Talladega County Man Agrees to Plead Guilty in Murder-for-Hire

BIRMINGHAM—Federal prosecutors today charged a Talladega County man in connection with his efforts to hire a member of the Ku Klux Klan to murder a man he suspected of raping his wife, announced U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance and FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard D. Schwein, Jr.

In a one-count information filed in U.S. District Court, the U.S. Attorney’s Office charged Allen Wayne Dense Morgan, 29, of Munford, with using and causing someone else to use interstate facilities and travel—a telephone and a motor vehicle—with the intent to commit a murder-for-hire. Morgan has agreed to plead guilty to the charge.

Federal officials arrested Morgan in August after he told undercover officers, whom he believed to be members of the KKK, that he would pay them to murder a black neighbor whom Morgan’s wife had accused of raping her, according to Morgan’s plea agreement with the government. Morgan offered a watch, a necklace, and a gun as payment for the murder and gave explicit details for the man’s torture and murder, according to the plea agreement.

Morgan’s efforts to arrange the paid murder of his neighbor unfolded as follows, according to his plea agreement:

Morgan talked to an undercover FBI agent, who identified himself as a KKK member, by telephone on August 22. The men arranged to meet three days later at an Oxford motel to discuss payment for the murder. In that phone conversation, Morgan used a racial slur to describe the man he wanted killed and bragged that he had just fired several shots toward the man to intimidate him. Morgan also described, in detail, how he wanted the man "hung from a tree like a deer and gutted," to have body parts cut off, and to "die a slow, painful death."

Morgan faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The FBI investigated the case, which Assistant U.S. Attorneys Pat Meadows and John B. Felton are prosecuting.