from: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0415serialfolo.html

Phoenix deejay also a suspect in 4 Okla. deaths

Cory Morris

Dennis Wagner and Susan Carroll
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 15, 2003 12:00 AM

A man who reportedly confessed to the serial strangulations of five Phoenix prostitutes is now suspected by Oklahoma authorities in at least four similar murders.

Cory Morris, a 24-year-old barroom deejay, lived in Oklahoma and Texas before moving to Arizona in 1999. He was arrested Sunday when his uncle summoned authorities after finding a body in the motorhome in which Morris often slept.

Court records say Morris confessed to the grisly crimes, telling detectives he killed the Phoenix women during sex by using neckties, a nylon strap, his hands and a victim's hair extensions.

He said a sixth woman was not strangled but died of unknown causes after the two had sex.

On Monday, detectives from the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigations arrived in Phoenix to compare information on four women who were killed and dumped in rural areas of that state.

Those slayings fit the modus operandi of the Phoenix killings, said Jessica Brown, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation.

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All of the women had histories of prostitution, Brown said. Two of the deaths were classified as cocaine overdoses, similar to the Phoenix victims, and both showed evidence of strangulation.

Two other corpses were too badly decomposed to determine a cause of death.

"They were all very similar to the way the bodies were found in Arizona," Brown said.

The Oklahoma cases are:

On Jan. 5, 2002, the nude body of Janice Buono, 29, was found in a rural pond outlet about a mile from an Oklahoma highway. She had last been seen on New Year's Day. The cause of her death has not been determined, but there were no obvious sign of trauma.

Eighteen months earlier, on June 17, 2000, 25-year-old Mandy Raite's body was discovered three miles away in a small creek off a dirt road. The death was attributed to an "acute cocaine overdose."

The nude body of Jane Chafton, 29, was found Aug. 13, 1999, floating in a shallow creek. She had been last seen alive Aug. 9. Police said her body showed no signs of trauma. The medical examiner's office could not determine a cause of death.

The skeletal remains of 25-year-old Cassandra Ramsey were found March 22 near a bridge in a rural area. The young prostitute had last been seen alive in October 1999.

Brown said police records show Morris was in Oklahoma in July 2000. He was stopped and cited for obstructing an officer and permitting an unauthorized person to drive a vehicle, both misdemeanor charges.

Morris also lived in Austin during the late 1990s, but police there said they did not know of any similar cases and had not been in contact with Phoenix detectives.

Morris, charged with six counts of first-degree murder, remains in a Maricopa County jail. He has refused interview requests.

According to court records, he admitted guilt in five of those slayings. Morris said one of the women was not strangled, but died of unknown causes after the two had sex, according to a detective's statement filed with his arrest paperwork.

Morris reportedly said he placed her body in a shopping cart, like the others, and pushed it to an alley near Roosevelt and 13th streets, where most of the bodies were dumped.

Morris supposedly told detectives all of the women were killed inside the motorhome, parked in the center-city yard behind his aunt and uncle's home.

He indicated that, at least in some cases, he kept the decomposing corpses for days before disposing of them.

The prosecution may be complicated by a glitch that influenced investigators from the beginning: none of the Phoenix deaths was listed as a homicide, nor was strangulation identified as a factor. Instead, coroners ruled that most of the women died of cocaine overdoses, and lab results were not back for the others.

Dorothy O'Connell, deputy director of the Maricopa County Medical Examiner's Office, said those findings were not the result of errors, but reflected the difficulty in isolating the cause of death in such cases.

Noting that television depictions of forensic work have "no basis in reality whatsoever," O'Connell said autopsies were stymied by two factors: If strangulation occurs after unconsciousness, as in a drug overdose, the victim will not fight and there will be very little markings on the body. And the corpses were badly decomposed when neighbors found them, so tissue damage was lost or masked.

O'Connell said the autopsies were conducted by six medical examiners. She emphasized that, in cases where lab work was completed, "They had fatal levels of cocaine in their bodies."

Experts said prostitutes and drug abusers are frequently targeted by serial killers because they are "easy marks," willing to get into a vehicle without question.

"There's generally a baseline sexual motive," said Robert Ressler, a former FBI agent who has written books on the subject. "But it goes beyond that to levels of hatred and social dysfunction."

"It's someone who basically kills for power, control, sexual sadism," agreed James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University. He said prostitutes are safe targets in part because society does not react to their deaths, and police may investigate less aggressively.

"If they were middle-class White victims, there would be intense pressure for the public to solve it," Fox added.

Fox and Ressler said necrophilia is not uncommon in such cases, which might explain why corpses were not discarded until they had decomposed.

While there is no set profile for serial killers, they added, the prototype of an isolated White, male, late 20s or older, does not fit Morris, who is Black, younger and held a gregarious job running karaoke night at a Phoenix bar.

Morris also was a former assistant manager at the Goodwill at 32nd Street and Thomas Road. That job ended last year after he was arrested and convicted of stealing $600 from the store safe. Court records say that he used a copied key to get into the building in November, turned off the alarm, opened the safe and lifted the money. As he left, he was seen by a witness who identified him.

Morris has lived in the 700 block of East Pierce Street for three years. His aunt, Melva Willis, said she began double-checking locks on her doors after recent news accounts of the murders, never dreaming that a suspect was living in her back yard.

She said she had tried to help Morris on and off since he was 8 or 9 years old, explaining, "My sister knew that I was in a position to help him with his school work."

After spending a year with the Willises in Phoenix, Morris returned to his family in Oklahoma City. But he showed up again three years ago.

Melva said she doesn't want to believe her nephew is guilty but sees no other explanation. Police, who obtained a search warrant after Morris told them he had kept the victims' clothing, removed numerous items from the motorhome: "The evidence is just too strong," Melva said. "If you talk to anyone, you would think he would be the last one to do anything this horrific. It is totally weird."

However, Willis stressed that she does not believe her nephew had anything to do with any of the killings in Oklahoma.

Reporters Carol Sowers and Yvonne Wingett contributed to this article.