SEATTLE - Nearly a decade after one of the most bizarre manhunts in American history, the victims of a notorious Northwest murderer get their final justice.
Adam Morgan was just 14-years-old when he came home from a friend's house to hear the news that would destroy his childhood and change his life forever.
He ruined my life. It took a long time to get out a hole like that, said Morgan.
Morgan's mother, Marchelle, had fallen victim to Mike Braae, a man nicknamed Cowboy , who wooed women with country karaoke at small town bars and then savagely attacked them.
He shot her, dumped her, and left her for dead on the side of the road, says Morgan.
In June 2001, Braae went on a violent spree, attacking four women, raping two, killing two and attempting to kill Morgan. He shot her in the head and threw her body in a ditch on the outskirts of Yakima. Somehow, she was able to survive, but suffered serious brain damage.
That day, I knew I was an orphan, says Morgan, whose father had died a short time earlier.
The cases caught national attention when Braae tried to escape capture by shooting at police, jumping 40 feet into the Snake River along the Oregon-Idaho border and trying to drown a police dog. He was eventually caught and convicted, but Adam Morgan's mother continues to live in a Montana assisted living facility with very little memory of her only child's life.
I love my mom very much, says Morgan, but she's a different person now. She's not the mom I grew up with. He took that away from me.
During the spree across the Northwest, Braae was supposed to be under the supervision of the Washington state Department of Corrections, but they lost track of him due to a paperwork mix-up.
Braae had a record of 42 various convictions dating back to the mid-1990s.Attorney Blaine Tamaki, who represents families of four of Braae's victims, believes the killer shouldn't have been out of jail in the first place.
If the DOC had been doing its job reporting to the court all of the serious crimes he was committing during his parole, they could have locked him up, said Tamaki.
For Morgan, now a father of two himself, he is simply grateful that his mother is alive and that they have a chance to be a family again.
We're just going to build on our future, he says. She's got grandkids now that I want her to be a part of. We can start a whole new family.
All four families have now settled their cases with the state for a total of $6.4 million. Michael Braae is currently serving a 48-year sentence for murder.
