Death in 2012 to be re-examined

Anne Arundel mom’s campaign successful

The Rev. Marguerite Morris didn’t cry while she read the opinion.

Except for the initial phone call with the Maryland Office of Administrative Hearings, she’d gone most of the day — her daughter Katherine’s 31st birthday — with dry eyes. She ordered dinner in her daughter’s honor at Olive Garden and blew out the lone candle on the ninth slice of birthday cake she’d ordered for Katherine

since she died in 2012.

After, she got in her car, turned on the overhead light and started to read the 58-page opinion. An administrative law judge found, after all these years, the state medical examiner shouldn’t have ruled her daughter’s death a suicide.

“I couldn’t think of a better birthday present to give her,” she said.

Morris has, for years, maintained Anne Arundel County police did not do a thorough enough investigation before determining her daughter’s death was a suicide in 2012. Lawsuits, legal inquiries and

letters filed over the last nine years gained little traction or were dismissed outright.

Morris broke through Thursday when an administrative law judge found the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner erred in ruling it a suicide. Judge Susan A. Sinrod recommended acting Maryland Department of Health Secretary Dennis Schrader order the office to change the cause of Katherine’s death to “undetermined” to allow police to consider additional evidence, such as Morris’ volatile marital situation with an Army specialist.

“While I certainly acknowledge that it is possible that the ultimate determination will be that Katherine committed suicide, prudence and diligence would dictate allowing such an investigation to occur,” Sinrod wrote in her finding.

Representatives for the Maryland Department of Health and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner both declined to comment.

Police spokesperson Marc Limansky declined to comment on the specifics of the case or the administrative opinion.

“We support the judicial and administrative processes, and at this time, there has been no change to the finding of the matter of death,” Limansky said. “We can’t speculate on what the future would bring.”

A security guard found Katherine Morris, 22, dead in her car behind the Anne Arundel Community College building in Hanover on May 6, 2012. Police who responded to the scene said they found lit charcoal grills and a bottle of sleeping pills inside the car, which was still running.

On Katherine’s phone, they found a note indicating she intended to end her own life. Back in her University of Maryland dorm room, there was a typed-out version, suggesting her husband’s infidelity drove her to do it.

Morris had secretly married Army Specialist Isaac Goodwin in August 2011. Goodwin filed for spousal assistance, which provided him with $600 monthly payments and a $100,000 life insurance policy should Katherine die. The insurance policy did not exclude suicide.

Shortly before Katherine’s death, she discovered Goodwin’s infidelity, according to the decision, and confronted him, threatening to notify his chain of command as adultery is a crime in the military.

Officers and the medical examiner investigated available evidence, including camera footage of the parking lot where the security guard found Katherine. Her death was ruled a suicide shortly thereafter.

But Marguerite Morris questioned their conclusion from the beginning, asking the police department to reopen the case several times in the years following her daughter’s death. The department did reexamine the case more than once and in 2014, assigned a cold case panel to look into it.

Every time, police reached the same conclusion: Katherine died by suicide.

“We are still not saying definitively that Katherine Morris couldn’t have harmed herself; we are just saying there are so many things to be looked into,” Morris said. “Something just doesn’t feel right.”

Morris wrote to the Maryland Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in 2015, asking the examiners to consider additional evidence she said the police did not. Police did not conduct a thorough investigation that considered the role Katherine’s marital strife could have played in her death and could not investigate further once the medical examiner ruled her death a suicide, she said.

The office denied her request. Morris appealed the determination to the secretary of the Maryland Department of Health.

The health department did not refer her appeal to the state Office of Administrative Hearings, a court that deals with disputes between citizens and state agencies, until July 14, five years after she filed it, according to the decision.

In the intervening years, Morris filed lawsuits against the Anne Arundel County Police Department, once in 2018 and again in 2019. Both times, she was unsuccessful.

Thursday’s proposed order marks a bright spot in her nine-year effort.

Morris doesn’t know what comes next. She’s hoping Schrader will heed Sinrod’s proposal, opening the door for further investigation into her daughter’s death, but nothing is guaranteed.

“We are still looking and still believing there is gonna be a change,” she said.

Morris finished reading the lengthy administrative opinion in the dimly lit parking lot Thursday and started up her car to drive home when the tears started flowing. She pulled into a convenience store parking lot and broke down.

“When you are in the battle, you don’t feel the wounds. When you are in the battle, you don’t see the battle scars,” Morris said. “I just sat in the car and quietly wept.”

She composed herself, walked in and bought a Coke. Then, she made the 20-minute drive home alone in the dark.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. Call 800-273-8255.

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