Affidavit: After animal dragged body from Texas garage, suspect wrapped child in tarp
.JPG "A man who authorities believe killed his wife and daughter in Wise County and stored their decomposing bodies in and near his garage falsely claimed his son was responsible for the deaths, according to affidavit supporting an arrest warrant.")
A man who authorities believe killed his wife and daughter in Wise County and stored their decomposing bodies in and near his garage falsely claimed his son was responsible for the deaths, an investigator wrote in an affidavit supporting an arrest warrant.
Robert Morairity, 45, told a law enforcement officer that his son stabbed Kimberly Kellam to death in November, according to the affidavit. Morairity placed his wife’s body inside a container, described in the affidavit as Tupperware, inside the garage at a house in the 1300 block of County Road 4371 in Decatur. Kellam was 42.
In January or February, Morairity’s 11-year-old daughter was smothered with plastic, the father told the officer, again claiming that his son was the killer, according to the affidavit. Her body, too, went to the garage.
The birthdate of Morairity’s son is redacted in the affidavit.
The Wise County Sheriff’s Office on June 13 arrested Morairity on suspicion of capital murder of a person 10 to 15 years old, murder and tampering with a corpse.
“We don’t believe the evidence supports (Morairity’s account),” Wise County Sheriff Lane Akin told the Wise County Messenger. The report from an autopsy that could include both victims’ cause and time of death is incomplete.
The name of the 11-year-old victim is redacted in the affidavit, which was written by John Polhemus, an investigator at the sheriff’s office.
Morairity, who was not living at the house, agreed to go there with two law enforcement officers, according to the affidavit. Morairity showed them a tarp outside the garage. Animals dragged a body that the affidavit suggests was the child out of the garage, so Morairity wrapped her in the tarp and placed a box, broken table and a bicycle on top, according to the affidavit.
Morairity directed investigators to the center of the garage and a large plastic tub often used to water livestock in which there was a body, according to the affidavit.
The smell of body decomposition was in the air.
Kellam’s brother-in-law on June 12 told a deputy Kellam’s relatives were afraid to report that Kellam and her daughter were missing. No one in the family had seen either since November.
Morairity is at the Wise County Jail with bond set at $800,000.
This story was originally published June 21, 2023 at 6:01 PM.
