1866
Florence was founded in 1866 by Levi Ruggles.
about 0:08:20The story
Florence, Arizona, lies in south central Arizona, about an hour from Phoenix, in Pinal County. It was founded in 1866 by Levi Ruggles on land south of the Gila River and is the sixth-oldest non-Native American settlement in Arizona. Silver was found nearby in 1877 and the town boomed for a while, but the railroad never arrived and silver prices collapsed in the 1890s. In 1912, when Arizona became a state, the silver mine closed. A courthouse was finished without enough money for clocks, so hands were painted on the tower faces at 11.44. By 1984 the town's main industry was incarceration.
His mother was fifteen, described in a court document as a hard-drinking prostitute, and his father abandoned them. He was raised by his grandparents, but his grandfather was abusive and in 1952 the state removed him and placed him in foster care. He was eventually adopted by Henry Frederick 'Bud' Morman, who ran Flagstaff's only taxi service, and his wife a Maud Morman. At school he was classified as mentally retarded and put in special education classes. At thirteen, in 1961, he was committed to a state mental hospital after he shot Maud with a .22 rifle while she sat on his bed; she survived and said it was an accident.
He drove towards Las Vegas, stopping at motels where he sexually assaulted the girl. In Nevada the car became stuck in sand and he hitchhiked with her. Connie Jo Swanson and her husband, driving their RV from Phoenix, picked them up, gave them food and put the girl to bed. Morman told them the girl was a friend's child. He took out a pistol and removed the bullets, and Swanson asked him to put the gun in a drawer. He told officers he had planned to leave the girl to die in the car, then to kill the Swansons and take the motor home, but did not because they were too nice to him.
Morman's furlough began on Friday 13 January. Between six and 7.30 that morning he bought food, a steak knife and a buck knife. About nine he asked the motel owner to hold maid service and phone calls because his mother was unwell. The owner's wife noticed that he smelled terrible and had blood on his face. In the afternoon Marianne Southworth, a friend of Maud's, arrived with Maud's suitcase. Morman said his mother had gone out for a salad about ten that morning and had not come back. About four he telephoned Southworth to ask whether Maud had called. About 4.30 he asked the motel owner when the rubbish was collected. Later he asked the liquor store clerk and the pizza owner whether he could put spoiled meat or animal guts in their bins; both refused.
About 10.30 that night two police officers knocked on his door. He said his mother had gone visiting with a Mexican woman about six and had not returned. The officers watched the room and he came out to speak to them. Between 10.30 and eleven he asked a corrections officer how to dispose of twenty-five pounds of spoiled hamburger meat. At 1.30 a.m. the police told the lieutenant that Morman's mother was missing.
He said he and his mother had argued, that he hit her, tied her up with a torn towel and suffocated her with a pillow on the bed nearest the bathroom. He then dissected her in the bath with a razor blade and a steak knife, put the parts in plastic bags from the U-Totem store, flushed her fingers down the toilet, gave a bag containing towel strips and part of a razor to the maid, and put bags in the motel dumpsters. He claimed that his mother had made him take his father's place and had forced him into sexual acts for years.
A search of room 22 found bloodstained bedding, towels, a washcloth and a cooking pot, blood on the bathroom walls and floor, a scouring pad with human tissue, a buck knife and a steak knife, and Maud's bra in the closet with $500 pinned inside it. The dumpsters held her thorax, head, pelvic area, feet and hands, muscle and skin from her limbs, torn towel strips, a razor and the packaging from the steak knife. A finger was found in the sewer.
Thomas Kelly defended him on grounds of insanity. Dr Overbeck, a psychologist, diagnosed organic delusional syndrome, paedophilia and schizoid personality disorder. The state's experts, Dr Cleary and Dr Tutchler, both diagnosed paedophilia and antisocial personality disorder; Tutchler rejected organic delusional syndrome but believed Morman's account of a long incestuous relationship with his mother. A neurologist found no organic brain defect but could not rule one out. Morman was resentenced to death.
He suffered a major stroke in 2007 and in 2011 had an emergency appendectomy, during which doctors found his heart was badly clogged and gave him a quintuple bypass. At a clemency hearing on 24 February 2012 his lawyers argued that recent tests put his IQ below seventy, but the Arizona Supreme Court refused the claim because state law requires a full-scale IQ of seventy or lower with onset before eighteen. The night before, between 7.30 and eight, he was served a double hamburger with onion, lettuce and tomato, French fries with four ounces of ketchup, two beef burritos, three RC colas and two fourteen-ounce containers of Rocky Road ice cream. He declined a light breakfast. His last words were that he hoped it would bring closure and that the family could begin healing, and that he hoped they would forgive him in time.