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A Texas convict on probation killed his wife and 11-year-old daughter, hid their bodies in the garage of their abandoned rural home and went on the run for months, police said.
Law enforcement didn't know they were missing until Kimberly Kellam's brother-in-law told the Wise County Sheriff's Office on June 12 that he hadn't seen or heard from Kellam or her eldest daughter in months, the sheriff's office said.
Deputies checked the family's home in Decatur, a rural city about 65 miles northwest of Dallas, but police found it to be abandoned. The daughter's school told law enforcement that she hadn't been enrolled since 2022.
The investigation led to Kellam's 45-year-old husband, Robert Morairity, who was tracked down by the sheriff's office, Texas Rangers and Dallas police to a Dallas hotel, where he was living with his two other children, ages 3 and 10, according to the sheriff's office.
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Robert Morairity killed his wife and eldest daughter before hiding their bodies at their abandoned Texas home for months, police said. (Wise County Jail)
"I wish they would've called us earlier, but they neglected to do that," Wise County Sheriff Lane Akin told WFAA. "They were all scared to death of this guy. They were afraid to say anything."
Morairity first said he didn't know where his wife and daughter were but later changed his story and told police that they were dead in his garage, Wise County Sheriff's Office said.
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The victims were there for "probably 5 [or] 6 months," Akin told the local news outlet.
"They were covered and stowed away in the garage, but it wasn’t hard to find them," Akin said. "We don’t know exactly what the motive was, exactly how they were killed, but we know it was at his hand."
That timeline would mean that Kellam and their daughter were killed around November 2022.
At that time, Morairity was on probation after he pleaded guilty to two counts of abandoning or endangering a child with criminal negligence in 2019, according to jail records. His probation ended on March 29, 2023.
He led deputies and a Texas Ranger to their bodies, WFAA reported.
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He was arrested and charged with murder, capital murder of a person older than 10 but younger than 15, and tampering with/fabricating physical evidence with intent to impair a human corpse, according to jail records.
Morairity is in Wise County jail on $800,000 bond.
