Briery Knob -- Chapter 5 -- Two Confessions
No one ever accused Lee Morrison of being the sharpest tool in the woodshed in West Virginia. In Hillsboro, people would say "the cheese done slid off his cracker."
When it came to most of the men in Pocahontas County though, Morrison was a straight-out Einstein.
Like many guys in Pocahontas County, Morrison had a toolbox a NASCAR mechanic drool after. He collected hand tools like a black dress collects lint.
In 1983 Morrison,went to neighboring Greenbrier County to talk with the sheriff and confess to his part in the three-year-old slayings.
Morrison told the sheriff he and Gerald Brown had picked up Santomero and Durian. Morrison claimed he was drinking while they rode around and he passed out. When he woke, he was in the van on Briery Knob watching Brown kill both women.
"You what??" asked the deputy setting upright.
"Yes, sir. I seen Brown kill those two hippie-chicks. I helped move them bodies to the edge of the field."
"Why-in-the-hell-did-you-do-that?"
"Gerald ordered me," Morrison said as he bowed his head and began to sob.
The deputy arrested Morrison without pause. A couple of months later, at his preliminary hearing, Morrison recanted.
"Judge, Jacob Beard told me something would happen to my family if I didn't say I done it."
The judge dismissed the charges against Morrison, and the emotionally-broken Mountaineer went home.
The case sat in a government issue gray-metal filing cabinet, and in 1985 a Pocahontas County deputy noted Alice Roberts, a local, should be interviewed. The note was stuck in the Rainbow Murder file and forgotten.
For several years the investigation went into deep hibernation. By 1991, the local law enforcement was seeing a change in personnel as senior officers retired and new ones took their place. A deputy who was just a kid when the murders took place got curious and started digging in the files. He found the note about Alice Roberts and followed up.
Alice told investigators they needed to talk with Pam Wilson, her daughter. Pam said on the day of the killings she had seen two "hippie-type" girls climb in a van with Richard Fowler, a friend, at the wheel. She also told the officers she saw McCoy with Winters Walton and Fowler as the sun started down behind the ridge.
In November 1991, investigators got a call from Keith Cohenour, a man serving ten-years in Pruntytown Correctional Center for forgery and auto theft.
"I got information on those hippie girls," said the voice.
"Oh?" asked Bob. On duty after enjoying a short vacation, he wasn't sure he was ready for this. "What do you know?"
"I learned who killed them."
"How do you know?"
"The day them girls were killed I was in the tavern parking lot there in Hillsboro. I walked right past a van that Richard Fowler owned," Cohenour paused.
"Go on."
"I overheard Fowler in the van yelling at McCoy. They were having a verbal knock-down they was."
"And....?"
"I listened as McCoy told Fowler he refused to spend the rest of his life behind bars for Jacob Beard or no one else."
"Go on...and?"
"Well, Fowler told McCoy that if Beard heard him say that he'd end up in the same place those gals are."
Cohenour continued his narrative telling Bob he met up with Fowler and McCoy several hours later at a double wide owned by Gerald Brown. Brown and Jacob Beard argued, and Beard told Brown to keep his mouth shut, or he would "end up on Briery Knob also."
Cohenour wasn't done. He told the deputy that later the same night, he gave McCoy a ride home and McCoy said he watched Beard shoot the women.
And he wanted help in getting his incarceration reduced.