12/29/2002

By JULIA SILVERMAN, Associated Press Writer

Tips poured in from across the country after an Oregon man charged with killing his pregnant wife and children was featured on "America's Most Wanted" police said Sunday.

But none of the 50 or so calls yet provide any definite clue as to the whereabouts of 37-year-old Edward Morris, Tillamook County Sheriff Todd Anderson said.

"In Alabama, New Jersey, Utah, a lot of people have seen an Oregon plate in their state," he said.

Edward Morris. (File photo)

Hunters found Renee Morris and her three children in a remote, snowy patch of the Tillamook State Forest on Dec. 20th. A few days later, Edward Morris was charged with seven counts of aggravated murder in the deaths.

Since then, a flurry of tips have come from the Bellingham, Wash., area, raising suspicion that Morris might have fled across the Canadian border.

Bellingham police told The Oregonian newspaper that they have received six reports of sightings of Morris since Dec. 23, including one Saturday from a McDonalds' restaurant clerk who thinks she sold him breakfast the morning after Christmas.

All the reports involve sightings from several days ago, Acting Sgt. Chad Cristelli told the paper.

Alexis (left) and Bryant Morris. (Oregonian photo)

Investigators are also looking at the logs of ferries that travel between Washington and Canada; another ferry leaves Bellingham for Alaska, Anderson said. Detectives had also contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, he said.

Morris is considered armed and dangerous; investigators assume Morris is alive because the evidence doesn't prove otherwise, Anderson said.

The FBI is stressing that people shouldn't ignore a possible Morris sighting elsewhere because police have focused the search on Washington and Canada, said Beth Anne Steele, spokeswoman for the FBI in Portland.

"If that's where he went, then certainly we'll find him," she said. "But we don't want people in California not to call us because they'll say, 'Oh, it can't be him -- he's in Washington."'

More than 500 mourners attended a memorial service for the four victims Saturday at a North Portland church.

(Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)