Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
WEST JORDAN — Troy Morley has lost everything.
"This shouldn't have happened," Morley said, blinking back tears as he described how much an addiction to methamphetamine has cost him. "I had a good job, I had a good life, and I gave it up."
Troy Morley, 49, was arrested last November after entering the Sandy home of Stephanie and Aaron Edson through an unlocked door, finding their then 5-year-old daughter asleep in the basement, and carrying her outside.
The Edsons awoke when they heard the girl's voice, sending her father rushing out to find her and Morley in the driveway. Aaron Edson spoke to the man calmly, managing to recover the little girl within moments, sparing her from physical harm but not from what her parents called life-altering psychological trauma.
"I've waited a whole year to tell the parents that I'm sorry for entering their home," Morley said Monday, apologizing for violating their "sanctuary."
Morley pleaded guilty to child kidnapping, a first-degree felony, as part of a plea deal in August. In exchange, additional charges of burglary, a second-degree felony, criminal trespass, a class A misdemeanor, and interfering with an officer, a class B misdemeanor, were dropped.
As part of the plea, attorneys agreed to recommend a sentence of six years to life in prison, which 3rd District Judge Charlene Barlow handed down Monday. He faced a maximum potential sentence of 15 years to life, but was considered "low risk" in a pre-sentence report.
While Morley's attorney, Roger Kraft, said methamphetamine use and deep depression had driven Morley into "an extreme state of psychosis" that day — believing that an unknown enemy was trying to kill him and sending him wandering into the Edson home at random — the couple insists the intruder was aware of what he was doing.
"Morley went into her room and took her from her own bed — something that haunts her to this day," Stephanie Edson said, recounting to the judge her daughter's account of how "the man" had come into her room, turned on the light and looked through her closet, explaining that she needed to leave with him or someone would shoot him.
The mother noted that Morley didn't change his mind or voluntarily give the child back, but was intercepted by her husband. Likewise, Aaron Edson said he believes that if Morley had managed to leave the yard with the girl, she likely would have disappeared without a trace.
"There was virtually no chance we would have seen our daughter again had I not been in the right place at the right time," the father said.
Court documents indicate that the girl told her parents that Morley told her he "needed to take her to the church or 'they' would kill him." The child apparently agreed to go with him and told him where the church was.
The family was forced to move from their home, the parents said, seeking a new refuge not filled with triggers from "the scary thing," as their daughter calls it. The once confident girl now needs constant reassurance that she will not be taken again, and both she and her mother still struggle to sleep through the night.
The family's pain is not a consequence of drugs, the parents say, but of Morley's choices.
"I don't believe that drugs kidnapped my daughter, Troy Morley kidnapped my daughter," Aaron Edson said.
As she handed down the sentence, Barlow agreed with the parents that Morley's drug use does not explain away what he did.
"Taking drugs is a very self-indulgent thing," the judge told Morley. "(Methamphetamine) is not responsible for what you did, you are responsible for what you did."
Morley told Barlow that he has been clean of the drugs for a year, noting that he has instead found a "spiritual high" through religion and reading scripture. Following his apology, he thanked the members of his family who have forgiven and encouraged him.
Morley's father, Gary Stokes, called his son "a good kid" as he left the courtroom Monday.
"He didn't mean to do it, the drugs made him do it," Stokes said, disagreeing with the judge's comments. "I'm sorry, but she ain't as close to him as I am."
Contributing: Sandra Yi, Andrew Adams
