Attorney General’s Office reviewing 2009 death of Sheena Morris in Bradenton Beach
The Florida Attorney General’s Office of Statewide Prosecution has agreed to review the 2009 death of Sheena Morris.
Morris was found hanging in the shower of her room at the Bridge Walk Resort in Bradenton Beach on New’s Year’s Day in 2009. Her death was ruled a suicide by the Bradenton Beach Police Department and the District 12 Medical Examiner’s Office.
But Morris’ parents have maintained that she did not kill herself, and instead believe she was killed by her then 45-year-old boyfriend.
The case was also investigated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which concluded there was no evidence of a homicide. A subsequent review by the 12th Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office also concluded the death was a suicide.
Morris’ parents, Kelly Osborn and Davis Morris, believe they have evidence that proves their daughter was murdered. Last August, State Attorney Ed Brodsky agreed to review the case, including the new evidence.
But recently, Osborn and Morris have begun to publicly question Brodsky and whether he was actually actively reviewing the evidence in the case. In response, Brodsky announced Wednesday morning in a news release that he has asked the Attorney General’s Office of Statewide Prosecution to review the evidence in the case, “in order to ensure the full faith and confidence” in his office and “due to the extraordinary circumstances and history in this case.”
“I understand the loss of a dear loved one is hard to accept under any circumstances. I want to be able to alleviate any concerns by Sheena Morris’ family in their search for the truth and I don’t want them to ever second guess my office’s intentions nor that the public do so,” Brodsky said in the issued statement.
Assistant Statewide Prosecutor Cass Castillo, who has more than 40 years experience, confirmed that he will be reviewing the case but said he was not permitted to comment further. Typically the Office of Statewide Prosecution handles cases involving organized crime that involve more than one judicial circuit.
A call to Osborn requesting comment has not been returned.
The primary new evidence provided by Morris’s parents, according to Brodsky, is connected to claims by former medical examiner Michael Berkland that lividty marks on Morris’s body match the pattern of a wicker chair that was inside her room at Bridge Walk Resort. According to a Dec. 31, 2018, letter from Berkland to Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Russell Vega, later shared with Brodsky, Morris had to have died in the chair and her body moved afterward. Also, the death scene was staged, according to Berkland.
On Wednesday, Brodsky cited the response from Vega and Assistant Medical Examiner Dr. Suzzane Utley, who performed Morris’s autopsy, to Berkland.
“While we agree with your opinion that the lividity pattern is not readily explained from the photos or other available information, this uncertainty does not change our overall opinion regarding the cause and manner of death as currently certified. Anecdotally, in our experience, most such linear patterns of lividity sparing are caused by creases or seams in clothing,” the doctors wrote.
Vega and Utley also stated that they strongly disagreed with Berkland’s conclusions that the lividity patterns must be from the chair or that her body was moved.
The state attorney’s office questioned Berkland’s qualifications as an expert witness in a 21-page memo, dated Nov. 20, 2013, issued following a review of the case.
“Any evaluation of Berkland’s information in this case must therefore take into account these prior assessments of his integrity and qualifications,” Assistant State Attorney Art Brown wrote in the memo.
Berkland worked as a medical examiner in the District 1 medical examiner’s office in Pensacola from 1997 to 2003, but was fired after he failed to complete autopsy reports. He ultimately lost his medical license as an osteopathic physician indefinitely.
It was not the first time Berkland had been fired as a medical examiner. In 1996, he was fired from his position as a contract medical examiner in Jackson County, Miss., for falsifying autopsy records.
More recently, Berkland was charged in 2012 with improper storage of hazardous waste, keeping a public nuisance and driving with a suspended license after body parts were discovered in more than 100 containers, including soda cups and plastic food containers, in a Pensacola storage unit that was auctioned off when he was unable to pay the rent.
On Wednesday, Brodsky explained that he discussed the claims surrounding the lividity marks on Morris’ body with the medical examiner’s office and not police because “lividity is a medical issue.” Since last August, Brodsky says he has met with Vega once and spoken several times on the phone abaout the case.
But he reiterates that his office, as well as the medical examiner’s office, the Bradenton Beach Police Department and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, have believed from the onset that Morris’s death was a suicide.
Brodsky also cited the second autopsy conducted in 2010 by renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden that found the death to be a sucide.
Baden, who is mostly recently known for his work in the Jeffrey Epstein case on the family’s behalf, recalled the case when contacted by the Bradenton Herald on Wednesday. He said he could not comment without first reviewing his records.
According to a copy of his autopsy report, while Baden did find that the cause of death was hanging as Utley had determined, he listed the manner of death as undetermined.
This story was originally published January 22, 2020 at 3:57 PM.
