Robert Morairity (Wise County jail), the property where his wife and daughter were found dead (WFAA screengrab)
A Texas man convicted years ago in a child endangerment case is accused of murdering his wife and daughter before the hiding the victims’ bodies in a garage for months at an abandoned rural residence.
Kimberly Kellam’s brother-in-law was the person who called the Wise County Sheriff’s Office on Monday, June 12, to report that he had neither seen the 42-year-old woman nor her 11-year-old daughter for six months. When authorities, including the Texas Rangers, found 45-year-old Robert Aaron Morairity Jr. on Tuesday, he was with his 3-year-old and 10-year-old children in Dallas, more than a hour away from the Decatur property where investigators would find the victims’ bodies — allegedly with the suspect’s assistance.
According to the sheriff’s office, Morairity initially said that he had not seen his wife or daughter in around six months.
Sheriff Lane Akin told WFAA indicated that statement may have been literally true, as the bodies were allegedly hidden away in the garage for “quite some time” — “probably 5-6 months.”
The sheriff said Morairity quickly abandoned his claimed ignorance and led investigators directly to the remains on the County Road 4371 property.
“They were covered, and stowed away in the garage but it wasn’t hard to find ’em. We don’t know exactly what the motive was, exactly how they were killed, but we know it was at his hand,” the sheriff reportedly said.
Akin also offered an explanation as to why it took so long for family members to report the victims missing.
“They were all scared to death of this guy, they were afraid to say anything,” the sheriff told WFAA.
WFFA reported that 11-year-old victim had not been enrolled in school since last year.
“The 11-year-old who’s deceased is in a better place now than where she was,” Sheriff Akin somberly said.
Her siblings are now in the custody of Child Protective Services.
Wise County jail records reviewed by Law&Crime show that the suspect was booked Wednesday on three charges: murder, capital murder of a person older than 10 but younger than 15, tampering with/fabricated physical evidence with intent to impair a human corpse. Morairity’s bond totals $800,000.
County court records also show that the suspect was previously convicted of abandoning or endangering a child with criminal negligence, a state jail felony stemming from a January 2019 incident. The case records show that Morairity pleaded guilty to two of those endangerment charges on March 11, 2019. He was placed on deferred adjudication and sentenced to four years of probation/community supervision, which was officially terminated on March 29, 2023. It appears, then, that Morairity was was still on active probation at the time the victims were killed.
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