Bio

Joseph Bernard Morse was born in 1943 in the United States. Morse lived in San Diego County, California, before his first known murders. As a teenager, he was involved in a violent incident against a woman named Ellen Young. Court records state that he followed her after she got off a bus, attacked her, stole her purse, and beat her. This assault was included in the same indictment as the later murders of his mother and sister.

In 1961, when Morse was still a teenager, he killed his mother and his disabled sister in Chula Vista, California. The killings were committed with a baseball bat and a rock. He was later convicted of two counts of first-degree murder. At age 19, he became one of the youngest men in California to receive a death sentence.

Murder Story

Joseph Bernard Morse was first convicted in 1962 for murdering his mother and disabled sister in Chula Vista, California. The victims were beaten to death with a baseball bat and a rock. He pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity, but the jury found him guilty and sane. The jury imposed the death penalty for both murders.

Morse appealed the case to the California Supreme Court. In 1964, the court upheld his convictions but found problems with the way the jury had been instructed during the penalty phase. The case became important in California death penalty law because it limited how juries could be told about parole and future release when deciding between life imprisonment and death.

On August 6, 1964, after a retrial on punishment, a jury decided that Morse should receive life imprisonment for the murders of his mother and sister. Eight days later, on August 14, 1964, while he was still in the San Diego County jail waiting for formal sentencing, Morse killed another prisoner, Thomas Larry Taddei. Court records state that Morse used part of a mattress cover braided into a cord to garrote Taddei.

Reports later stated that the killing involved a dispute over cigarettes and a gambling debt. Morse confessed to strangling Taddei and was later tried and convicted for that murder as well.

Morse’s case continued through several trials and appeals. According to later reporting, he was tried multiple times over eight years and received death sentences more than once. However, in 1972, the California Supreme Court modified his death sentence to life imprisonment after California’s death penalty was found unconstitutional under state law and after the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Furman v. Georgia.

After his death sentence was reduced, Morse remained in prison and appeared at parole hearings over the following decades. Prosecutors continued opposing his release.