TV Viewer Helps Locate Murder Suspect

A man sought in the August murder of a popular gas station owner who was killed in his Lake View Terrace home has been captured in Florida due, in part, to a television show that broadcast a story about the crime, police said Friday.

Curtis Ray Morgan, 33, was arrested Thursday in Pinellas Park near St. Petersburg and was being held without bond, authorities said.

Pinellas County Sheriff’s deputies were led to Morgan by a woman who met him in a bar this week and remembered him from a March 6 broadcast of “America’s Most Wanted.” She called the show’s number and gave information that was relayed to Foothill Division detectives and then turned over to authorities in Florida where deputies arrested Morgan.

Morgan was wanted on a warrant charging him with the Aug. 20 murder of Ray Dilger, 43, the owner of Ray’s Chevron in Sun Valley. Dilger, a former champion stock car driver who was also known for doing community volunteer work, was shot twice in the head in the Jiminez Place home he shared with his wife and two teen-age daughters.

Police said Morgan was the common-law husband of Dilger’s daughter, Cheryl, 25, and that the couple had a child. Police speculated that Morgan was upset over the breakup of the relationship and blamed Dilger.

Detective Al Ferrand, head of Foothill’s homicide squad, said police had no idea Morgan was in Florida. He said the police department was contacted in February by producers of the Fox Broadcasting show and asked for cases in which suspects were at large.

“I sent in this one case, and they took it,” Ferrand said. “Now we have the suspect. That’s 100%.”

The show began broadcasting throughout the country this year and features segments that dramatize crimes in which suspects have not been captured.