warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised
I’t started with a welfare check , inside that house was the beginning of a story no one saw coming, what they uncovered was colder than they imagined.
It started out like any other weekday,by that afternoon wednesday April 19th , 2023, something felt off ,the call came in to Hudson police, not from a neighbor or a co-worker but from a mother.
She explaned that her daughter had been waiting at school expecting to be picked up by her father, that never happened .
The father’s name she said was Todd Morgan , Todd was ‘nt just any dad, he was a well known professor in Cleveland, smart , accomplished,the kind of guy who didn’t just forget about his kids.
He had two children, Aaron , his 10 year old son from a past marriage , and a little girl , Cecilia, almost five, with mary anne ,the women who called 911.
That wednesday was supposed to be his turn with his daughter but he never showed up, Todd had always been steady, the kind of man who showed up when he said he would, espcecially for his kids.
That’s what made this so unusal, even with the custody battle going on this felt out of character.
Todd’s life had gone through phases,his first marriage was to Teresa Reagan, they tied the knot in 2010,back when everything still felt promising,Todd stepped into the role of stepdad to Teresa”s son Aiden,not long after they had a child of their own Aaron.
But things didn’t stay perfect, Todd crossed a line with one of his students and when Teresa found out that was the end of their marriage.
They divorced eventually that relationship with the student ended too.
Then came mary ann,he and mary ann connected fast.it felt real to both of them, they got married in 2018, their daughter Cecilia Cece was born.
She became the center of Todd’s world, Todd was the kind of guy who always picked up his phone,didn’t matter how busy life got,if yo called he answered.
But the phone was still on, that made things even more strange.
Todd had built a good life, afte earning his degree from Cleveland state in 2005 went on to get a doctorate in businesss administration from kent state
He taught across the country , massachusetts ,michigan , and finally retruned to Cleveland statea as a professor,he loved travel , animals,the classroom but nothing mattered more than Aaron and Cece, so,when he didn’t show up for his little girl, it wasn’t just a mix up ,something was off.
At almost 7:00 pm,a patrol car pulled up to a quiet house on West Streetsboro street, a male and female officers stepped out .
This was the home Todd Morgang had bought just over a year earlier back in February 2022,it sat back from the road framed by an open front lawn, the backyard held a small pond a greenhouse and a few garden beds.
It looked peaceful ,calm , nothing out of place there until now…
The officers were on the lookout for Todd’s Black 2015 SUV.
When they pulled up,, the driveway out front was empty, no sign of the car.
While he was checking the driveway , the femal officer stepped up to the front window she leaned in looked through the glass and spotted someone.
That’s when she saw it.
It looked bad,the mood shifted instantly,the radio cracked again as the officers called for EMS.
The back door wasn’t locked,inside just a few steps in, they found him .
Todd was lying on the floor,he was in his dressing gown,his body showed clear signs of trauma, especially to the head, this wasn’t a wellness check anymore this was a crime scene.
EMS, detectives ,forensics , they needed everyone, the scene was hard to process, at the first glance,the injury on Todd’s temple made it look like he might have taken his own life.
There were shell casings nearby but no gun in sight, maybe it was underneath him,they thought,but as they check more closely,nothing.
No weapon anywhere near his body,that changed the entire direction of the call,this wasn’t a man who had ended his life,this was something else.
Something worse, they started clearing the house,checkng room by room,they didn’t know if anyone else might be inside.
In one of the kids rooms,they found a piggy bank knocked over,loose change was scattered across the floor,but that was it,nothing else looked out of place,it didn’t look like a robbery.
Then, they reached the master bedroom,that room was different, the bed was a mess,bottles of alcohol were left out,half empty.
Condom wrappers were tossed across the floor, it looked like someone had been there recently maybe not just Todd.
They needed detectives on the scene.
Now, near the stairs ,they found another shell casing, same caliber as tyhe others.
That’s when the rest of the team arrived, one officer pulled the supervisor aside and gave him the rundown.
They had a body, blood and bullet casings, but no murder weapon ,and then came the quiet realization,looking at the condition of the body,the officers could tell ,Todd had been there a while.
Todd had made something of his life, born in 1981 in Grand Rapids Michigan, he came into the world during a time of major change.
The Iran hostge crisis had ended.
Prince charles married Lady Diana.
NASA launched Columbia.
And in a small corner of the country Todd morgan was born.
By 41 Todd had built an impressive life,he was more than a professor,he was well traveled,sharp with numbers, loved by his students for being real and relatable,he taught finance,but he wasn’t stiff about it.
His classes were engaging, he had a way of making the complicated feel simple but all of that degrees, travel, work,none of it meant more to him than his kids.
His son Aaron ,his daughter Cece, Todd was a serious man,but not with his kids, with them he was goofy, warm , present,dance off,video games , trips to the park,he made time for them always.
That’s what made this moment so heavy.
With the body secured and the house cleared detectives were called in, it was time to turn a chaotic scene into an investigation.
The responding officers gave a quick rundown to the detective.
The door behind him looked lke it had been kicked or blown outward.
A piece of the door fram was missing,the lock was damaged it was clear early on, this wasn’t just a crime scene,it was a puzzle,at first they weren’t sure if the damage to the door had happened during the police response.
But then they found the broken piece of the frame, a few feet away on the deck.
officers retraced every movement, they checked if maybe one of them or paramedics had accidentally done it.
That meant someone else had and it had happened before anyone arrived.
Then came another clue, there were bloody footprints trailing out onto the deck,they led down the stairs toward the driveway.
Todd’s black SUV was parked nearby, untouched, but whoever had walked out that door,must have had a ride waiting or their own vehicle ready to go.
At first they considered if the prints could have come from one of teir own,no match,the prints didn’t belong to any of them.
even the paramedics were checked,so,that was it, the prints didn’t belong to anyone still at the scene,wich meant the person who left them was gone.
Inside the house,police found laptops and tablets, scattered in plain sight, nothing seemed taken that alone cast doubt on any theory about a robbery.
His car a high end vehicle, still sat parked neatly in the driveway,his wallet and keys were found too,stashed inside the house,just mising the cash, which according to the family wasn’t unusual.
Todd rarely carried any, buyt one thing was missing,and it stood out,his phone was gone.
Officers began combing the home for any sign of what might have happened.
Eventually they uncovered eight shell casings inside.
A few guns turned up during the search too.
In one closet hidden beneath layers of clothing was an unloaded 9 mm handgun,close to it they found a shotgun, also not loaded.
The master bedroom held another suprise, sitting on a shelf inside the nightstand, was a second 9 mm,this one tucked under a spider man mask.
It was loaded,one round in the chamber,four in the magazine.
Every gun they found was legally registered to Todd but non matched te bullets that killed him.
With the house search and little to suggest forced entry,officers turned their attention to the neighbors, maybe someone saw something.
A stranger loitering, a parked car, even something that didn’t feel right.
Neighbors mostly described Todd as polite,resserved and often seen with his two young children,he wasn’t the chatty type,but he waved when he passed by
But then they found Linda,Linda had a gut feeling that something was off, she couldn’t quite explain it.
Her daughter babysat for Todd,once or twice about a year ago,she always thought there was something strange about him,the officer wanted her to spell it out,what exactly felt off about him?
But she couldn’t put it into words,she didn’t understand how he lived the way he did,she didn’t buy the whole story about a work from home job.
It felt too convenient and then there was the babysitting,he gave her a weird feeling that kind of off energy you can’t always explain and that was all she had to say.
At the house next door,retired grandfather Brian had been home all morning, like he usually was,but even with his routine of watering the plants,watching TV and sitting on the porch sipping his coffee,he hadn’t seen or heard anything unusual.
Todd always came off as a decent guy to Brian,he seemed quiet,polite, just a regular neighbor with kids and all.
But what Linda had described him earlier didn’t quite match that version of Todd,to her ,he was off,strange , that awkwardness now clashed with Brian’s view of Todd as a decent family man.
And then there was Todd’s past,his first wife left him over cheating, now the weird state of his bedroom was telling a whole different story about him.
The man was a walking contradiction,just down the street ,Eugene ans Sherry an older married couple were eager to talk, they told police,they’d been up early that morning like usual ,and around 7:15 or 7:20 am they both heard what could have been gunshots.
At first they didn’t think much of it, sound strangely across the back end of their property could have been more work being done at Todd’s place,he had been renovating the house a lot lately.
But it wasn’t just the sounds, that stood out, they also remembered seeing car.
Long haired person,it wasn’t much but it was more than they had before ,sheri saw the individual who left in the unknown vehicle, she gave a general idea of what they looked like,small build,shoulder length hair.
Regardless of the color of the car,she was confident about one thing: it was not a car she’d ever seen at Todd’s house before.
But this unfamiliar car it stood out, sheri was certain it wasn’t art of the usual mix, the officers zeroed in on what the pereson had been doingbefore they left.
Later that day Eugene dug int his ring footage to try and help officers make sense of what they had seen.
He found a faint image of the vehicle around 6:50 am.
The person that got in and out of it was barely visible, but the car itself showed up clearly parked beside Todd’s black SUV at exactly 7:00 clock.
By the time the camera skipped ahead to 7:30 the vehicle was gone, Eugene sent the still frame to the police,the car was a light colored crossoversomething that looked completely out of place in Todd Morgan’s regular driveway scene.
And while the investigation was still developing,one thing was becoming undeniable,Todd hadn’t died by accident,the signs were stacking up,someone had deliberately walked in carried something in and out and left him there.
Now,police had a suspect to chase,the state of the master bedroom didn’t make sense at first glance,a loaded gun on the floor, spent shell casings.
And then there were the masks,the adults toys,the used condoms tossed around like trash.
It didn’t look like a typical break in or robbery,it looked messy in a very personal way.
Investigators considered the possibility that Todd hadn’t been alone,maybe he was in the the bedroom with a women and maybe her boyfriend or husband found out and stormed in with a gun.
That theory was floating in the air, but it was far from confirmed,First they had to figure out if Todd had been romantically involved at all.
So they went to Mary Ann Carandang, she was the one who had called in the wellness check after he failed to pick up their daughter.
Now she was standing face to face with Hudson officer, hearing the worst.
Mary had known Todd well ,well enough to have a daughter with him, even if they weren’t together anymore,she told them about his past, about how his first marriage had crumbled after an affair with a student,that relationship hadn’t lastes either.
Over time Todd had also started struggling with alcohol,to stay sober,he’d been using a breathalyzer linked to an app Isober,the device recorded his alcohol levels and sent the data straight to her phone, she told them the last time Todd had used the device was the morning before the died.
The officers wanted to know if there had been any recent conflicts in his life, anything that might have caused tension or escalated into violence.
The only person she could think of was Todd’s first ex wife,Teresa’s boyfriend.
the jealous boyfriend didn’t want them meeting in private, things felt tense enough that even a simple handoff of the kids had to happen in public spaces.as for any new relationship ,Todd might have been in, Mary couldn’t say.
But she didn’t know who never saw her, never asked, that was enough to give the detectives a new lead.
The autopsy didn’t leave much to question, Todd Morgan had been shot seven times,the wounds showed clear signs of stifling.
That powder burn pattern on the skin, that forms when a gun is fired at close range, at least one of those shots had been fired from very near.
Two bullets hit just above his left collarbone and the medical examiner believed those alone would have been fatal within minutes.
All seven came fom the same gun ,a 9 mm handgun, no sign fof a struggle it was methodical,it looked personal,like someone was very angry.
To the cops , Teresa’s jealous boyfriend looked like suspect no.1 but before they could haul him in,detectives started tracing Todd’s last steps and that when something strange popped up.
There had been a 911 call made from his own address that morning.
April 19th at exactly 7:21 am,that timing was important, it matched closely with when neighbor claimed thay heard the gunshots, but the call itself was strange ,dispatch picked up and no one spoke,silence,they explaine it could have been a system activated call.
Iphone’s automaically dial 911, investigators started to believe the call migt have been triggered unintentionally by the killer.
when they traced the number,it came back to someone named Terreionna Paschal, she was slim, dark hair, drove a silver corssover, that description matched wht neighbors had given earlier about the woman seen leaving Todd’s house that morning.
Now with her name attached to that accidental 911 call, the pieces started fitting together.
Officers headed straight to the adress tied to Terreionna Paschal but when they got there they hit a wall.
An older man answered the door, he was calm at first but quickly grew defensive, he insisted Terreionna didn’t live there.
He refused to let officers step inside,repeated there was no Terreionna in the house,she said she was in the area anymore,she was staying with a girlfriend somewhere in the valley.
They had a name, a face, and now a possible next location,detectives weren’t able to get Terrionna that first night, she was gone, but her phone wasn’t, so they filed for a search warrant and started tracing her movements.
They needed to know where she had been both before and after those shots were fired in Todd Morgan’s hudson home.
just six minutes after that accidental 911 cal went out,her phone was already flying down the interstate at about 60 miles per hours,it was heading toward the I- 271 split in Macedonia,Todd’sphone too followed the same exact path.
But while Terreionna’s kept going ,his stopped,it just froze along and never moved again, police believed that’s where she tossed the phone of the car.
They searched the area multiple times, his phone was never found,the search finally led them to her sister’s apartment at the envision complex.
her silver Ford Taurus X with that missing back plate was parked outfront.
Detectives brought her in for questioning,her phone had placed her at Todd’s house that morning,ring camera footahe showed a car matching her Taurus X parked by the back door.
And the footprints on the back deck,they belong to a specific style of Nike sneaker.
Detectives scrolled through her facebook and found pictures of Terreionna wearing those exact shoes,it didn’t stop there,they found a photo of her on social media loungin next to a lit black and mild cigar.
The same kind found burning inside Todd’s bedroom.
and then came her interview,when the questioning began Terreionna didn’t hesitate to deny knowing Todd Morgan,she claimed she had never even been to Hudson,she kept deflecting,brushing off anything that might tie her to Hudson, then came the topic of the 911 call.
Terreionna claimed she didn’t know anything about it,but she didn’t know that single 911 call had cracked open something much bigger.
The 9 mm cartridge recovered at the scene had matched a firearm from an unsolved 2021 Cleveland murder, the main suspect in that case, the victims ex girlfriend Terreionna Paschal same gun, same person,even back then,investigators had strongly believed she was the shooter.
But they hadn’t had enough to make a case stick,now things were different,that same gun from 2021,it was now confirmed to be the murder weapon in this case.
At that point, the detective shifted tactics, he stopped asking questions and started showing her the truth,she stuck to her story,said she didn’t know what was going on,but the data didn’t lie and she had no idea, how much data they have gathered against her.
Just days after the murder, she ha switched phones and numbers,but law enforcement stayed a step ahead, monitoring her new device,on April 22nd, she searched whether police could track a phone without a SIM card.
After that she read multiple news articls about the murder,especially one that named Todd Morgan as the Hudson victim.
She search for her own name 41 times in connection to the case and then the final piece came in, her DNA.
It was found on he cigar in Todd’s bedroom, and on the condoms too.
She can deny all day long,but evidence against her, was strong and extremely comprehensive, detectives brought out more.
Thst’s when the bigger picture started to form.
Terreionna and Todd had first connected on Bumble,from there their conversatin moved off the app into text messages.
On the day Todd was killed he sent her $ 50 on Cash App.
She tried to explain it away, maybe someone would send her that kind of money,but she didn’t deny it was her account,what she couldn’t explain was the timing.
that second payment never went through,it needed a confirmation, a ssecond tap on Todd’s phone,that prompt came just before 7:30 am, but by then Todd was already gone,Detectives had laid it all out,now it was Terreionna’s turn,but she didn’t say a word.
Still she never said the words,she didn’t admt she was at Todd’s house that morning, she didn’t have to, the evidence had already done the talking.
The case moved through the system slow and steady, eventually prosecutors charged Terreionna Paschal with aggravated murder involving a firearm.
A special felony along with tampering with evidence,there was aso misdemeanor charges,one for taking or tampering with Todd’s phone and another for the attempted theft of cash.
She initially pleaded not guilty and prepared for trial,But when that day finally arrived she changed her mind and took a plea deal,Terreionna didn’t say much in court,just a few words barely above a whisper.
The judge delivered her sentence. A period of 20 years to life
on count 1 aggravated murder, unclassified felony in addition that sentence will run consecutive to the three year firearm specification which is attached to that count 1.
that firearm specification three year sentence must be served first,it must be consecutive and it is in fact mandatory,this one will make Terreionna eligible for parole which there’s no guarantee of that at the earliest at 23 years,but she could serve up to life in prison for this matter.
Todd Morgan was laid to rest surroundedbt the people who loved him through every season of his life,his funeral was held at Lifestream Church on the first day of may ,the room was filled with grief and love.
The kind that doesn’t end even when a lfie does, some cases leave you asking how,this one it keeps you stuck on why.
In the space of a moment,his name became a headline,his house , a crime scene his life , a cautionary tale…