A 14-month Florida state investigation into the death of Sheena Morris has concluded that her death was a suicide. No evidence of a homicide was found. And Joe Genoese, Morris' fiancé whom Jack Trimarco all but accused of murdering her, has passed a polygraph examination administered by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement:
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20131121/article/131129926 NEW: In reversal, Sheena Morris' family rejects finding of suicide By Lee Williams
Published: Thursday, November 21, 2013 at 12:04 p.m. For a few hours Wednesday, Kelly Osborn's faith in her daughter Sheena Morris ebbed.
Osborn and her family received a powerful, emotional presentation from the prosecutor in charge of the “Sheena case,” Assistant State Attorney Arthur Brown III, and the state agents who spent 14 months investigating the 2009 death.
The presentation included charts and crime scene photos of Osborn's daughter, presented on an easel. Morris' family was not allowed to record the meeting.
Afterward, Osborn hugged and thanked the lawmen and then drove home to Tampa.
She told the Herald-Tribune she had accepted her daughter's suicide, and was thankful for the professional investigation she had wanted for nearly five years.
But a few hours later — after discussing the meeting with Sheena's father, Dave Morris, who flew to Tampa from his New York home to attend the briefing — and with her current husband, Osborn said she “came to her senses.”
“Sheena didn't kill herself,” Osborn said late Wednesday night. “She was murdered.”
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. That document was not given to them during their meeting at the State Attorney's Office.
Brown's report, which was based on an investigation by special agents from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, states that investigators found “no evidence of a homicide.”
It includes interviews with other forensic experts, in addition to snippets of information that Brown gleaned from several homicide textbooks.
Osborn says that Brown's report reads more like an argument against others who concluded that Morris' death did not appear to be suicide.
“I do not agree. It's my assessment of the evidence,” Brown said. “There was no evidence to support that she was unconscious before she was hung. There were no injuries, no drugs and low blood alcohol.”
Brown said he has never included citations into any so-called “decline memo,” and had to educate himself as best he could.
Witness criticisms About the same time Morris' family was questioning the prosecutor's findings, calls started coming in.
Some of the people named in the report, including several of her daughter's friends, told Osborn that what FDLE wrote about conversations they had with agents was not right, was taken out of context, or both.
FDLE agents accused Justina Jones, a longtime friend who has known Morris since age 12, of providing “inconsistent information” about Morris' state of mind.
Jones denied knowing how Morris met her former fiance or where she worked, the agents reported, even though Jones lived with Morris and dated Morris' manager.
Jones said Thursday the agents erred, twisting her statements from different periods of her life.
“They combined multiple time-frames into one statement, which makes it false” she said. “They did what they pleased with the information. They got it wrong. Sheena was murdered.”
Another of Morris' friends said agents told her that her name would remain private.
“They never said it would be released to the media,” the woman said.
The agents asked her about Morris' reaction to the 2008 suicide of a friend, Matt Kennedy.
“Sheena talked about it — why he would do it, but his death didn't affect her as they wrote,” the woman said. “Sheena was curious about it, but I never told them it affected her. They pumped it up — the seriousness of it.”
The woman requested that her name not be used in this story.
'Me against them' During their meeting with Osborn, neither Brown nor the FDLE agents would comment about how Bradenton Beach police handled the initial investigation, participants said.
“At first I accepted what they said, that this was a suicide,” Osborn said. “But it seems more like they just worked at disproving the facts — my facts — each point I had. I think they're covering for Bradenton Beach police. It's always been me against them. Now, I don't have anywhere to go.”
There are other concerns.
In his memo, Brown attacks the medical experts retained by Osborn.
But one of the medical experts that Brown cited, Canadian Dr. Anny Sauvageau, Alberta's chief medical examiner, is not even trained as a forensic pathologist, although she has written a book about autoeroticism.
Brown wrote that Sauvageau is considered “the leading expert in North America on hangings, and has studied the topic extensively since 2004.”
According to a 2012 story in the Calgary Sun, Andrew Baker, a forensic pathologist and president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, questioned Sauvageau's appointment as Alberta's chief medical examiner, asking why “anyone in a top post — be it in the U.S. or Canada — would not have the highest level of training available.”
In a letter to the Sun, published Dec. 8, 2012, Donavon Young, assistant deputy minister of justice services for Alberta's justice and solicitor general, defended Sauvageau's 2011 appointment: “It is important to note that when she completed her residency in anatomical pathology in the early 2000s, forensic pathology was not a specialty in Canada. The forensic pathology program in Canada began in 2009.”
He noted that Sauvageau helped create the exam administered by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons to all doctors in Canada seeking certification in this area. “She is not eligible to take this exam because of her role in authoring it.”
Brown said he was not aware of any concerns about Sauvageau's credentials.
The prosecutor said he did not send Sauvageau a case file to examine, just quotes from the report of one of the forensic experts that Osborn hired to examine Sheena's death.
Brown's report also indicates that Morris' former fiance, Joe Genoese, passed a recent polygraph examination conducted by Sharon Feola, a trained polygraphist and FDLE agent.
Genoese failed an earlier polygraph conducted by Jack Trimarco, which aired on the nationally televised “Dr. Phil” show.
Feola, according to Brown, criticized the questions Trimarco asked, stating they were “not appropriate nor generally relevant test questions,” and that they were “designed to evoke emotional responses based on their very wording.”
Brown said he never obtained copies of the questions that Trimarco asked Genoese, relying instead on Genoese's recollections of questions that were asked of him during the exam.
Trimarco, who was the chief polygraphist of the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office from 1991 to 1998, has performed more than 1,100 criminal polygraphs related to FBI investigations.
Those cases included the Unabomber, the Whitewater investigation and the bombings of the World Trade Center and the federal building in Oklahoma City. Trimarco has also performed numerous classified examinations involving foreign terrorists.
Feola has been a polygraphist for seven years.
According to his website, Trimarco has attended more than 50 polygraph training seminars conducted by the FBI or professional polygraph organizations and taught at federal, state and local agencies; national and state polygraph associations and private and professional groups.
Feola received her polygraph certification through a program held at the Northeast Counterdrug Training Center, operated by the Pennsylvania National Guard. The program was developed by the Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Area Community College.
Asked whether Feola was qualified to criticize Trimarco's process for delivering the polygraphy test to Genoese, Brown said, “I simply reported what she said.”
Feola did not return calls or emails seeking comment for this story. Genoese did not return calls seeking comment.
Check back for updates to this developing story.
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show, Brittany Bowers and Will Lewis, of deception with regard to their claim that their friend, Jacob Limberios, shot himself. However, since the show aired, the Ohio Attorney General has reported his conclusion that
, and that a defect in his gun may have caused it to fire without the trigger being pulled. Brittany Bowers and Will Lewis had both passed polygraphs administered by the Ohio Attorney General's Office Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Trimarco reviewed the Bureau of Criminal Investigation's polygraph charts and scored them as "inconclusive." That episode of the
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Jack Trimarco Accuses Joe Genoese of Deception in Fiancée Sheena Morris's Death (Read 71185 times)
