Morgan Fox was a 29-year-old woman who had been living with her boyfriend Jason Scarnecchia in Plain Township, Ohio for the past year. Morgan was said to be a generous soul who was very giving & had a love for animals & her family. Her eight-year-old daughter Emilia was her life & the two did everything together. She was one of thirteen children to parents Cyndi & Robert.
On the rainy morning of Wednesday, October 28, 2020, Jason’s alarm went off at 6 am & he made his way downstairs to get his breakfast ready. As he did, he glanced out the window & was immediately confused & concerned when he noticed Morgan’s car parked out front.
Morgan’s typical routine was to wake up at 1 am, leave the house no later than 2:15 am so she could be at her desk, ready to start work at 3 am as an operations manager for FedEx. Since she wasn’t in bed or anywhere else in the house, Jason threw on a coat & went outside. As he approached Morgan’s car, he noticed that the driver’s side door was wide open. Getting closer, he noticed in horror that Morgan’s body was slumped over the seat, perfectly still & covered in blood that was already starting to dry. Her cell phone was on the ground near her car.
Jason immediately called 911 & told the dispatcher that he found his girlfriend outside & she was dead. When officers arrived, it was confirmed that Morgan was deceased & appeared to be the victim of a random shooting. A neighbor noticed the commotion at the house & contacted Morgan’s mom Cyndi. Cyndi rushed over to Morgan’s house, hoping for the best & was horrified to see the house swarmed with police & wrapped in crime scene tape as she arrived. As she got out of her car, she learned the devastating news that her daughter had been murdered.
Homicide detectives quickly determined that Morgan had been shot twice in the head & based on how her body was positioned with her feet still outside the car, it was clear that she was ambushed as she was climbing into her driver’s seat. The previous evening, Morgan dropped Emilia off at her mom’s house so she could watch her while she worked. Cyndi said that when she saw Morgan for the last time, she seemed to be in great spirits.
As Cyndi processed the horrific events of what happened, she pulled one of the detectives aside & advised them to consider one of Morgan’s co-workers as a possible suspect. She said that a man named Jason McDermitt had been fixated on her daughter which had caused Morgan to feel very uncomfortable & even scared.
As the crime scene was being processed, 29-year-old McDermitt was at work, having clocked in for his shift at FedEx at 2:59 am. His co-workers later reported that he had come into work that morning in an especially chipper mood. He’d glanced over at Morgan’s empty workspace often, but showed no outward concern for her absence. When detectives spoke with him later in the day, he seemed to be genuinely grieving the loss of his friend & coworker. His parents later said that he wept almost to the point of hysteria over Morgan’s death.
He told investigators that he & Morgan were friends who were on great terms. He said he came into work at 3 am & had stayed on site throughout his shift which ended at 10 am. When he left, he went to a local gas station/eatery where he washed his car & got something to eat & surveillance from the store proved this to be true.
On review of the footage, police watched as McDermitt carefully washed his back tire wells, going back to clean them a second time. The police were aware that the car that had fled the scene of Morgan’s murder had spun in the mud; tire impressions were visible & mud was splattered on a nearby fence. Police obtained DNA samples from McDermitt & he was released.
When Ring doorbell footage was reviewed from homes in the neighborhood, they didn’t prove to be helpful.
On speaking with coworkers of Morgan & McDermitt, investigators learned that they had once been close friends, but that hadn’t been the case at the time of Morgan’s murder. On October 8, twenty days earlier, Morgan’s cell phone suddenly went missing. She was told that McDermitt & two of his friends had taken it. When she tracked them down, she demanded that they give it back to her. He handed the phone over, but before he did, he uploaded all of Morgan’s personal photos, videos & apps to his own device. He also shared some of these photos, many of which were intimate & not meant for an outsider’s eyes let alone people she worked with on a professional basis.
Morgan was absolutely infuriated by this betrayal of friendship & trust & completely ended her friendship with McDermitt, cutting off all ties. She reported him & the others involved to her supervisor & she’d become the victim of a harassment issue in the weeks before her death. The environment had gotten so toxic at work that Morgan even voiced the idea of looking for a job elsewhere.
McDermitt apologized profusely for his role in the incident but there was no rebuilding the friendship. Morgan blocked him from all of her social media platforms & instead of respecting her stance, McDermitt continued to relentlessly bother her in the following weeks, calling & texting her dozens of times a day. The last communication between them happened on October 24, four days before Morgan was murdered. Normally she would ignore him, but this time she responded strictly out of concern for her own safety. She had been out of town for a couple of days & this was something she hadn’t told him or anyone in his inner circle, yet he specifically asked her how Columbus, Ohio was. Feeling rattled, Morgan asked him how he knew she was there. He didn’t respond.
After the falling out between McDermitt & Morgan, fellow FedEx employees noticed a change in him. He normally had a pleasant demeanor & paid attention to his personal appearance, but he started to become sullen & unkempt. He appeared to be very depressed & told many people that he was having trouble sleeping & could barely stomach food. Oddly enough, on the morning of October 28, the day that Morgan was killed, it seemed as if a cloud had lifted from McDermitt & his usual self was emerging.
Coworkers, who had yet to hear the terrible news of Morgan’s murder even commented on his more upbeat mood & he told them that he & Morgan had resolved their differences. He said that after having a conversation, they agreed that the cell phone fiasco had just been a terrible misunderstanding. He said that they were in such a great place that they even considered the idea of moving in together.
No one took these ridiculous claims seriously, but his coworkers were relieved to see that he was coming out of his funk. They knew him as the type of person who tended to stretch the truth. An employee named Mary, whom McDermitt had trained, later told detectives that all he could manage to speak about was Morgan. He often pulled up pictures of her & her daughter on his phone, bragging about them as if they were his family.
Mary eventually learned that Morgan had a live-in boyfriend & was not interested in anyone else. Mary, tired of the constant talk of Morgan, finally told McDermitt that he needed to get over her & find someone else that would return his affections. She said he quickly steered the conversation back to the relationship that only existed in his mind.
Friends of Morgan’s began to plan a candlelight vigil on the day after her murder. McDermitt had been known to insert himself in situations where he was not welcome & stepped in to help with the planning. A coworker named Mikki went to the store to get supplies for the vigil & said she would never forget the disturbing conversation she had with McDermitt as they ran their errands.
While they walked through the aisles of a store, he told Mikki, in graphic detail, about a sexual encounter he claimed to have had with Morgan. Mikki did not believe the story, but was especially bothered when he ended it by saying that he planned to masturbate to the memory.
On the evening of the vigil, Cyndi brought Emilia to Morgan’s house so she could get some of her things & noticed a group of strangers congregating on the lawn. She quickly ushered Emilia into the house, grabbed a few of her things & got in the car to leave. Just as Emilia began to close the passenger side door, McDermitt swooped in & handed her a teddy bear. Before she could say a word, he told her the gift was so she would never forget him.
Cyndi repeatedly told him to move away from their car as McDermitt stood by & told Emilia that she was just as beautiful as her mom. A coworker named Mark could see that the situation was getting odd & told McDermitt to leave them alone. When he looked up to see that all eyes were on him, he finally moved away from the car. But lacking any impulse control, he continued to hold the door open & refused to close it until Cyndi agreed to give him her phone number.
Police continued to work day & night to find Morgan’s killer & poured over traffic camera footage. They spotted a blue Ford Focus with a noticeable bend in the license plate that was driving in the direction of Morgan’s house at 1:28 am on the day of her murder. In the house next door to where Jason & Morgan lived, detectives found tire impressions in the damp ground as well as mud splatter that indicated that someone left the area in a hurry. The tire impressions were consistent with those from a Ford Focus which is the make & model that McDermitt just happened to drive.
Because of the traffic cam & tire impression findings, police obtained a search warrant for McDermitt’s car. A K9 officer trained to detect the presence of explosive devices alerted to the driver’s seat & surrounding floorboards. This would suggest that a recently discharged firearm recently came into contact with those areas.
On October 30, with a search warrant, police searched the gun safe that McDermitt’s father owned & found several guns that were capable of firing .22 caliber bullets which was what was used to kill Morgan. After extensive testing, all but one weapon was eliminated. It could not be definitely determined that the gun was used but it also couldn’t be ruled out. Police learned that McDermitt had gone to his parent’s house the day before the shooting & again, the day after. He said that he’d gone there to drop off a birthday present for his mom, but her birthday had been three months earlier. Detectives suspected it was then that he removed the gun from his father’s collection before he had the chance to realize it was missing.
As a detective spoke with McDermitt, he mentioned that his car’s black box indicated that he had been in Morgan’s neighborhood at the time of her murder. This had been a lie, but he began to scramble to come up with explanations. No one else knew, but he had left his cell phone at home to be sure his movements couldn’t be tracked, but he hadn’t considered his car’s tracking system.
Learning this, he started to do damage control & voiced theories to a handful of coworkers that he viewed as friends. He wondered if someone had stolen his keys & taken his car to Morgan’s house, shot her dead & then put everything where he’d left it without his knowledge.
One day after the vigil, on October 31, Cyndi went back to her daughter’s home to get the rest of Emilia’s things & when she got there, she saw McDermitt & another man loitering near Morgan’s car which had been processed by the police & released back to the family. When she confronted them, McDermitt explained that his friend had been unable to attend the vigil & wanted to come by to pay his respects. Cyndi didn’t believe what she was being told & felt that McDermitt was there looking for something.
To rule out all suspects, detectives did test Jason Scarnecchia’s hands & clothes for any gunshot residue after Morgan had called 911 but there was no indication that he’d recently fired a gun. They also reviewed Morgan’s cell phone history & saw the text between the couple indicated they were in a great place.
The K9 officer who searched McDermitt’s car was also brought in to inspect the home that Morgan & Jason had shared & again, no residue was detected. Jason was ruled out as a suspect & police focused their attention on McDermitt.
McDermitt willingly handed his phone over to investigators but not before deleting some of its content. He didn’t realize that forensic experts could retrieve this information. Detectives were shocked to see the number of pictures & videos he had collected of Morgan since their friendship started. More than seventy photos showed that Morgan had obviously not known these photos were being taken, based on the angles & footage. Many of the images had been zoomed in to focus on her chest & backside. He had also secretly recorded a conversation they had in her kitchen when he visited Morgan’s home.
They were also able to retrieve a Skype conversation between McDermitt & an anonymous person. He posed as a woman involved in a lesbian relationship & repeated, verbatim the fictitious sexual encounter with Morgan.
On November 1, four days after Morgan was murdered, McDermitt posted a tribute to her on his social media. The message was written to “Foxy” & read: I wish I had time to list all the ways you have impacted my life, but the list would be so long we’d never make it to the end. You were the friend where if I was having a bad day, I knew I could always come talk to you. It’s so strange not having you around to talk to & this has left a giant hole in my heart. He finally concluded after continuing to ramble in circles, but I know you will always be watching over us, your family, your friends & your daughter.. You will never be forgotten.
On November 4, McDermitt was arrested while at his parent’s house & charged with Morgan’s murder. On December 17 he was indicted for aggravated murder with a firearm & stalking. After entering a not guilty plea, he was held on a $2 million bond.
The trial began on April 2, 2021 & lasted six & McDermitt’s father testified that he had the only key for the gun cabinet & claimed that his son had undergone wrist surgery that would have made it basically impossible for him to fire a gun.
Morgan’s boyfriend Jason took the stand & recounted the horrible moment when he found Morgan’s body & felt worse that he hadn’t been woken by the sound of gunshots. Neighbors also hadn’t heard anything out of the ordinary which brought to mind the possibility that McDermitt could have used a silencer.
After three hours of deliberation, McDermitt was found guilty of murder & on April 14 he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. During the victim impact statements, Morgan’s daughter who by now was ten, was given the opportunity to address McDermitt. With bravery, she spoke with emotion in a trembling voice & asked him why he took her mommy from her. She also said, “I wish she could see me graduate from high school. I wish she could see me get married.” Having never shown an ounce of remorse, he could only manage to look toward the ground & shake his head. Emilia ended with, “I thought monsters weren’t real, but you proved me wrong.”
Jason remains in a medium-security Ohio prison & maintains his innocence. Any appeals he has attempted have been denied.
To honor Morgan’s name & help others, Morgan’s survivors founded the Morgan Ashlye Fox Foundation in 2022 that helps others who have lost someone to violence.
Because Morgan’s concerns brought to HR about the harassment she was dealing with at work were brushed aside, in February of 2023, FedEx settled a civil suit brought against them by Morgan’s family. The case focused on the fact that the company failed to protect Morgan from a coworker who had made her work environment a living hell. FedEx agreed to a $4 million settlement, half of which was put into a trust for Emilia.
Morgan was a loving & dedicated mother who put Emilia at the center of her world. She was a champion of those less fortunate & her life was taken away far too soon by a person she had befriended & showed nothing but kindness to.
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