As law enforcement officers across the country study the 2009 Sheena Morris case as a ‘staged crime scene,’ officials are hesitant to reopen case

BRADENTON BEACH — New evidence has emerged that may prove Sheena Morris did not hang herself in a Bradenton Beach hotel room on New Year's Day 2009, according to national forensic experts.

Marks caused by the pooling of blood after death — known as lividity — indicate that Morris was seated in a wicker chair at some point after her death, and thus refute the suicide conclusions of multiple investigations conducted by Bradenton Beach Police, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and an assistant state attorney, says Jan Johnson, a certified senior crime scene analyst who has four decades of local, state and federal crime scene experience.

Johnson, who has worked for the Escambia County Sheriff's Office, FDLE and the FBI, has studied the Morris case at the family's request for years. Johnson founded Forensic Pieces in 2000 — a private firm that provides specialized forensic expertise in civil and criminal cases. She also offers advanced crime scene training to law enforcement officers throughout the county on topics such as shooting reconstruction, advanced crime scene investigations, advanced bloodstain pattern analysis, crime scene photography and "staged crime scene" investigations.

In her "staged crime scene" classes, Johnson highlights the Morris case using a PowerPoint presentation that features photographs taken by investigators from the District 12 Medical Examiner Office. The photos were taken inside the hotel room where Morris was found hanging in a shower stall from a dog leash, as her body was lifted onto a bed, wrapped in a sheet and then placed in a body bag.

Several of the photos show a pattern of red lines on Morris' lower back and buttocks caused by lividity. Other evidence photos show a wicker chair that was in the hotel room where Morris died. Both the lines on her back and the patterns in the wicker chair are the same length and have the same angle — 38 degrees.

“The pattern of lividity matches the chair,” Johnson told the Herald-Tribune. “Basically, they line up exactly with her being seated in the chair, after death.”

District 12 Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Russell Vega discounts the experts’ conclusions about the marks on Morris’ back, which had disappeared by the time she was autopsied by his colleague, Assistant Medical Examiner Dr. Suzanne Utley.

Still, Vega has no idea what, other than the chair, could have caused the lividity pattern.

“It’s not known,” he said. “It leaves me with a pattern I have no info for.”

State Attorney Ed Brodsky said he would need more information before he would consider reopening the case, which has captivated many Southwest Florida residents and has been the subject of episodes of both ABC’s “20/20” and the “Dr. Phil” show.

“We’d have to hear significant change in the opinion from our medical expert,” Brodsky told the Herald-Tribune last week, meaning Vega. “And we’d want to hear more from law enforcement.”

Throughout the 10 years that have passed since Morris’ death, Johnson has always maintained that local officials simply don’t want to admit they were wrong — that they jumped too quickly to the suicide conclusion, and then supported their flawed conclusion using biased investigations.

“There’s no doubt in my mind those marks are from that chair,” the forensic expert said. “I’ve shown this case to a lot of people — hundreds of crime scene experts. All of them agree. Nobody disagrees. They need to have someone take a look at it other than that group, because they are all fixed in their minds it was a suicide.

“People don’t want to change. I would be willing to meet with them. Someone needs to take a look at it from our perspective — someone without any bias.”

Morris would have turned 33 last week. Her mother, Kelly Osborn, says she has never believed her daughter killed herself.

“It’s very simple,” Osborn said. “If at some point Sheena was in that wicker chair after she was dead, how then did she hang herself in the shower?”

After Morris was found hanging in the shower stall, Bradenton Beach police detective Lenard Diaz quickly concluded that the young woman had killed herself. Diaz had never before investigated a suspicious death on his own.

It wasn’t until 22 days after Morris’ death that Diaz first interviewed Morris’ fiance, Joe Genoese, then 48, in person. Eight months later, the detective interviewed Marcos Claudio, whom Genoese had named as a person who could confirm his alibi.

Diaz never wrote a police report documenting either interview.

Diaz knew Genoese and Morris had a physical fight earlier that day, which left visible injuries on Morris’ neck and defensive wounds on her hands. And he knew Genoese left the hotel around 1:21 a.m., because Bradenton Beach police officers who were dispatched to investigate the couple’s fight wrote in their reports that they passed Genoese on the stairway as they were walking to the room. They did not stop or question him.

Genoese has strongly denied any involvement in Morris’ death.

Attempts by the Herald-Tribune to contact him for this story were not successful.

There were other red flags.

Crime scene photos show that Morris’ feet were caked with sand, yet there was no sand in the shower stall where she was found or on the bathroom floor.

Also, Morris called 911 after Genoese left her, and can be heard telling the 911 dispatcher that he took her purse, leaving her stranded without any cash. The next day when her body was found, her purse was found in the room.

Morris’ pants legs were sweeping off toward the shower door, which experts said is inconsistent with the act of suicide by hanging. If Sheena had hung herself, and thrashed as she choked, her pants legs would have ridden up her legs, and been found bunched underneath, instead of being found under her feet, flowing toward the shower door.

Investigators also noted petechial hemorrhages — burst blood vessels in Sheena’s eyes — which are more common in strangulations than hangings.

Months later, Genoese failed a polygraph examination about the case on a two-part episode of “Dr. Phil.” Jack Trimarco, a former FBI polygraphist who conducted the test, said Genoese was deceptive when asked if he killed Morris or was somehow involved in her death.

Trimarco, who conducted more than 3,500 polygraph examinations before his death last year, including in some of the most high-profile FBI cases, said he believed Genoese should have been questioned thoroughly years ago.

As concerns about the thoroughness of Diaz’s investigation grew, Vega changed Morris’ autopsy report from “suicide” to “undetermined.”

After the Herald-Tribune published a special report about Morris’ death, the case drew international attention.

FDLE assembled a panel of experts to re-examine the case. The group consisted of seasoned prosecutors, detectives, forensic specialists and medical examiners.

The experts concluded that the case should be reopened, and FDLE assigned several special agents to the investigation.

Assistant State Attorney Arthur Brown III, who oversaw the state probe, ultimately concluded that Morris killed herself. But many of Brown’s conclusions drew criticism from Morris’ friends and family, who said FDLE investigators manipulated their statements — cherry-picking comments to support the suicide theory and discounting anything that did not support suicide. Several said the content of what they told investigators was radically altered.

Osborn and her family started to question some of the very emotional arguments Brown had made, especially after reading the 21-page memorandum the prosecutor had written for the case.

Osborn still maintains that Brown’s report read more like an argument against anyone who concluded that Morris’ death did not appear to be suicide.

“They didn’t investigate Sheena’s death,” Osborn said recently. “They investigated Sheena. Their sole purpose was to cover up for law enforcement’s bungled investigations.”

New evidence

Johnson sent Vega a “Forensic Consultative Report” in December, seeking “to identify what the correct manner of death ruling is in the death investigation of Sheena Morris.”

The report was co-authored by three additional senior forensic experts.

It points out but does not dwell on missteps by law enforcement. It addresses the highly charged nature of the controversial investigations.

“This case has proven toxic to be affiliated with over the years, and as such a number of highly skilled investigators from various law enforcement agencies, both local and state, are reluctant, and frankly scared, to author an opinion paper for fear of agency reprisals,” the report states. “This includes opinions that they have formed based on new physical evidence presented in this report.”

Johnson’s report chronicles how the new evidence was shown to “hundreds of crime scene analysts, death investigators and detectives in training venues across the United States,” as part of her “staged crime scene” courses.

“Collectively, numerous investigators, detectives and crime scene personnel have expressed concern about the lividity pattern on the lower back/buttocks area of Sheena Morris,” the report states. “Experience level in these courses, among those concerned, ranged from a couple years to 20 years of experience with a collective experience of over 200 years of doing crime scene investigative work.”

One of the students suggested that the lividity pattern resembled that of a wicker chair.

Johnson immediately called Osborn, and the two went to the hotel where Morris died. They obtained a chair that was the same make and model as the chair found in Morris’ hotel room. The forensic specialists photographed the chair using a ruler in the frame to gauge the exact size of the wicker pattern.

Comparing the pattern to the marks on Morris’ back was somewhat problematic because investigators did not include a ruler in their photos. However, Osborn still has the underwear her daughter was wearing, so Johnson and her team were able to measure the garment and use it to create an accurate scale of the lividity pattern.

“The blanched patterned lividity appears to match that which would be created by the wicker design of the lower back of the chair, in size, configuration and angles,” the report states.

Johnson and her team could find nothing in the shower stall where Morris’ body was found that could have created the pattern.

“Reasonable inferences and logical conclusions allow even the most novice law enforcement officer, crime scene investigator, detective, FDLE special agent and state attorneys to come to the correct conclusion, once they eliminate their investigative bias on coming up with non-scientific methods and investigative adjuncts to ignore the hard physical evidence, and continue to believe this case is a suicide in the face of overwhelming physical and forensic evidence,” the report states. “For a skilled forensic pathologist the solution is clear as is the correct manner of death.”

• “There is no scientific explanation for the blanched lividity pattern as occurring from any object, wall or floor inside the shower enclosure.”

• “This pattern lividity and blanching matches with wicker weave pattern of the chair inside the condo in size, configuration and angles.”

• “The lividity pattern and blanching on Sheena’s back developed after Sheena was deceased with no beating heart.”

• “Sheena had to remain in the chair for a sufficient time period for gravity to take effect and dependent lividity to develop within the pattern.”

• “Then and only then, Sheena was moved by another person into the shower and the death staged to look like a suicide hanging.”

“The above are the forensic facts of the case and they are irrefutable,” the report states.

Red flags

Response

Vega and Utley both said they do not believe the lividity pattern on Morris’ back was caused by the wicker chair.

“I don’t think so, because you’d expect a change in the pattern would occur when she was hanging,” Vega told the Herald-Tribune.

In a written response to Johnson’s report, Vega and Utley noted they “strongly disagree” with the conclusions that the lividity was caused by the chair, and that Morris’ body was moved after the pattern developed.

“While we agree with your opinion that the lividity pattern is not readily explained from the photos or other available information, this uncertainty does not change our overall opinion regarding the cause and manner of death as currently certified,” the medical examiners wrote. “Anecdotally, in our experience, most such linear patterns of lividity sparing are caused by creases or seams in clothing.”

Vega did acknowledge why he initially changed the manner of death from suicide to undetermined.

“After the first revisit with Kelly (Osborn) and her family, there was enough uncertainty, and the best answer if there’s uncertainty is to change it to undetermined,” Vega said.

The medical examiner said he would consider changing the manner of death from undetermined to homicide “at some point, if there is more information.”

Asked what type of information he would require to change the case’s status, Vega said, “A good confession or a video” of the crime.

As far as the State Attorney’s Office is concerned, Sheena’s case is still closed.

Brodsky’s office only received a copy of the recent correspondence regarding the lividity pattern from Vega a week ago, after the Herald-Tribune began asking questions.

“The most important thing is getting this right,” he said. “The truth is the most important thing.”

Brodsky said he is keeping Brown, now a division chief at the State Attorney’s Office in Manatee County, updated about the new evidence.

Brown told the Herald-Tribune Tuesday that when he wrote his 21-page report, he didn’t focus on the lividity pattern because it wasn’t given much credence by Vega.

“I reviewed the medical examiner’s reports at the time, which discussed their observations of the lividity,” Brown said. “It wasn’t a significant finding at the time, so I don’t recall focusing on that in our review of the case. It wasn’t a significant finding in the ME’s report.”

The FDLE agents he oversaw did not give the lividity marks on Morris’ back much attention either, Brown said.

“As I recall, they were more focused on following up on witnesses in the case, and did not review the medical examiner’s findings, but simply allowed them to speak for themselves,” he said.

The FDLE declined a request by the Herald-Tribune to interview the agents who conducted the Morris investigation.

On Monday, Brodsky issued a written statement calling for any new information, and indicating which agencies would conduct another investigation if the case were reopened.

“Dr. Vega finds it significant that the impression found on Ms. Morris’ back at the hotel was not visible during the autopsy. I think it’s important that we consider any new information in this case. If there are any new reports, they should be shared with the medical examiner,” Brodsky said in the statement. “I will be also forwarding their reports to the Bradenton Beach Police Department and FDLE for their consideration. We’ll continue to work with the medical examiner and law enforcement to review any new or additional findings. The quest for the truth is always paramount.”

Asked if he has confidence in the Bradenton Beach Police Department’s ability to conduct a thorough review of the new evidence, Brown said, “I have confidence they will review the information we give them, as will FDLE.”

Osborn said she and her entire family are outraged at the prospect of Bradenton Beach Police and FDLE examining the case, again.

“Four years after Sheena died, when FDLE finally stepped in, they didn’t do an actual investigation of the death,” Osborn said. “What they did was a character assassination of Sheena and our family.”