On the morning of May 1, 1984, relatives of Jerry and Brenda Morgan came to the couple's mobile home in rural Gregg County, Texas, a few miles northwest of Longview near Spring Hill. Looking through the bedroom window of the couple's son, Devin, they could see Jerry and Brenda on the floor. They flagged down a meter reader, Mike Owens, who went in to check on the baby. All three were dead of gunshot wounds. Devin was twenty-two months old.
For six years nobody was charged. Then, in 1990, a man in Michigan called the Gregg County Sheriff's Office to say that his former wife knew what had happened. She had later been married to a Tyler drug dealer named Alvin Andrew Kelly, who by then was in prison for a different killing. Her testimony, with that of Kelly's younger brother, sent Kelly to death row in 1991. He spent seventeen years there, insisting he had never met the Morgans, and federal courts heard four separate appeals over whether his former wife had lied. He was executed on October 14, 2008. In his last words he denied killing the Morgans and asked another family to forgive him for the murder he did admit.
Kelly was fifty-seven when he was executed, which puts his birth around 1951. The sources reviewed for this page say little about his childhood. As an adult he owned a truck repair shop in Tyler, in Smith County. He told the Associated Press shortly before his execution that the pressure of running the business led him to drugs, which he said were first offered to him by a cross-country truck driver, and that he became addicted to methamphetamine. The shop failed. By 1984 he was buying, selling and making drugs, and he said later that he had once thought of himself as a gangster.
His criminal record, as the jury heard it at his sentencing, included convictions for burglary, unlawful weapon possession, delivery and possession of controlled substances, aggravated sexual assault and murder. He told the AP that with a record like that he "didn't stand a chance," and that it was his own way of life, not the State of Texas, that had put him on death row.
Cynthia, who later went by Cynthia Cummings, met Kelly in 1982 or 1983 and moved in with him in Tyler, according to her trial testimony as summarized by the Fifth Circuit. She had been married before, to a man named Chris Vickery. She said she became addicted to methamphetamine and often went along on Kelly's drug deals, carrying a pistol at his request to "watch his back." The couple married on September 5, 1985, more than a year after the Morgan killings, and had a son, Alvin Jr. They later divorced. Kelly's younger brother, Steven, was in the drug business with him. His supplier, his "main man," was a dealer named Walter Shannon, also known as W.W. Shannon, and he worked with another trafficker, Ron Wilson, known in later reporting as Ronnie Wilson.
Jerry Morgan was a plumber. Brenda Morgan had just started a new job at a physical therapist's office. Both served as reserve officers with the city marshal's office, a fact that became central to the prosecution's case. Their son Devin was remembered in the Dallas Observer as "all boy, full of just play and life." Brenda's mother was Betty McGrede, and her sister Cheryl McGrede. A niece, reported as Lori Kubecka by the Lufkin Daily News and as Kelly Kubecka in other AP copy, was ten when her aunt, uncle and cousin were killed. Twenty-four years later she said she still could not stay alone overnight.
When the family was found, a long list of things was missing from the home: the Morgans' 1977 Pontiac Catalina, a .22 caliber revolver, a .380 semiautomatic pistol, a 7mm rifle, a Remington 870 pump shotgun, a .38 caliber derringer, a television set, a video recorder, a stereo, decorative brass butterflies and a coffee maker. Investigators also collected vacuum sweepings from the home, which turned up hairs a laboratory described as having "Negroid" characteristics. That evidence would become the core of Kelly's defense.
Investigators did not solve the killings in 1984. The Morgans' car was found in a hospital parking lot in Tyler, wiped clean of fingerprints. A pickup truck had been stolen from a parking lot near where the car was left, and two Black men were arrested for stealing it. A necklace was recovered that two of the Morgans' relatives at first identified as Brenda's; the Dallas Observer later described it as a "floating heart" necklace. None of this led to a charge.
Cynthia said much later that she had wanted to talk. A Gregg County detective, Roy Bean, said in an affidavit that she spoke to him several times but "refused to go into details" unless she was given immunity. The Fifth Circuit noted an investigator's handwritten note that read "witness protection - RoyBean?" but found no proof that protection was ever requested or offered. Prosecutors told the AP in 2008 that she had been afraid of Kelly and never felt she could come forward.
Kelly was not arrested for the Morgan murders in 1984, but he was arrested for another killing. John T. Ford, an East Texas man, was killed in 1984, after the Morgans. The Fifth Circuit called the Ford case unrelated and said it happened after the Morgan murders; the Dallas Observer reported that Ford had been Kelly's roommate and that investigators believed Kelly killed him less than three weeks after the Morgans died. Kelly pleaded guilty to Ford's murder and was serving a thirty-year sentence for it in 1990. He never denied it. Before he died he asked Ford's family for forgiveness.
The courts later heard competing claims about Cynthia's role in the Ford killing. Kelly filed affidavits from two relatives, Ricky and Shelly Kelly, saying she had told them she killed Ford, and his lawyers alleged that she helped dispose of Ford's body and the weapon. In a deposition she denied taking part, and in an affidavit she denied ever saying she had shot anyone. The Ford killing was never put before the Morgan jury, because Kelly's own lawyers asked the judge to keep it out.
While he was held in the Gregg County Jail on a drug charge, Kelly was implicated in the aggravated sexual assault of two fellow inmates. He said it was also in that jail that he found religion.
In 1990 Chris Vickery, Cynthia's first husband, called the Gregg County Sheriff's Office and said his former wife had information about the Morgan case. She was living in Michigan and was divorced from Kelly. Russell Potts, chief investigator for the Gregg County District Attorney's Office, went to Michigan to meet her. He testified years later that she was cooperative and willing to testify but hesitant because she feared Kelly would retaliate, and that he never threatened her. Potts and Chuck Willeford, of the Gregg County Sheriff's Office, led the investigation that followed. A Gregg County grand jury indicted Kelly for capital murder: the murder of Devin Morgan in the course of robbing his father, Jerry Morgan. Ron Wilson was also charged.
Kelly went on trial in Gregg County in the fall of 1991, and the jury returned its verdict in October. The prosecutors included Rebecca Simpson and David Brabham, both of whom later became county judges. Kelly's defense received $7,392.74 for investigation, including a trip to Alaska, according to findings by the state habeas court, and the defense deposed seven witnesses before trial, including Cynthia and her sister Violet Brownfield.
Steven Kelly testified first about a visit to the Morgan home a few days before the killings. He said he drove there with his brother and Wilson, and that Alvin told him to stay in the car. Hearing an argument, Steven walked around to the back of the house and saw his brother pointing a gun at Jerry Morgan and saying, "I want you to know that I can kill you at any time." His brother saw him and angrily sent him back to the car. Steven heard Wilson arguing with a woman inside. As they drove away, he said, Wilson complained that they were supposed to "prove a point" and had not, and Alvin answered that they could always come back later and take care of it.
Steven testified that late on the night of April 30, 1984, after he and his wife had gone to bed, his brother arrived at his house with Wilson and Cynthia. Alvin was nervous and in a hurry. He said he was in serious trouble, that he had killed the family Steven had seen him threaten, and that the child had been "involved." He opened a briefcase, handed Steven a pistol and asked for five hundred dollars to get out of town. Steven gave him the money.
Cynthia's testimony was the center of the case. She said that on the evening of April 30, after drinking beer and injecting methamphetamine, she rode with Kelly and Wilson to a house without knowing where they were going or why. Kelly told her to stay in the car. She heard gunfire and a baby crying, and went inside. Jerry Morgan had already been shot. Kelly had Brenda Morgan pinned against a wall while Devin cried. Cynthia picked up the boy and tried to keep him from seeing his mother. She testified that Kelly shot Brenda in the back of the neck and dragged her into a bedroom, where he laid her beside her husband. Brenda asked Cynthia for help, and Cynthia brought a towel and put it under her head.
Cynthia said she went back to the living room to comfort Devin. Kelly took the child from her and shot him in the head, then pointed the gun at her and ordered her out to the car. As she left, she heard him shoot the boy again. She said he used the same .22 caliber pistol on Brenda and on Devin; Kelly had once told her police could not run ballistics tests on a .22. Kelly and Wilson loaded guns, the brass butterflies and the coffee maker. Kelly drove the Morgans' car, with Wilson, and had Cynthia follow in their own vehicle. The three of them wiped the Morgans' car for fingerprints and left it in the hospital lot in Tyler. Then, needing money, they went to Steven's house. After that, she said, her memory was blurry, though she remembered Kelly and Steven going off to the pool room to talk.
The State presented evidence that matched much of her account: the location of the wounds on Brenda and Devin, the caliber of the weapon, where and how the bodies lay, the towel found under Brenda's head and the car found wiped clean in Tyler. Prosecutors put on evidence that Jerry and Brenda Morgan were city marshal reserve officers, and argued that Kelly killed them because they were giving information about him to law enforcement. According to the Lufkin Daily News, prosecutors also said the killings might have been drug related.
Two more witnesses described admissions. Violet Brownfield, Cynthia's sister, said Kelly had bragged about killing a family, including a child. Danny Moore, who knew Kelly through a cousin, testified that Kelly said he collected debts for Walter Shannon at a forty-sixty split. Moore said Kelly told him he had "taken care of that job" and needed to see "the man" about money, that "that man, his old lady, and the kid... they're not coming back," and that more people would end up the same way if they did not pay.
Kelly's defense was that someone else, a Black man never identified, had killed the Morgans. His lawyers pointed to the hairs in the vacuum sweepings, the pickup stolen near the Morgans' abandoned car, the two Black men arrested for that theft and the necklace. Their theory was that Cynthia had a relationship with a Black man and had made up her story to protect him, or to take revenge on Kelly. A State trace-evidence analyst, Timothy Fallon, testified that the hairs did not match either of the two men arrested for the truck theft, and that hair with those characteristics could come from a white person. A defense witness, Kerry Phillips, testified after the State located him.
In closing, the prosecutor argued that Cynthia was not an accomplice under Texas law, which would have required corroboration of her testimony. "Cindy Kelly acted in an attempt to stop what was done," the prosecutor told the jury. "She attempted to stop the murder of the baby. She begged this Defendant to leave the baby at a doorstep and to save the baby's life." The prosecutor added that even if jurors doubted the point, three witnesses had described confessions: Steven Kelly, Violet Brownfield and Danny Moore.
In October 1991 the Gregg County jury found Kelly guilty of capital murder. At the punishment phase the State presented his record and his reputation for violence, the jury answered the special issues under Texas law in favor of death, and the court sentenced him to death. He arrived on death row with TDCJ number 999012.
Ron Wilson was tried separately. According to the Dallas Observer, a jury, relying largely on Cynthia's testimony and Steven Kelly's, convicted him of murder and sentenced him to sixty-six years. Wilson has always denied being there.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Kelly's conviction and sentence on June 26, 1996, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case on March 24, 1997. Kelly's first state habeas application was denied without written order on April 8, 1998, and the Supreme Court again declined review that October. A federal petition was dismissed because some claims had not first been raised in state court. His second state application was dismissed in September 2000 as an abuse of the writ, and he filed again in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Beaumont.
The federal appeals turned on three people in Kelly's own family and Cynthia's.
The first was Violet Brownfield. On October 2, 1997, she signed an affidavit saying Cynthia had confessed to killing Jerry Morgan: that Cynthia ran into the house after a shot, found Jerry struggling with Kelly, was told to get him off, and shot him. The same affidavit said Cynthia told her the trial testimony about Kelly killing Brenda and the baby was true. Twenty days later Brownfield signed a second affidavit saying Cynthia had described shooting Jerry Morgan as a bad dream, not something that happened, and that she had not mentioned this because she was trying to get custody of Alvin Jr. The sisters, she said, had been smoking marijuana at the time. Cynthia signed an affidavit saying she had told Violet about dreaming that she killed a man. Another sister, Beverly Frank, said in a deposition that Cynthia had once claimed to have killed Jerry Morgan while angry at her for trying to stop her drug use, and that she no longer believed it; Cynthia, she said, was not capable of killing anyone.
The second was Kelly's sister, Nancy Brown. She and her husband, Conley Brown, drove to Georgia, where Cynthia was living, for an unannounced visit. Nancy's affidavit said Cynthia told her privately, "This is between you, me and God," that Kelly did not kill the baby, that "they" had threatened to kill Cynthia and Alvin Jr. if she did not testify, that many people had been at the Morgan home, and that "the law was involved." The affidavit also said Cynthia told her Kelly "did commit murder."
The third was Steven. Kelly's lawyers alleged that he later told relatives he had "turned state's evidence against his brother for a crime he didn't do."
In July 2003 the Fifth Circuit refused to let Kelly appeal seven claims, including a free-standing claim of actual innocence, which federal habeas law does not recognize, and his complaint about the prosecutor's argument on whether Cynthia was an accomplice. On August 10, 2004, ruling on four claims the district court had certified, the court rejected nearly all of his allegations of perjury and hidden evidence. It assumed, for argument, that Steven had made up the confession, but found no evidence the State knew. It found no proof of an undisclosed deal with Cynthia; the state court had found there was none. It rejected a claim about Walter Shannon because Shannon was not Black and did not fit the defense theory. On one point it sided with Kelly: the district court had dismissed Nancy Brown's affidavit as not credible without a hearing, and a judge cannot weigh credibility on summary judgment. The court sent that part back, noting that Cynthia "may have lied to Nancy Brown."
The district court again ruled for the State without a hearing, and on April 20, 2006, the Fifth Circuit vacated that ruling for failing to follow its earlier mandate. The district court then held an evidentiary hearing. Nancy Brown testified that she had gone to find Cynthia after praying about her brother's case and receiving what she described as an impression from God that Cynthia "would bare her heart to me." Conley Brown testified that they went because they were already convinced Kelly was innocent. Cynthia testified that the visit happened but denied saying Kelly did not shoot the baby, denied saying she had shot anyone and denied being threatened by law enforcement. She said she had used drugs in the past but had not for six years. Kelly testified that he had never met the Morgans, that on the night of the killings he was changing the engine in a truck with a man named Johnny Waller, and that Cynthia, Violet Brownfield and Steven had all lied. He admitted the Ford murder and admitted that he had been a drug dealer, and said he had converted to Christ.
On February 15, 2007, the district judge found that Cynthia had not recanted. The judge wrote that the credibility of the witnesses was not obvious from their testimony or demeanor, that the whole record supported Cynthia "slightly more" than Nancy Brown, that Nancy Brown's account of the visit resembled her account of the vision and might have grown from it, and that Conley and Nancy Brown disagreed about whether Cynthia had said these things privately or to both of them. On April 10, 2008, the Fifth Circuit affirmed, saying Kelly fell "woefully short" of showing the finding was wrong.
Around 2001, the Dallas Observer reported that Kelly, then fifty and held at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, believed DNA testing would clear him; tests were under way on the crime-scene hairs, and his lawyer had asked for the necklace to be tested. The sources reviewed for this page do not report the results. Cheryl McGrede, Brenda's sister, told the paper that she had sat through the trials and would speak up herself if she believed an innocent man was in prison.
Texas set Kelly's execution for October 14, 2008. He was one of twelve Texas inmates scheduled to die over six weeks. The Supreme Court declined to review his last regular appeal the week before. His lawyer, Scott Smith, then asked the justices to delay the execution while they considered a Tennessee case about whether poor death-row inmates seeking clemency were entitled to state-paid lawyers. "I doubt they're going to issue a stay on this one," Smith told the AP. The Court turned him down about two hours before the scheduled time.
Kelly said he did not want a reprieve. In an interview from a visiting cage outside death row, he told the AP, "As I stand before God, I'm innocent of this case." He said he had turned down several plea offers because accepting them would have meant lying: "If I was guilty, I would plead guilty." He rejected the idea that methamphetamine had wiped out his memory of the night: if he had done it, he said, he would remember. He called himself "an ex-drug dealer scumbag" and "an old sinner," said he held no animosity toward the people who had prosecuted him, and described his coming death as a "graduation" to go home to God.
Rebecca Simpson, the prosecutor, told the AP that the case was still vivid to her nearly twenty years on. "Who shoots a baby in the forehead twice?" she asked, and said she had no doubt the evidence was overwhelming. Betty McGrede told the Longview News-Journal that nothing would bring her children back and that Kelly had lived longer than he deserved.
On the evening of October 14, 2008, in the death chamber at the Huntsville Unit, Kelly thanked God for his salvation and spoke of his love for his family and friends. He turned to the Morgans' relatives. "I offer my sorrow, and my heart goes out to y'all," he said. "As I stand before God today, the true judge, I had nothing to do with the death of your family." He said he hoped it would bring them some peace. He then spoke to John T. Ford's family: "I ask for forgiveness because I do stand guilty for my involvement for that." As the drugs began to flow he sang a hymn of praise until his voice faltered. He was pronounced dead at 6:30 p.m., twelve minutes later. He was fifty-seven, the tenth person executed in Texas that year and the 415th since Texas resumed executions after the death penalty was reinstated.
The Morgans' niece watched. "We know he did it, without a shadow of a doubt," she told the Lufkin Daily News. The family had come, she said, "to speak and give voices to our family who did not have voices anymore." His last words made her feel ill, and she thought he "got off too easy." To the Longview News-Journal she said she thought he deserved it, though so much time had passed. Chuck Willeford, by then chief deputy of the Gregg County Sheriff's Office, said by phone that the execution would never bring the Morgans back, "but maybe they'll feel there was some justice." Kelly's relatives and friends declined to comment.
Kelly was executed on October 14, 2008. The case against him is closed. No later court action concerning the Morgan killings, and no report on the DNA tests mentioned in the early 2000s, was found in the sources reviewed for this page.
Proven at trial: the capital murder of Devin Morgan, 22 months, in the course of a robbery, Gregg County, 1991, upheld at every level of state and federal review.
Admitted: the murder of John T. Ford in 1984, by guilty plea, repeated in Kelly's last statement.
Not separately tried: the killings of Jerry and Brenda Morgan. The State's evidence was that Kelly shot Brenda and that Jerry was already dead when Cynthia went in; no witness described seeing Jerry shot. The indictment named only Devin.
Disputed:
Cynthia's account. Kelly maintained to the end that she lied. A court heard the recantation claim in full and found she had not recanted; Violet Brownfield withdrew her own affidavit within three weeks; Beverly Frank said she no longer believed Cynthia's angry claim.
Steven's account. Kelly's lawyers alleged Steven admitted making up the confession. The Fifth Circuit assumed this for argument but found no evidence the State knew.
Accomplices and immunity. Cynthia was never charged. She testified that no one promised her protection from prosecution, and the state court found no such agreement. Ron Wilson was convicted of murder on the testimony of the same witnesses and denies being there.
The motive. Prosecutors said the Morgans, as city marshal reserve officers, were informing on Kelly, and also suggested the killings were drug related. No source reviewed shows what information, if any, the Morgans had passed on.
Physical evidence. The hairs, the stolen pickup and the necklace were put to the jury, which convicted anyway; no DNA results were found.
About 1951: Kelly is born.
1982 or 1983: Kelly and Cynthia begin living together in Tyler.
Late April 1984: According to Steven Kelly, Kelly threatens Jerry Morgan at gunpoint at the Morgan home.
April 30, 1984: Jerry, Brenda and Devin Morgan are shot dead in their home near Spring Hill, Gregg County.
May 1, 1984: Relatives find the bodies.
1984: John T. Ford is killed in East Texas; Kelly later pleads guilty and receives thirty years.
September 5, 1985: Kelly and Cynthia marry.
1990: Chris Vickery calls the Gregg County Sheriff's Office; Russell Potts interviews Cynthia in Michigan; Kelly is indicted for capital murder.
October 1991: Kelly is convicted and sentenced to death.
June 26, 1996: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirms.
March 24, 1997: The U.S. Supreme Court denies review.
October 1997: Violet Brownfield signs, then retracts, an affidavit that Cynthia killed Jerry Morgan.
April 8, 1998: State habeas relief denied.
September 13, 2000: Second state application dismissed.
July 17, 2003: Fifth Circuit denies appeal on seven claims.
August 10, 2004: Fifth Circuit orders further proceedings on Nancy Brown's affidavit.
April 20, 2006: Fifth Circuit vacates a second summary ruling; evidentiary hearing follows.
February 15, 2007: District court finds Cynthia did not recant.
April 10, 2008: Fifth Circuit affirms.
October 14, 2008: Kelly is executed at the Huntsville Unit.