HOUSTON – Sitting in a Harris County courtroom today, shackled in chains, Colt Morgan pleaded guilty to the horrific murder and mutilation of his fiancee, the woman he once hoped to marry.
It was October 30, 2013 when Wende Marshall disappeared without a trace. Her neighbors reported smelling something weird coming from her fireplace chimney.
Now, almost two-and-a-half years later, Morgan is admitting he got into an argument with his fiancee, stabbed her to death, set her body on fire in her own fireplace, cut her body into pieces and then scattered what was left of her into a hole in the backyard.
Defense attorney Anthony Osso said Morgan was addicted to and high on acid at the time of the killing.
“They had an argument…and my client was hooked on hallucinogenics at the time and he was not thinking clearly,” Osso said.
In court on Tuesday, holding a cremation urn in his hands with his daughter’s remains inside, Paul Marshall, Wende’s dad, looked dead into Colt Morgan’s eyes and called him a “murdering, burning, butchering, b------.“ He told Morgan that by killing Wende in so brutal a fashion, he had betrayed the woman who loved him so much and tried to help him get his life together.
After the murder in 2013, Morgan ran from police and for weeks lived in the woods of Leon County in a tent made of garbage bags and duct tape.
At one point he was caught on dash-cam video fighting with a Buffalo Police officer.
Morgan escaped after pulling a gun on that officer and fighting him off.
But now Morgan will not be running anywhere.
He was sentenced to 40 years in prison Tuesday by Judge Jan Crocker, part of a plea bargain arrangement that Morgan’s attorney made with prosecutors.
Anthony Osso says Morgan wanted to plead guilty to murder to spare the Marshall family the pain of going through a lengthy trial.
Just before the court was adjourned, Wende’s father held up a large picture of his daughter and told Morgan, the man that had murdered his daughter, “Your senseless and barbaric murder of our daughter will never dim our memories of Wende”.
