Since Morgan Harrington disappeared on October 17, 2009 I have been following her case, which up to now remains unsolved. I taped the Monday night broadcast of Disappeared on The Investigation Discovery Channel. It covers Morgan Harrington’s case and is titled Heavy Metal Mystery. The special is well produced, I learned alot, but much of the confounding evidence came back to haunt me.
The reenactments of Morgan preparing for the Metallica concert, her departure to Charlottsville and arrival at the John Paul Jones Arena seemed as real to me as if I had been there when it happened. There’s her familiar outfit again, the black mini-skirt, black tights, chin-high black boots, decorative jewelry and the identifying black T-shirt with the metal band name Pantera on the front.
I’ve viewed Heavy Metal Mystery four times already. And rather than summarize it for you, since I know you will see it for yourself, I will only touch on a few items that continue to puzzle me, even as they did at the time Morgan went missing. The first and most obvious enigma, is why did she leave the arena? Her behavior outside the arena was indeed very odd.
The special points out there were 18 clearly marked women’s restrooms within John Paul Jones concert hall. Therefore, it’s not logical that Morgan left the arena looking for a restroom. Why’d she leave? Did she do some drugs? She was obviously incapacitated when in the parking lot outside the arena. Her friends said she hadn’t had too much to drink. She was stumbling around outside the arena.
Morgan must have taken some type of drug, unless you can think of reason why she would just drop her purse and cell phone, and leave these important items in the parking lot, then take off hitchhiking on the Copeley Street Bridge. This makes no sense at all! A person would have to be very stoned to do this. (You probably don’t like to hear this, but how else can her behavior be explained?) Or did she really leave these items?
The perpetrator could have returned to the arena and dumped these items in the parking lot to make it seem as if Morgan had left them there. Have the police eliminated this possibility? Why was the battery missing from her cell phone? Either the killer took it out so it couldn’t be traced or else a random individual came upon it and took it out. The latter is less logical in my mind.
One thing I learned from Heavy Metal Mystery is that newspaper reporter Courteney Stuart, who writes for the Hook in Charlottesville, Va., has done the most original research on the Morgan Harrington case. Courteney makes an appearance on the special and has written dozens of stories on the case in the last year and half. She has interviewed many of the witnesses and is your clearest window into the evidence.
Try out ‘He’s Still Here.’ And other revelations in the Harrington case by Courteney Stuart. Two different sets of witnesses saw Morgan hitchhiking on the Copeley Street Bridge. The killer had to have picked her up at this spot around 9:30 PM on that dreary Saturday in the fall of 2009. But what about the four boys that were spotted with her?
Have these young men ever been identified? And Norma Parsons’ story is interesting. Norma, a newspaper deliverer, is quite sure she saw Morgan with some young men on the campus of Virginia Tech. Were these young men the same young men who were with her on the bridge earlier in the evening? And if this true, then Morgan’s meeting with her killer must have happened later on, early Sunday morning.
Norma Parsons was quite certain that she saw Morgan that morning (10/18/’09). However, how does this unidentified individual, whose DNA was found on her retrieved Pantera shirt, fit into the picture painted by several eye-witnesses? We don’t know. Why would the perpetrator randomly discard the Pantera T-shirt and not other items? We don’t know. Why do the police refuse to disclose the cause of death? We don’t know. Why did the killer hold on to Morgan’s Swarovski-brand necklace? We don’t know.
