Arizona Daily Star from Tucson, Arizona • Page 10

HE ARIZONA DAILY STAR TUCSON, SUNDAY, FEBRUARYS, 1979 PAGE TEN SECTION A Mysterious shooting ended both of Tucsonibusinessman's lives "There was no reason for Morgan to kill himself. He had everything going," says his attorney. (Continued From Page One) (the) kind of a person (who would kill himself)," said Mrs. Morgan in a recent interview. Newman said, "There was no reason for Morgan to kill himself.

He had everything going. He was a family man and real active in the (Masonic) lodge. He was well-liked in the community. He just had acquired a new business which he had been trying to do for a long time. He had finalized one of his goals.

It was just out of character for the guy." Mrs. Morgan said Larry Simpson, the sheriff's detective who headed the investigation in its final stages, told her that, based on what he had seen and been told, "there was no way Chuck Morgan committed suicide." Simpson has since quit the Sheriff's Department and could not be reached for comment. Newman said, "There are obviously many questions that can't be answered. The physical evidence doesn't tend to prove suicide nor does it tend to prove homicide." A sheriff's deputy who helped investigate the death said Morgan could have pulled the revolver's trigger with his thumb, even though it would have been awkward. He said blood and dirt found on the gun could account for its lack of fingerprints.

Morgan had two life insurance policies. One paid off after he died, and Mrs. Morgan is contesting the refusal of the second to pay because suicides are not covered. Morgan worked at the former Western Title Insurance Agency until he was fired five months before his death after arguments with his supervisor. He bought controlling shares in the Statewide Escrow Service and was getting the business started when he died.

He had previously worked for the Country Escrow Service Mrs. Morgan a briefcase her husband normally carried with him has never been found. An unidentified woman called Dupnik and told him there was $60,000 in the case. Morgan's banking records show that he frequently made large deposits and wrote big checks, yet his widow said she has found no large assets. Pinned to Morgan's undershorts when he was found was a $2 bill with seven Spanish surnames written on it along with a map of a large area southwest of Tucson.

A man who identified himself only as "the husband of green eyes" called Dupnik and told him that Morgan and his associates were involved in buying gold bars and gold coins in Mexico. Investigators have never identified the caller nor the woman. Morgan also was seen at various restaurants and stayed at several motels near Interstate 10 on the westside of town before he was found dead. A woman who investigators theorize may have been "green eyes" was reportedly seen with him. Morgan disappeared once in March 1977 and later told his wife and some associates that he had been kidnapped, had his throat painted with hallucinogenic drugs and been flown out of town.

He told his wife that a $2 bill he always kept with him was temporarily taken in that kidnapping. Mrs. Morgan said her husband was very dirty when he came home, and told her he had had to drive home in handcuffs. She said he had a handcuff around one leg and was missing a shoe. She said he communicated with her by writing notes because his tongue was swollen from the hallucinogenic drugs.

Jeff Turberville, a friend and employee of Morgan, told investigators that Morgan told him when he returned from his 1977 I TucsonV PAPAGO Ai ra Valley INDIAN RESERVATION 1 Ana Valley Turberville told sheriff's investigators that Morgan had told him he "was aware of many activities of an illegal nature iri the handling, buying and selling money." Turberville said Morgan was close to a prominent Tucson man whom Morgan de-scribed as a Mafia member who wields a lot of political and economic power. He also quoted Morgan as saying that an employer whom he did not identify "was somehow messed up in the Mafia and had threatened his family." Turberville said that was one of the reasons Morgan carried a gun. Mrs. Morgan said he also refused to let his four daughters leave the house unescorted or allow strangers in the house. Morgan told his wife he was working as an undercover agent for the U.S.

Treasury Department. Pima County Sheriff's tigators, however, checked with the Treasury Department, the FBI, the Drug En- forcement Administration and other federal agencies and could find no record of his being an undercover agent or an informer. Two days after his death, the sheriff's. department received information from the U.S. Customs Service here that in 1973 its agents had worked on a criminal investj- gation involving Morgan and two other, (i people, one of whom is now dead.

Customs officials said the investigation involved a "scam to sell non-existent gold." Sheriff's records say the Customs Service did not think there was enough evidence for federal indictments and that the U.S. Attorney's Office did not want to pursue the matter. Turberville told sheriff's investigators that Morgan had told his co-workers at Statewide Escrow Service before his last disappearance that he would be "looking over his shoulder" until the statute of limitations ran out on possibly illegal acts in which he had been involved. Included in Morgan's voluminous records are many telegrams, notes and figures about the buying and selling of millions of ounces of almost pure gold. He had letters and telegrams from Switzerland, England and Mexico.

The Star contacted a man in the Phoenix area who claims to be a former gold smuggler and says he knew Morgan. The man, who insisted on not being identified because of his past criminal activities, said he met Morgan and other alleged smugglers several times In the past four or years in Hermosillo, and a motel in; Nogales, Ariz. During a recent trip to Hei-mosUlohe said, he was told by people associated with 1 the smuggling business that Morgan was in Hermosillo the night before he died. He said he was told that Morgan had left Her- mosillo with a known, "big" gold smuggler who, he said, is now supposedly in a prison in Mexico. i r' Points xavier" V-j MPJ28 INDIAN RESERVATION tBody found Kitt Peak Sasabe Your Valentine's Day sentiment is crystal-clear.

And no wonder: it's rich, gleaming English lead crystal by Dartington. A paperweight, a bibelot, a conversation piece an unforgettable Valentine. J7.50 Something Beautiful for Everyone. twice the first time 15 years ago and once for Lawyers Title of Arizona. Associates described Morgan as an "escrow genius." He also did work with trusts and dabbled in personal real estate deals.

Under a State Banking Department's threat to deny him a license to operate Statewide Escrow, Morgan testified secretly before the department about the former Banco Internacional de Arizona and alleged illegal activities concerning one of its former owners, David Kali, and about trusts handled by a former title insurance company he worked for, case reports say. After Morgan's testimony, State Banking Department officials ordered Kali, Paul Rees Jr. and Nathan Shiff to divest themselves of their controlling ownership in Banco Internacional because of questionable loans. Records show that Morgan wrote two checks payable to the bank on a Western Title account. The checks, for $360,000 and $36,000, were to buy Banco stock for Kali, Rees and Shiff, but they bounced for insufficient funds.

The checks were later made good, and the Banking Department got a court order barring the company from writing bad checks. Newman told police, records show, that "certain factions and individuals" did not want Morgan to buy Statewide Escrow because he would be in direct competition with them. Morgan told several business associates and friends after his testimony to the State Banking Department that he feared for his life. Pat Baldwin, a Statewide employee, told authorities that Morgan would not sit with his back to a window because of those fears. mSmm heart.

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For your Valentine. For the treasures of her Dead man's map A map of this area was found pinned to the undershorts of Charles Morgan, along with a $2 bill with several names on it, when his body was found near Three Points. (Star map by Judy Margolis) temple 1 lives in shadow of Jonestown Your golden opportunity to make him happy. disappearance that seven platinum bars had been stolen from the trunk of his car, Tucson police reports say. Turberville said Morgan told him the platinum bars were worth approximately $50,000.

When Morgan disappeared in 1977, his wife told police in an affidavit that Mor gan said he had been told not to call police because if he did, he would be "signing a death warrant for himself and his family." For a long time, Morgan had worn a butch haircut and was clean-shaven, but after the 1977 disappearance, he started growing a beard, his widow said. Morgan also was what investigators call a "collector" a man who collected records and notes of every type. Many of them involved prominent Tucson people, as well as detailed notes on his alleged gold and land deals. He told his wife several times that he had damaging, potentially embarrassing information on prominent Tucsonans and area politicians involving escrow and land deals and laundering money. Mrs.

Morgan said her husband refused to give her further details, saying he wanted to safeguard his family. Mark Lane and the Cult lawyer By JOHN M. CREWDSON 1979 The New York Times First of two parts SAN FRANCISCO Last September, Mark Lane was proclaiming Jonestown a socialist paradise and professing that he had found a conspiracy within the U.S. government to destroy the People's Temple and its founder, the Rev. Jim Jones.

By December, he was calling Jonestown a horror and Jones a paranoid murderer, insisting he had suspected as much all along. Lane's turnaround came almost immediately after the events of Nov. 18, when Rep. Leo J. Ryan, and four other persons were shot to death after a visit to the commune in Guyana and when Jones and more than 900 residents of Jonestown died, many of them apparent suicides.

These remarks of Lane, a New York lawyer and author, are drawing special attention at the moment because of pending judicial actions against him. Buta closer examination of his involvement with the temple illustrates his propensity, demonstrated over two decades as a public personality, for attaching himself to issues of the moment. A formal complaint that could lead to disbarment has been filed in New York, based on allegations that Lane Lane failed to warn Ryan and his group of dangers that awaited them in Jonestown. In recent days, the relatives of some who died there have brought civil lawsuits against Lane, charging him with contributing to the wrongful deaths of the commune residents. And a California psychiatrist who is suing the temple said Lane posed as a magazine reporter while interviewing him, an action that apparently would violate the lawyers' code of professional responsibility.

The judicial inquiry in New York was based on a Washington Post reporter's article in which he said Lane had been quoted as saying he had kept to himself a Lane did not say that before the mass deaths, however. On Oct. 3, he and Freed said at a news cenference that they had found that Arerican intelligence agencies were to discredit Jones and disrupt his or-gsnization and that those agencies were fiianced with hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funds laund' red through a Jouth American country Lane praised Jones, describing Jones-tovn as an unarmed, peaceful, socialist-ag-arian community and an embarrass-mtnt to the United States because of its sucess. Lane also said that no one was beng held there against his will. in his memo, Lane recommended that tht temple retain him to conduct a full-scile investigation, principally by filing reqiests for government records under thef reedom of Information Act.

Girry, the temple's principal attorney, had leen filing requests under the Freedom if Information Act for a year, and only tie Customs Bureau had found any mentioi of the temple or Jones in its files. The buieau refused to release its information sinje its investigation of alleged gun-running vas still under way. Lane filed any Freedom of Information remests or suits on the temple's behalf. Biwn said later that all he had done was eicourage the paranoia of Jones and his folowers. "And really," she added, "heJidn't do anything constructive to help out of it." Lane's proposals must have seemed attractive to Jtnes because a short time later the lawyer was offered, and accepted, what subsequently referred to as a "small fee $20,000 to work full time for the nftt three months to determine the origins the "campaign against the People's Tenple." Lane received $10,000 cashier's check Oct.

16. Lane acljiowledges that most of that money is unpent, but he said last week that he planed to keep it and bill the temple for tht rest. He also said he might use the mofcy on the temple's be half. (NEXT: The telligence gathering warning from someone in the temple that sandwiches to be served to the Ryan party were poisoned or treated with drugs, and had avoided eating any of them himself. Lane has denied making such a comment, but last week the Guyana Broadcasting Service reported that Lane had made essentially the same remarks in a tape-recorded interview a few days after the Jonestown deaths.

The chief counsel for the People's Temple, Charles Garry, who left Jonestown with Lane shortly before the mass deaths, says Lane made a similar statement to him that night in the Guyana jungle. The propriety and legality of Lane's behavior at the time he represented the temple remain to be decided in the courts. Whatever the outcome, his involvement with the People's Temple seems likely to follow him for the rest of his career. Lane's relationship with the cult began almost casually, sometime last summer, when his friend, Donald Freed, became interested in breaking what Jones believed was a conspiracy among federal agencies against the temple. Lane gained prominence through his assertions shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy that the president was a victim of a conspiracy.

Now he was apparently intrigued both by the suggestion of a plot to destroy Jones and, according to Freed, by Jones' offer of financial help in efforts to free James Earl Ray, imprisoned for killing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Jean Brown, who was in charge of the temple's headquarters here at the time of the Jonestown deaths and became its ranking official when Jones died, said in a recent interview that two things had convinced Jones that the federal government was intent on his destruction. U.S.

customs inspectors, looking for illicit firearms, opened crates of agricultural supplies sent to Jonestown by the temple, she said, and there were indications that the Federal Communications Commission, acting on short-wave radio operators' complaints about the temple's San Francisco-to-Jonestown radio link, was monitoring its broadcasts. Lane flew to Jonestown in mid-September to talk with Jones. The lawyer's interest, Freed said, had been stimulated partly by the temple's offer to pay his fare from Guyana to London, where he wanted to investigate a matter pertaining to Ray's case. But when Lane left Jonestown three days later, he had been retained by the temple. Lane said in a recent interview that he told Jones: "I thought they should not panic, should not develop this fortress mentality." A few days after he returned to the United States, however, Lane prepared a confidential memorandum that bore out, and enlarged upon, Jones' suspicions.

"Even a cursory examination" of the available evidence, Lane wrote to the commune's leader, "reveals that there has been a coordinated campaign to destroy the People's Temple and to impugn the reputation of its leader." The conspirators, the lawyer said, included not only the Bureau of Customs and the FCC but also the CIA, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. But several disaffected former members of the People's Temple had approached the FBI with stories of the physical and mental abuse, only to be told that the bureau lacked jurisdiction and could not take any action. Nor is there evidence that the FBI or the CIA showed any interest in the temple or its leader before Nov. 18. Moreover, barely a month before Lane wrote his memorandum, the IRS had advised the temple in a letter that it had no plans to investigate the church's finances or its self-proclaimed tax-exempt status.

And, despite the complaints, the FCC never moved to shut down the temple's San Francisco transmitter. Asked about all this. Lane conceded that no federal agency had ever taken formal action against the People's Temple. But he said he had believed in a conspiracy designed not to put Jones out of business or behind bars but rather to "drive Jim Jones crazy" by making him believe the government was preparing to move against him. Arizona's Jeweler Since 1897 Park Mall Center Also Phoenix Use one of Rosenzweig's convenient charge plans or American Express, BankAmericard, Master Charge.

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