A jury inward Oakland County, Mich. has found homeless gender offender Jeffrey Morris shamed of the horrific polish off of professional stove poker player Susie “Susie Q” Zhao.
The 30-year-old’s seriously charred dead body was found inwards secluded parkland northwestward of the urban center of Pontiac in July 2020. Zhao had been zip-tied, sexually assaulted, doused inwards gasoline, and place on fire.
The presence of soot in her airways suggested she had been burnt-out alive, according to testimony from the medical examiner. She also had extended scathe to her genital country caused by frank force.
Phone Evidence
Prosecutors argued that cellphone records linked Esther Hobart McQuigg Slack Morris to the crime, showing his sound and Zhao’s were unitedly inward the hours leading upward to the murder. Investigators tracked the II devices from the Sherwood Motel inward Waterford, where Gouverneur Morris had rented a room, to the expanse where Zhao’s dead body was found.
The panel also saw picture evidence from a stack away where Esther Morris may have got stolen zip ties and oil jelly prior to the killing. Separately, a gas post owner testified that he sold Esther Morris a jerrycan of gasoline non long before Zhao was murdered.
There was also home certificate footage showing Morris’ railway car straits past a residence half a mile from the criminal offense shot at rough the clip of the murder. It returned inward the opposite way seven proceedings later.
Morris had made thousands of net searches related to to sadistic sexual urge involving nobble and force against Asiatic women. He also looked upward porn that mired encounters inward secluded wooded areas.
In his closing argument, track litigator Gospel According to John Skrzynski described the suspect as “a killer and a liar, a prevaricator and a murderer, a liar and a pervert,” and someone for whom gender “is violence, is death, is inflicting pain, it’s cruel,” as reported by The Oakland Press.
Morris’ defense force team argued that a great deal of the grounds against him was circumstantial, and hence his guilt feelings could non be proven beyond sensible doubt.
But it took the jury less than an time of day to yardbird Gouverneur Morris on 1 bet each of felony dispatch and second-degree criminal sexual conduct.
He faces mandatory lifespan internment when he is sentenced next month.
Much-Loved Poker Player
Born in China, Zhao grew upwardly inward Michigan, where she had returned during the pandemic after a decennium as a professional poker participant inwards California.
She had clear life history tourney earnings of $224,671, according to the Hendon Mob Database, but she was predominantly a hard currency mettlesome player. She also was a much-loved figure on the Calif. poker game scene, where intelligence of her off was met with blow and disbelief.
At the time of her death, she was suffering from schizophrenia, according to court of law records.