- This week on BuzzFeed Unsolved we cover the mysterious
death of Charles C Morgan. This case is a bizarre web of crimes, full of clues that only
lead to more questions. This case is layered, so
there's multiple crimes that happen in this one, it's
not just Charles C Morgan-- - It's a crime parfait. Could we call it that?
- Sure, you could call it whatever you want man,
- All right. - Like, or a six-layer dip
- Ooh! - There you go, we're gonna
dip our little chips in it. - Scoop on in - Eat it and then get
a little on your finger and lick that off. - Scooping our little justice chips. - Yeah, our little justice chip. (imitating chomping) You dropped some on your shirt. Oh, no, you can take it out. (imitating chomping) Okay, well, let's get into it. On March 22nd, 1977, Charles Morgan, a 29 year-old escrow
agent in Tucson, Arizona, went missing after leaving his home, seemingly abducted on the
way to his escrow company. Three days later, at 2:00am,
he finally returned home. His wife, Ruth Morgan reported that he had a plastic
handcuff around one ankle, and handcuffs around his hands. He pointed to indicate
that he couldn't speak. Ruth gave him a pen and paper, and wrote that there was
a hallucinogenic drug in his throat that could
destroy his nervous system. - [Shane] What? It's in his throat? - [Ryan] Yeah. - [Shane] That would destroy his nervous, that's just poison then,
at that point, isn't it? - [Ryan] If you have handcuffs
on ankles and your hands, and that's an afterthought
of what's happening to you, you know you're into some
weird shit at the moment. - Yeah, that's why I stay away from, you know, people always say,
oh, LSD, man. (laughing) You know, it'll open up your mind, open a door that you can never close. I'm like, I think I'm good, pal. - [Ryan] Ruth wanted to call the police or get in contact with a physician, but Charles told her not to, and said it would put
their family in danger. Ruth resigned to nursing
him back to health, after which he told her that for the past two or three years, he had been working as a secret agent for the Treasury Department. He claimed his abductors
took his treasury ID, giving her no more details. - [Shane] It seems weird
to be a secret agent for the Treasury Department. - [Ryan] That was something
that I first thought, as well. - [Shane] What are they,
going out and just making sure nobody's got any loose
Sacagaweas in their pockets? Like, don't be carrying
those around anymore. They don't work at the vending machine. - [Ryan] Yeah, it's true. - [Shane] Gotta get those out of there. - [Ryan] Yeah, I know. I mean, I don't see what would necessitate having a secret agency department. - [Shane] What are they doing? - [Ryan] Within the Treasury Department. But I do have an answer for that. You may find it odd that
the Treasury Department would have secret agents. Let's go into a brief explanation. On July 5th, 1865, the US Secret Service was formed to catch counterfeiters. In 1867, the mission of the
Secret Service broadened to, quote, "detecting persons
perpetrating frauds against the government," end quote. It was part of the Department
of Treasury until 2003, and is now part of the
Department of Homeland Security. - I am imagining just
desk jockeys, sort of, out in the field, just sweating. - I'm also just imagining
the secret agent office being within the Treasury office. - Yeah.
- They're walking into work, covered in blood and shit, and it's just, desk jockeys sitting
there crunching numbers, having to co-exist
together in the break room. - All the dorks. (laughing) - All the dorks.
- Yeah. - [Ryan] Now back to Charles. Two months after Charles' disappearance, he is reported missing again. After nine days, Ruth
receives a phone call. An unidentified woman tells Ruth, quote, "Chuck is all right, "Ecclesiastes 12, one
through eight," end quote, and then hangs up. Two days later, on June 18th, his body is discovered lying
40 miles west of Tucson, near his Mercury Cougar. Charles C. Morgan had been
shot in the back of the head by his own gun, a 357
caliber magnum revolver. He was found wearing a bulletproof vest that he reportedly had been wearing after his first disappearance, a belt buckle that concealed
a knife, and a holster. A pair of sunglasses found
at the scene were not his. Pima County sheriff
investigators searched his car, and found several weapons
and a cache of ammunition. The car had reportedly been altered so that it could be
unlocked from the fender. On the rear seat of the car, Morgan's tooth was discovered, wrapped up in a white
handkerchief, and yet, that isn't the strangest thing investigators found at the scene. - [Shane] What is going on, Ryan? - [Ryan] There's a lot
of things going on here, and I will telegraph that I
don't have a lot of answers for these weird things
that are happening here. Bizarrely, there was also an item pinned to Morgan's
underwear, a two dollar bill, with seven Spanish surnames
and a map of the border area. The map led to the towns
Robles Junction and Salacity, an area between Tucson and Mexico. Those towns had a reputation
for smuggling at the time, a fact that will become important later. Above the list of surnames
was the note, quote, "Ecclesiastes 12," end quote, and arrows pointing to
the numbers one and eight within the bill's serial number. Some of the writings on the bill had alleged Masonic references. Charles also had a piece of paper with directions to the
site where he was found. The directions were in his handwriting. - [Shane] Well, this just
gets nuttier and nuttier. - [Ryan] It's odd. - [Shane] If you were up to some shady, no good business, and you
knew your goose was cooked, is maybe the best way to
just throw a bunch of shit at the wall? - To get them away from you, you would? - Just fuzz the radar, you know? - What would be that in this? - If you're throwing, like, yeah, put his tooth in the backseat. Eh, put a Bible verse in there. Pin this to his underwear. - Oh, you're saying is from
the perpetrators perspective-- - Yeah, if someone had, if he was involved with shady people, they killed him, and
they didn't want stuff to get traced back to them, what you do is you just turn
into like a J.J. Abrams type. - [Ryan] Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And you start planting
all these mystery boxes. - Yeah, little mystery boxes. - Yeah, you think that's
what's going on here? - Perhaps. I mean, again, they could
throw them off the trail, make them think this is some
kind of weird serial killer and not just organized crime. - Right. - [Ryan] Medical investigators
say he had been dead for only 12 hours when he was found. Strangely, there were no fingerprints found at the scene, not even on the gun. On Morgan's hand, they
found gunpowder and residue. It is likely for this reason
the sheriff's department labeled it as a suicide, and for years, that seemed to be the end of
the Charles C. Morgan case, a supposed suicide with twisted clues that seemed to suggest
otherwise, and with that, let's get into the theories. The first theory is
the Morgan's death was, in fact, a suicide. There was gunpowder on his hand, and the gun used was his own, yet, Morgan was right handed, and the gunpowder and
residue was on his left hand. It doesn't make sense for
him to use his left hand to shoot himself in the back of the head, let alone use such an awkward
position to kill himself. Furthermore, the crime scene suggests the presence of someone
else, such as Morgan's tooth, the pair of sunglasses
that didn't belong to him, and the bizarre two dollar bill. - Also, I thought they said
they didn't find fingerprints on the gun. - They didn't. - So you're not gonna be like,
well, this has been swell. Poof. - Wipe it, oh, I guess
he, wiped it off, yeah. I mean, I guess he could've
been wearing gloves, oh, but if he was wearing gloves, it would be on his hands still. - It would be on his hand, yeah. - Yeah. Pretty dumb. I don't know why they
even considered that. - Maybe they wanted to wrap this up, and get on with their day. - Or they're dirty. - Is that one of the theories? - It isn't, but I mean, I just
thought of that right now. It seems pretty cut and dry
that this is not a suicide. I could say that with a relative amount of certainty, I feel. Not a suicide, I don't think so. The second theory is
that Morgan was killed due to being in the Secret Service. It should be noted that
Morgan was not definitively in the Secret Service, but if he was, as he said to his wife, it's possible that this led to his murder. Morgan allegedly had done escrow work for organized crime families. Shortly before his death,
Morgan had also testified in a secret state investigation
on illegal activity on both sides of the
Arizona-Mexico border. He was a reluctant witness for the Arizona Attorney General's office in the questioning of a
now closed Tucson bank. Was Morgan alluding to this
case when he told his wife he had been undercover with
the Treasury Department? One of Morgan's daughters, Megan Hidey, has stated, quote, "My father had a lot of information "about people here in Tucson "that could've been very detrimental. "There was a lot of
information about politicians, "people who are still alive
that work in our government. "He had that information, "and they wanted to
silence him," end quote. I think, like it's possible. It's highly possible,
if he had information that was detrimental to
some of these people, the big players in this area, and that's what he was investigating, maybe he flew a little
too close to the sun. - [Shane] Sure, sure. They found out, he's
digging up dirt on us. - [Ryan] Yeah, he was, snip, snip, cut off the loose ends. - Yeah. Oh, I thought you were talking
about cutting off his-- - His penis?
- his testicles. Or his penis, yeah. I don't know. - I mean, no.
- Those were intact when they found him. - As far as I know, yes, his
penis was still on his person. - Okay. Otherwise, they probably
would've mentioned that. Also, his penis-- - Yeah, I don't understand
why they wouldn't mention he had no penis. - Penis, check. - [Ryan] The third theory
is that Morgan was murdered due to other illicit activity. Two days after Morgan's death, a woman who called herself Green Eyes called the Pima County
sheriff's department and claimed to be the same woman who had contacted Morgan's wife before. Green Eyes said that she had met Morgan in a motel before he died. The Pima County sheriff's
department had confirmed that Morgan had been
staying in a West-Side Motel for over a week before he was shot. Green Eyes said that Charles
showed her a briefcase full of thousands in
cash, which he claimed was to buy him out of a contract
the Mob put on his life. - I gotta be honest. This guy sounds like he was
into some shady business, he got what was coming. - Or what if he was just doing
a service to the country? He was in the Secret Service. - The Secret Service. - It's a secret. - Yeah. Yeah. He sure made a lot of bad friends. - [Ryan] Following her husband's death, Ruth had a visit from two
men claiming to be the FBI. She said that they flashed
their identification quickly and quote, "Tore the house
apart and left," end quote. But she never learned
what they were looking for or if they found it. - So that's some bullshit right there. That's them going like--
- Yeah. - Oh, yeah, I'm the FBI. - FBI, gotta get in here. - [Shane] Yeah. - Just holding up like a stapled-- - You ever try to do that? - No, I haven't. - You've never tried to
impersonate an FBI officer. - No, but one time, I did
hold up a piece of paper that kinda looked like a
FastPass at Disneyland. - [Shane] Yeah? - And I walked quickly
enough before they were like, and I knew that person, it was a hot day, so they were not gonna chase me down. - Yeah.
- 'Cause they're like, eh. - It's all about confidence. - [Ryan] Almost 13 years after his death, on February 7th, 1990, an episode of NBC's Unsolved Mysteries, covering the Charles C. Morgan case aired. This sparked a flux of incoming calls that helped Don Devereux, a journalist for Unsolved Mysteries, piecedtogether that Morgan had been involved in money
laundering and large transactions with gold and platinum,
that would occur regularly between the years of 1973
and his death in 1977. - [Shane] So he's using his
position at the Treasury to perform illicit activities. - [Ryan] That's not for sure, but he was caught for
money laundering, yes, and it's kinda funny
that this came to light because people watched Unsolved Mysteries and they started calling in with tips to Don Devereux. - [Shane] That show accomplished a lot. - [Ryan] Yeah. - [Shane] I think that was
pretty common for that show. - [Ryan] Yeah, way more than us. - [Shane] Yeah. - [Ryan] We have helped
solved nada, nothing, zilch! - [Shane] Also, to be fair,
we don't have a hotline. - [Ryan] No, but all-- - [Shane] Which we could, can we? How much is that? - Doesn't matter, because neither of us are a journalist anyway. Message us your tips on
Instagram, how about that? Or tweet at us, I don't know. - Yeah, get me on Gram town. - Sure, go to Gram town. - I'll meet you there. - [Ryan] Morgan was dealing with upwards of a billion dollars worth of gold alone. There were also, perhaps,
undercover CIA agents involved, most likely to pocket
money for themselves. Allegedly, exiled Vietnamese
government officials were involved, as well as people from the Department of Defense. Morgan was also linked to
a money laundering scheme with fraudulent real estate,
and one of Morgan's clients was a Mafia crew, centered
around Joseph Bonanno, Senior. Devereux also found
that Morgan kept copies of all of the illicit transactions made, thinking they could
save him in the future. Were these paper trails
of illegal transactions the reason why Morgan was killed? - Maybe.
- Possibly. - [Shane] Yeah. - [Ryan] I mean, I don't know
much about illicit dealings, but I'd like to imagine that if you are forming a paper trail, people will not like that. - [Shane] Yeah. - [Ryan] And if they caught wind of that? - [Shane] Not happy. - [Ryan] It may be whack town. - [Shane] Yeah, whack town. - [Ryan] That's where you
go when you get whacked. - [Shane] Oh, okay. Yeah, sounds like he's involved
with a lot of shady people. Oh, the Vietnamese government
is getting involved? - [Ryan] Yeah, also, some
rogue CIA agents in there. So he's really just forming
a group of people here that you don't wanna be seen with. Perhaps lending credence to the idea that Morgan was silenced, a similar crime occurred around the airing of the Unsolved Mysteries episode that exposed most of
Morgan's criminal activity. On May 14th, 1990, at 11:00 PM, Phoenix, Arizona resident, Doug Johnston, left for his night shift at
a computer graphics company. He was found dead an hour later in his company's parking lot, slumped in the front seat of his car, having been shot once behind the left ear. It was determined that the gun had been at least 12 inches
away from Doug when it went off. Like Morgan, authorities believed that Doug committed suicide,
however, Doug was right handed, and the bullet was behind the left ear. No gun or gun residue was
found at the scene of the crime but a 25 caliber bullet casing was found. The medical examiner said the shot could've been self inflicted
or the work of someone else. Doug's widow said he would
have never committed suicide. Curiously, Don Devereux, the journalist who previously investigated
Charles Morgan's case for Unsolved Mysteries
lived across the street from the site where
Doug Johnston was found. Another interesting shared
aspect between the two, Johnston's car, a Toyota station wagon, was very similar to Devereux's. Around this time, Devereux
had a conversation with another journalist,
who had received a warning from the CIA. This journalist learned
from a trusted CIA source that the killing of Doug
Johnston was a botch job, and that the bullet
was meant for Devereux. This CIA authority had also claimed that there were still contracts out for Devereux's death. These threats may have
occurred because of Devereux looking into the death
of Charles C. Morgan. - [Shane] Is that bad for us? - [Ryan] I was thinking
that, as I was reading this. Like, oh shit. This guy is doing a better, I mean, he's essentially
doing a very souped up version of what we're doing. - [Shane] Yeah. - [Ryan] And he almost
got a bullet in his head, and the only reason he didn't is because they got the wrong car. - Yeah, for the record, I'm
not gonna be looking into this much more after this episode. - I'm not looking into--
- At all. - After this episode. - I'm done with it. - I'm done with it, too. I'm just reading the tale,
I'm reading the tale. Don't kill the messenger. - And then we're done with it. - It would be a fruitless
effort to kill us. You're not preventing anything. There's no follow up. - There's no follow up. - Unless they kill us
before the post-mortem. - Then you're just gonna
be drawing more attention to yourself. - If anything, you'll be
preventing the hot dog that's next installment, which, oh no. - It made it into the
main show, we did it. - Cut that out, cut that out. - No, keep it in, keep it in. - Cut that out, cut that out. I'm serious, cut that out. - Keep it in, I'm serious. - There is a sanctuary--
- Nope. - [Ryan] That is the main episode. - It's infected it, and that's fine. - And you cannot, you cannot corrupt it. Okay, we're gonna cut that out. - Okay, continue. - Further backing up the idea that people looking into
Morgan were being silenced, a writer from Washington,
D.C. named Dan Casalero, had reached out to Devereux,
asking for information on Morgan's gold transactions. Before Devereux could
send the information, Casalero was found dead in a hotel room in the bathtub, with his wrist cut deeply approximately a dozen times. Police ruled it a suicide. Dan Casalero's brother, a doctor, said that Dan was so squeamish he would barely let his
brother prick his finger for any blood work, which does not add up with Dan Casalero's method of suicide. Devereux believes the same people involved in 1970s activities
are still out there. They perhaps silenced Morgan,
and writer Dan Casalero, and perhaps, tried and
failed to silence Devereux. This case leaves us with many questions. If true, why was Charles
Morgan in the Secret Service? Is this why he was killed? Or was it people involved
in money laundering schemes? Did Morgan's copy of illicit
transactions get him killed? What was the significance
of two dollar bill? Are the killers still out there? And do they still want Don Devereux dead? The case remains unsolved. (dramatic music) All right, well, see you next
time on Unsolved, hopefully. - That's it? We're just hard out? - Yeah, I mean, I don't
know what else we could do. - We're not gonna look
this one up anymore. We're done with it. - I think it's pretty clear. - We'll never solved it. No one ever will. - Yeah, no one should solve it. I think it's clear that this
guy was into some weird things. You said it yourself, play
shitty games, get shitty prizes. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, who needs it? - That's what happens. - Let's get outta here. That's plenty.
- Don't kill us. - [Shane] That's quite enough. (dramatic music) (whooshing)
never thought I'd see my boi Shane on r/breadtube.