According to court documents and statements from Dallas' U.S. Attorney's Office, Morris began presenting himself as a filmmaker and modeling agent to the parents of teenage boys in 2009. Over the next eight years, Morris gained the trust of the kids' parents and flew boys around the United States, including to various hotels in North Texas and Morris' home in Forney.
Under the guise of taking modeling photos of the boys or filming them for low-budget TV shows — the productions had names like "Scarecrow Boy," "Crime Scene" or "Child Victims Unit" — Morris filmed the boys in provocative poses and, in some cases, performing or receiving sex acts.
The next day, Morris took the 12-year-old to his house, where he filmed him in a Speedo and covered him in fake blood.
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Morris admitted to grooming one child, identified in court documents as John Doe 4, for years and filming multiple pornographic videos with the boy. In a 2013 video, Morris tells John Doe 4 to "take off his clothes and dance," before sexually assaulting him and telling him, "Don't be mad."
That year, the Dallas County Sheriff's Office hired Morris as a detention services officer for Lew Sterrett Jail's West Tower. He maintained that position until his October 2016 arrest by the Kaufman County Sheriff's Office and U.S. Marshals, which followed a yearlong investigation stemming from a tip made by a teenage boy to a sheriff's deputy in Orange County, California.
The boy told authorities that he flew to Dallas in 2012 to meet Morris. Morris picked him up from the airport and took him to a La Quinta Inn in Irving. Morris took pictures of the boy in a Speedo and forced him to expose his genitals, the victim said. The next day, Morris took the boy, then 12, to his house, where he filmed him in a Speedo and covered him in fake blood. Morris touched the boy's penis.
During the investigation, Morris' victim recorded a phone call to Morris, who apologized repeatedly and called the boy, now 16, "sweetheart" and "baby."
When officers arrested Morris at his home, they found hundreds of videos of his 10 known victims, including at least four who have yet to be identified by the FBI, the lead investigative agency in the case. Morris also had numerous additional videos of child pornography in which he did not participate.