Randle Man Sentenced to 23 Years in Prison for Fiancee’s Murder

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The former Randle man who admitted to beating and strangling his fiancee to death last July was sentenced to nearly 24 years in prison Wednesday morning in Lewis County Superior Court.

Corey R. Morgan previously pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and second-degree assault for the slaying of his fiancee, Brenda Bail, last month.

The courtroom Wednesday morning was filled with friends and family of Bail, including her two teenage daughters.

Five family members of the victim spoke at Wednesday’s hearing, and told the story of Morgan and Bail’s violent relationship troubled by mental illness, alcohol abuse and domestic violence.

The victim’s father, Bruce Burnside, said the 32-year-old man manipulated his 48-year-old daughter, a single mother of two teens, took all her savings, money and cars, and when there wasn’t anything left to take from her, he took her life.

“He killed my only daughter,” Burnside wrote in a statement, which was read to the judge by a victim’s advocate.

Throughout the court hearing, Morgan remained silent and looked down at the table in front of him.

Morgan severely beat the Chehalis woman on July 13, breaking her nose, several ribs, and splitting her lip before ultimately strangling her to death, Deputy Prosecutor Will Halstead told the judge Wednesday morning.

“It is more than fair to say she went through hell,” he said.

Morgan then tried to cover up the murder with a lie about how she died after a high-speed car crash that occurred when the couple was trying to flee three men who had randomly attacked them on Forest Road 73, Halstead said.

The motive of the slaying, the prosecutor said, is still unclear.



“There appears to be absolutely no reason for this to have happened,” Halstead said.

The prosecutor requested Superior Court Judge James Lawler sentence Morgan, who faced between 15 and 23 years in prison, to the high end of the range, and also requested that the judge impose an extra year onto his sentence due to a probation violation for a fourth-degree domestic-violence assault conviction that stemmed from an incident in which Bail was the victim in October 2012.

 

Morgan’s court-appointed attorney, Don Blair, requested the judge sentence his client to the middle of the range, and for the probation violation sentence to be served concurrently with the prison sentence.

The defense attorney described Morgan’s relationship with Bail as “up and down,” and said Morgan and Bail were both on medication for bipolar disorder and were drinking alcohol the night of the slaying, Blair said.

The defense attorney said Lawler should consider a shorter sentence because shortly after Morgan’s arrest, he expressed remorse and the desire to take responsibility for what happened, sparing Bail’s family from the trauma of a trial.

Lawler chose to sentence Morgan to the high end of the sentencing range and imposed an additional year in jail for the probation violation of the fourth-degree assault conviction.

The judge told the family that he was bound by state law to sentence Morgan within the range imposed by the Legislature, adding that this crime “cries out” for the maximum penalty possible.

While it is good that Morgan pleaded guilty relatively quickly to the crime, it did not constitute a lower sentence, Lawler said.

“It’s really insignificant in comparison to the damage he’s caused,” Lawler said.