Keith Morrison Correspondent • Profile

This is a story about  movies. Three of them, actually.

The first—pure, simple; about her, the radiant star.

And then those others, those would-be Sherlocks, chasing the riddle down their strange, opposing paths.

But Jennifer, like the center of any Movieland mystery — as you will see — hides her secret well.

Tom Morgan: It kept me awake at night, just thinking about it and thinking about it. Kept me awake at night,  but I found the best relief was physical. I would go to the gym and I would lift weights and I would run and I would do all of these things to just try and exhaust myself in hopes that night I would be able to sleep and not think about ‘God what happened that day?’

His name is Tom Morgan.

His sister Jennifer, 23, tall, attractive, funny, college marketing major, is our star, and the subject of our mystery.

Keith Morrison, Dateline correspondent: What was the thing that got you obsessed?

Tom Morgan: I felt like we knew who did it. 

And so, as this strange tale unspooled, Tom would put his suspicions in his own movie.  A fictional tale to point an accusing finger toward truth.

But making movies, someone might have told the man, can be hazardous. Especially when someone else makes the sequel.

So be careful, they should have said.

Morrison: Be careful what you wish for.

Tom Morgan: That’s right. 

In our little movie tonight, this will be the opening scene...

Bucolic.  Southern sun.  A charming college campus in Florence, South Carolina, November 9, 1994.

A mother has been trying to phone her daughter, her daughter Jennifer, at the mobile home park which was her off-campus residence.

Kerry Morgan, mother: I had started calling her the line was busy-busy-busy.

At the very same moment, across town, a woman in the final stages of labor is also trying to reach best friend Jennifer, who’d promised to be with her for the birth:

Dina Berg, friend: The line was busy. And it was busy for the next hour and the next hour…for hours upon hours.

They are calling the one woman, who - outside these few frames of video - you will never meet.

The young woman at the center of this tale.

Because at that very moment, Jennifer Morgan,  is lying on her bed.

And she is dead in a house fire.

It was just after 12:30 p.m. By the time the fire department arrived, the intensity of the blaze had roasted one end of the mobile home.

They knocked the fire down,  and discovered the body burned beyond recognition, lying face down on the bed.

Summoned to the scene was a young detective named Kenny Boone.

Sheriff Kenny Boone: I can remember it just like it was yesterday.  November the 9^th, 1994.  It was on a Wednesday.

As the grim wheel of investigation began to turn, the news was sent to Jennifer’s family.  Her mom, Kerry, and her father, Jim, struggled to come to grips with the worst news parents could ever hear. Their baby, the last of their four children, was dead.

Jim Morgan: It just takes time for it to really sink in and say yea you know it really is true and you know you’re never gonna see her again.

The whole family was all but paralyzed by grief.  Jennifer had three siblings, an older sister, a brother near her own age, and Tom, the eldest.

Kerry Morgan: Tom was a protector, Tom always wanted to take the role over his dad; wanted to know who she was seeing what she was doing, taking care of her.

Morrison: So you felt you could go to bed at night if she was out because Tom?

Kerry Morgan: Tom was right there waiting for her...Exactly.

But on that awful day Tom was in Charlotte, North Carolina. He’d just moved there from Michigan and was staying with a friend.

It was late afternoon  when Tom’s dad called.

Though at first what he said didn’t seem to make sense.

Tom Morgan: He said don’t come home until tomorrow.  And I just sat there and I just said dad what are you talking about?

It took a moment, then he told Tom what that meant.

Tom Morgan: And he said your sister died today in a fire and I don’t want you to come home until tomorrow and he hung up the phone.

And then, said Tom, he virtually collapsed, went numb, cried.  And  waited until the next morning to make the four-hour drive to his parents home in Myrtle Beach.

On his way, said Tom, he stopped at the trailer park where his sister had died. 

Tom Morgan: I had to see that trailer burned.  It was still all roped off with caution tape and I just stood outside there for probably 15 or 20 minutes just still in disbelief and just cried.

There was no police presence, said Tom.  But then, why would there be.  It was an accident, after all.

Time was a blur, as Jenny’s parents planned the funeral.

And then, two days after her death, Kenny Boone called, and they tried to absorb more news:  Jennifer’s death was not an accident after all.  Whoever set that fire was trying to hide a murder.

Only the method was still unknown.

Kerry Morgan: She hadn’t been stabbed she hadn’t been raped she hadn’t been shot.  And at the time they said we’d like you to keep it quiet.  We don’t want anything tainted by you telling people because everybody still thought it was an accident.

And now their grief was salted with anger and  confusion and impossible questions.

The investigator, Kenny Boone, told them what he knew:  that he saw right away the fire was so intense, it had to have had extra fuel, some sort of accelerant. He’d found milk jugs scattered about, which smelled not of milk, but of gasoline.

Kenny Boone: We started taking samples from the carpet.  I immediately got those results right back.

Morrison: What’d they say?

Boone: Positive for gasoline.

Boone sent the body to the forensic pathologist.

Kenny Boone: There was no soot, no carbon monoxide in her lungs. We knew she had to be dead prior to the fire.

But who would have wanted to kill Jennifer?  And why?

Kerry Morgan: She was very, very loved by a lot of people. She was just that kind of kid, you were just drawn to her.

Tom Morgan was inconsolable, but found some comfort in believing that his sister’s killer would be found.

Tom Morgan, brother: I had complete confidence in our law enforcement.  I had complete confidence that they were doing all the right things. And they were gonna bring this thing to some closure for us.

And so did that arson investigator in charge of the case.  After all, the murder and the fire to cover it up all happened in broad daylight right in the middle of a mobile home park next to a busy four-lane highway.

Looking back, 13 years later now, Kenny Boone is sheriff of Florence County.

Kenny Boone: I mean I really thought that we was gonna go straight to you know maybe a boyfriend or an acquaintance.

This, he was convinced, would not be so hard to solve.

Of course, things don’t always work out the way we’d like them to.

And that movie idea? It’ll soon be time for that part of the story. There would be two movies, remember— twin parades of hope and folly.

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