("Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who playing)
NARRATOR: CSI: Miami,
the global television phenomenon.
In this series, we'll explore crime
through an entirely new lens.
DISPATCHER: Marlene Warren was just shot.
NARRATOR: The investigations on this program are true.
Ride along with the real CSI experts.
VINCE WEINER: This was most brutal homicide in over 25 years.
CRUX CONCEPTION: Forensic science,
it was the key witness.
NARRATOR: Talk to the real suspects.
I didn't kill anybody, dude.
NARRATOR: Hear from the real victims.
I couldn't believe it. I'm in a state of shock.
NARRATOR: And ultimately, solve the case
through the use of forensic science.
We still have a homicide suspect somewhere out there.
This is... WOMAN: A murderer.
REPORTER: A disturbing story has come in... (overlapping voices)
* *
NEWS ANCHOR: A murdered young woman was washed up
on the shores of the Indian River,
her body bound with rope and spline,
gagged with duct tape, wrapped in a plastic trash bag.
I've been an investigator with the Broward County
Sheriff's Office homicide unit for 25 years.
I raised my kids here, and it's pretty much
a small-town community, low-crime area.
Just a nice place.
On July 23, 2000,
a 911 call came into our communication center
around 4:30 p.m.,
stating that there's a possible body
floating in the river behind his house.
I recall getting to the scene, and...
indeed, there was a body floating in the river.
We're walking the shoreline looking for anything
that might by of evidentiary value--
a purse, a wallet, a phone.
Anything that might lead us to who the identity
of this person is.
And we didn't find anything.
Finding evidence in water makes it
extremely difficult to process.
The likelihood of fingerprints or DNA
is minimized tremendously.
My name is Mary's Martinez.
I have a master's in criminal justice.
I've worked as a crime scene investigator
for the last six years.
At the scene, investigators could tell
that it was a female.
She was completely nude.
It was clear that this wasn't an accident.
ROBERTS: First things we did while we were at the scene
is we asked the sheriff's office communication center
to ask the dispatchers to contact
all the surrounding agencies
and be on the lookout for any missing females.
Next thing we did was contact a medical examiner
as well as our agricultural marine unit
because we needed a boat to get the body out of the water.
What stood out the most was that
she was in pretty late stages of decomposition,
which comes with a whole host of different challenges.
The body's more fragile,
from a biohazard perspective,
but also from an evidentiary perspective.
We're talking about DNA. Maybe there's trace evidence.
Detectives discovered multiple pieces of white duct tape.
One was tightly covered around her eyes.
And then there was a secondary piece
that was located around her mouth and her neck area.
Upon further analysis of the tape,
investigators discovered that there was her hair
on the tape as well as a foreign hair substance.
Also discovered on the body was a marine-style rope
with some sort of knotting
in order to bind her wrists to her ankles.
Investigators also found Publix grocery store plastic bags
that were tied with, like, a black rubber material.
The investigators believed that those bags
were set in place with rocks or sand to weigh the body down.
ROBERTS: According to the medical examiner, he determined
that it's highly likely that the decedent
died from asphyxiation.
The cause of death was undetermined due to
the state of the decomposition
and the time length the body had been deceased.
When you have an unknown Jane Doe, so to speak,
identifying this person is-is paramount.
There was nothing that came up
as far as a missing female at the time.
So, next thing we would look at would be fingerprints
and try and identify them through that.
MARTINEZ: When a body is submerged in water
for an extended period of time,
what occurs throughout the decomposition
is what we call slippage.
Slippage just means
that the layers of the skin are separating.
In an event such as this,
where it's difficult to identify the individual,
we do a technique called degloving.
Degloving essentially is the removal of the fingerprint
from the victim...
and placed on either a gloved hand,
such as our own, or a mannequin hand
that we then use to roll the fingerprints,
and then submit that print into IAFIS for identification.
IAFIS stands for
automated fingerprint identification system.
It's a national database that's ran by the FBI.
This database is actually pretty vast
as it collects and stores fingerprints
from traveling records, immigration
and previous crimes.
And that's how we came up with identification
of the descendent.
The results came back as belonging to...
22-year-old Misty April Morris.
ROBERT MORSE: Misty's mom called me.
She was screaming, "She's dead."
"What?"
"She's dead. She was murdered. Misty's been killed."
Initially, I couldn't even process it.
My brain just sort of shut down for a second.
It's unimaginable.
I miss Misty every day.
Misty started life in Springfield, Ohio,
on April 10th, 1978.
When she was little, she was a daddy's girl.
We ultimately got a place
down in Indian Harbor Beach, Florida.
And that's where Misty really came into her own.
She enjoyed going down to the beach and surfing.
She loved the water.
That's all any parent wants
is for their kid to have a good life.
But Misty's mom and I got divorced in 1996,
and things just sort of fell apart.
Misty moved with her mom, and I went on my merry way.
MARTINEZ: Once the investigators arrived at the house,
they were able to speak to Misty's mom, Linda.
Linda told investigators
that she had not seen her daughter for three days.
MORSE: It was very common for Misty
to go away for a couple days.
Sometimes she would call, sometimes she didn't.
She was an adult,
so her mom didn't think anything of it.
Misty's mother begins a timeline of what happened that night.
The last time she saw Misty
would have been sometime after midnight on July 20th.
MARTINEZ: Linda, Misty's mom, figured
this is either somebody that she knows
or somebody that she's already comfortable with
because she didn't find the need to get dressed up
or put nice clothes on.
Investigators are asking, "Where are these items?"
ROBERTS: Linda also told us during the interview
that, uh, Misty had received a phone call for a few minutes,
and then a little bit later, she got a second phone call,
which lasted a few seconds, which made us believe
that somebody was probably saying, "We're here,"
for her to come on out.
So, it was important to us to find out
who these phone calls came from.
To do that, we subpoenaed the record
at Verizon Wireless
to determine who made these calls.
MARTINEZ: Back in 2000, investigators had to contact the mobile carriers
to look at incoming and outgoing calls individually.
It wasn't something that they were able to confirm
right away, so it could be anywhere between
days, weeks, months before the investigators
received this information.
Once they request this information,
their focus is now on victimology
and trying to get more information
on who the victim is.
ROBERTS: Victimology is very important
when you're dealing with a homicide.
Who the person is, what they do,
what their habits are, what their lifestyle is like.
Everything can play an important role
just determining who may have done this.
MARTINEZ: Misty's childhood was a bit rocky,
especially after the divorce.
You know, she worked where she could.
She worked in a lot of, you know,
clubs and bars in the area,
but just like probably any other 22-year-old,
she was just living her life and having a good time,
not taking things too seriously.
She was on track to make a better life for herself.
She had enrolled in Vardy Community College.
ROBERTS: According to Misty's mom, she said Misty had
a lot of different boyfriends and a lot of friends.
TOD GOODYEAR: At the time of this case,
I worked as a sergeant
for the Brevard County Sheriff's Office.
As investigators start interviewing her friends
and, uh, coworkers,
there's a rumor that starts to come
from several different people
saying that Misty was pregnant.
We needed the medical examiner to figure out if it's true,
but if she was saying that she was pregnant,
would that be a motive for someone to take her life?
Could be.
ROBERTS: Once we learned about this,
we wanted to find out who
is the alleged father of this child?
You know, who is Misty talking to?
Who's she talking about?
Linda, Misty's mom, provided investigators
with a couple names that could be of interest,
including her current boyfriend, Teddy Underwood.
GOODYEAR: A good place to start are boyfriends.
So Teddy Underwood being the current boyfriend,
is number one on the list.
MARTINEZ: Investigators learned that Teddy and Misty
had been dating for about two months.
ROBERTS: Misty was claiming to be pregnant.
Teddy may disagree with that,
and that may be a motive to kill her.
Our theory of the events is...
Teddy arrived at her house after her shift was done.
She ran out to meet with him.
He then learned that Misty was expecting his child.
He got angry to the point of murdering Misty.
Then he took her on the boat,
took her out into the river, tie her up,
filling brown grocery plastic bags
to weigh her body down,
and then disposing of her body into the river.
* *
GOODYEAR: Most of the time, you have
a significant other that causes a death.
Teddy Underwood becomes
suspect number one.
* *
MARTINEZ: Investigators felt the need
to speak to Teddy Underwood.
Given the fact that he and Misty were
in a relationship.
We look at him as our most viable suspect at that point.
So we brought him in for interview.
MARTINEZ: Teddy stated this
quote, unquote, "relationship" with Misty was very casual.
Misty was saying that she was pregnant.
Maybe he didn't want her to have his child.
ROBERTS: But during our interview with Mr. Underwood,
he had stated that he was not with Misty
during the time she would have been murdered.
He indicated he was at work that night.
"I had no knowledge of her whereabouts."
We were able to establish
his alibi that he was at work
as he had stated.
And he was cleared as a suspect.
GOODYEAR: At the start of this investigation,
a lot of different things were going on.
You have people that are doing interviews,
people that are requesting records,
people that are doing analysis on evidence.
MARTINEZ: Once the evidence
located on her body was analyzed,
investigators learned a couple different pieces
of new information.
The rope that was used
to tie Misty's hands and legs had a cow hitch knot,
which is not necessarily something
the general public knows how to do.
GOODYEAR: You're looking for a person
that is not your everyday, average weekend boater.
This is somebody that might be a boat captain
or possibly may have served in Coast Guard or Navy.
MARTINEZ: In analyzing the duct tape,
investigators also noticed that there were
shorter pieces of black hair on that tape.
They were able to identify that the hair on the tape
was, in fact, nonhuman,
and it actually belonged to a dog.
GOODYEAR: So knowing that we have a cow hitch knot
as well as the dog hair on the tape
narrows it down a little bit for us,
but it's not gonna lead you directly to a suspect.
One of the big questions in this case was
where Misty was killed and then where she went into the water.
MARTINEZ: They were able to conduct a drift test.
What the investigators do is that they use
floating devices such as buoys...
...drop them into the water in different areas
along different distances
to try to see how the current carries on the item
and how they might've ended up where Misty was found.
They determined that the current was flowing northeast,
which meant that, more than likely,
she was put in south of that location.
But to say exactly where southeast she was placed
was something that we just couldn't determine.
As we continue to investigate
this pregnancy rumor, we find out that,
according to her mom,
Linda Morse,
Misty was also seeing a man named Bobby Cooper
from time to time.
MARTINEZ: Bobby Cooper was a person who she had just recently met
at a house party.
Misty's mom, Linda, stated that he might be a person of interest
because he had been at the house a couple days prior.
ROBERTS: Speaking with some of the people
in Misty's circle and friends, they told us
that Bobby wanted to be a boyfriend, so to speak.
He wanted more of a relationship with Misty
than she wanted to have with him.
MARTINEZ: You have someone who may feel
jealous, may feel upset, may feel betrayed.
ROBERTS: We wanted to talk to Bobby Cooper.
We wanted to find out what he knew
about her whereabouts up to
and including the time of her death.
Our strategy with Bobby Cooper is the same
with some of the other people, just to lock them into a story,
find out what they were doing, what they know, who they know.
And is there any ulterior motive that we don't know about.
Investigators also asked Bobby where he was
during the night of the incident,
at which point he stated that he was
actually at his parents' house.
Detectives think that they're done with the interview.
However, Bobby then asked the detectives
if they would like Misty's driver's license back
because he has it with him.
How is it possible that he has the driver's license?
Linda, Misty's mom, stated that that night
that she disappeared, she took her phone
and her license.
Now the detectives have to figure out how he got
her license and if he was with her
the night she got murdered.
* *
GOODYEAR: In the interview with Bobby Cooper,
he says he has Misty's driver's license,
which we were led to believe by Linda that she left
the house the last time she was seen alive
with that identification.
Why else would you have
Misty's ID if you weren't with her
the night of the murder?
The investigator's theory is
Bobby called and picked up Misty at her residence.
They had a conversation in the car where she stated
that she was pregnant by another man.
He could have been enraged, jealous, or hurt,
even to the point where the conversation
became physical.
Bobby abducts and kills Misty...
...takes her license...
...and then disposes of her body in the water
south of where she was found.
Now the investigators have to start the interview
all over again.
Then he explained that they went out together
a couple nights prior to the murder,
and she asked him to hold on
to her driver's license,
then she would pick it up when she saw him the next time.
MARTINEZ: As an investigator and just as a person
that has lived in Miami and has gone
to a couple parties or clubs herself,
yeah, that's absolutely justifiable, really.
Sometimes women might be wearing things that don't have pockets,
and it's easy to hand it to the person that you're with.
GOODYEAR: We found out from re-interviewing
Misty's mother, Linda Morse,
she believed that she took her ID with her
because when she looked in Misty's purse,
which is still at the house,
the identification wasn't in the purse.
But she just put two and two together,
and she couldn't actually confirm that fact.
MARTINEZ: Now that the investigators have created
a criminal profile, it's time to figure out
if any of those specifics match what they know
about Bobby Cooper.
So the questions are,
does Bobby Cooper own a boat
or have some sort of nautical experience
with those type of tools and materials?
Could it possibly be that he was in the military?
Is he a dog owner?
Does he have a criminal background?
ROBERTS: We couldn't find anything
that would, uh, lead us to believe
he was any more of a suspect.
* *
MARTINEZ: Bobby didn't have any violent criminal history.
He also had not been part of any military branch--
the Marines, the Navy.
He didn't fit that narrative
of the person that they were looking for.
And he was able to be cleared as a suspect.
MARTINEZ: However, investigators,
while interviewing Bobby,
get a tip of information from him in reference
to another person--
Misty's ex-boyfriend, Brent Huck.
MARTINEZ: Investigators need to go speak to Brent.
ROBERTS: That leads us to south Merritt Island,
south of where the body was found.
We asked Brent if he would accompany us
to the sheriff's office.
He agreed to come and talk to us.
GOODYEAR: We learned that Brent Huck was in his mid-20s.
He was a charter boat captain, had grown up around boats,
came from a fairly wealthy family.
Confirmed that he'd been in a relationship with Misty.
He admitted to seeing Misty about nine days earlier
on July 11th, that they, actually, uh, got together,
they had a sexual relationship at that point.
He presented himself as being the honest guy,
as forthcoming and helpful in our investigation.
We now have him being the last person on record
that we know called her
before she went missing.
Watching the interrogation interview,
my first thought is that he was trying
to keep very calm to not alert law enforcement.
In my opinion, he seems almost too comfortable.
Brent's demeanor seemed as though he didn't really care,
just dismissive of who Misty was,
the relationship that they had.
And he spoke as though it didn't even bother him
that she had lost her life.
MARTINEZ: That was extremely shocking,
but this is more common than you would think,
where, as an investigator, you just stay silent,
and because of the fact that they're hiding,
they then start to overcompensate.
And this is exactly what's happening with Brent,
where he's not being asked any questions.
He's just sharing, and overly sharing,
to either cover up his tracks or trying to dissuade
the investigators to look elsewhere.
The fact that an ex-girlfriend,
whom his girlfriend at the time
may not know is still in the picture,
is supposedly pregnant with his child,
and if she found out,
that would've been the end of their relationship.
Looking at that, is it a possible motive for murder?
It's a great possible motive for murder.
MARTINEZ: He had the motive, had been violent with her.
He had the military experience,
he had the boating experience,
on top of him possibly
having been the person who she last spoke with.
Could Brent Huck be the perpetrator?
MARTINEZ: Investigators working this case build a profile
of a possible perpetrator
which would fit the narrative.
Someone who knows Misty personally,
someone who possibly has some sort of boating experience,
maybe even military experience, but then also had a motive.
And Brent checked off a lot of these boxes.
He's leading us to believe that, yeah,
this is very possibly our suspect.
So, the next question to us is,
where did this happen at?
So our plan at this point was,
"Let's see if he'll let us search his house."
So we asked for consent to search
and he said, yeah, come on by.
ROBERTS: Off we went.
And we began the search.
We determined that Brent Huck had a dog.
The dog was a black in color Rottweiler mix,
um, that had short black hair,
just like the dog hair on the duct tape.
So, as part of the search warrant,
there were hair samples taken from his dog.
MARTINEZ: At the time,
investigators didn't know if there was any tests
that would be able to compare dog hairs.
GOODYEAR: Then investigators walk into the house.
There was some items found there that are very interesting to us.
As investigators go in the garage,
then they see, hanging down, a roll of this rubber spline,
which is a material that is used on the inside of windows.
It's a weatherproofing.
It looks exactly like the spline that she's tied with
and is not something everybody has in their house.
As we continue our search, we're searching the kitchen area
and we find Publix bags
consistent with the same bags that were found
on the victim as well.
So now we have two pieces of potential evidence.
GOODYEAR: And through his bedroom, they actually see
a crumpled piece of duct tape, white in color, same type.
Actually looks like a perfect match
for the tape that was found on Misty.
ROBERTS: That's pretty significant.
I put it on my clipboard and actually was carrying it
through the house and Brent saw it, and...
he turned, like, white as a ghost.
He was frantic about us finding that tape.
GOODYEAR: Finding all three of those things in the house
are-- some people will say coincidental--
but as a homicide investigator,
we don't believe in coincidence and those types of things.
The residence that Brent Huck took them to is on the waterway.
Investigators notice that there's a boat there
and that it belongs to him.
They get consent from him to search the boat.
A couple pieces of evidence were located on the boat.
They found a rope.
It was white and red with a diamond pattern,
more like nautical-themed.
And then on the boat,
they found two individual pieces of hair on the floor,
as well as a clump of matted hair
next to a fishing rod holder
that was adhered to the boat.
GOODYEAR: All of the evidence that we have come up with,
we bagged separately
and sent off to labs
to get further testing done on them.
ROBERTS: As we're talking to Brent,
we told him, if you're involved and if you did,
there's, you know, there may be an explanation.
And his response was, essentially,
you can't explain a woman being tied up,
bound up and thrown in the river.
GOODYEAR: Those types of things, the condition of the body,
if they were tied up or bound,
we would not disclose to the media because
there's only really two people that know what happened.
The person that's deceased, who can't talk about it,
and the person that did it.
That has guilt written all over it.
The detectives... (sighs)
were sharing more and more information with me
and letting me know what they had found,
that they thought
Brent Huck was responsible for Misty's murder.
MORSE: When I was still living in Indian Harbor Beach years ago,
Misty called me up one day,
and she was all bubbly and happy
and wanted to meet for lunch.
So, I met Misty.
During lunch, I learned what all the excitement was about.
She had recently met this guy and started going out with him.
Eventually, Misty moved in with Brent
and gave Brent the dog.
They named the dog Sheba.
I thought they were happy,
but I wasn't really a part of her life.
And unfortunately,
there was a lot of stuff that Misty didn't share with me.
I was not aware that at that time
that he had a fiancée.
Sadly, I didn't know how to teach Misty
what a good man looked like,
so she didn't know how to look for one.
And I will never forgive myself
for that.
If I live to be a thousand,
I will never forgive myself.
The sad thing is, this whole thing
was because...
...allegedly,
she was pregnant with his kid.
The autopsy ruled that theory out.
She was, in fact,
not expecting a child.
MORSE: It wasn't even true.
It just, you know, does not compute.
I wondered why she would state that she was pregnant.
And then the medical examiner proved that she was not.
Regardless, there's no justifying what happened.
Investigators are receiving some of the results
back from the evidence collected from inside of Brent's home
and the comparison request that they had made.
GOODYEAR: There's a lot of different things
we're looking for on the evidence.
Can we identify a manufacturer for it?
Can we tell where it was made and what it's used for?
Was it cut? Was it torn? All of those types of things
are going to help unlock this case.
What was concluded was that
the spline that was located in the garage,
as well as the spline that was used to weigh down Misty
with the Publix bags in the river,
they were made by the same manufacturer,
in the same plant and on the same assembly line.
Our investigation into the Publix bags determined
that they were the bags tied to her feet.
And the bags found at Brent Huck's house
originated from the local Publix there,
as well as the same lane by the same clerk,
same batch.
And then we have the tape which was sent off.
It was the same color, same texture, and the same make.
MARTINEZ: And then investigators find a rope,
which happens to match the type, color and pattern.
Lastly, the hairs that were located on the boat
were analyzed using mitochondrial DNA,
abbreviated as mDNA.
Unlike the DNA that we're used to from a nucleus,
which tells us exactly who this person is,
mDNA provides a matric comparison to a maternal line.
So, investigators were able to confirm...
...the hair that was tested on the boat
and the hair that was collected from Misty
during the autopsy
matched to the same maternal line.
There was no reason why Misty's mom Linda
would have been on the boat.
Which means that the hair that was on the floor of the boat
was, in fact, Misty's hair.
GOODYEAR: Early on in the investigation,
there was a request put in for, uh, Misty's cell phone records,
and those records also came back.
MARTINEZ: The phone records show
that there were two calls that night on the 20th,
like Linda had mentioned during her interview.
GOODYEAR: We take those phone numbers that are on that record
and we cross-reference it, and we find out
that both of those calls came from Brent Huck.
ROBERTS: Looking at all the evidence and so on,
at this point, it was a pretty strong case.
I felt pretty confident.
As we're going along, we take this to the state attorney
and we're showing them everything we have.
GOODYEAR: However, they don't believe
that there's enough for them to say
that they would be able to get a conviction.
I can go down to Walmart and buy that screen spline.
I can buy that duct tape,
I can probably buy that-that line or similar line.
I could send it off to the lab
and the same result would come back.
Does that mean I murdered Misty Morse,
because I can obtain these things? No.
GOODYEAR: And the reason we have Misty's hair
would be because Misty
was on the boat at another time, maybe not with him that night.
MARTINEZ: Pretty much all of the evidence,
as of this moment, is still circumstantial.
GOODYEAR: Now we're kind of
at a standstill.
MARTINEZ: The state attorney's office
wants more.
* *
MARTINEZ: The state attorney states
that the evidence is not enough to prove that Brent
is actually the perpetrator of Misty's murder.
When you get that from the state attorney's office,
I mean, it's disappointing,
because we believe that we have enough.
But they look at it from a different standpoint.
They look into the-- what can they take into court,
how is a jury gonna view it?
And do they feel comfortable enough
that they have a reasonable certainty to win that case?
MORSE: Even though it was not DNA,
it wasn't smoking gun videotape and signed confession,
the evidence just kept piling up against Brent.
I tried to quiet my mind by keeping busy,
but also, at the same time, staying informed.
It was oftentimes difficult and frustrating for me,
knowing that Brent was continuing
to live the good life, running a charter boat
and hanging out with his fiancée
while I knew in my heart that he had killed Misty.
* *
ROBERTS: You want to solve the case,
so we'll continue to work, we'll continue
to strengthen our case.
It's pretty frustrating.
We're working on it, but we haven't come up
with a prosecutable case yet.
Nobody's in jail.
You want to solve the case, but years passed.
MARTINEZ: A lot can change in two years,
especially in the forensic world.
NEWS ANCHOR: Investigators collected dozens
of other pieces of evidence,
the most noted being a dog hair found on the tape
that covered Morse's mouth.
ROBERTS: There's never been a case
brought before a court successfully prosecuted
based on animal DNA.
The California v. Westerfield case changed that.
MARTINEZ: This case in California specifically states
that pet DNA
is now admissible, meaning that pet DNA could,
ultimately, be used to place someone on the scene.
It blew the whole case wide open.
Knowing that we have the dog hair on the tape
and we have standards
from Brent's dog, we're able to send that off
for comparison to a lab.
MARTINEZ: The analysis was able to confirm
that the hair that was attached to the...
adhesive side of the tape that was on Misty's body
matches the hair of Brent's dog.
GOODYEAR: And that's the piece
that the state attorney, once they looked at it,
they were willing to go to trial.
And they were able
to issue a grand jury indictment
for first-degree premeditated murder for Brent Huck.
MORSE: I remember thinking,
"Finally.
It's about time."
MARTINEZ: This is what they believe occurred that night.
Brent heard about the rumors of Misty
being pregnant with his child.
He decided to confront Misty.
Things get a little heated.
The argument turns physical.
Brent ends up murdering Misty.
He uses the white duct tape
to cover her mouth and eyes,
the red and white rope to tie
her hands and her legs
and the black spline to attach
weighted bags to her.
Drives out to the river and discards her body.
GOODYEAR: After a near two-year investigation,
Brent Huck finally goes to trial,
um, in October of 2002.
MARTINEZ: In analyzing all the pieces of evidence that were found--
we're talking about
the tape, the spline, the bags--
both at the scene and at his house.
The hair that was located on his boat.
The dog hair
that was on the tape.
The telephone records.
The fact that he knew exactly how Misty
had been found and how she was bound.
His military background, his knowledge of boating.
He had the motive,
being fearful that his current girlfriend
finding out about the rumors of Misty being pregnant
with his child.
From a forensic standpoint,
but also, from a circumstantial standpoint,
there was really no other solution.
Brent Huck is Misty's murderer.
* *
GOODYEAR: On October 23rd,
the verdict was given by the jury.
COURT CLERK: The defendant Brent Robert Huck
is guilty of first-degree felony murder.
NEWS ANCHOR: Brent Huck shook his head in disbelief
as the court clerk read the verdict: guilty,
for the death of his former girlfriend Misty Morse.
And he eventually was sentenced to life in prison
without parole.
No parole, life in prison. He's getting what he deserves.
(exhales sharply)
I just-- a very deep sigh of relief.
When they said "guilty," at that point, I realized
that that was it, he was going away forever.
It's kind of ironic
that her gift to him...
...was what did it in for him.
I think that that is quite possibly
the best kind of "gotcha."
Nothing could cause him the pain that I've had to endure
for the last two and a half years.
I mean, there's nothing that could do that.
Because I have to live with this every day.
You know, he left me very alone.
The reason we do what we do is the family and the victim.
We can't bring her back.
But at least they know that the person that caused her death
is being punished, and won't have
the ability to hurt anybody ever again.
...the way she was.
And keep that memory alive in my heart and in my mind.
For a long time,
I kept expecting the phone to ring
'cause when I would answer,
Misty would always say, "Hey, old man."
Of course, it never happened.
* Ooh... *
Misty was cremated,
and we had a memorial
at Hightower Park there in Satellite Beach.
We walked down to the ocean,
and just as the cremains were dumped in the water,
a little wavelet kind of came in and broke over it.
* So it's time to let go... *
And you could see the ashes being swept out.
* Let go... *
It was almost like the ocean
wrapping its arms around Misty and saying,
"Come on, go with me."
* Send in the waves *
* To wash away... *
I want nothing more than for Misty
to be remembered as a loving,
beautiful woman who cared about people,
who wanted to spread happiness.
And...
when I think about Misty,
that's the thing that I think I remember the most.
That's the thing that makes me smile.
* Send in the waves *
* To wash away *
* All of my pride *
* Why do I try? *
* Send in the waves *
* To wash away *
* The rising tide *
* So I can't hide *
* Send in the waves *
* Send in the waves. *
Captioning sponsored by CBS
Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org