Who was Emilie Morris? Missouri mom mysteriously died before trial against school coach who sexually abused her
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI: Emilie Morris was an athletic teen who was planning to pursue cross-country running as a student of Lindbergh High School in St. Louis, Missouri before her track coach allegedly sexually abused her, changing her life forever.
According to a 2018 BuzzFeed News article, Morris struggled with self-loathing, bulimia, alcoholism, and depression in the years that followed the alleged child abuse. Even after she got married, and had two children, the demons from her past continued to haunt her. Her marriage fell apart and her struggle with alcohol cost her the custody of her children.
Finally, Morris summoned courage and went to the police with her allegations against her former coach, James Wilder. Investigators told her to get a confession from Wilder to make a strong case against him, so she arranged to meet her alleged abuser in a St. Louis-area shopping mall parking lot. Wearing a wire, she confronted her alleged abuser and recorded an 87-minute conversation where the pair discussed their past relationship.
The St. Louis County Police Department arrested Wilder and charged him with six counts of statutory sodomy after Morris handed the authorities the recorded evidence. But just before Morris was close to selecting a date for her deposition, was found dead in her apartment under unexplained circumstances. Soon after her death, all charges against Wilder were dropped.
In the two-hour special 'The Case Died With Her,' premiering Sunday, Dec. 6, Oxygen re-examines the mysterious death and the allegations of abuse against Wilder. Here are some highlights:
Sexual encounters started with the game 'Chicken'
During a cross-country team practice at a park not far from the high school, while the rest of the team were busy playing capture the flag, Morris approached Wilder behind a tree and began to tell him about a game a boy in her school wanted to play with her called “Chicken.” The game involved the guy running his hand up her leg and see how far she would allow him to go before she called out, “Chicken.”
Wilder was interested in playing the game with Morris, she told the police, and began to put his hand on her leg — sliding it all the way up to her crotch where he allegedly held it, over her jeans. He quickly removed it when a boy from the team ran past the pair. Morris' parents asked Wilder to drive her home the same day. When they got home, they found that the home was empty and Morris invited her coach in. Once inside, he allegedly laid her on a blue ottoman in the living room, pulled down her pants and underwear, and performed oral sex on her, according to the special. Although they did not go any further that day, she claimed the abuse continued in the months to come with one performing oral sex on the other about once a week.
Confessions on the tape
In the nearly 90-minute conversation between Wilder and Morris, he allegedly admitted to the sexual relationship they shared in the past when she was still his student but never mentioned a date during the confessions, which made the timeline murky.
"We did something that wasn’t right according to our laws these days,” Wilder allegedly admitted in the recordings, according to BuzzFeed. “You know I’m not a creeper. I didn’t creep.” He added, “(In) 90 percent of the world, 15’s legal. So, if I go over and boff a 15-year-old in Spain, I can do it all day in the streets — whatever — and nothing would happen. You touch a 16-year-old and you go to jail here.” If he was convicted in the state of Missouri, each count could have carried a sentence of up to seven years behind bars.
Morris' death mystery
Morris' body was discovered by her father. She was found in her pajamas laying face down on her bedroom floor with a trash can pulled over her head. She was wrapped in a comforter and had snacks scrambled nearby. Investigators found vomit in the plastic lining of the trash can that was pulled all the way to her shoulders and determined that she had died from asphyxiation. An empty bottle of vodka also sat nearby.
However, her family found her death suspicious, noting that a door of the apartment had been unlocked and her blood alcohol concentration at the time of her death had been less than 0.05 percent — lower than the legal driving limit of 0.08 percent, according to the special.