A Jackson County schoolteacher who police say was killed by her husband had sought a protective order against him, saying he once choked her until she passed out and wrote a suicide letter to their children.Michael controls everything I do,” Amanda Smith Morrow wrote in the Feb. 10 complaint and motion for domestic protective order. “I'm not allowed to go anyplace with anyone, including my parents, without having to check in every 10 minutes.”
The two separated, and Morrow dismissed the charges two weeks later.
District Court Judge Monica Leslie on Monday arraigned Michael David Morrow on a first-degree murder charge.
She set his bond at $2 million after Assistant District Attorney Jeff Jones cited Morrow's violent past and potential threat to his family, himself and a previous wife.
Jones said in court that Morrow choked his wife in a fight Friday night at her Haywood County home before going back to his car and getting a gun.
Amanda Morrow made it about 100 yards to a neighbor's home — more than likely running for help — before Michael Morrow caught up to her, put his .32-caliber revolver to her right temple and pulled the trigger, Jones said.
A man and his wife found her in a fetal position on their front porch nearly eight hours after her mother called 911 to report she was fighting with her estranged husband.
Amanda Morrow taught seventh-grade math at Fairview School in Sylva.
Michael Morrow said nothing in court other than to acknowledge he understood the charges.
His attorney, capital defender Tony Dalton, of Brevard, didn't fight the request for a high bond, saying Morrow wasn't interested in getting out of jail.
The slaying, according to statements in court and court papers, comes just weeks after Amanda Morrow testified against him in a custody battle he had with his ex-wife.
'What are you doing?'
Amanda Morrow had called her mother sometime after midnight on Saturday to say her estranged husband's car was in her driveway, according to a detective's statement in an application to get a search warrant for Morrow's home. Dottie Smith heard the two arguing.“What are you doing? … what are you doing? … what are you doing?” she recalled her daughter saying before the phone went dead, according to the warrant application.
Deputies found Amanda Morrow's silver Ford Focus straddling Nutmeg Court and Pot Leg Road. The door was open, and the hood was warm despite temperatures in the 30s that night.
They found no one inside her home at 58 Nutmeg Court.
Deputies searched the area for her husband's black Ford Fusion.
Officers would later recall passing a similar car traveling east on Grindstone Road, which intersects with Nutmeg.
Detective Jim Schick was dispatched to the scene about two hours after the initial 911 call. Amanda Morrow still hadn't turned up.
He talked to her mother, who lives nearby on Pot Leg Road. She told him about the call from her daughter and the fight, according to the warrant application.
Schick, along with a Sheriff's Office sergeant and a Maggie Valley police officer, went to Michael Morrow's home.
He didn't answer the front door, and officers found a back door unlocked.
Inside, they found him lying on his back in the bedroom. A .32-caliber revolver was next to his left side with the hammer cocked.He began to sit up, but Schick pinned him and handed the gun to the sergeant. He helped Michael Morrow up.
“Where's Amanda,” Schick asked. “We need to know.”
“I did what I did,” Michael Morrow said, offering no other information.
It would be hours before the owner of a house on 353 Pot Leg Road would walk on to his front porch to find her cold and beaten body. He called 911 at 8:45 a.m.
“No, there's no breath,” he told a dispatcher, while his wife wept in the background. “She's definitely dead, sir.”
His home was directly across the intersection from Nutmeg Court and Pot Leg Road, where deputies had found her car earlier that morning.
He told the dispatcher he heard the screaming and saw the three deputies, but he didn't think to check his front porch. He thought the fight was at his neighbor's house. “My dogs were throwing a fit, and I went all around, but I didn't know,” he said, “and the deputies went to my neighbor's across the road.”
Violent past
The two had split in February, according to court papers.
She told the court in her request for the protective order that he had accused her of having an affair because she came home from work late once.
He hit her with a pillow and got on top of her and choked her.
It wasn't the first time he had become violent. She told the court in her request that they had argued in December last year. She thought he had left after the argument but saw a light come in an outbuilding. She found him loading a rifle. He pushed her against a wall and choked her until she passed out, according to the complaint.
When she came to, he was standing with the rifle under his chin.
“He told me I woke up just in time to see him blow his brains out,” she recalled in the restraining order papers.
She talked him out of the suicide.
A court date was set for Feb. 24. She dismissed the charges that day, according to court records.
Investigators declined to discuss a motive in the killing.
Amanda Morrow recently testified in the custody battle between her estranged husband and his ex-wife, who was trying to get full custody of their three children. The trial ended on Oct. 1. She told of his abuse.
Amanda Morrow has a son of her own from another marriage. He is a kicker on the Tuscola High School football team.
Her husband's former wife, Lauren Lanita Morrow, had a current restraining order against him. She told the court in December 2008 that he tried to ram her car with his truck, a blocking maneuver the prosecutor on Monday said was similar to what Morrow did Saturday.
The day before, he had sent her a text message saying “enjoy the holidays, enjoy every day as if it were your last.”
Community saddened
Counselors on Monday were at Tuscola High, Jonathan Valley Elementary and Fairview School.
Bill Nolte, associate superintendent in Haywood County, said Tuscola's football coach had visited several times with her son over the weekend.“It's just a very sad situation for the family,” he said.Superintendent Sue Nations in Jackson County said staff at Fairview on Monday planned to meet for a debriefing to determine whether more counselors would be needed today.
Morrow was well-liked at the school. “She was a very competent young woman,” Nations said.
Seventy people were killed last year in domestic violence-related homicides in North Carolina, said Julia Freeman, executive director of the REACH shelter in Haywood County. Most were women.
Advocates said people who are in abusive relationships should call their local women's shelter for help in creating a safe plan to get out. Having a plan and support are two of the most important tools for ending an abusive relationship, though the advocates said preventing murder is impossible.
“Homicides you can't predict,” Freeman said. “You can't stop that. A restraining order is simply a piece of paper.”
Valerie Collins, executive director of Helpmate in Asheville, said many abusers aren't able to change. “What we have seen is, statistically, unless the person gets a significant amount of support in breaking the cycle of his own violence, unless that person gets significant support from a good counselor, it's not going to stop,” she said.
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