Accused killer confessed after officer’s plea, court told

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This article was published 20/11/2019 (2463 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

He maintained his innocence for hours, but in the end it was a police investigator’s appeal to his humanity that prompted James Morris to admit he had killed Christophur Baur.

Morris had been in a police interview room for nearly 10 hours on Feb. 15, 2015, when Det. Sgt. Scott Taylor dropped a bombshell: police officers searching Morris’s Magnus Avenue home had just found Baur’s frozen body, wrapped in plastic underneath his front porch.

“If you say nothing, do you somehow think you are going to get out from under this?” Taylor asked Morris in a police video interview played for jurors on Wednesday. “Of course not.”

“My lawyer’s advice is to remain silent,” Morris said. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Do you at least feel bad?” Taylor said.

After a long pause, Morris replied: “Yes.” With that admission, Taylor pressed his advantage.

“You are a freethinking man who made a horrible decision,” Taylor said. “But at this point, what is stopping you from saying sorry?”

Morris paused again before saying Baur, his cocaine dealer, had gone to his house looking to collect $200 he had fronted him for drugs.

“I didn’t have it. He said I was in deep sh-t and I was going to get hurt,” Morris said. “I told him not to and a tussle ensued. The next thing I know I was in a f—ing spot. I liked Chris. I certainly never meant to hurt the guy. I don’t know how it escalated.”

Morris said Baur hit him with a baseball bat before he disarmed him and struck Baur in the head four or five times.

Baur fell downstairs into the basement where the fight continued, Morris said.

“All of a sudden it was done,” he said. “I assumed he was dead and it was full-blown panic. I can’t tell you what was going through my head.”

Morris said he “cleaned up as best I could,” dressed and moved Baur’s car two blocks over to Manitoba Avenue. Morris wrapped up Baur’s body in a blanket and garbage bags and, the following day, hid it underneath his porch.

“What was the plan, long term?” Taylor asked Morris.

“I’ve been trying to think of it and I really didn’t know what to do,” Morris said.

He claimed he was still high on cocaine at the time he killed Baur.

Morris is on trial charged with second-degree murder. He has pleaded not guilty, claiming he was acting in self-defence.

Baur, 36, was reported missing on Jan. 4, 2015, one day after Morris killed him. Jurors have been told investigators with the missing persons unit learned Baur was involved in the drug trade and obtained call records for his two cellphones. The call record of Baur’s drug phone showed Morris had called him three times on the day he disappeared.

Morris was interviewed by a missing persons unit investigator on Feb. 3 and released without charge. Twelve days later, police executed a search warrant at Morris’s home and arrested him for second-degree murder.

Morris told investigators he had a drug problem that cost him his marriage and kids. He initially claimed he had called Baur to make a drug buy and was waiting at home for him, but Baur never showed up.

At the conclusion of the interrogation, Morris was allowed to call his sister. Morris’s part of the call was captured on video.

“I’m so sorry for everybody, I’m so sorry for my kids,” he said, breaking into sobs. “It fell apart so bad.

“I don’t know what you are going to tell them. There is nothing that makes it better. I’m so ashamed. I needed help a long time ago and I didn’t take it. And now it’s too late.”

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca