Wong Slaying Suspect Says He’s No ‘Predator’ : Crime: In jailhouse interview, Edward Patrick Morgan talks at length about his troubled life, possibility of facing death penalty. He’s accused of savage killing of woman outside of Orange nightclub in May.

In an exclusive jailhouse interview Saturday, Edward Patrick Morgan denied being a monster who savagely battered to death and mutilated a 23-year-old Huntington Beach woman outside an Orange nightclub last month.

“I’m innocent,” said Morgan, his hands cuffed tightly in front of him. “They got me out to be some mean basher that ripped some girl apart with my bare hands.”

Morgan, who has three previous sexual assault convictions, disputed media portraits of him as a smooth-talking stalker from a troubled home, romancing women and then raping them.

“It’s not true,” said Morgan, who has been on suicide watch for much of the time since his latest arrest May 23. “I’ve always had girlfriends. I’ve been rejected just like anyone else. They got me out to be some predator.”

Morgan wouldn’t comment on whether he knew Leanora Annette Wong, who police say Morgan lured from the Australian Beach Club May 20 and killed in a nearby parking lot, ripping apart her insides with an object detectives have yet to identify.

But he said the security videotape that allegedly filmed the attack and the attacker is “not as explicit or graphic as they say.”

“It doesn’t show any kind of brutal killing,” he said. “It doesn’t even show a person you can identify. You can’t see anyone killing anyone.”

Behind a thick glass barrier at the Orange County Jail, Morgan, 28, talked at length about his life and the possibility of facing the death penalty.

Brown-eyed, his brown hair neatly gelled, Morgan spoke with the boyish, slightly flirtatious charm of a brother’s best friend. His yellow jail jumpsuit fit tightly around his bodybuilder’s 5-foot-8, 200-pound bulk, and a black mermaid tattoo trailed down his right biceps.

Morgan said he fled to the small Northern California town of Quincy after Wong’s slaying to hole up at his girlfriend’s house while police nabbed the real killer.

“I was hoping they were going to catch the person that did it and I was just going to hide out there until they did,” he said.

When Plumas County Sheriff’s deputies tracked him down, he screamed “Shoot me! Shoot me! I didn’t do it” because “I was innocent,” Morgan said.

“I just knew what I was going to have to do. I was going to have to come back here and face a murder trial. I didn’t want to hassle with it,” he said. “I tried to get them to shoot me, but they wouldn’t.”

Showing his only anger during the interview, Morgan said reporters had not gotten the complete story on his history of sex crimes.

Morgan didn’t dispute that he had raped his 16-year-old ex-girlfriend in October, 1983, nor that a year later he had raped another 16-year-old outside a party in Buena Park.

He wouldn’t talk about the assaults, citing his upcoming trial and a wish to forget that period of his life.

“You don’t hear a bunch of Vietnam vets talking about the war,” he said.

According to court records, Morgan, then 19, sweet-talked the second girl into taking a walk with him, steering her to the darkness between two houses. When the girl objected, Morgan dragged her there, saying “I love you.” When she continued to resist, he yanked her pants off and slammed her head and face against the pavement while he raped her.

Morgan was convicted of both sex crimes and went to prison for the first time on Jan. 16, 1985. He was paroled 21 months later.

But Morgan said the second two women who have accused him of rape “are looney tunes.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with these girls. It was consensual,” he said.

One of the victims, a 16-year-old from Buena Park, said Morgan raped her in October, 1990, after she accepted a ride and drank beer with him. As part of a plea agreement, the rape charge was reduced to sex with a minor. Morgan was sentenced to one year, four months in custody.

In March, 1993, a 24-year-old Huntington Beach woman accused Morgan of handcuffing her to a tree in a park and raping her after she also accepted a ride and drank beer with him. Prosecutors, citing inconsistencies in the women’s statements to police, declined to press charges. But the parole board revoked Morgan’s parole, sending him back to prison for a year.

Morgan denied handcuffing the woman and said both the teen and the woman wanted to have sex with him and only went to the police to get attention.

“These are women that gave me their phone numbers after the fact,” he said. “They let me drive them home and see where they live. If I never had a record before, those charges would’ve been dropped.

“Any girl can cry rape. If they don’t like you, they could claim it. If they’re obsessed with you, they could claim it. If this glass wasn’t here, you could just yell to a deputy that I assaulted you, and who would they believe?”

Morgan said that news stories painting his early family life in La Palma as troubled are exaggerated. A number of Morgan’s closest friends from high school have said that Morgan and his mother often fought violent battles in front of them. Morgan said he wouldn’t comment on his friends’ observations.

“Everyone’s trying to blame my parents for everything, and it’s not true,” he said. “I’ve had good times and bad times like anyone else. I have not been abused.”

Morgan said his parents have stuck with him through his past convictions and have been very supportive since his latest arrest.

“Most parents would have given up on their kids a long time ago,” he said.

He said his family has been shattered by his arrest.

“My dad’s has a very bad heart,” he said. “Something like this could kill him.”

Reached at his Strongsville, Ohio, home, Edward Morgan Sr., a retired Hoover vacuum executive, declined to talk about the allegations against his son. He said he only wanted to “express his sorrow” for Wong’s family.

“I hope my son didn’t do it,” he said.

Morgan said he spends his days in isolation writing letters, reading the Bible and trying to stay away from “rat snitches who are trying to get close to me to cut time off their sentences.”

And every day, he said, he tries not to think about a possible death sentence. But he said it’s in his head, impossible to shake.

Morgan said he enjoyed a brief distraction Friday afternoon listening to police chase former football star and fugitive O.J. Simpson across Southern California freeways. He kept his ear pressed to the door of his cell, straining to catch the sound of a faraway TV.

“I knew exactly what he was going through in his mind just being on the run,” Morgan said. “I was praying so hard that he wouldn’t kill himself.”