Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2009

by Meghan Tierney | Staff Writer

The family of a Dickerson man who was last heard from more than two years ago is still searching for answers.

John James Morris, 39, was last seen seemingly waiting for a ride in the driveway at the home he had shared with his boyfriend, who he recently ended a 12-year relationship with, on Whites Ferry Road on July 30, 2007. Morris had returned to the house to pick up personal items after a weeklong trip.

"He just disappeared into the night," his mother Madeline Morris of New Jersey said.

Morris' family reported him missing in August after he missed several of his regular weekly phone calls, his mother said. He left all of his belongings, including his truck and dog, behind.

"You pray a lot, you cry a lot, it's just always on your mind," Morris said, describing her son as warm and funny and an animal lover and talented artist. "There's no closure. If he's dead, at least you have closure, at least you know. You're hanging in limbo."

Morris has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and a history of depression and had run out of his medication, his mother said. He was "hallucinating," "paranoid" and told his mother the FBI had been watching him, she said.

"He told me he was going back to God and the FBI was picking him up," Morris said, adding that the behavior was unusual for her son "… He said he was going away for a while and that he'd call me to send him some clothes, but he never did."

A secretary for Morris' former boyfriend, a federal government employee, had told Morris she would contact the FBI if he continued calling the office, his mother said she later learned. The boyfriend had been verbally abusive during their relationship, she said.

The North Carolina-based nonprofit CUE Center for Missing Persons, an advocacy group that also assists with search and recovery and specializes in cold cases, recently took up the family's cause and included Morris in the 104 missing person cases it is publicizing this summer. The group focuses mostly on missing adults, whose disappearances are often not given as much attention by police and the media, according to founder Monica Caison.

"The perception people have is that if you're an adult you have the right to go missing, but that needs to be modified — you don't have the right to go missing and not notify someone," Caison said, adding that men who go missing have an especially difficult time getting attention. "…The majority of missing adults don't walk out on their lives, they've been abducted or something's happened. It's not taken as seriously and it creates a lag time where nothing gets done."

Morris' disappearance is one of the center's more serious cases, Caison said, an assessment that's reached after talking to the families since they know the missing person best.

"That's one thing that his mother had shared, that something's really wrong," she said.

Morris is described as white, 6 feet tall and 185 pounds with brown eyes, graying brown hair, a tattoo of a snake on his right forearm and a tattoo of a scorpion on his left shoulder. He has scars on his right calf and his left ear is pierced. For more information, visit www.findjohnmorris.com.

Anyone with information is asked to call Montgomery County Police at 240-773-6239.