Joe Morrow takes plea deal in wife's murder

After three years of delays, it seemed as if Joseph Eli Morrow would never go to trial on a first-degree murder charge that he killed his wife Donna in order to avoid an expensive divorce.

And now, he never will.

On Sept. 10, as the trial was finally about to get started, Mr. Morrow reached a plea deal with Prosecutor Steve Wagstaffe.

On Sept. 11, a gray-haired and pot-bellied Mr. Morrow pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree murder, and seven felony counts of assault for spousal abuse dating back to 1981.

Mr. Morrow, 59, faces 25 years to life in prison when he appears in court at a sentencing hearing set for Oct. 24.

In exchange for his plea, prosecutors dropped the special circumstances allegation of murder for financial gain, a charge that could have landed him in prison for life without possibility of parole.

Prosecutors contend that a few days before Christmas in 1991, Ms. Morrow, 37, had decided to end her abusive marriage, but she never got the chance to file for divorce. Instead, Mr. Morrow killed her in their Menlo Park home, buried her body on undeveloped land near Los Gatos, and later fled the country under an assumed name, said Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe.

“It’s my fervent belief that he strangled her,” Mr. Wagstaffe said. “The daughter heard a loud argument, then she heard her mother’s voice go quiet.”

According to Mr. Wagstaffe, when Mr. Morrow’s previous wife asked for a divorce, he knocked her down the stairs and choked her until she was unconscious.

Back in 1991, Mr. Morrow claimed the couple simply had an argument, after which his wife left the house and disappeared.

“All (Donna’s) friends said, the thing that mattered to her more than anything in her life, were her four children,” Mr. Wagstaffe said. “She never would have left them on Christmas.”

Menlo Park police Sgt. Jim Simpson worked for years to keep the cold case alive. He finally caught a break when Mr. Morrow, who is thought to have fled to the Philippines in 1993, was arrested near Manila in early 2003 and extradited to the U.S. on passport fraud charges.

Ms. Morrow’s skeletal remains were unearthed on the Los Gatos property in September 2003 after Mr. Morrow’s former handyman led law enforcement officials to the spot where he said Mr. Morrow asked him to dig a deep hole for a water feature. Mr. Morrow was indicted by a criminal grand jury in November 2003.

The trial was set to begin in Feb. 2004, but a series of postponements, medical problems suffered by attorneys on both sides, and legal maneuvering by the defense team made it seem as though the trial would never get started.

Defense attorney Robert Courshon said the plea deal was driven by Mr. Morrow’s children’s desire to see their father get out of prison on parole.

“His kids all want to see him get out at some time. That’s why Lisa, one of his daughters, went in to try to convince Wagstaffe to allow him to plea to second-degree (murder),” Mr. Courshon said.

As for Mr. Wagstaffe, he said he doesn’t think Mr. Morrow will ever be paroled. He’s lining up witnesses to testify at the sentencing hearing in order to make sure any future parole board has “all the grimy details” about Mr. Morrow, he said. Ms. Morrow’s surviving family members will be flying in from Missouri to testify, Mr. Wagstaffe said.

“He’s criminal and violent. This is my one chance to express the outrage that society feels about what he did, ” Mr. Wagstaffe said. “The saddest part for me is that … Donna’s mom Shirley Rubio didn’t get to be here. She died a couple of years ago, and the most important thing to her was to see this carried out.”

Bay City News contributed to this report