Charges: Man lived with brother's corpse for 17 days after shooting him

PRICE — Seventeen days.

That's how long Kurt Alan Morris lived in a Carbon County mobile home with the corpse of his brother decomposing in a bedroom down the hall, according to charging documents filed Thursday in 7th District Court.

Morris is charged with murder, a first-degree felony, in connection with the shooting death of his 50-year-old brother, Jack Roger Morris.

The homicide was discovered Sept. 4, when Carbon County sheriff's deputies responded to a call at the mobile home the men shared in Carbonville. A neighbor had reported that a hose was strung from the tailpipe of an idling pickup truck into the home, said Carbon County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Tom Stefanoff.

A deputy entered the home and found Kurt Morris, 55, unresponsive on a bedroom floor, Stefanoff said. Deputies and paramedics were able to revive him and asked whether anyone else lived there.

"He said his brother did, but his brother was at work," Stefanoff said. "He then changed his story and said the brother was inside."

A deputy re-entered the home and found a second bedroom that had plastic sheeting over the door and was sealed by duct tape. Inside the bedroom, deputies found the body of Jack Morris on a bed with a gunshot wound to the head.

Investigators said Jack Morris had been dead "a week or more." In charging documents filed against Kurt Morris, Carbon County prosecutors said Morris was killed on Aug. 18 — more than two weeks before his body was found. 

The charges did not list a possible motive for the slaying.

Kurt Morris remains in the Carbon County Jail, where he is being held on a $100,000 cash-only bail. His first court appearance on the murder charge still had not been scheduled late Friday.

— Geoff Liesik, Twitter: GeoffLiesik