. She figured after her mom died, they would 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 stepfather. These suspicions still have not amounted 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 won't give up. She's speaking out now more than ever on her mother's case to make sure the coverage doesn't die down. She has even been in touch with Katie 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 the case is also told to us from one person's perspective. No one but Lori heard the call where Mary McGinnis Morris said she was being followed by a creepy man. Most of the accounts of Dwayne's behavior only comes from Lori. If Lori 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 Dwayne.

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 caught 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 McGinnis Morris, you can contact Harris County Sheriff's Homicide Detective Jeff Thomas at jeff.thomas at hctx.net. You can also call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS. These will also be tagged in the show notes.

This has been a really long episode of Heart Starts Pounding, written and produced by me, Kaylin 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 cannot wait to discuss this case more with you on Patreon.

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

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