>> 911. ♪ >> has the jury reached a verdict? >> we the jury find the defendant -- >> she was funny and friendly and captivating. ♪ good-bye ♪ >> she was that kind of kid. you were just drawn to her. >> in life and even after her death. her murder. >> i should have protected her. >> a brother haunted by should haves, thought he could vent his grief by making a movie. >> i'm jennifer. >> a low budget feature about the crime.

>> i saw a guy outside. >> but along the way he became the star of someone else's whodunit. a cop turned moviemaker who met the brother and saw not a sister's champion, but her killer. >> i'm demanding justice for jennifer morton. >> or so he says. aren't you taking two and two and coming up with five? tonight, the murder, the movies and the real investigation, a case filled with red flags, red herrings and possible clues from the grave. >> i'm thinking, you know, jenny, are you trying to send us a message. >> keith morrison, "scenes from a murder." many were devoted to her in life, some obsessed with her in death. thanks for joining us. i'm stone philips. >> and i'm ann curry. she was a good-hearted free spirited young woman who knew her mind and where she was going. something about her was extraordinarily compelling and that seems to be even more the case since her death. >> she left behind a brother so tortured by her loss, some would

wonder if it wasn't just grief but guilt that was driving his obsession. what happened then, he says, was surreal. here's keith morrison. this is a story about movies, three of them actually. the first, pure, simple, about her, the radiant star. and then those others, those would-be sherlocks, chasing the riddle down their strange, opposing paths. but she like the center of any movieland mystery, as you will see, hides her secret well. >> it kept me awake at night, just thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it. it kept me awake at night but i found the best relief was physical. i would go to the gym, and i would lift weights, and i would run, and i would do all of these things to just try and exhaust myself in hopes that that night i would be able to sleep and not think about "god, what happened that day." >> his name is tom morgan.

his sister, jennifer, 23, tall, attractive, funny, college marketing major, is our star and the subject of our mystery. >> what was the thing that got you obsessed? >> i felt like we knew who did it. >> and so, as this strange tale unspooled, tom would put his suspicions in his own movie. a fictional tale to point an accusing finger toward truth. but making movies, someone might have told him, can be hazardous, especially when someone else makes the sequel. so be careful, they should have said. be careful what you wish for. >> that's right. >> in our little movie tonight, this will be the opening scene, bucolic, southern sun. a charming college campus in florence, south carolina, november 9th, 1994. a mother has been trying to phone her daughter, her daughter jennifer at the mobile home park which was her off-campus residence.

>> i had started calling her. the line was busy, busy, busy. >> at the very same moment, across town, a woman in the final stages of labor is also trying to reach her best friend jennifer, who'd promised to be with her for the birth. >> the line was busy. and it was busy for the next hour and the next hour, for hours upon hours. >> they are calling the one woman, who outside these few frames of video, you will never meet. the young woman at the center of this tale because at that very moment, jennifer morgan is lying on her bed, and she is dead in a house fire. it was just after 12:30 p.m. by the time the fire department arrived, the intensity of the blaze had roasted one end of the mobile home. they knocked the fire down and discovered the body, burned beyond recognition, lying face down on the bed.

summoned to the scene of the fire was a young detective named kenny boone. >> i can remember it just like it was yesterday. november the 9th, 1994. it was on a wednesday. >> as the grim wheel of investigation began to turn, the news was sent to jennifer's family. her mother kerry, her father jim struggled to come to grips with the worst news parents could ever hear. their baby, the last of their four children, was dead. >> it just takes time for it to really sink in and say, yeah, it really is true, and, you know, you're never going to see her again. >> the whole family was all but paralyzed by grief. jennifer had three siblings, an older sister, a brother near her own age and tom, the eldest. >> tom was a protector. tom always wanted to take the role over his dad, wanted to know who she was seeing, what she was doing, taking care of her. >> so you felt you could go to bed at night if she was out because of tom? >> absolutely. >> tom was right there waiting for her, exactly. >> he would be waiting for her to come in. >> exactly. >> but on that awful day, tom

was in charlotte, north carolina. he'd just moved there from michigan and was staying with a friend. it was late afternoon when tom's dad called, though at first what he said didn't seem to make sense. >> he said, don't come home until tomorrow. and i just sat there, and i said, dad, what are you talking about? >> it took a moment, then he told tom what that meant. >> and he said, your sister died today in a fire, and i don't want you to come home until tomorrow, and he hung up the phone. >> and then, said tom, he virtually collapsed, went numb, cried and waited until the next morning to make the four-hour drive to his parents' home in myrtle beach. on his way, said tom, he stopped at the trailer park where his sister had died. >> i had to see that trailer burned. it was still all roped off with the caution tape, and i just stood outside there for probably 15 or 20 minutes just still in disbelief and just cried.

>> there was no police presence, said tom. but then why would there be? it was an accident, after all. time was a blur as jenny's parents planned the funeral. and then two days after her death, kenny boone called, and they tried to absorb more news. jennifer's death was not an accident after all. whoever set that fire was trying to hide a murder. only the method was still unknown. >> she hadn't been stabbed. she hadn't been raped. she hadn't been shot. and at the time they said, we'd like you to keep it quiet. we don't want anything tainted by you telling people because everybody still thought it was an accident. >> and now their grief was salted with anger and confusion and impossible questions. the investigator, kenny boone, told them what he knew, that he saw right away the fire was so intense, it had to have some extra fuel, some sort of accelerant. >> we started taking samples from the carpet. i immediately got those results

right back. >> what'd they say? >> positive for gasoline. >> boone sent the body to the forensic pathologist. >> there was no soot, no carbon monoxide in her lungs. we knew she had to be dead prior to the fire. >> but who would have wanted to kill jennifer? and why? >> she was very, very loved by a lot of people. and she was just that kind of kid. you were just drawn to her. >> tom morgan was inconsolable but found some comfort in believing his sister's killer would be found. >> i had complete confidence in our law enforcement. i had complete confidence that they were doing all the right things and that they were going to bring this thing to some closure for us. >> and so did that arson investigator in charge of the case. after all, the murder and the fire to cover it up all happened in broad daylight, right in the middle of a mobile home park next to a busy four-lane highway.

looking back kenny boone is sheriff of florence county. >> i mean i really thought that we was going to go straight to, you know, maybe a boyfriend or an acquaintance. this, he was convinced, would not be so hard to solve. of course, things don't always work out the way we'd like them to. and that movie idea? it'll soon be time for that part of the story. there would be two movies, remember, twin parades of hope and folly. but first suspicion falls as it often will on an attentive young male. >> clingy, protective, stalky, a key -- just stalked her. en it comes to helping you reach your financial goals taking small, manageable steps can be an effective... and enjoyable approach... compared to the alternatives. push! i am pushing! sfx: pants ripping how you doing eddie? almost there. small steps.

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your hour's top stories, the city of brussels remains on lockdown tonight after authorities say they received a serious and immediate terror threat. subways are shut down. armed police and soldiers visibly patrolling the streets. however, some businesses in the capital are keeping their doors open. meanwhile, our first look inside the apartment where the organizer of the paris attacks was taken out, along with two others. abdelhamid abaaoud was killed in a hail of gunfire when french officials stormed the apartment in saint-denis. the manhunt continues for one other suspected attacker. and here at home this has

forced the cancellations of hundreds of flights throughout the midwest all gwynethetting slammed by snow. football keeps on going on. 6 to 10 inches forecasted for chicago. now back to our msnbc special. >> even when detective kenny boone decided not to arrest chris woodson, the morgans remained deeply suspicious. partly because the odd things didn't stop, even after jennifer was buried and the months began to turn into years. >> around her birthday or the date of her death, we would come out and find flowers that were laid here, and we would always ask the people who were close friends of hers, oh, did you lay the flowers, and we could never account for who had put them there over and over again.

>> and it wasn't just flowers the family found but couldn't explain. >> we found a bracelet at jennie's grave. a string bracelet with beads laying on her -- >> right on the stone. the flat stone. >> yes, i had gone to the caretaker, and i had said, has anyone come and inquired about jennifer's grave? and he said, yes, and he described chris. >> surely this was significant, thought the morgans, and perhaps would trigger law enforcement to take a second look at chris. >> when you called them, what was the response? >> i had called the lead investigator at the time, and he would always assure me, we are working on this, not a day goes by that i don't think about the case. >> years went by, and tom morgan and his family heard less and less from investigators growing more and more pessimistic that anybody would ever be charged. mind you, jennifer's father had been feeling that way since two days after the fire when he came

here to the trailer park to pick up her car. >> i could tell at the time that in my mind that it was not an accidental death. i'll just say that. >> was there a guard around the place? >> no, i was told they would be guarding and watching the property, but there was no one around. the premise was destroyed. i figured that there would absolutely be no resolve. >> so that investigation was what? >> it was botched. >> what of the evidence investigators did have, at least they had that watch, the old boyfriend's gift found in jennifer's hand. tom thought the killer might have put it there as a message of some sort. >> now that's strange to me that that watch would be in her hand and both the guys were there on monday night. both knew who gave her that watch. >> it seemed to tom that the watch must be important evidence. did the wanna-be boyfriend, chris, plant the watch in her hand just to make boyfriend scott look guilty? surely an interesting question. and yet authorities simply sent

the watch to jennifer's mother. >> that's not evidence apparently. so if that's the way that evidence, potential evidence was treated, i'm sure there's not much. >> but even as tom says he tried to dampen the anger that was eating him up, he kept finding what looked like evidence. jennifer's grave itself seemed to be throwing up strange tantalizing clues. >> almost as if she was down there tossing it to us. >> nine years after jennifer's death, her father, jim, was tending her grave clearing away weeds. >> he was edging around the back of the headstone, and he was down here with just a little edger to clear the grass away, and he popped out a fraternity ring. >> had to be a fraternity with those distinctive markings. >> odd that after that long a period of time that someone would come and obviously felt

this tremendous remorse or whatever their feelings were that would have to come back to the grave site and put this under their headstone. so we took pictures of it, and we sent it to florence county. >> but not before they searched the internet to identify the fraternity that issued such a distinctive ring, and soon they had their answer "tau kappa epsilon," a new and small fraternity then at francis marion. and one of its founders on campus, number 26 here on the roster of members was chris woodson. an enticing clue that only contributes to a case of severe frustration. >> it comes to a point where you just have to -- you just have to deal with it. >> oh, he will, with a screenplay and set in motion a chain of events, well, who could have seen it coming? n life that make me smile. spending the day with my niece. i don't use super poligrip for hold

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>> i just kept thinking how long is it going to take before they arrest this person? how long is this going to take? and why wasn't it today? is it going to be tomorrow? >> all the old impatience, the frustration, the crazy feeling came flooding back the minute tom's parents found that fraternity ring at jennifer's grave. tom had sent it to lead investigator kenny boone hoping boone could trace it back to the jealous would-be boyfriend and thus solve the case. and, well, dream on. >> finally when i did talk to him, his response was, it's not illegal to put a ring under a headstone. so he took his frustration to the next level of law enforcement, the state police. but, says tom, the dismissive response there was -- >> yeah, we're working on it. we're working on it.

we're working on it. >> working on it? angry now, tom fired off a legal request, a demand really, to see whatever evidence the state police had. and he received a letter instead. here it is. it says "the file could not be located" but that the agency would continue to search for these missing records. >> when i got that letter, i called him back that day and said, how are you possibly working on this case when you don't even have any of the information? he was irate. how dare i insinuate they're not working on this case? how dare i be upset or be mad about it? you know, question his authority, no way. >> and that strange though it may sound was the birth of the movie. it came out of anger and frustration. >> there are only so many weights you can lift and so many miles you can run and so many things you can do to try and get rid of that anger and that

energy, and then it comes to a point where you just have to deal with it. >> he had no idea, of course, where that would lead. he just began to scribble. >> i started writing a stream of consciousness. >> it wasn't even that hard, even though he was a real estate broker, not a writer, the words just fell to page. >> here's a guy that i think potentially did it and what would that conversation be like? >> he wrote imagined conversations, pent up thoughts and feelings about his own belief that chris, the fraternity boy, killed jennifer. tom's theory? that chris in a jealous rage about jennifer's old boyfriend, lost his temper, killed her, without meaning to, then got his frat brothers to help him hide the crime with the fire. gradually what emerged was a screenplay about one young man's terrible, deadly mistake. >> and for my closure, as strange as this may sound, i

didn't want him to be a bad guy. this is something that happened that wasn't premeditated because in my mind that's the only way i could forgive him. >> why wouldn't you want to hate and seek out and see justice done to this person? >> because i got to live with myself every day. >> and then a decision that would come back to haunt him. tom wrote himself into his screenplay. since he was writing fiction, he says, he wanted to make a change. he didn't want it to seem like his beloved sister had a steady stream of men visiting her trailer, so he put himself in the place of scott snowden, that other boyfriend chris encountered just before jennifer's murder. >> this is someone i protect in my life. i made her pure for my family. i made her pure for my parents. i made her pure because she was a good person. >> of course, tom wasn't really here at the trailer park any more than he knew for certain that chris was really here. this was a fictional story based on real events, yes, but spun

together with altered names and faces and speculations and shifted timelines and at the heart of it, a brother's regret that he hadn't paid more attention the last weekend to the incessant calls of that fraternity boy. >> i had my chance that weekend when that kid called that many times. i felt like i should have protected her. i wish i had that chance again. >> you never get those chances again, do you? >> nope, you don't. you just get a lifetime to think about them. >> every time you talk about it, your eyes go red and they start to water. >> cause i just remember how alive she was that weekend. i just remember how excited she was that weekend, and i just remember my little sister, and i miss her, i miss her. >> tom rattled off the script and threw it into a drawer. it didn't make him feel better,

of course. besides, all tom knew about making movies is that he didn't know anything about making movies. so it was exciting when a friend said he knew someone who could make the film. this was that someone. his name was pat moug. he agreed to read the script and said he liked it. >> and he, oh, by the way, happened to be a police detective in michigan. that was his -- that was his background. >> the acting detective. >> yeah, exactly. he worked on the s.w.a.t. team, and he was still actively involved with the police force and then the sidelight, what he really -- his passion was for acting and for making film. >> s.w.a.t. team by day, thespian by night, huh? >> yeah, and then he came down and said he really wanted to direct this film. he'd read the script and really, you know, seemed like a nice guy, a great guy. >> yes, and somehow larger than life.

pat moug, the livonia, michigan, acting cop looked like a cross between mr. clean and kojak. a big friendly bundle of gung ho. and moug had already done it. he had made an independent film, directed and starred in it himself, a movie called "the ugly one." >> you always said i should start fighting again. >> in a ring with gloves and rules. >> the fact that moug was a detective was a bonus, tom figured. >> i've been a police officer for 18 years. >> another experienced set of eyes to consider the evidence. >> i felt that being a police officer, someone that was a detective in sex crimes, i thought i'd be able to bring something to jennifer's story that other filmmakers might not be able to do. >> plus, moug had a great idea. why not make a promotional video about tom's project? >> in 2002 i met tom morgan. tom morgan had written a screenplay called "brothers." >> neither one of them had the money to make tom's movie.

a good video, suggested pat, could attract investors. >> sounded good with me. i mean, i was -- i was okay with it. i thought it was great. >> so moug traveled down to south carolina, interviewed jennifer's friends. he took some footage on her college campus. he even interviewed tom about the murder itself, about the movie project and about fund-raising. >> we need money for a movie. send money. $50,000 to share. >> then we're sitting and waiting for funding. you know, basically trying to figure out how we were going to be able to pay for this thing. and as many independent films do, you know, it never came. just never came. >> so the project languished for a couple of years until, again, a happy accident. a banker from charlotte, north carolina, named john schwert

heard about the script and loved it and offered to finance tom's film if -- and this was a condition -- if he, the banker, could direct it. >> takes a second mortgage out on his house to pay for a film and resigns from the bank and says, i'm going for it and it's like, god, i got the right guy. the guy's perfect. >> of course, tom now had to call pat moug up at the livonia, michigan, police department and tell him the news. the movie about jennifer's death now had financing and would be made but pat would not be directing. >> he said at that time i was going to be sorry. i thought he meant cinematically. as a -- his ideas for the film or whatever. that's what i meant by i was going to be sorry. >> tom morgan will have his movie. he will bring his nightmare to life. >> i saw the guy outside. >> how? >> oh, yes, but there are so many ways to be sorry, aren't

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we'll take six. it was the fall of 2004. it happened on makeshift sound stages around charlotte, north carolina. >> the production looks great. >> the fall start with the film-making cut from imy was forgotten now. tom morgan watched the local production team piece together his story. tom's fictional imagining of the murder of his little sister jennifer. part art, part desperate effort to prod the police into reviving their investigation. it was a shoestring budget. tom's screenplay was shot in a fast and furious 24 days. >> i want story to be told told over and over again until maybe

somebody says hey, i know something about that. >> now i hope you enjoy the film. give us a minute for our high-tech lighting system turn-off. thank you. >> finally here it was. 11 years after her death, jennifer's story flickered to life on the screen. >> i'm ethan, by the way. >> i'm tiger woods. >> you are definitely not tiger woods. >> i'm jennifer. >> in the audience her parents and older sister. the story was based on fact. but tom had made some significant changes to real events. and added lots of speculation. and then the director took over and made some more changes. so this certainly wasn't a nonfiction movie. >> ethan, what are you doing? >> what does it look like. >> ethan, we're just friends.

>> okay. >> still, tom's suspicion of what really happened to his sister did come through. >> i was wondering if you wanted to see mere tomorrow. >> ethan, that's really sweet, but like i said i -- >> stop before you use the f word again. >> among brothers was set in a college fraternity. chris woodson's real-life identity was never revealed in the movie. still, if you knew him it wasn't hard to see that the ethan character was based on him. >> something you wouldn't know much about, right. >> audience saw that character hide in the bushes growing jealous as jennifer's character meets a male visitor. in the film the visitor is her brother. in real life it was chris woodson's rival, scott snowden. >> i thought had you plans to see your family tomorrow. your boyfriend is your family? >> as the story progresses the fraternity boy has an argument

with jennifer. that part is true it came right from chris woodson's statement to police. but then ethan loses his temper and accidentally kills her. and that part is tom's speculation. >> i don't know what happened but i just -- i just panicked and i ran out of there. >> fraternity brothers help him cover up the crime by setting fire to the scene, again, the circumstances of the fire, something tom imagined. >> and hire's a version of the awkward true scene, the morgans remembered so vividly the day after jennifer died when the real fraternity boy, chris, came by their house and offered that theory. it sounded more to the family like a cover-up. >> i was thinking about it in the car on the way over here. what probably happened. several synthetic fibers in the

sofa you will holsupholstery that are highly flammable. >> the film ends with wishful thinking by tom, a cop zeros in. >> ethan, i'm going to catch the person who did this. and when i do the district attorney is going to seek the death penalty and probably get it. >> and the ethan character is left tortured by what he's done but unwilling to turn himself in. >> cruising through life living life, everything is fine. you have your friends, your health. and then you make one bad decision one. and you're screwed. >> tom morgan. [ applause ] >> not in the audience that night was of course the very person tom hoped would be compelled to admit what really happened. the real fraternity boy, chris

woodson. >> do you hope it does what to him? >> i hope he looks at it and says, and thinks to himself, man, this guy is not giving up. >> tom had put all of his suspicions and the evidence he thought had been overlooked out there in public for all to see. >> how often do you get updates? do the bliss keep you informed of anything new? >> yeah. we don't often get updates. >> for a start-up independent, the film did pretty well. it broke even. 15 international film festivals asked to screen "among brothers." and in the end a little independent made with the director's second mortgage on a distribution deal. >> the momentum kind of got behind this thing. i think partly because it's based on a true story and partly because it's a pretty good film. >> so now the waiting game started up again, would someone finally come forward?

well, yes, in fact, someone did. the south carolina state police. >> they said hey, we've got a cold case unit we want to reopen your sister's case. >> cold case unit? >> i was really excited. finally i had gotten someone's attention. >> of course tom had not forgotten that this was the said stam police agency that once admitted they had lost the file on this case years before. >> my first question why did you pick this case now? made it sound like it was just luck lucked upon this. we were the lucky lottery winner that they pulled up our case. >> tom packed his years' worth of notes in his car and drove over to state police headquarters in columbia. there for two and a half hours with investigators he reviewed every detail everything he knew about the case. >> they were very good at putting me at ease. talking about the fact that we we know that you know a lot about this case. we know that you know probably

more than anybody about this case. >> and then came quite suddenly another one of those moments, the air seemed different. right then and there the complexion of tom's world changed. the detective asked one simple question. >> any problem taking a polygraph? no. no problem. hook me all up. >> that day? >> right then. >> what does that feel like? >> it felt okay good check me off the list i got nothing to hide. >> but there it was. it was all different now. he waited for polygrapher and an awful feeling washed over him. >> what were the questions? >> were you there when jennifer morgan's trailer caught fire. did you kill jennifer morgan? >> jarring questions said tom. but ridiculous. and when they were finished he sat, waiting somewhat impatiently to be dismissed. >> i'm sitting there checking my voicemail messages thinking i've got to get out of here. and the guy walks back in and says, you failed the test.

>> failed? >> failed the test. what was going on? how could he have failed a lie detector test? and why was one particular person not so surprised? >> this may be the person that murdered this girl. sister and set her on fire. >> it's a pretty terrible thing to say. 3w4r a deer leaps into the road and you don't even have time to hit the breaks. the air bags go off... suddenly the police are there. when you call the insurance company, they want

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