Alfred Morgan, the father who threw his 2-year-old daughter into a creek drowning her while she was in a weighted down car seat, wrote a jailhouse letter that was read in court Friday, March 14. In that letter he makes a chilling statement regarding the mother of his child, Imani Benton. “You should have came with us. … It would have been so different, and I’m sure. That was the plan, to go as a family.”
The implication in the letter was not lost on Benton who stated “If I would have gone to the movie, we wouldn’t have gone to the movie … we all would have died.”
Prosecutors claim that Morgan acted in a premeditated, jealous rage when he killed Tierra that night because Benton broke off their relationship. Days earlier she had returned a ring and other jewelry to Morgan firmly telling him the two were over as a couple.
Morgan admitted throwing his daughter off the bridge that night, but says he was in an unbalanced state of mind.
The difference between a premeditated state of mind and an unbalanced one could be important in the sentencing phase. It is the difference between life in prison or a lesser charge, such as reckless manslaughter, which would only get him five years.
