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Born at Walsall, England, during August 1929, Raymond Morris possessed good looks and above-average intelligence. He dabbled in poetry and photography, impressing acquaintances with the fact that he never lost his temper, shifting from sunny charm to icy stoicism in an instant. Married at nineteen, Morris frightened his wife with abrupt changes of mood, displaying cold fury when she balked at his spontaneous demands for sex. They separated nine years later, Morris withholding support payments until she agreed to visit him once or twice a week, bending over a table so that he could take her in the "animal position." By the time he married for the second time, the violent side of Raymond's nature had apparently evaporated, leaving him the perfect husband. But, in fact, his silent rage had merely been diverted from the home front to another area. On September 8, 1965, six-year-old Margarelt Reynolds vanished en route to her school, in the Birmingham suburb of Aston. No trace of her had been discovered by December 30, when five-year-old Diane Tift disappeared on the short walk between her home and her grandmother's house, in nearby Bromwich. On January 12, 1966, a workman spotted a child's body in a field near Cannock Chase, a few miles to the north; when the small corpse was moved, a second body was discovered underneath, pressed into the soft earth. The search for Margaret Reynolds and Diane Tift was over. On August 14, 1966, ten-year-old Jane Taylor went for a ride on her bicycle in Mobberly, south of the Cannock Chase region, and disappeared forever. Two months later, in October, Morris was accused of taking two girls into his Walsall apartment, leading them to separate rooms, and afterward undressing each. Because neither girl could corroborate the other's testimony charges were eventually dismissed. On August 19, 1967, Christine Darby, age 7, was playing with friends in Walsall, when a man pulled his car to the curb and asked directions to Caldmore Green. Christine climbed in the car, her playmates startled as; the driver roared off in the wrong direction. Five days later, searchers found her violated body in a field; she had been killed by suffocation, probably by hands pressed tight across her nose and mouth. Descriptions of the suspect car led homicide detectives to question various locals, including Raymond Morris, suspect in the prior molestation case. The matter was reluctantly abandoned after Raymond's wife confirmed that he had joined her in a shopping expedition on the day Christine was killed. On November 4, Morris tried, unsuccessfully, to abduct ten-year-old Margaret Aulton in Walsall. This time, a neighbor saw his license plate, and he was taken into custody. A search of his apartment turned up pornographic photos of his niece, the latter evidence persuading Raymond's wife to testify against him. At trial, with her admission that the shopping alibi had been a fabrication, Morris was convicted and received a term of life imprisonment . |
