More trouble for the salafy Muslims in Philadelphia

Prosecutors: Murdered MontCo. Man Had Second Wife

(AP) MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Pa. A Muslim man who was killed in his bed early Sunday had taken a second wife in Morocco and planned to travel there later that day, prosecutors said.

Jereleigh Morton's first wife, Myra, told police she chased after the intruder who shot him in their $1 million suburban home. But police found no signs of a break-in and focused their attention on the victim's marital status after reading Myra's diaries.

Myra Morton, 47, had reluctantly agreed to the second marriage and even traveled to Morocco this year to sanction it under Muslim law, authorities said. Prosecutors, however, think her husband may have married the other woman -- a 20-something he met on the Internet -- even earlier than Myra knew.

"We're working under the theory that she sort of approved it after the fact," Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. said Tuesday. "I think there was discussion, and she felt pressured into agreeing to allow it."

No charges have been filed, but police took cheek swabs from Myra Morton to compare to DNA found at the scene, court papers show.

"We haven't excluded her as the killer," Castor said.

The Mortons, who hail from North Philadelphia, converted to Islam about 20 years ago. They lived in a small city row house until a medical malpractice settlement over their teenage daughter's death netted them a reported $8 million in 2005.

They paid $1 million cash that year for a sprawling suburban home near Ambler, and Jereleigh retired from his job as a plumber to dabble in real estate. Their surviving daughter also lived with them, and was home Sunday morning, along with her husband and baby.

"I never saw any problems or concerns about them or their relationship," said lawyer Charles Hehmeyer of Philadelphia, who represented the Mortons in the wrongful-death case. "She's a nice lady and has endured a lot of tragedy in her life."

Myra Morton has not retained a criminal lawyer, and the family's home telephone rang unanswered Tuesday.

Jereleigh Morton, 47, was shot twice, at least once in the head. A gun holster was found on the dresser, and a handgun was outside a sliding glass door that leads from the bedroom to the yard.

Myra Morton called 911 at about 3:30 a.m. to report the shooting.

Police, working with the U.S. State Department, are still trying to piece together a timeline of the couple's overseas travels. And they do not yet know the identity of the second wife, Castor said.

"In March '07 my husband married a woman from Morocco. Before this he was showing strange behavior to me, going out staying late, on computer all the time," Myra Morton wrote in a diary, according to a police affidavit.

She discovered that her husband had sent the woman money for a dowry. She told police they had about $6 million in assets.

Myra Morton wrote that she went to Morocco and even ran around to get the paperwork in order, only to have her husband grow increasingly aloof.

"I go give him the permission, because he argues with me when I protest this marriage," the diary reads.

He was scheduled to leave again for Morocco at 7 p.m. Sunday, a trip Myra Morton had backed out of, said Risa Ferman, an assistant district attorney in Montgomery County.

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that a minority of Muslims take second wives, and that Islamic scholars would differ on whether one could do so while living in the United States.

"Some scholars may say it's not permitted at all in a society where two legal marriages would be outlawed," Hooper said.

Castor was equally unsure of how Pennsylvania's polygamy ban might apply. He did not know if the state would have jurisdiction over a marriage in Morocco.

In the wake of the slaying, the point is moot.

"We're doing a homicide investigation, not an adultery (case)," Castor said.