In the spring of 1977, 39-year-old Charles “Chuck” Morgan appeared to be a successful family man living in Tucson, Arizona. He was married to his wife, Ruth, had four daughters, and was president of his own escrow company.
By the beginning of summer, he was dead in the Arizona desert.
What happened in the months between is difficult to separate from the plot of a conspiracy thriller: an unexplained three day disappearance, plastic handcuffs, a claim that someone had drugged his throat, possible organized-crime connections, secret testimony, a mystery woman calling herself “Green Eyes,” a tooth wrapped in a handkerchief, and a $2 bill covered in apparent codes.
Some parts of Morgan’s story come from his wife and later witnesses and cannot be independently verified. But many of the strangest details found after his death were documented by investigators and contemporary newspapers.
The first disappearance
On March 22, 1977, Morgan left home to take two of his daughters to school.
Then he disappeared.
Three days later, at around 2 a.m. Ruth Morgan heard their dog barking and a noise at the back door.
Chuck was standing outside.
According to Ruth, he was missing a shoe. Plastic restraints were still attached to his hands, and another was around one ankle.
More disturbing was the fact that he would not speak.
Ruth later recalled that when she asked whether he could write, Morgan nodded. She brought him a pen and paper.
What he wrote was bizarre.
Morgan claimed he had been kidnapped. He said his captors had painted the inside of his throat with some kind of hallucinogenic drug and that the substance could damage his nervous system, drive him insane, or kill him.
When Ruth wanted to contact a doctor or police, he refused.
According to her, Chuck believed involving anyone else could amount to a death sentence for the entire family.
For roughly the next week, Ruth cared for him at home.
During that period Morgan wrote another strange message: “They took my Treasury identification.”
Ruth said this was the first time she had heard her husband suggest he had any connection to the federal government. Morgan later told her he had supposedly been working with the Treasury Department for several years.
Whether Morgan really had a Treasury role has never been conclusively established. But there was one element of his claims that was not simply paranoia or family lore: his business had placed him close to serious financial investigations.
Morgan had performed escrow work associated with organized-crime figures, and contemporary reporting later established that he had recently testified in a secret state investigation into illegal financial activity on both sides of the Arizona-Mexico border. He had also told other people that he was working undercover for the Treasury Department.
His behavior changed rapidly and whatever happened during those three missing days, Morgan apparently came away convinced that his life was in danger.
He began wearing a bulletproof vest.
He carried weapons.
His belt buckle concealed a knife.
His Mercury Cougar was modified so that it could be unlocked through the fender from outside the vehicle.
He also became particularly protective of his daughters, reportedly insisting on driving them himself.
Then, roughly two and a half months after the first disappearance, Morgan vanished again.
This time he did not return.
Nine days into his disappearance, Ruth received a telephone call from a woman she did not recognize.
The woman addressed her familiarly as “Ruthie.”
According to Ruth, the caller told her:
“Chuck is all right. Ecclesiastes 12, 1 through 8.”
Then she hung up.
Ecclesiastes 12 is an unusually ominous passage to invoke while speaking to the wife of a missing man. It deals with approaching death, the failing of the body, and the eventual return of the body to dust.
Two days later, on June 18, 1977, Charles Morgan was found dead approximately 40 miles west of Tucson, near his Mercury Cougar. He had been missing for eleven days.
Morgan had suffered a single close-range gunshot wound to the back of his head.
The weapon was his own .357 Magnum revolver and was lying nearby.
Morgan had gone into the desert dressed like a man expecting someone else to shoot him.
He was wearing his bulletproof vest.
He still had a holster and the belt buckle containing the concealed knife.
According to the Arizona Daily Star, investigators found no fingerprints on the revolver beside him.
The contents of Morgan’s car were just as strange.
Investigators found weapons, ammunition and CB-radio equipment.
Then they found one of Morgan’s teeth.
It had apparently been removed from his mouth and carefully wrapped inside a handkerchief.
Why the tooth had been removed, when it happened, or why Morgan kept it wrapped in his vehicle has never been satisfactorily explained.
Investigators also reportedly found a piece of paper containing directions to the area where Morgan died. The directions were written in Morgan’s own handwriting.
A pair of sunglasses found at the scene reportedly did not belong to him.
And then they discovered the item that has come to define the case.
Pinned or clipped inside Morgan’s underwear was a $2 bill covered in writing.
This was not simply a dollar bill with a random scribble or two.
On one side were seven Spanish names beginning with the letters A through G.
“Ecclesiastes 12” was written on the bill.
The numbers corresponding to verses 1 through 8 were apparently indicated with arrows connected to portions of the bill’s serial number.
That was the exact chapter of the Bible the mysterious woman had mentioned to Ruth only two days before Morgan’s body was discovered.
The reverse side had figures depicted in the Declaration of Independence scene were numbered, and a rough map had been drawn across the bill. The map appeared to correspond to an area south of Tucson toward the Mexican border.
Nobody has convincingly demonstrated what Morgan was trying to communicate.
But hiding the bill inside his clothing strongly suggests that, if Morgan placed it there himself, he wanted it to stay with him and eventually be discovered.
“Green Eyes”
Two days after Morgan’s body was found, another call reportedly came in-- this time to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.
The caller identified herself only as “Green Eyes.”
According to the account later featured by Unsolved Mysteries, she claimed she was the same woman who had telephoned Ruth and quoted Ecclesiastes.
She also claimed she had recently met Morgan at a motel.
Her story, if true, offers one possible explanation for why Morgan had been hiding.
“Green Eyes” claimed Morgan showed her a briefcase containing thousands of dollars. She said he believed a contract had been placed on his life and intended to use the money to buy his way out of it.
There is no independent way to know how much of her account was true.
But investigators had legitimate reasons to examine the possibility that Morgan had become entangled with dangerous people.
His escrow work had brought him into contact with organized-crime interests, and he had given secret testimony in a state investigation shortly before his death. Those connections were reported in Arizona newspapers independently of the later television retellings.
Murder or suicide?
The Pima County Sheriff’s investigation ultimately concluded that there was no evidence of foul play and treated Morgan’s death as a suicide.
It is possible to construct a suicide theory.
Morgan may have been under enormous psychological pressure. His first disappearance could have been staged or could have involved events very different from what he told his wife. The mysterious clues may have been created by Morgan himself.
But that interpretation raises its own questions.
If Morgan intended to kill himself, why did he travel into the desert wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying multiple means of protecting himself?
Why were there no fingerprints on the revolver found beside him?
Why was his tooth wrapped inside a handkerchief?
What was the purpose of the directions to the scene?
Who owned the sunglasses?
And, most importantly, what was the purpose of the $2 bill hidden beneath his clothing?
And the obvious detail of a bullet wound to the back of the head being deemed a suicide just does not jive with me.
The alternative is that Morgan really was frightened because someone intended to kill him.
In that scenario, the $2 bill becomes particularly interesting. It could have been something he prepared in advance-- a crude dead-man’s message containing names, locations or information that would make sense only to whoever knew the key.
There is also the unanswered question of the first disappearance.
If Ruth’s description was accurate, Morgan returned home physically restrained and so frightened that he refused medical treatment or police involvement. Even if his explanation about a hallucinogen was false or confused, something appears to have convinced him that he and his family were in immediate danger.
One final strange detail
After Morgan died, Ruth said two men arrived at her home claiming to be FBI agents.
According to her, they briefly displayed identification and asked to search the house. She allowed them inside, and they searched extensively without explaining exactly what they were looking for.
Ruth did not record their names.
Journalist Don Devereux later attempted to obtain information about Morgan from the FBI and claimed he encountered difficulty establishing what records the agency had concerning him.
Because this portion of the story relies heavily on Ruth and Devereux’s accounts, I would not treat it as proof of a government conspiracy.
But nearly fifty years later, there is no single explanation that comfortably accounts for everything.
Maybe Chuck Morgan was involved in financial crimes and knew too much.
Maybe he secretly cooperated with investigators and was discovered.
Maybe he was suffering from paranoia and created an elaborate narrative around his own death.
Or maybe the strangest clues-- the restraints, the vest, the tooth, the unidentified sunglasses and especially the coded $2 bill--were exactly what they appeared to be:
pieces of a warning Morgan never lived long enough to explain.
Source:
Arizona Daily Star — Charles Morgan
https://tucson.com/charles-morgan/article_9b6ad508-b528-11e7-8290-979928329998.html
