One of the lesser-known cases of American true crime is also a very sad one. Meet Charles Morgan, a man who got in over his head with organized crime.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: Who was Charles Morgan and what happened to him?
That's right. This is the case of a sort of a lesser known unsolved true crime murder, in fact. Yeah. I hope that didn't spoil anything. I don't think so. In this thing you put together, called it bizarre. I take issue with that. I don't think it's bizarre at all. But it is unsolved and interesting.
Okay. I think when you, yes, you're right. No, it's not bizarre.
It sounds like any episode of The Sopranos to me.
It is unsung in that it doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. No mention of this whatsoever on all of Wikipedia, which is very surprising. But we're talking about the death of a man named Charles C. Morgan. who died in May of 1977 in the desert outside of Tucson, Arizona. And his death was, like you said, almost certainly a murder.
But it was pronounced suicide by the local sheriff, even though the coroner was like, I don't know what this was. Everyone else on the planet will tell you it's a murder, especially once you know the details, which we're going to get into right now.
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Chapter 2: Why was Charles Morgan's death ruled a suicide?
Yeah. Well, let's just describe the crime scene. This guy was found deceased at the scene wearing a bulletproof vest from a gunshot wound from his own handgun to the back of his head. And it did not have his fingerprints on his own gun.
And it was laid beside his body.
Yeah. So the sheriff was like, well, it looks like a suicide to me. You know, the guy put on surgical gloves and, you know, shot himself in the back of the head as one does. And then Managed to somehow to take those gloves off and hide them.
Exactly. Before he said, let's go get lunch.
Yeah. His wife said, no, there's no way that this was a suicide. That's impossible. And now we're going to tell you a little bit about Charles Morgan and things will become pretty clear as we do.
Yeah. So he was an escrow agent. And the escrow agent, as anyone who's ever bought a house knows, is the person who holds the money.
Yeah.
They're this impartial third party who follows a set of rules about keeping and dispersing money. And basically wants the sale of some high value thing, almost always real estate. But sometimes things like if you're buying a bunch of gold or you're buying a private jet or something like that.
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Chapter 3: What role did Charles Morgan play in organized crime?
There's going to be an escrow agent involved because you don't just hand over the money and hope for the best. And then once everybody's signed and all the stuff is legal and set, then the money gets sent out. But they hold it in escrow.
And by being an escrow agent, not just Charles Morgan, but any escrow agent, I think even still today, is in a really good position to help organize crime launder money.
Yeah. Like just putting money in escrow, all of a sudden it's got a little bit more legitimacy to it. Yeah. It's not the most regulated industry, so it's a little easier to get away with something like that probably as an escrow agent, or at least certainly it was in 1977. Yeah. And that's what he was doing, it seems like. You know, from all accounts, it didn't seem like he was a bad dude.
It seems like somebody – Maybe like in a Sopranos episode where he got in a little over his head, maybe ended up feeling like he had to do certain things once the mafia got their, you know, their finger in his pie.
What? Good one, man. I love that. That's the best one since sniff him off the case. Oh, man. Yeah. That's wonderful. As it was coming out of my mouth, I knew that it was not right. 17 years in, and you're still doing it, man. I appreciate that. I love it.
But he was doing this for the mafia, and there's a journalist for Unsolved Mysteries at the time named Don Devereaux, who basically was like, this guy was helping the mafia launder money through Arizona as an escrow agent by... buying and selling platinum and gold is how they were doing it.
Yeah, because again, like you said, just taking tainted money, money made from selling drugs, you put it in an escrow account, it gives it legitimacy. If the escrow agent isn't asking where it came from, from that point forward, once it's in the escrow account, that's when the paper trail really kind of starts.
So if they use that money to buy, legitimately buy legal gold and platinum and then turn around and sell that, that illicit drug money just became legitimate in the eyes of everybody. Thanks again in part with the help of Charles C. Morgan. And did you say he oversaw a billion dollars worth of transactions in the few years he was doing this?
I did not.
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Chapter 4: How did Charles Morgan's disappearance unfold?
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Okay, so surely there's other people out there who know much more about this and the chain of events that led to this. But if you take it from the story of Ruth Morgan, Charles Morgan's wife, the whole thing starts in March of 1977, when all of a sudden, one day, Charles Morgan goes missing. And he's missing for three days, and he finally turns back up.
But when he turns back up, he's not carrying like flowers and chocolate to apologize. He shows up missing a shoe, among other things.
Yeah, he's missing a shoe. His hands are zip tied together. There are another set of zip ties that I guess he got out of, but on one of his ankles. And she immediately is like, oh, my God, the mafia has their fingers in your pie. That's right. I know what this means. He was refusing to speak and wrote down on a piece of paper. And this is the part that I just find interesting.
And I don't take issue with it, but I'll tell you what I mean. He wrote down that his throat had been painted with a hallucinogenic drug that could either drive him insane or his words or destroy his nervous system and kill him. So don't call the cops. and don't say anything out loud, and move my car, go hide my car, because I don't want them to know I'm back.
Yeah, so I get the impression that he wasn't just telling his wife that because he didn't feel like talking to her. I think he was naive enough that somebody told him that they did that, and that he was really worried it was true.
All right, we're in agreement then, because I don't think that's a thing, is it?
No. I mean, you would still absorb whatever drug through the mucous membranes of your mouth.
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