Pair of Multiple Killings Eerily Similar

Tillamook and Lincoln counties share a border, a coastline and the snowy ridges of the rural Coast Range. And now they share a dubious distinction: Each is the site of one of the largest mass killings in Oregon -- spaced exactly a year apart.

On the morning of Dec. 21, a father and son out hunting in the remote Tillamook State Forest saw drops of blood on the snow. The trail led to a hand sticking out of the snow with blankets piled on top of it. The hunters raced to call police from the nearest convenience store.

Police quickly uncovered the body of 31-year-old Renee Morris and by nightfall found the bodies of her three children -- Bryant, 10, Alexis, 8, and Jonathan, 4 -- nearby.

Two days later, the Tillamook County district attorney charged Edward Morris, 37, with multiple counts of aggravated murder in the deaths of his family. He is still missing and believed to be on the run, possibly in northern Washington or Canada. The crime recalled a similar case last year in Lincoln County, 70 miles to the south.

Over a weeklong period beginning Dec. 19, 2001, Oregonians watched in horror as the bodies of first one and then two more young children and their mother were pulled from shallow coastal waters around Waldport and Yaquina Bay. Mary Jane Longo, 34, and Madison, 2, were found curled in a suitcase; Zachary, 4, and Sadie, 3, had weights tied to them.

And, like Morris, Christian Longo fled as authorities charged him with multiple counts of murder. He was arrested in Tulum, Mexico, three weeks after the first body drifted to the surface.

The stark parallels between the cases jarred even veteran investigators. Detectives haven’t ruled out the possibility that Morris could be a Longo copycat, FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele said. “Our folks have a great familiarity with the Longo case,” she said. “The cases are very similar, with a father who’s a suspect in the murder of his wife and three kids.”

The FBI and local agencies familiar with the Longo case rallied around the Morris investigation and shared information about what worked -- and what didn’t -- a year before. Neither rural department had ever handled such a large, gruesome case.

Investigators hoped a segment Saturday about Morris on the TV program “America’s Most Wanted” would help break the case, as it did with Longo.