Stephen Morin

Little is known about Morin's childhood. He was born on February 19, 1951, in Providence, Rhode Island, into a poor family.[3] He dropped out of school early, and in his teenage years, Morin began to use narcotics and delved into the criminal lifestyle.

In the mid-1960s, Morin was arrested in Florida for car theft. He was convicted and spent some time in an institution for juvenile delinquents. Freed in 1968, Morin left Florida and wandered around the country. For the majority of the 1970s, he resided in Northern California, specifically in the San Francisco Bay Area, constantly changing his places of residence and using various pseudonyms while committing crimes. For some time, he lived in San Francisco, where he worked as a car mechanic and builder.[4]

In the 1970s, Morin became addicted to drugs and led a transient lifestyle. In 1976, in San Francisco, Morin attacked a 14-year-old girl, abducting and then raping her. After this crime, he was put on a federal wanted list. During this period, he committed a series of murders of girls and young women in different states. In January 1980, he tried to abduct 19-year-old Sarah Pisan in Las Vegas, Nevada. She survived by dodging him twice.

In June 1980, he abducted 20-year-old Cheryl Ann Daniel from Las Vegas, whose corpse was found in Utah six months later. Near Daniel's body, a wallet belonging to Pisan was found, which allowed the investigators to assume his continued fixation on her, especially since his previous attempts at her had failed. In the fall of 1981, he found himself in Colorado, where he killed 23-year-old Sheila Whalen in Golden.[5] After Whalen's murder, Morin moved to Texas, attacking 21-year-old Janna Bruce in Corpus Christi, whose strangled body was found on December 2.

On December 11, 1981, Morin attempted to abduct 21-year-old Carrie Ann Scott while attempting to steal her car. Initially, he said that he'd had no intentions to kill her, but claimed to have been overcome with something, and subsequently shot her in the parking lot of Maggie's Restaurant in San Antonio. After that, he abducted Margy Mayfield and held her hostage for 10+ hours in a car.[6][7][8]

Following Scott's murder, the motel in San Antonio where Morin had been staying for the past few days, was surrounded by the SAPD's SWAT team and searched. During the search, 32-year-old Sarah Clark, his at the time stalking victim, was taken into custody in hopes of helping identify him, and 23-year-old Pamela Jackson, another victim abducted on November 30, was rescued. Several false IDs, credit cards and social security cards were found, leading to suspicions that Morin committed other murders in a multitude of states.

On the afternoon of December 12, Stephen Morin was arrested at a bus station in Austin.[1] At the time of his arrest, he surrendered without resistance.[3] Upon arrival in Austin, Morin had released Mayfield. Despite his peaceful surrender, Morin refused to cooperate with investigators and claimed to be innocent.

Morin was charged with the murders of Carrie Ann Scott and Janna Bruce, since there was a lot of evidence supporting his guilt in those cases. After withdrawing his appeals and pleading guilty, he was convicted and sentenced to death in February 1984.[9] Later on, he was additionally convicted of killing Daniel, before being extradited to Colorado on charges of killing Sheila Whalen, for whose killing he was also sentenced to death at the end of 1984.[10] Morin was also supposed to be later extradited to Utah to stand trial for other killings he supposedly committed there, but for reasons unknown, this never occurred. In total, Stephen Morin was investigated for 48 violent murders committed in the states of Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Washington, Idaho, Indiana, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Texas, New York and California.[11][12][5] In Nevada alone, Morin was tested for involvement in 8 murders.[8][4]

After his conviction, Morin converted to Christianity. His execution date was scheduled for March 1985. Shortly before this, the convicted stated that he did not want to appeal for a new trial or postpone the execution,[13] which conflicted with his lawyer David Goldstein, who filed a petition for a forensic examination on his client, since he showed signs of mental retardation. The application, however, was rejected.[3]

Morin was executed by lethal injection shortly after midnight on March 13, 1985, at the Huntsville Unit in Texas, in the presence of his victims' relatives and his girlfriend. On the day of his execution, for his last meal, Morin ordered steak, baked potatoes, butter, green pea salad, banana pudding and coffee.[14] His final words were the following:

"Father, forgive these people for they know not what they do. Forgive them as you have forgiven me and I have forgiven them. Lord Jesus, I commit my soul to you."

Before his execution, Morin was described as being in a happy mood. Due to his history of drug abuse, the execution technicians were forced to probe both of Morin's arms and legs with needles for nearly 45 minutes before they found a suitable vein, a first-time occurrence at that time.[15] He was pronounced dead at 12:55 AM, becoming the sixth man to be executed by lethal injection in Texas since the method was introduced in 1982.[16][3] In fact, The Supreme Court legalized the death penalty in 1976, which made Morin the sixth Texan to be executed ever since.[17]

• "Signs of a Serial Killer" by Crystal Clary (ISBN 9781491861387)
• The Eyes of a Stranger by Carrie Frederickson (ISBN 1481729799)
• Sarah's Story: Target of a Serial Killer by Sarah Lea Pisan (ISBN 1481729799)
• Obsession: Dark Desires: "Paging Sarah"
• Serial Thriller: "The Chameleon" on Investigation Discovery

• Capital punishment in Texas
• Capital punishment in the United States
• List of people executed in Texas, 1982–1989
• List of serial killers in the United States

• Offender Information from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice
• Last Statement from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice
• Final Meal Requests at the Wayback Machine (archived December 2, 2003). Texas Department of Criminal Justice (2003-09-12). Archived from the original on 2003-12-02. Retrieved on 2007-08-17.