The 1984 Murder of Larry Morrow in Wimberley

This is a story about an obsessed woman who fancies herself to be in a love triangle. Her victim, Larry Morrow, had nothing to do with the lovers; he was merely a pawn in her plot to win back the girl.

// Click here for the Visual Timeline – In case you are interested, I always start with a timeline and map my way through a story. //

Saturday Evening – October 13, 1984 | Where’s Larry?

Megan Spencer had been worried about her friend Larry Morrow since the night before. She and other friends were supposed to meet up with him in Austin on Friday night, but he didn’t show up and she couldn’t reach him by phone.

Now it was Saturday, and Megan stood in front of Larry’s condo at 1506 W. 13^th Street, ringing the doorbell and knocking. Larry had invited her for dinner, but his Volvo wasn’t there. She doubted he was home, yet she wanted to try one last time before reporting him missing. A few minutes later, Megan Spencer stood in the lobby of the Austin Police Department, waiting to file a missing person report.

Larry Morrow was Megan Spencer’s best friend. They had known each other since childhood and had grown up in Bay City, the seat of Matagorda County on the Texas Gulf Coast.

Morrow and Spencer graduated from Bay City High School in 1970, and they both enrolled at Southwest Texas State University, which is now Texas State University in San Marcos. Both had graduated in 1974.

Megan Spencer impressed upon the officer taking her report that she knew this 31-year-old man well and he was the most dependable person she knew; if Larry Morrow said he was going to be somewhere, he showed up on time. At that point, he had missed two appointments with her and other friends, and she was sick with worry.

After she made the report, Megan drove to her home in Buda and waited by the phone.

~~~~~
Sunday, October 14, 1984 | Strange Car in the Neighborhood

In the early morning hours of October 14, a teen who lived on Summitt Drive off Ranch Road 12 in Wimberley, an hour away from Morrow’s condo, had been to a concert with friends. She was returning home and passed a new gray Volvo, just sitting there on the side of their street. She mentioned it to her father.

When the car was still there at 7:30 p.m. that evening, the girl’s father called the Sheriff’s department. He had looked inside the Volvo, and a man’s wallet and checkbook lay on the front seat. In the back seat were a couple of briefcases.

A deputy came out and summoned a wrecker to pick up the car. They couldn’t open the trunk because there were no keys and there wasn’t any way to open it from inside because the glove compartment, which held a trunk release button, was also locked.

Monday, October 15, 1984 | Body in the Trunk

The next morning, Sheriff Alfard Hohman found a mechanic who said he could try to open it by sending an electric charge through a certain circuit. Sure enough, the trunk lid popped open. That’s when they found the body of 31-year-old Larry Morrow in the trunk.

Holding Morrow’s Texas driver’s license, protected by a plastic bag, in his hand, the sheriff made a couple of phone calls. The first call was to the Austin Police Department, where he learned a missing person report for Mr. Morrow had been filed by Megan Spencer the night before. The sheriff took down her number, and next he called Texas Ranger Ron Stewart, whose resources would better address the case of a murdered Austin man in a car trunk in Wimberley.

If you don’t know, Wimberley is in Hays County, southwest of Austin and north of San Antonio; it takes about an hour to get to either of the larger cities from Wimberley. Megan Spencer lived in Buda, which was about thirty minutes from where Larry Morrow’s body lay.

What was Morrow, who lived in Austin, doing on a country road in Wimberley? Who could have wanted him dead?

Ranger Stewart arrived quickly. He noted that the victim’s clothing was covered in dog hair before calling Megan Spencer. She arrived within the hour and was devastated. She identified Larry Morrow’s body and told Stewart and Hohman about her friend.

She explained that while in college, Morrow worked for Brown Schools, a private, for-profit boarding school with therapeutic education programs for teenagers who had emotional or behavioral problems. He stayed on with Brown Schools after graduation and was offered a position in its headquarters, which was in Austin. He worked there for around ten years and had only been with Landmark Investments (also in Austin) since 1983.

Lucy and Elizabeth

Megan Spencer also filled in Stewart and Hohman about a woman who lived on Summitt Drive, and that the previous week, the woman—44-year-old Elizabeth Marie Dommert—had been calling Larry and asking him to come to Wimberley. Dommert said she was out of her mind with worry about her former roommate and begged Larry to come and talk with her about it.

Investigators immediately wondered why Elizabeth Dommert had been calling Larry Morrow in the first place.

Spencer explained Larry had dated Dommert’s former roommate, a girl named Lucy Brown, during 1983.

~~~~~

Let’s talk about Lucy for a minute.

I’m calling her “Lucy Brown,” which is a fictional name. Lucy Brown was at the center of this crime but had no criminal involvement in this crime. Lucy Brown liked Larry Morrow; she had no reason to harm him. Lucy’s only crime was giving Dommert the time of day years earlier.

Like so many other predators, Elizabeth Dommert seemed like a nice and helpful person, but she was a controlling, manipulative, obsessive, and malignantly entitled monster with the IQ of a genius.

In October 1984, she was on a ten-year probation stint for a second degree felony. She had broken into a fish and aquarium supply store in Baytown seven years earlier. (Read about that here.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Larry Morrow’s murder happened, Lucy was 29, quite attractive, and she taught school in a nearby small town. Lucy had been Elizabeth Dommert’s roommate since 1981, perhaps longer. My sources, which are primarily the Austin American Statesman and the San Marcos Daily Record, said Dommert and Brown had lived together for seven years, but I would say it was probably more like four or five years.

I checked the Hays County property records and found that Lucy Brown and Elizabeth Marie Dommert bought a house together where they had both lived since at least 1981, so they could have been business partners just accumulating assets together, they could have been roommates, or they could have been more, which is what I believe Elizabeth Dommert had in mind.

Whether they were simply roommates, business partners, or something more isn’t important to this story. What matters is that Elizabeth Dommert was obsessed with Lucy Brown. The month before, Dommert had tried to keep her from moving out of their house. Lucy Brown was engaged to a dentist who I am calling Dr. Dash Grey. (He was also 100% innocent in this crime.)

By the time October 12 had rolled around, Lucy and the dentist had been married for nearly three weeks. Dommert was frantically trying to talk to Lucy Brown, but Brown wanted nothing to do with her, and Dr. Grey did a fine job of putting up a buffer. Dommert had pretended to be gravely ill in September to keep them from marrying, but they married anyway, and now Lucy would not speak to her at all.

After talking to Megan Spencer, Stewart and Hohman went straight to Larry Morrow’s Austin condo and searched for anything that might tie him to Wimberley. Near his phone was an address book. Inside was the name “Elizabeth Marie Dommert,” and her home address was mere tenths of a mile from where Morrow’s car had been left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ranger Stewart and Sheriff Hohman were back on the road from Austin to Wimberley, heading straight to the home of Elizabeth Marie Dommert.

She was at home and allowed them to come in.

The first thing they noticed was that the home was unkempt. There were piles of feces left by the dog, and dog hair was all over the furniture. Stewart noted that the fur looked to be the same as what was found in Larry Morrow’s car and he took off his jacket and put it in one of the furriest spots to furtively collect a sample.

Dommert said she wondered when someone would come to talk with her because of the situation that existed between Larry Morrow, Lucy Brown, and her new husband.

Ranger Stewart told her to explain what she meant.

The furry dog’s owner told the men that Larry Morrow was desperate to talk to Lucy, but her husband, Dr. Grey, was almost certainly holding her against her will and would not let her talk with anyone.

Dommert talked about Larry Morrow calling her (Dommert) constantly, wanting to know about Lucy. She said he even showed up in the parking lot of the store where she worked, begging for Lucy’s phone number. She said she told him that the number was at her house. She would write it down for him and leave it in her truck in the driveway. He could get it out of there. She said she didn’t know if he got it or not.

Ranger Stewart was surprised, yet couldn’t look away, when Dommert became quite emotional about Lucy Brown and said Dr. Grey was no good. She was adamant that Grey was a terrible person and bad for her former roommate. She said when Brown married him, it “broke my heart.”

~~~~~

Dr. and Mrs. Grey were soon cleared of any wrongdoing, and Dr. Grey told investigators that a man who said he was “Larry Morrow” called at 11:30 p.m. on Friday, October 12, and asked to speak with his wife. He told the caller that his wife was asleep.

~~~~~

Larry Morrow’s funeral took place on the following Thursday, and he was buried in the Roselawn Cemetery in Van Vleck, just outside of Bay City.

~~~~~

On October 17, due to her circulation disease, Elizabeth Dommert developed a blood clot in her leg; her leg was amputated below the knee on October 31, 1984.

~~~~~

January 1985 – Wired Up

For months, investigators quietly assembled the evidence against Elizabeth Dommert. Ranger Ron Stewart was certain she had something to do with Larry Morrow’s death, and Megan Spencer wanted to help solve his murder.

While Dommert was recovering, the ranger and Morrow’s best friend cooked up a plan. They decided Spencer would wear a wire and visit Dommert at her home in Wimberley.

While Larry and Lucy had dated, Megan Spencer and Elizabeth Dommert had socialized with them at least four times, so it wasn’t strange for Dommert to hear that Megan would like to drop by for a visit.

The older woman welcomed her, tried to empathize with her about her loss, and she told her guest that “Larry was a very nice and gentle man.”

But most of their conversation that day centered around Lucy Brown. Dommert said since Lucy had married, she had really hurt her. Her former roommate would not speak to her, and she had told horrible lies about Dommert.

Rumors had been spread that Lucy Brown had lived with Dommert under coercion.

Dommert claimed a friend said, “Betty told her I kept her prisoner by keeping her drugged. These stories, they just kept getting more bizarre than the last one.”

Other stories Dommert had heard involved her threatening Lucy Brown with a gun in order to keep her from leaving. Brown eventually left the house under the pretense of going to her teaching job in Dripping Springs, but instead met Dr. Grey, and the couple drove to San Marcos where they were married by Justice of the Peace Becky Sierra.

Note: I believe all the so-called “rumors” were true, and that’s why Dommert brought them up. It is a typical trait of an abuser to cast their victim in a bad light to divert anyone from believing what the victim may say about the abuser’s coercive and controlling behavior.

During the conversation, Dommert said Morrow had called her at least four times the week before he was murdered, seeking Betty’s telephone number. “He was becoming aggressive in the frequency of his calls to get in touch with her,” said Dommert.

Megan knew Larry Morrow wasn’t romantically interested in Lucy Brown; he had recently told his closest friends that he was gay. Megan Spencer said this, and Dommert confirmed that she also knew he was gay. She said Larry Morrow wanted to congratulate Lucy about the marriage, which sounds ridiculous.

Spencer asked her: “Who do you think could have killed Larry?”

Dommert’s answer sounded like a self-description.

“Who the hell could be capable of it?

“That would have to be a pretty cold-blooded person.

“Even if It was a cold-blooded person, it would have to be someone who kills for the thrill of killing, someone who belongs in a straitjacket, and everyone in the county would know about that person.”

May 1985 – Search Warrant

The wheels of justice inched forward. A forensic lab determined that the strands of dog fur on Morrow when he was found in the trunk belonged to Elizabeth Dommert’s dog.

On May 23, 1985, Ranger Ron Stewart executed a search warrant on Elizabeth Dommert’s Wimberley home. There he found a briefcase with documents and a plastic bag with a gun.

Stewart sent the briefcase and its contents off to be processed. The results: The gun in the closet was the gun that fired the bullet that killed Larry Morrow.

August 1985 – Indictment

The grand jury of Hays County indicted Elizabeth Dommert for Larry Morrow’s murder. She was arrested and allowed bail so she could stay at home until her trial because of her poor health.

May 1986 – The Trial

Elizabeth Dommert’s trial began and took more than a week.

The prosecutor’s theory:  At 11:30 p.m. on October 12, 1984, Dommert held a gun to Larry Morrow’s head and forced him to call Lucy Brown’s home to get her on the phone. Dommert wanted to speak with her that night and she was desperately spiraling out of control. When he failed to get Lucy on the phone, Dommert killed him out of rage.

I will take that theory one more step and say if she could have talked with Lucy Brown, Dommert would have said, “You either come to my house right now, or I’m killing Larry Morrow.” Also, I think she thought she had to kill him because she was already on probation, and she may have been imprisoned for committing another felony by holding Larry Morrow at gunpoint. (Maybe a charge of false imprisonment or unlawful restraint.)

The information that came out in the trial has been incorporated above. A few other items of note:

• Her mother perjured herself and lied elaborately to cover for Elizabeth Dommert. The prosecutor impeached the mother’s testimony.
• Dommert was convicted on May 29, 1986. She was allowed to stay at home until her sentencing because of an upcoming medical procedure. Her sentencing date was set for July 3.
• On July 3, Dommert did not show up, so the judge sent an officer to her house. When Dommert arrived at court, she was unkempt and wore pajamas.
• Elizabeth Marie Dommert was housed in a Gatesville prison. She died in a hospital in Bell County, Texas, about thirty minutes from the prison, in January 1992.

Remember this …

Larry Morrow died because he answered the phone when someone he believed needed help asked him to come to Wimberley. By all accounts, he was exactly the sort of dependable friend Megan Spencer described—a man who showed up when people needed him. Tragically, Elizabeth Dommert used that kindness against him.

Credits

For this story, I relied on newspaper articles from the Austin American Statesman and San Marco Daily Record.