Editor’s Note: Jim Watson is the author of “Mysterious Island: Catalina,” available at Amazon, Kindle and in stores in Avalon.
A few weeks ago I did a story on a handful or so of missing persons stories that have graced the headlines of southland papers over the years.
Some of those stories had happy endings. Some, in fact, have really no ending yet at all because the person in question has never been found.
But as you might have guessed, others stories had bad endings. Bad, bad endings.
Editor’s Note: Jim Watson is the author of “Mysterious Island: Catalina,” available at Amazon, Kindle and in stores in Avalon.
A few weeks ago I did a story on a handful or so of missing persons stories that have graced the headlines of southland papers over the years.
Some of those stories had happy endings. Some, in fact, have really no ending yet at all because the person in question has never been found.
But as you might have guessed, others stories had bad endings. Bad, bad endings.
One of the stories I didn’t mention in that column involved the disappearance in 2006 of a Denver radio personality named Steven B. Williams. The story actually got me some face time in the form of an on-camera interview on the Discovery Channel’s sister network “Investigations Discovery.” That episode of “Sins & Secrets,” as the show is called, aired a couple of years ago.
Eventually, Williams’ body was found floating several miles off the West End of Catalina. Until he was identified, he was known as “John Doe 88.”
Rather than the presumed victim of a drug trafficking operation gone wrong, it turned out the story behind Williams was quite a bit more complex. For L.A. County Sheriff’s Department Sergeant Ken Clark, things got interesting when he learned that Williams had recently inherited $2 million from his father and had subsequently been swindled out of it.
The wheels of this epic confidence scam began turning even before Williams had inherited the money when he met up with a man named Harvey Morrow in San Pedro in 2003. The two became pals and Williams regularly updated his new friend on his father’s condition and—unfortunately for Williams—on his huge inheritance upon his father’s death.
At this point, the con game—which had no doubt been swirling in Morrow’s head for months—went into high gear. Williams, who evidently was suffering from that often deadly combination of greed and naiveté, actually let Morrow convince him that he could save him a ton of money on taxes by putting his new-found wealth in “tax shelters” in offshore banks in the British Virgin Islands.
As you’ve probably figured out by now, Morrow simply opened the bank accounts in his own name and even began using the funds to refurbish his yacht the “Ioliar-Mara,” Gaelic for “Sea Eagle”.
Williams remained blissfully ignorant of these clandestine moves on the part of Morrow and the two not only remained “friends” but began planning an around-the-world sailing adventure.
But sooner or later a light finally switched on in Williams’ head and in May 2006 the pair found themselves on Morrow’s yacht off the Isthmus. There, Williams unwisely began protesting Morrow’s usurpation of his wealth—a protest that was ended by a gun shot to the head.
Williams’ body remained in the ocean for an estimated two weeks before being discovered by a passing yacht from Newport Beach on May 18, 2006.
Morrow fled to Montana where he landed a job as a used car salesman. Despite his colossal haul, within six months of the murder he was already broke.
Not only was Morrow evidently poor at handling his own finances, he was apparently rather poor at selling used cars as well and his employer paired him up with a mentor named Joe Parsetich, who just happened to be a retired deputy from the Cascade County Sheriff’s Department.
Being a retired peace office, Parsetich was naturally curious about his new student’s life and learned from Morrow that he had recently moved to Montana in an attempt to assuage his grief over his “wife’s drowning” off their yacht in Texas.
Parsetich did a little sleuthing on the internet and learned that Morrow was wanted for questioning by the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department in connection to the murder. Morrow was subsequently arrested and extradited to L.A. County.
On Wednesday, November 9, 2011, a jury in Long Beach Court convicted Morrow of First Degree Murder and Murder for Financial Gain. The following month, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole, plus 25 years.
