Cohoes

Mayor Shawn M. Morse, who remains under investigation for allegations that he grabbed his wife by the neck and threw her to the ground during an argument last year, has been accused of using physical violence on multiple occasions against his wife and younger daughter, according to documents and child protective services reports obtained by the Times Union.

The new information expands the number of women that Morse has been accused of physically abusing. Colleen Keller, a former girlfriend, went public last year and said that Morse had repeatedly abused her in the 1990s, including an incident where he grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off the ground.

Another incident involved a former girlfriend who Morse allegedly grabbed by the hair and dragged out of a Cohoes pharmacy during an argument, according to state Assemblyman John McDonald, who witnessed the incident. McDonald, a former city mayor whose family has operated Marra's Pharmacy in Cohoes for decades, said that incident took place in the late 1980s and that the woman, now a Waterford resident, worked at the pharmacy at the time.

Morse has denied ever striking or choking the women, and would not comment on the allegations filed by his daughter.

But the documents shared with the Times Union include an affidavit — never filed in court — in which Morse's wife, Brenda, accused her estranged husband of assaulting her throughout their 19-year marriage. The document attributes to Brenda Morse statements that her husband "has punched me, kicked me, slapped me, broken a jewelry box over my head, broken a picture frame across my back, thrown me down a flight of stairs, and slammed my face against a concrete surface, causing a bloody nose and facial cuts."

Brenda Morse, who is pursuing a divorce, declined to comment for this story on the advice of her attorney. But she confirmed that the accusations contained in the affidavit and the child protective services reports are accurate, and that she stands by the allegations she made against her husband.

The child protective services reports, filed by investigators in Rensselaer County because of Shawn Morse's political ties in Albany County, detail allegations that he regularly used physical violence against his younger daughter, now 16, including pulling her hair, throwing her to the ground, choking her and punching her in the head. It's unclear why CPS investigators became involved, but during at least one interview Morse's daughter was accompanied by Heather Bradt, a math teacher and tutor at Cohoes High School who has mentored Morse's daughter. That interview took place March 24, 2017, at the Cohoes Public Library, according to the report.

During the interview, a CPS investigator wrote in a report that the daughter, then 15 — whose name is being withheld by the Times Union — recounted how a few days earlier her father allegedly attacked her unprovoked at the family's residence following a heated argument he had with his wife in the middle of the night, the document states.

"(Child) said she pulled covers over her head and (father) was pulling the covers off and punching her in the side of the head," the report states. "(Child) said she was fighting and kicking (father). ... (Child) said she got up to go to her room and put clothes on to leave. (Child) said (father) followed and was standing kind of on the side of her and he grabbed her with both hands and started to choke her. (Child) said (father) was saying 'I'll kill you right now ... who are you talking to me like that.' (Child) said (father) was holding her throat for about 5 seconds and said he saw that she couldn't breathe and started crying so he let go."

The report said that Brenda Morse and her daughter then "drove around for an hour and a half or so" and that Morse was sleeping when they returned home at 4 a.m.

A person familiar with the daughter's allegations, who spoke on the condition of not being identified, said that last year, after another incident when Morse had allegedly grabbed his daughter by the hair and threw her to the ground, Bradt, who as a teacher is a mandated reporter of domestic abuse, accompanied the teenager to the Cohoes Police Department to file a report about the incident.

Cohoes police Chief William Heslin was out of town last week and not available for comment. Assistant Chief Tom Ross did not respond to a request for comment. It's unclear whether the department, which was aware of the CPS investigation, looked into the allegations.

Morse declined to comment on the documented allegations by his daughter. "Shawn will not comment in any manner regarding his family," Joseph Ahearn, Morse's attorney, said in a statement last week.

But Ahearn said that Morse has denied "ever striking, choking his wife."

On Thursday, after the Times Union sent a list of questions to Ahearn and Morse for this story, Morse called his wife and asked her to issue a statement discounting her allegations of physical abuse by him.

"I want to know if you want to help us or you don't," Morse told his wife, according to a recording of the telephone conversation provided to the Times Union by a friend of Brenda Morse's. "But how am I going to pay you $1,000 a month if I don't make $1,000 a month? How am I going to (expletive) do anything? ... What am I going to do? I'm 51 years old."

Brenda Morse pressed her husband about the alleged physical violence that led her to call 911 last November, but he declined to acknowledge it. He responded: "I didn't hit you. ... You didn't scratch my face? ... Listen, I'm asking you (to retract the story) — if you don't want to, say no. ... Will you fix the problem? Or we have a nightmare to live with."

In November, a day after Brenda Morse dialed 911 and told a dispatcher that her husband had grabbed her by the neck and that she suffered scratches as he threw her to the floor in their residence, Morse denied having a scratch on his face. But a scratch was visible below his left eye when he attended a public ceremony in Cohoes that afternoon.

Despite the conflicting statements, Ahearn, Morse's attorney, said the fact there have been no charges filed as a result of the November incident is telling.

"If there was any credibility to Brenda Morse's 911 call, law enforcement would have arrested Shawn 10 months ago" he said.

Morse and Ahearn also provided text messages they said Brenda Morse sent three days after the incident to Michael Conners, the Albany County comptroller and a close friend of Morse's, in which she disavowed the 911 call and said she had done it to embarrass her husband. A source familiar with the police investigation that ensued said Brenda Morse later told investigators her husband had put her up to sending the text messages, and allegedly sat by her side and told her what to write in order to help save his political career.

She said that he also coached her to tell State Police investigators, who took over the investigation from Cohoes police, that the incident never happened. A State Police investigator who interviewed Brenda Morse told her he did not believe her and encouraged her to call them when she was ready to be truthful, according to multiple law enforcement sources.

Shawn Morse was elected Cohoes mayor in 2015 and faces re-election next year. Before becoming mayor in the city where he grew up, he was chairman of the Albany County Legislature, a powerful figure in the county's Democratic machine, and was employed as a Cohoes firefighter from 1989 to 2015.

The abuse allegations have dogged him since his wife called 911, marking the first time that allegations of domestic abuse against Morse became public.

A month later, as Morse publicly denied the accusations, Colleen Keller, who had dated Morse in the 1990s, went public with her allegations that he had physically abused her.

"The abuse started out with me being physically pushed, grabbed and verbally degraded. It escalated from there," she said.

Keller issued her statement a week after Morse disputed information in a Dec. 10 Times Union story that reported people close to Keller had described an incident from 1995, when she told police Morse grabbed her neck and lifted her off the ground during an argument. Morse said the incident never happened and that he had spoken to the unidentified women in that story, and that he claimed they had denied the Times Union's story.

"It did happen," Keller said in her statement. "He grabbed me by the throat, picked me up, and carried me by the throat into the dining room, where I finally was able to break free. The incident left me with bruises on my neck, throat and arms."

Three longtime friends of Keller's and a former city police officer, Gary Ethier, previously confirmed there were police responses to Keller's former Grant Street residence after she reported abusive behavior by Morse, including instances when she said he spit on her. The three people close to Keller said that her parents, now deceased, had kept copies of police reports and photographs of Keller's bruises to document the alleged abuse.

Keller said that Cohoes police declined to arrest Morse even when he allegedly forced his way into her private residence.

"The response to those calls by the police didn't make me feel safe," her statement read. "Shawn had and continues to have a great deal of sway in the city of Cohoes and I did not. I got restraining orders. Shawn violated them."

Morse's attorney issued a statement last year saying that Morse denied Keller's allegations. He said Keller and the mayor have a son together and dated for a shorter period of time than the four-year period she described in her statement.

"The relationship between Shawn and Colleen ended very shortly after the child was born (in 1994)," Ahearn said. "After a contentious paternity proceeding in family court, Shawn has ... spoken to Colleen only sporadically over the years."

The handling of abuse allegations against Morse by the Cohoes police has been a focus of the ongoing investigation by the Albany County district attorney's office. But it's unclear if the district attorney's office will issue a report on its findings or take any other action. Cohoes police had quickly dismissed Brenda Morse's allegations after responding to her 911 call last year, saying they noticed a scratch on Morse's face but did not see any visible injuries on Brenda Morse.

But within days of the incident, the department turned the case over to State Police on the recommendation of the Albany County district attorney's office. Although Cohoes police officials said their officers found no signs of abuse, they did not disclose that Brenda Morse told the patrol officers who first responded to the residence that her husband had "beat the (expletive) out of me again" and that she said there had been prior instances of domestic abuse.

Morse has issued public statements in the last year saying he never "harmed" or "hit" any women. He has criticized the Times Union's stories on his alleged abusive behavior as inaccurate and unsubstantiated.

Following his wife's 911 call last year, Morse weathered several weeks of political uncertainty. At one point, his supporters at his urging flooded a City Council meeting as a show of support. It came as Morse pushed back against calls from several local political leaders — including several fellow Democrats — to resign as mayor.

"State Police thoroughly investigated this case and did not develop probable cause to make an arrest. However, the case will be reopened if additional information is developed, and an arrest will be made if warranted," said Beau Duffy, a State Police spokesman. "While it's not appropriate to detail our interactions with the witnesses, we want to be clear that we will accept any new information related to this case."

blyons@timesunion.com • 518-454-5547 • @brendan_lyonstu