Morris: Friendship grew into more; murder suspect left wife weeks after victim’s death

The man accused of killing a Scottsville shopkeeper 21 years ago told investigators at that time that he and the victim’s wife had a friendship that grew into something more after the man’s death, according to recordings played Wednesday in Albemarle County Circuit Court.

Alvin Lee “Butch” Morris is charged with murder in the 1988 shooting death of Roger Lee Shifflett, who owned and ran the Southwind Market off of Route 20. He also faces robbery charges and a charge of using a handgun to commit a felony.

Morris left his wife less than a month after the shooting and married Barbara Shifflett, Roger Lee Shifflett’s widow, about a year after the slaying, rearing two of Shifflett’s children as his own.

Testimony from the state medical examiner’s office in Richmond showed that Shifflett had been shot five times, including both forearms, the left thigh, the chin, and a fatal shot to the left side of the back of his head.

Morris was interviewed three times by investigators in 1988, once in July, once in September and again in October. The tapes played in open court were often unintelligible due to noise on the recordings, including static, hisses and squeals. Judge, jury and attorneys followed the tapes with transcripts of the interviews, but the transcripts were not submitted into evidence and the transcripts were not made available to the press or public.

In the 1988 interviews, as played in court, Morris was heard to describe his relationship with Shifflett’s widow, Barbara Shifflett, as a good friendship that developed into something more. He also expressed feeling guilty, although it was unclear from the recordings as heard in court whether he was talking about his relationship with Shifflett’s wife or the storekeeper‘s death.

During one interview, Morris could be heard to tell investigators that a store employee had confessed the killings to him. In a subsequent interview, Morris recanted hearing the confession, telling an investigator he could not recall that part of his previous statement, the employee’s comments or if the conversation with the employee took place.

Throughout the interviews, however, Morris maintained his innocence.

“I guarantee I could not do anything like that in any way, shape or form,” he told Albemarle County police a few weeks after Shifflett’s slaying.

Shifflett, who was a father of five, was found on the floor near an open cash register that displayed a recent sale of $1.25. A bag of food from Hardee’s sat nearby and an open container of Tender Vittles cat food was found near his Volkswagen Beetle in the store parking lot.

An estimated $135 was taken from the store.

No one had been arrested in the shooting until last year when DNA tests conducted on cigarette butts found at the shooting site matched DNA supplied by Morris, officials said. That led to his arrest.

Defense attorneys are questioning how closely police kept custody of evidence in the decades between the death and Morris’ arrest.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that expands the right of an accused to confront witnesses — Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts — has also had its impact, making inadmissible to the court and jury such documents as the original autopsy report on Shifflett’s body.

Under the new ruling, handed down on June 25, the commonwealth’s attorney would have to subpoena the medical examiner who conducted the autopsy in order to get the report admitted into evidence. In the Morris case, the medical examiner who investigated Shifflett’s death has since had medical problems that preclude his appearance in court, nullifying the autopsy’s admission to the jury.

The new ruling is being interpreted as the case moves along, often resulting in oral arguments without the jury to resolve whether a document is part of an investigation and subject to cross-examination or a business document that can be accepted on its face.

Morris’ trial is expected to continue throughout the week and possibly into next week as lawyers plan to call more than 40 witnesses.