
© TOPSFIELD POLICEBomb-making materials were discovered in the bedroom of Daniel Morley, above, who had ties to Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
At 2:40 a.m. on June 9, 2013, Sergeant Detective Gary Hayward was dispatched to an address near the center of the tony town of Topsfield, in the North Shore region of Massachusetts. There, he found an elderly woman on a bench outside the town library in her bathrobe, sobbing, her disheveled and distraught companion beside her.
Hayward, a patient man with a calm demeanor honed over nearly 30 years in law enforcement, sat with the woman, Glenda Duckworth, as she described being forced to climb out of her bedroom window to escape her 6-foot-2, 240-pound son, Daniel Morley, after he attacked her, yelling, "Witch, burn in hell!" She said her son snatched her eyeglasses off her face and began melting them on the stove, threw her in a chair and forcibly drew cat whiskers on her cheeks with a marker, and then chased her into her bedroom, where he jumped on top of her longtime partner, David Bloss. As Bloss begged, "Help me, Glenda!," she climbed out of the window. Bloss wriggled out from under the 27-year-old Morley and escaped out that same window. Together they called 911 from Bloss's cellphone.
Hayward took copious notes as the terrified couple described Morley's breakdown, which had been building over the previous eight weeks, since the day two bombs were detonated near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
Morley's mother had grown so concerned about his behavior that she'd made a psychiatrist appointment for him, which she reminded him of as he assaulted her - "I am your mother, and you need help!" - according to the affidavit she swore out later that day to get a restraining order against him. Her son, Duckworth explained, had long struggled with mental health issues, but since the Boston Marathon bombing, he had become "very dark."
Comment: The FBI was obviously in major damage control mode regarding the Tsarnaevs and Morley. But it's possible, as McPhee brings up in
her book, that this wasn't necessarily because of any direct complicity on their part. Yes, they were probably running the Tsarnaevs (and Morley) as informants. But if someone else was running this group of losers, the FBI would be forced to cover up their connection to the group. Who would that someone be? CIA?
Comment: The FBI was obviously in major damage control mode regarding the Tsarnaevs and Morley. But it's possible, as McPhee brings up in her book, that this wasn't necessarily because of any direct complicity on their part. Yes, they were probably running the Tsarnaevs (and Morley) as informants. But if someone else was running this group of losers, the FBI would be forced to cover up their connection to the group. Who would that someone be? CIA?