Mitra Mehrabadi’s body was found in a Portland city center office building on a Saturday night in 2016; she had died from multiple gunshot wounds.
Earlier that day, and about a mile away from Mitra’s office, eyewitnesses noticed a middle-aged man sat in a car holding a firearm, and they phoned the police. When officers approached the vehicle, the man shot himself dead.
Police identified the man as 51-year-old Jimmy Alan Morgan, who worked with Mehrabadi in the same office at Liberty Mutual Insurance. Investigators ascertained through ballistic testing that Morgan had used the same firearm that he shot himself with to murder the 36-year-old Mehrabadi.
The motive for the killing remains something of a mystery; the Mehrabadi and Morgan families knew each other well and socialized together, including dinner gatherings at each other’s homes. Family and friends have stated that there was no friction between the two colleagues.
Morgan’s widow, Diane Morgan, has described her husband as a “loving and devoted husband, father and neighbor.” She says he left their home on the day of the killing, telling her he was going to a hardware store to look for fencing material. She was completely unaware that anything was amiss or that he had any hostility to Mehrabadi.
Mehrabadhi had emigrated with her husband, Morteza Rezaee, to the United States from Iran just four years before the murder. They had an 8-year-old daughter. They had migrated to build a better life for themselves and were by all accounts living the American dream. Neighbors described the Mehrabadi’s as being “such a sweet family,” and Mitra as “such a good person.”
At the time of the murder, the Morgans had a 17-year-old daughter.
Watch the Latest on our YouTube ChannelSee details of the case in She Never Saw It Coming at 10/9c on Investigation Discovery.