Pod Insights Murder With My Husband 289. The Deadly Friend - The Murder of Steven B Williams About this episode On this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into the chilling case of a beloved radio host whose friendship with a charming investor aboard a luxury yacht takes a deadly turn, ending in betrayal, greed, and murder on the open sea.
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Case Sources:
CrimeLibrary.com -
https://www.crimelibrary.org/notorious_murders/celebrity/steven-b-williams/a-body-in-the-water.html
PressTelegram.com - https://www.presstelegram.com/2011/11/09/updated-man-found-guilty-in-killing-of-denver-dj-off-catalina-island/
Distractify.com - https://www.distractify.com/p/harvey-morrow-now
IslaPedia.com - https://www.islapedia.com/index.php?title=WILLIAMS,_Steven_B.
DailyBreeze.com - https://www.dailybreeze.com/2013/02/27/murder-case-of-disc-jockey-found-off-catalina-island-in-2006-to-be-heard-on-appeal/
DenverPost.com - https://www.denverpost.com/2006/09/21/arrest-made-in-djs-death/
OCWeekly.com - https://www.ocweekly.com/harvey-stephen-morrow-conman-who-preyed-on-late-cdm-mans-famous-son-convicted-of-murder-6465510/
Oxygen.com - https://www.oxygen.com/deadly-waters-with-captain-lee/crime-news/murder-dj-steven-williams-catalina-island
CBSNews.com - https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/jury-convicts-suspect-in-denver-dj-murder/
TheCatalinaIslander.com - https://thecatalinaislander.com/mysterious-island-the-curious-demise-of-steven-williams/
TheCinemaholic.com - https://thecinemaholic.com/steven-b-williams-murder-how-did-he-die-who-killed-him/
Dateline NBC - https://podcasts.happyscribe.com/dateline-nbc/who-killed-the-radio-star
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 You're listening to an Ono Media Podcast. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with my husband. I'm Payton Moreland.
0:07 Garrett Moreland? And I'm Garrett Moreland.
0:08 Speaker 00 And he's the husband.
0:08 Garrett Moreland? And I'm the husband. If you are watching on YouTube, I'm sorry about the lighting. We're missing a shade and it's really bright. If you were listening on audio, you have no idea that anything is different and that's great.
0:25 Speaker 00 No idea that everything, anything is different.
0:28 Garrett Moreland? What I said?
0:28 Speaker 00 Yeah, but it's okay. We all understood.
0:31 Garrett Moreland? Man, long day, long day.
0:32 Speaker 00 We all understood.
0:33 Garrett Moreland? Hope you guys are all doing good. Peyton and I are actually going to a hockey game after we record. Pretty excited. Hockey season is starting.
0:41 Speaker 00 It's October.
0:42 Garrett Moreland? It is officially Oc-tober.
0:46 Speaker 00 We forgot to put our skeleton up.
0:48 Garrett Moreland? We did forget to put our skeleton up. Happy October. Spooky. It's creepy. What else?
0:55 Speaker 00 Amazing month. Merry October, everyone.
0:57 Garrett Moreland? It is a pretty amazing month. We have our house decorated already. Spooky stuff everywhere. We are ready to go. Yeah, I hope everyone's doing good. We're gonna kind of hop into today's case. I will say really quick that I'm officially going to be opening a bagel store. It'll be early next year. Stay tuned. I will keep you updated. I won't mention it too much more other than that. I have a lot of work to do.
1:21 Speaker 00 And Loki, I've just been getting bagel after bagel and they're so good.
1:26 Garrett Moreland? Peyton's been eating a lot of bagels.
1:29 Speaker 00 I was like meditating and you came in and he just waved one over my nose.
1:34 Garrett Moreland? I know. It's like drugs in our house now. There's just bagels everywhere.
1:36 Speaker 00 They're so good.
1:37 Garrett Moreland? Bagels, bagels, bagels. Thanks for listening. Thank you for supporting. Remember, if you want bonus content, you can check out our Apple subscriptions or Patreon, Spotify subscriptions, and you get bonus episodes and ad-free content. Let's hop into today's case.
1:54 Speaker 00 Our sources for this episode are crimelibrary.com, presstelegram.com, distractify.com, islapedia.com, dailybreeze.com, denverpost.com, ocweekly.com, oxygen.com, cbsnews.com, thecatalinaislander.com, thecinemaholic.com, and Dateline. There's one thing about being an adult that I have learned, and that is how much harder it is to make strong, meaningful friendships as we get older. When you think back to childhood, you're just so open and willing to let people into your life. How easy it is to just walk up to someone in a classroom or playground and just play with them and build this friendship right then and there.
2:37 Speaker 00 But as we reach adulthood, that sort of fades. And is it because by that point, many of us have already established our group of friends, our core community that we already feel comfortable with? Or is it because our time becomes more valuable and we want to spend it more with those we care about and less with getting to know new people? Or is it because our perspectives of the world has changed? Our trust in others is more fragile than it was when we were younger?
3:05 Garrett Moreland? I thought you were going to say life's expensive.
3:07 Speaker 00 Why does that make you not have friends?
3:08 Garrett Moreland? No, I'm just saying as I've gotten older, I feel like I've realized.
3:12 Speaker 00 It is.
3:13 Garrett Moreland? Like when I turned into an adult, I was like, oh my gosh.
3:16 Speaker 00 Yeah.
3:17 Garrett Moreland? World's expensive.
3:19 Speaker 00 Yeah. I'm definitely, I'm one of those adults that's like, this is a scam we should reverse.
3:26 Garrett Moreland? And be a kid forever. Look it up while you can.
3:29 Speaker 00 I do think, though, despite all the reasons, there are certain things that happen that should lead you to being more careful about the new people you let into your life. Because when someone is so eager to be your friend. There's usually a good reason why. And like in today's story, sometimes that reason can be deadly. So let's take a trip to Denver, Colorado, where we start today's case. We are actually back in the 1980s and there is a man named Stephen B. Williams that is dominating the local radio waves in Denver. If you were in Denver at the time, you might remember his morning show on KPKE Radio called Stephen B. and the Hawk.
4:14 Speaker 00 The show was a pretty huge hit and was said to pave the way for a lot of morning radio talk shows. And Stephen really did have the voice and personality to lure in listeners. He had this charm about him. His deep soothing voice earned him the nickname, "The Voice of the Rockies." But Denver wasn't exactly where Stephen saw himself being forever. So born on May 14th, 1947, Stephen's dad was in the US Air Force and he grew up presumably on a base in Hawaii. When his father finally retired in 1963,
4:54 Speaker 00 Stephen's parents and older sister, Jan, moved to Corona Del Mar, California. But even then, the now 16-year-old Stephen-
5:04 Garrett Moreland? A nice area, by the way. Very nice area.
5:08 Speaker 00 But despite the fact that his parents and his sister moved to California, 16-year-old Stephen decided to actually stay in Hawaii. From a very early age, Stephen knew that he wanted to be a radio DJ and even got a job at a popular radio station in Honolulu in the early 1970s, when he was around 20-something years old. So after finding some success there, Stephen went on to work at several more radio stations, including one in San Francisco. And then he was offered that great opportunity to join the team in Denver. That's when he moved there around 1980.
5:52 Garrett Moreland? It's pretty funny because that job doesn't really exist anymore. I mean, it does to an extent, but not how it used to.
6:00 Speaker 00 I mean, growing up, the local radio DJs or talk show hosts, they were like celebrities, like local celebrities. And now-
6:08 Garrett Moreland? Social media has kind of taken over.
6:10 Speaker 00 Well, and kids just don't really listen to the radio.
6:12 Garrett Moreland? Or people who are DJs. I mean, there's DJs on like TikTok, like other clubs. It's just changed quite a bit.
6:18 Speaker 00 Yeah, but our story is obviously in 1980, so it is popping off. The president of the Denver Radio Company was extremely impressed by Stephen. He specifically talked about how grounded Stephen stayed in the midst of the local fame, saying, quote, "Sometimes egos grow with ratings, but not Stephen. He and Don Hawkins were the market leaders, but he was a good guy." Now, unfortunately, Stephen couldn't ride that wave of fame and success in Denver forever. So around the turn of the millennium, he was laid off from the radio station. But instead of getting the same job somewhere else,
7:00 Speaker 00 Stephen decided to actually change career paths and follow a different passion of his, and that was wine making. So he moved to the Napa Valley area and began working at a winery.
7:13 Garrett Moreland? Okay.
7:13 Speaker 00 And he also started going to culinary school. And though the winery was a huge pay cut for Stephen, he really didn't seem to mind. Cooking and wine had always been a huge part of his life, and he was happy being out in the fields with a hose, lugging buckets of grapes down to the cellar. So for a while, doing this was his happy place. Unfortunately, though, life didn't allow him this pleasure for very long. In 2001, Stephen's father got very sick, and so Stephen moved back to Corona Del Mar, California, to help take care of him, and that was where Stephen stayed for the next two years.
7:54 Speaker 00 Finally, in 2003, Stephen's father's health became irreparable. He passed away that year. But he didn't leave Stephen and his sister with nothing. By that point, Stephen's father had amassed a $2.4 million estate, including his million-dollar home, which he left to Stephen and his sister Jan to split after his death.
8:18 Garrett Moreland? And I will say, I do not think you could find anything close to a million dollars in Corona Del Mar.
8:26 Speaker 00 I don't either. And it was a whole home.
8:29 Garrett Moreland? I would say the average home in CDM these days is probably three to four million. A nice home's gonna be eight to 10 million.
8:36 Speaker 00 It's definitely like
8:37 Garrett Moreland? Crazy.
8:38 Speaker 00 The nice suburbs next to the ocean.
8:41 Garrett Moreland? It's like right next to Newport Beach. I mean, technically, sometimes it's considered Newport, but just crazy how much has changed.
8:48 Speaker 00 So his father leaves this money to Steven and his sister Jan. But problem was, is Steven was pretty overwhelmed by this. He had never been great with managing his finances. And now he had even more than he knew what to do with. Taxes, bills, savings and investments were not Steven's strong suit. But thankfully, he had found some relief in September of 2003, when he reunited with an old friend. Steven had invited this friend over to his house for what seemed like dinner one night. And that guy brought along another friend, a man named Harvey Morrow. Now, one of the first things Harvey noticed when he stepped into Steven's house
9:32 Speaker 00 was all of the open bills and paperwork that he had strewn about. It seemed clear that whatever Steven's financial situation was at this point in his life, he was in over his head. So over dinner that night, the three of the men get to talking. And Harvey mentioned that he had been in the investment banking business and he was a retired Wall Street executive. He had made quite a few bucks from stocks. And apparently at one point, he even had a job importing luxury cars from Canada. Harvey had actually gotten divorced several years back, but then remarried a woman named Debbie in 2000. And they had been living in a beautiful lakeside home in Texas,
10:14 Speaker 00 but had recently relocated to Los Angeles, which was not very far from where Steven was living now. And they had flipped that investment into a 75 foot luxury sailboat that they now had docked out in San Pedro, California, about 45 minutes away.
10:32 Garrett Moreland? 75 foot boat, that's big.
10:34 Speaker 00 Yeah. So Harvey is telling Steven all about this and that him and his wife Debbie's plan is to get the boat fixed up a bit and then one day travel the world. And Steven thought this was one of the coolest ideas he had ever heard of. At the time, Steven was kind of unsure what the next chapter of his life would be with radio behind him and no longer needing to take care of his father, not to mention this lump of cash that he had. The world was pretty much Steven's oyster and he tells Harvey that. Now, at some point Harvey seemed to joke with Steven going along with them on this boat to travel the world as their own private chef.
11:18 Speaker 00 And Steven seemed to think it was actually a good idea. So from there, Steven and Harvey become fast friends and they begin spending more and more time together. Now Steven began taking more cooking classes at this point while he and Harvey split their time between staying at Steven's house and on the boat where they worked tirelessly to get it up to seafaring condition. And the additions they made were pretty lavish. Teak floors, new masts, state of the art electronics, a new GPS system and internet access. And these updates continued for the next few years as their friendship blossomed kind of over fixing up this boat.
12:01 Speaker 00 And before long, they were mapping out their route for the trip. One version was to travel north and spend the summer in Alaska before moving down and heading towards the Caribbean for winter. Meanwhile, the two get closer and closer, spending more and more time together. But for Steven, it might have been more than just a friendship with Harvey, spending all of this time with him. Because apparently Steven was gay and not many people knew about that. Now, whether or not there was anything more to their relationship than the promise of just being the chef on this adventure, I'm not sure. People say there's no evidence that it was romantic between the two, but other people felt it was kind of weird that he was just willing to go third wheel on this boat for
12:46 Speaker 00 so long. But it could explain why Steven felt so connected to Harvey and why he felt like he could trust his new friend when it came to managing his finances too.
12:56 Payton Moreland? Now, as I said, Steven is the first to admit he was bad with money. And one friend actually mentioned how there was a time when Steven would just forget to file his taxes for a few years at a time. So imagine how overwhelmed he must have been when he had to figure out how to handle his father's estate after his father died. And thankfully, Harvey was a pro at that.
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16:02 Speaker 00 Harvey offered to help him set up a trust fund where he could stash away that $2 million in inheritance. So he helped Steven set up an account and he promised to manage it. And after that,
16:14 Garrett Moreland? Oh no.
16:16 Speaker 00 Issues start arising between Steven and Harvey, but it's not actually over the account. The issues were because by 2006, Steven was ready to kick off this boat trip as the chef. It had been nearly three years of him helping Harvey work on this boat and them looking forward to it. But every time he would mention taking the boat out and starting, it seemed like there was something else that needed to be done on the boat, according to Harvey. Harvey always had an excuse for why they just weren't ready to go quite yet. And understandably, Steven gets frustrated because he had really put his life on hold to help fix this boat up for three years and then go on this adventure. That was his plan.
17:00 Speaker 00 And then around April of 2006, Steven tells his older sister Jan something odd. He says someone had gotten into the trunk of his car and stolen his passport and his laptop, which was alarming for two reasons.
17:13 Garrett Moreland? Getting your passport stolen would be 30.
17:18 Garrett Moreland? Fifty times worse than getting your license stolen.
17:20 Speaker 00 And this is even worse for him because he's just antsy to get on this trip and now it's gonna delay this travel even further. And two, because there were some important business documents on that laptop with sensitive information about his accounts that held all his money. Still, that didn't stop Steven from wanting to take the boat out that May. So he told his friend at the beginning of that month that he was planning on going to Catalina Island for the weekend. This was about 22 miles off the coast of Los Angeles. And this isn't really weird for Steven because he's been working on this boat for three years. So it's not weird that he's like, I'm gonna just take it for a short trip.
17:57 Speaker 00 On Thursday, May 4th, 2006, another boat owner saw Steven getting on board Harvey's boat at the marina. But then after that, May 4th, 2006, Steven seemed to go radio silent. Luckily for Steven, he had a lot of close friends who were worried about him several days later. And that was including his friend Leo Rossi. Now Leo and Steven spoke to each other almost every single day. So when three days went by with no word from Steven, Leo panicked. So he calls Steven, he leaves him five or six voicemails, but still doesn't hear back.
18:40 Speaker 00 So then he calls another friend who then calls Harvey. And Harvey tells this friend, oh yeah, Steven was planning on taking a trip back to Hawaii for a bit to blow off some steam. And then when that friend relays back the message to the other friends who are worried, they're like, there's no way that's true.
19:03 Garrett Moreland? Okay.
19:04 Speaker 00 Because Steven had talked about going back to Hawaii before and he just said he didn't really want to go back. He wasn't interested in it. But when they say this to Harvey, they're like, hey dude, he didn't want to go to Hawaii. Harvey doubles down and insists, no, he changed his mind and made the trip back. He'll probably be home in a couple of weeks.
19:24 Garrett Moreland? A couple, okay.
19:26 Speaker 00 However, Leo, his friend who initially was really worried about him, still isn't buying it. Especially when another friend tells him, oh, Harvey told me that Steven went to Mexico, not Hawaii.
19:41 Garrett Moreland? That's crazy. I mean, we obviously know where this is going. It's crazy. He's trying to cover it up.
19:47 Speaker 00 And not telling.
19:48 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, why would you say different stories?
19:49 Speaker 00 Cause you forget your lies.
19:51 Garrett Moreland? Idiot.
19:51 Speaker 00 So Leo's like, that's it. I'm filing a missing persons report. I'm not taking Harvey's word that he's in Hawaii. And so around Stephen's 59th birthday on May 14th, he gets a missing persons report filed in his behalf. Now, cut to four days later, March 18th, 2006. The sheriff's deputy on Catalina Island gets a call from the US Coast Guard.
20:17 Garrett Moreland? Hmm, okay.
20:18 Speaker 00 A boater was out in the channel between Catalina and the mainland near Los Angeles when they spotted a bunch of seagulls circling a floating object out in the water.
20:31 Garrett Moreland? Yep.
20:31 Speaker 00 And when they got closer, they realized it was a human body floating face down. Now, once police are able to get out there and get the body onto a boat, they noticed a few things. One, the body seems to be a male, though it's hard to say for sure. The decomposition and time spent in the water has made it nearly impossible to identify this person.
20:55 Garrett Moreland? Wow.
20:56 Speaker 00 The person is wearing a green fleece tracksuit, gloves and expensive deck shoes. But the most telling part is that there are already barnacles stuck to the bottom of the shoe. Now, for barnacles to grow on something like that, it means the body must have been out in those waters for at least five to 15 days. Now, unfortunately, there is no identification on the body. And at first, police suspect this might have been someone who was out working on their boat and then fell into the water accidentally and drowned. But when the body is then transported to the morgue, the autopsy tells a different story.
21:38 Speaker 00 For starters, this wasn't someone who fell off a boat and drowned because there is a bullet hole in the John Doe's head.
21:46 Garrett Moreland? Wow.
21:46 Speaker 00 And when they remove the gloves from the John Doe's hands, they noticed that this person happens to be missing three fingers that looked surgically removed prior to death.
22:00 Garrett Moreland? Okay.
22:00 Speaker 00 Now, I haven't told you this yet, but back in high school, Steven had lost three of his fingers in a woodworking accident.
22:09 Garrett Moreland? Got it. Okay.
22:10 Speaker 00 So now our John Doe is missing three fingers and Steven, who is currently missing, is also missing three fingers.
22:16 Garrett Moreland? Alright.
22:17 Speaker 00 Now, knowing all of this, police realize they likely have a homicide investigation on their hands. So they start going through missing persons reports and they come across the one Leo Rossi called in about his friend, Steven B. Williams, four days ago, which matches up with the story the barnacles told that the victim was in the water for at least five to 15 days. So they get in touch with Leo and they ask, hey, are there any features that could help us identify Steven if we find him? And he's like, oh yeah, he actually is missing three fingers from a woodworking accident he had. And suddenly,
22:57 Speaker 00 John Doe number 88 is given a name. He is identified as 59-year-old former DJ Steven B. Williams.
23:07 Garrett Moreland? It's crazy because, I mean, I know where this is headed. I'm sure you guys all do, right? It's wild to me, the amount of cases we do that involve money. It gets, it's mind blowing how much money plays a role in, I mean, everything. I mean, even at the beginning of the case, right? I said, life's expensive. Like, money plays a huge role in so many aspects of, I mean, everything.
23:35 Speaker 00 To be honest, obviously, I don't have, like, defined data on this, but...
23:42 Speaker 00 From all the cases I've researched, it seems like money is one of the top motives that police look into immediately. They immediately check out their victims' financial situation to see if there is any money motive around them in their life that would have caused this. It's similar to like a love triangle, right? Like, police immediately look for these things.
24:05 Garrett Moreland? Whether it's they had a lot of money, whether they owed someone money, money plays a role. I mean, I would say at this point, 75, 80% of the time in these cases.
24:15 Speaker 00 Bro's always throwing out statistics.
24:17 Garrett Moreland? I, I made the statistic up, but it sounds pretty good. So we're going to keep going with it.
24:22 Speaker 00 So obviously they're like, yeah, Leo, this is definitely your friend Steven's body that we found in the water. Do you know anything? And Leo's like, oh, let me tell you about this guy Harvey, who Steven was supposedly last seen with, like getting onto his boat. And now he's telling different people. So this is one of the first places detectives pay a visit to. On May 25th, 2006, about a week after Steven's body was found, police get a warrant to search and seize Harvey's boat in the San Pedro Marina. Only Harvey isn't there, and he doesn't know about the search until a contractor named Greg Labano calls
25:02 Speaker 00 him to say, hey dude, the police are on your boat. Now, when this contractor talks to Harvey, he doesn't seem too concerned. However, Harvey does show up shortly after that phone call at around 10 a.m. to watch police search his boat. Now, the dock master and the marina office manager later tell detectives, oh yeah, we saw him come by, but he didn't ask a single question or say anything about why you guys were here and on his boat. He just watched you guys for a little bit and then disappeared. Police are like, he had no question as to why we were searching his boat.
25:40 Garrett Moreland? That's insane.
25:42 Speaker 00 But onboard the vessel, there's not a whole lot to go off of. For example, detectives find an operating manual for an expensive portable GPS system, only that GPS system itself is nowhere to be found. And when they turn on the main GPS that had been installed inside the main cabin, they realized it had never been used. But other than that, there's no signs of a struggle onboard. There's no hint of a murder weapon, not a drop of blood from what they can tell. But police do speak to a witness. It's the same guy who actually called Harvey to tell him that police were searching his boat, Greg Labano. Now Greg had been doing some work on the boat that night before it was searched, which was why he was even there.
26:27 Speaker 00 And afterwards, Harvey asked if he wanted to grab some dinner and drinks. Then he offered to let Greg spend the night on the boat rather than drive home. Greg said Harvey was adamant that he sleep in Steven's designated cabin. But after dinner and seeing the police search the boat, and then how Harvey's acting around the entire situation, Greg starts to get a bad feeling. He noticed that Steven's room on the boat was practically sterilized. And he'd been working on this boat with them for a while. This wasn't how Steven normally kept his cabin. Now, when Greg asked Harvey where Steven was,
27:10 Speaker 00 he's like, "Yeah, he actually went to Hawaii because we called off our big sailing trip." So this is kind of what's going on with Greg as police are continuing to look into Steven's disappearance, and they get to the point of going through Steven's cellphone records. And they showed that on the afternoon of May 4th, Harvey and Steven had called each other back and forth a few times. Steven's phone last showed him that same day in the area of Catalina Island. And then after that, the calls between Steven and Harvey stopped completely. Now, obviously, none of this looks good for Harvey because the day Steven goes missing before anyone supposedly know he's missing, he just stops calling his friend.
27:51 Garrett Moreland? And he also knows... I mean, yeah. How do you explain Hawaii? How do you explain Mexico? It's just not gonna happen.
27:57 Speaker 00 They don't really have any like actual evidence of the murder. So police start digging into Harvey's background to see if he has the means and motive to kill his friend, Steven Williams. And it doesn't take long for them to realize Harvey Morrow does have a past and he kinda seems like a master manipulator. Turns out while Steven was ramping up his DJ career in the 1980s over in Colorado, Harvey was in Florida and he wasn't importing luxury cars or working on Wall Street like he had said. He was operating an investment scam, selling back stocks.
28:38 Speaker 00 When the US Attorney's Office found out about this scam, they charged his company with corruption. Surprisingly, all of the senior staffers were caught and slapped with charges except for Harvey. He ran off to Colorado and kept his head down for eight years while the statute of limitations expired on the case.
28:58 Garrett Moreland? Okay.
28:58 Speaker 00 There, he married a lawyer named Deborah, which is not to be confused with his new current wife, Debbie.
29:05 Garrett Moreland? Also, how ironic that he is in trouble with the law and that goes and married a lawyer.
29:12 Speaker 00 So with Deborah, he has a few kids. He also gets a huge house, a couple of Mercedes.
29:18 Garrett Moreland? His kids?
29:19 Speaker 00 With his wife after he runs away. Nine motorcycles and expensive wardrobe. Harvey again tells everyone he's an investment banker when in reality, he was working as a human resources officer. Eventually, things fell apart between Deborah and Harvey, which Harvey didn't take very well. In response, he lit one of her dresses on fire and was convicted of arson in 1996.
29:42 Payton Moreland? That is when Harvey moved to Texas and met his new wife Debbie. The two get married in 2000 and eventually moved to Los Angeles in 2003, where they bought a brand new boat and began outfitting it with state of the art technology. And it's around this time where they were introduced to Steven Williams.
30:02 Garrett Moreland? Where's all this money coming from?
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32:57 Speaker 00 So, in the weeks before Stephen's death, Harvey had actually called his ex-wife Deborah to say that he was having a hard time making ends meet and he needed to lower the child support payments that he was paying for a while. Which is interesting, considering at the same time, he was dumping more and more money into his boat. Here's the thing, though. Remember, Stephen was terrible with his finances to the point where Harvey was managing them. Only Harvey didn't take the money and put it into a trust like he said he would. He moved the money into an offshore account on the British Virgin Islands and was withdrawing the money in small increments and using it for himself. Harvey probably told Stephen the withdrawals were for stock investments.
33:39 Speaker 00 He definitely told him that this was the way to save on taxes. But when Stephen lost access to his account completely, alarm bells started to sound. And what's even worse, that money belonged to Stephen's sister Jan as well. The two were supposed to be splitting it and Jan trusted Stephen and Harvey to manage all of the money together. And Steven had nothing in writing to show for it. There was no paperwork, no documentation, nothing to say that he had given Harvey his money and was trusting him as his financial advisor. Instead, the money slowly trickled out of that account and into renovations for the boat that
34:22 Speaker 00 Steven had no idea he was paying for. Now meanwhile, Jan, who was apparently living with a disability at the time, was evicted from her townhouse for not being able to pay her rent.
34:33 Garrett Moreland? Oh my gosh.
34:34 Speaker 00 Then she was thrown out of another apartment where she found herself unhoused before moving in with friends in Tennessee. Steven also confided to a friend that he no longer had a dime to his name. He was having a hard time paying for meals at restaurants, buying himself groceries, because he no longer had access to his inheritance, because it was locked up in this account.
34:56 Garrett Moreland? Oh my gosh. That's horrible.
34:59 Speaker 00 Now, when his friend offered to give Steven a loan back in April, a month before his death, Steven actually declined. He said, "Uh-uh, I am approaching Harvey. I'm gonna confront him about this and I'm gonna get my money back." Now Steven's friend begged him not to do it. She's like, "And if you are gonna do it, please do it in a public place." She just kinda had a sense that this whole thing was weird, that Harvey had locked Steven's account and now Steven doesn't have access to the money and Harvey's just kinda giving him the runaround, but Steven doesn't take the advice. And that was the last time he would ever see his friend, which is why police start to suspect maybe Steven had confronted
35:39 Speaker 00 Harvey about the money on the boat that day. Maybe the two started arguing, maybe Steven asked where all of the money was and if it was even there and Harvey responded by shooting him in the head.
35:51 Garrett Moreland? Oh, okay.
35:52 Speaker 00 The problem was, there was zero evidence tying Harvey to the murder. Sure, he had a history of being a con man. He had very strong motive, but he didn't have any history of being a murderer and everything we have right now is circumstantial. Still, knowing that Harvey was managing Steven's funds and stealing them was enough to file the case with the DA, except for one big issue. Harvey Morrow was now on the run. Immediately after seeing the police on his boat that may, Harvey took off, leaving LA and his wife behind. After speaking with some of Harvey's connections, they were worried he might have actually left the country, either going down to Belize, where he had some criminal ties he could rely on,
36:35 Speaker 00 or to the Virgin Islands, where the offshore account was established. Turns out Harvey had a whole other idea entirely, to run to a place no one expected him to go. Great Falls, Montana. By September 2006, Harvey had settled down there and gotten himself a job at a used car dealership. By that point, he had already blown through all of the money from Steven and Jan and was probably looking for his next target.
37:04 Garrett Moreland? This blew through $2 million?
37:07 Speaker 00 Mm-hmm. And it was there that he actually became close with the manager at his place, a former cop named Joe Parsadich. Now Harvey told Joe, his wife had died in a boating accident in the Gulf of Mexico, and he was looking for a fresh start. Now Joe, the ex-cop, is not buying it. Harvey seemed too cocky and overly confident to be this mourning husband who moved to Montana after his wife died. So Joe goes on the internet, he looks Harvey up, and that's when he discovers that Harvey is a wanted man, wanted for murder in LA County.
37:40 Garrett Moreland? Good job, Joe.
37:41 Speaker 00 Apparently Harvey didn't even try to change his name. So Joe wastes zero time, he calls the police immediately to say, "Hey, Harvey's hiding out in my hometown." On September 20th, 2006, authorities moved in on the 55-year-old Harvey and finally arrested him at the used car dealership where he was now working. He was then brought back to California to face murder charges. There was still something weighing on prosecutors. Could they build a case against Harvey based on motive alone? The murder weapon was likely at the bottom of the ocean. Any DNA had been cleaned from the boat or washed away from the victim. There was little hope of finding something concrete at this point, but then a miracle happened.
38:26 Speaker 00 In February of 2007, as the prosecution was putting together their case, someone at the Los Angeles Yacht Club called the police. Said they had found something inside one of the cabinets at the club library, and they believed it was something police might be interested in.
38:43 Garrett Moreland? No way he would put it... Okay, wait, keep going.
38:47 Speaker 00 Okay, apparently, this was the area where Harvey Morrow always used to sit and read at the yacht club library. And right near it was a filing cabinet. One of the employees was going through the cabinet recently when they discovered something in the back of one of the drawers. It was a heavy object wrapped in paper towels.
39:04 Garrett Moreland? It was a gun.
39:06 Speaker 00 When they unfolded it, they saw it was a handheld GPS system.
39:11 Garrett Moreland? Ah, his old GPS system, yeah.
39:13 Speaker 00 And the batteries were removed. So the yacht club employee took the device home, got it new batteries, turned it on, looked at the most recent trip. It showed a voyage from Los Angeles to the far side of Catalina Island. And even stranger, the boat seemed to move in circles for a while before it turned around and came back to the mainland. Now, this yacht club employee clearly knew about the case of the person who was wanted for murder on a boat from their yacht club, and was worried this might have something to do with it, so they called police, told them what they found and that it might be evidence. And sure enough, the GPS matched the exact same manual they had found on Harvey's boat when they first searched it. It was the missing GPS from the boat.
39:52 Speaker 00 And the timing of the route matched exactly with the data from Steven and Harvey's cell phones from that day. Now, his defense team uses a suicide theory, saying, no, Steven took his own life at trial. But Harvey's wife actually divorces him while he's sitting in jail and says, I had no idea about Steven's money. I had no idea that Harvey was even managing it. Like, I thought this was all of our own money. They claim that Steven was distraught over the mismanagement of his funds and instead of confronting Harvey about it that day, he and Harvey were on a fishing trip that weekend when Steven shot himself and fell overboard.
40:31 Speaker 00 They said the only reason Harvey took the money from Steven and his sister was because their father and Harvey's father knew each other. And he said the Williams were indebted to the Morrows and they had been for 20 years. So he's like,
40:43 Garrett Moreland? making things up.
40:44 Speaker 00 He's like, yeah, once I saw my friend take his own life, I just took the money.
40:47 Garrett Moreland? Okay.
40:48 Speaker 00 Cause I deserved it.
40:49 Garrett Moreland? Extremely strange defense, but.
40:52 Speaker 00 I also want to say there's no evidence that the families knew each other or had a relationship.
40:57 Garrett Moreland? Wild.
40:58 Speaker 00 So finally, on November 9th, 2011, five years after Steven B. Williams' death, a jury reached a conclusion. They found the 60-year-old Harvey Morrow guilty of first-degree murder.
41:10 Garrett Moreland? Oh, God.
41:10 Speaker 00 And murder for financial gain.
41:12 Garrett Moreland? Okay.
41:13 Speaker 00 He was sentenced to life in prison without parole, plus 25 years. And as for Steven's sister, Jan, following the sentencing, authorities attempted to sell Harvey's yacht to help recoup some of the losses that she had suffered. They also began an investigation to see if they could recover some of the stolen funds. Now, whether or not that came to fruition is unclear, but I do know that about a year later, Jan actually passed away, seemingly from natural causes. The one silver lining is that she did get to see her brother's killer brought to justice before she said her final goodbyes. And that is the case of Steven B. Williams.
41:53 Garrett Moreland? Can't believe he had kids, too.
41:55 Speaker 00 Harvey?
41:56 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, just like what a horrible human being.
41:59 Speaker 00 Also, it is eerie when someone who is a local celebrity to many people, like back in the day on the radio, their favorite DJ, he then moves on with his life. He's gonna go sail the world and then you learn that he was murdered.
42:12 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, it's sad.
42:13 Speaker 00 Because someone was stealing his money. It's just an eerie case.
42:17 Garrett Moreland? It's crazy that this guy was doing stuff and like kids didn't know, his different wives didn't know. Just all behind someone's back.
42:25 Speaker 00 Scammers, man. The pipeline from.
42:30 Speaker 00 Fraud, money to murder is insane. Like, it happens so often.
42:37 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, it's actually kind of scary because I think that when you're committing a bunch of scams and you're stealing people's money, um, and you're a con man. I think it's so easy for that person to justify murdering somebody.
42:51 Speaker 00 Well, because they
42:51 Garrett Moreland? So easy.
42:52 Speaker 00 At first, they justify money, right? It's like, well, I'm not a bad person. I just need this money to pay this person back.
42:58 Garrett Moreland? I'm not hurting them.
42:58 Speaker 00 And then they get in this web.
43:00 Garrett Moreland? Yep.
43:01 Speaker 00 And then
43:01 Garrett Moreland? Boom.
43:02 Speaker 00 You've murdered someone to try to keep up with the lies.
43:05 Garrett Moreland? It's, it's wild. It's honestly crazy.
43:07 Speaker 00 It's actually, I think it's like a disorder.
43:10 Garrett Moreland? Yeah.
43:11 Speaker 00 Yeah. Anyways, that is our case for this episode and we will see you next time with another one. I love it.
43:17 Garrett Moreland? And I hate it.
43:18 Speaker 00 Goodbye.
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