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When Dallas police arrived at Leonard Mornes’ Ledbetter Drive home at around 7 p.m. Wednesday night, the 60-year-old homeowner told them he’d caught the two dead women inside breaking into his house and shot them. Which, given the rights endowed upon property owners by God and the state of Texas, would absolve him of legal wrongdoing.
But police say that’s not quite how things went down. Rather, according to an arrest affidavit, Mornes and the women had been smoking crack cocaine. He’d fallen asleep assuming they had left, but when he woke he heard voices coming from his rear bedroom. The affidavit says he grabbed a handgun and opened fire as he entered the room, shooting each repeatedly. He later told officers that he’d been under the impression that the women were secret agents sent to spy on him and that they’d replaced the bullets in his gun with blanks.
Mornes was taken to Lew Sterrett jail on a capital murder charge. Police have identified one of the women as Bridgette Manning, 45. The other has not been unidentified.
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