HIGH POINT CONFIDENTIAL: Double homicide case rocked Denton in 1970

DENTON — July 4, 1970.

Small towns like Denton typically don't have many red-letter days like this one in their history, but this is a date the locals cannot — and should not — ever forget.

On the bright side, it's the day that Denton's annual Southeast Old Threshers' Reunion, the largest antique tractor and engine show in the Southeast, got its start. Fifty-four years later, the popular event draws tens of thousands of visitors to Denton every summer.

July 4, 1970, also holds a dark memory, though, and it's one the locals would probably just as soon forget. It's the day the small, charming — some might even say "Mayberry-esque" — town of Denton lost its innocence, courtesy of a shocking crime that no one could've predicted.

And which, unfortunately, no one could solve.

Ironically, the case seemed pretty cut and dried at first glance — it didn't even look like a crime. Following a severe electrical storm that night, a raging fire — initially believed to have been ignited by lightning — destroyed a two-story farmhouse on Jackson Hill Road, just south of Denton. The charred bodies of the owners, Ronald Lee Morris and his wife, Rachel Cranford Morris, were found among the ashes.

That could've been the end of it — an unavoidable, heartbreaking tragedy caused by an act of God — but a couple of Morris relatives reportedly pushed local officials to send the bodies for autopsies. They just wanted to be sure of the cause of death.

A couple of days later, the stunning autopsy results revealed the Morrises had been shot to death before the fire — the husband was shot twice in the head, and the wife had taken a single bullet to the head.

The news rocked Denton, where crime scarcely even made headlines, much less front-page headlines. The Morrises were known as respectable, salt-of-the-earth people who were active in their church and community. They had no known enemies. Ronald, 35, was a farmer and part-time truck driver; Rachel, 31, taught at Denton School.

Was this a double homicide? Or could it have been a murder-suicide? With two shots to the head, Ronald was clearly murdered. Rachel, however, only had one shot to the head, so it was plausible that she could've killed her husband and then turned the gun on herself.

The murder-suicide angle raised questions, though. First and foremost, authorities had found several firearms in the rubble — including one that wasn't far from the bodies — but none of them proved to be the fatal weapon. So what happened to it?

There was also no clear motive. By all accounts, the Morris couple seemed happy, and they were even in the process of adopting a child together. And even if authorities uncovered a possible motive, Rachel was shot in the left temple, but she was righthanded — an unlikely scenario.

Furthermore, officials determined the fire most likely had been set intentionally. If Rachel killed Ronald and then herself, who started the fire?

It wasn't until a month after the couple's deaths that Davidson County authorities, working in tandem with the SBI, definitively determined the case to be a double homicide.

Unfortunately, that ruling just raised more questions. Again, there was no clear motive, as the couple had no known enemies. If robbery was the motive, the robber(s) had left behind several guns and a cache of ammunition, as well as a coin collection and other possessions that would've been deemed valuable.

Every time a new newspaper was published about the case, Davidson County Sheriff Fred C. Sink expressed hope that the killers would be caught, but admitted that every lead had taken him down a dead-end road. In late November — nearly five months after the slayings — The High Point Enterprise published a story titled, "Are Denton's Murders Unsolvable?"

In that , Sink said authorities had interviewed more than 400 individuals in their investigation, but still had nothing concrete to go on. "This is the most difficult case I've been involved with since I've been sheriff," he said.

A couple of weeks later, a $2,000 reward was offered for information leading to the killers' arrest and conviction. Sadly, the reward went unclaimed, and today we have no more answers than they had 54 years ago.