Morrison’s Mistress
Linda Carter summoned her inner circle to her fifth-floor office in the Johnson County Courthouse. It was fall 2006, and Carter was the director of administration for then-District Attorney Paul Morrison. She wanted to play show and tell with her girlfriends — Brenda Albright, Shawna Chambless, Shelly Hartman and Stacey Trumbly. They all reported to Carter. They were also supervisors in the District Attorney’s Office.
Carter named her group of gossip girls the Doll Club. She came up with the name after seeing a production of Valley of the Dolls in December 2005 during a girls’ night out at the now-defunct Late Night Theatre. Being a member of the Doll Club meant asylum from the often-vindictive Carter, but it also meant putting up with her antics.
Carter shut and locked her office door. To build anticipation, she told the Doll Club to look away. The women turned their backs to her.
Carter slipped her panties down below her skirt. Her lacy lingerie hung around her knees. The women turned around to gaze at Carter’s new pink thong.
A former Doll Club member recalls the reactions of the others. Trumbly was uncomfortable. Hartman was mortified. Chambless and Albright were grossed out.
Carter was pleased.
“It was pretty, but I didn’t want to see her underwear,” a former Doll Club member tells The Pitch. “I had work to do. I didn’t want to screw around.”
By the time of Carter’s panty drop, screwing around was common in the district attorney’s office.
Carter, in her 50s and married with three children, wore her blond hair big, with teased bangs, and she charmed people with her Southern drawl. During the workday, she frequently pulled her employees into her office to talk about sex. Carter fancied herself a Southern belle, though her tongue was more Howard Stern than Blanche DuBois.
Carter was also in the midst of an extramarital affair with her boss. Carter’s affair with Morrison began in September 2005 in an empty office on the sixth floor of the courthouse and lasted two years. Morrison was a tough, unforgiving prosecutor, a workaholic who locked up serial killers Richard Grissom and John Edward Robinson. And on November 7, 2006, Morrison defeated Phill Kline and became Kansas attorney general.
A year later, Carter told her new boss, District Attorney Phill Kline, about the affair with Morrison. She claimed that Morrison tried to blackmail her and wanted her to give him information on Kline’s investigation of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri. With Kline threatening a criminal investigation, Morrison resigned in disgrace.
The Pitch spoke with 21 of Carter’s friends and colleagues, who detailed for the first time the story of Linda Carter, the woman obsessed with ruling the DA’s Office. Morrison and Carter wouldn’t go on the record for this story, but their former colleagues say Carter lusted for power and, when Morrison gave it to her, abused it. They say Morrison allowed Carter to divide and conquer his office by creating dissent among supervisors and support staff.
The former employees say Morrison’s run for Kansas attorney general distracted him from the duties of his office. Morrison still carried a caseload, but he left the office under Carter’s control. In his absence, she crushed the atmosphere of camaraderie and cooperation.
When Morrison was confronted with the problems, he dismissed them as cattiness. An abusive, threatening environment developed. Carter created a sexually charged workplace that would have gotten others in the office accused of sexual harassment or fired.
“All of these people worked their butts off for Paul Morrison,” a former supervisor says, “and we got screwed.”
[page]
“Paul let Linda run amok,” a former member of the support staff says.
A former juvenile-support-staff supervisor tells The Pitch that she confronted Morrison. “She is going to destroy your office,” the supervisor told him. Morrison ignored her. Little did Morrison know that Carter would also destroy his political career and nearly wreck his marriage.
In August 1987, Linda Carter became executive director of the Marysville, Kansas, Chamber of Commerce. She also headed the Marysville Travel and Tourism Bureau. And across town, her husband, John Carter, was Marysville’s city administrator.
It all ended in April 1989. According to the Marysville Advocate, Carter resigned her positions, citing unspecified “controversies and criticisms.” Carter wrote in her resignation letter that her job was “terribly incompatible” with her husband’s.
“It’s difficult for other people to separate the two positions,” Linda Carter wrote. “People expect you to be so perfect.”
The Carters left Kansas in 1989 for McCook, Nebraska. They moved again in December 1995 to Johnson County. John Carter became the first city administrator of Roeland Park, and Linda Carter took a job in March 1996 at the Johnson County District Attorney’s Office. As a part-time secretary, she made $8.19 an hour.
Linda Carter seemed to find her niche. In December 1997, Morrison promoted her to a part-time victim advocate in the property crime unit. Carter excelled in the role, and her co-workers liked her. In July 1999, Morrison hired Carter full time as a victim witness coordinator, and they began working together on criminal cases.
In mid-2000, the director of administration quit. Carter lobbied for the job, calling on her friend Joyce Morrison, Paul Morrison’s wife. Joyce Morrison encouraged her husband to hire Carter as director of administration. Morrison hired Carter on January 21, 2001. The District Attorney’s Office had grown bigger than Morrison could handle alone. He needed to delegate some of his authority, and Carter became his gatekeeper.
In her new role, Carter made $49,004 a year. She was in charge of the entire support staff, including all seven support staff supervisors and the administrative fiscal coordinator.
Carter’s former colleagues say she could have done great things for the office. But signs of division came early. Carter’s co-workers accused her of playing favorites.
“It was very cliquish,” a longtime supervisor says. “It was just like the queen and her minions.”
By 2003, Carter had formed her first group, the Rose Club, which included Sheila Fanning, Shawna Chambless and the supervisor of the economic fraud unit. It started with drinks. Then dinner. Then the games began. Tongues loosened over drinks. With inhibitions lowered, Carter pumped her subordinates for personal information by asking racy questions. No subject was taboo, and there was never too much information for the audacious Carter.
“If you could have an affair with an attorney in the office, who would you pick?” Carter asked. She promised that the hypothetical answers would stay “in the vault.”
Carter answered her own question. She called Morrison the sexiest person she’d ever seen. She said if she were to have an affair, he would be her choice.
Members of the Rose Club say they felt compelled to answer. They say they feared Carter would fire them if they didn’t play along.
“Every time we walked out of these meetings, we were immediately on the phone with each other,” a former Rose Club member says. They believed that Carter would eventually use the information against them.
Carter’s vault wasn’t airtight. In March 2004, she became distant and short with Rose Club members. In May 2004, she accused a member of the club of having an affair with an attorney in the office.
[page]
“Linda likes to come on as your friend so she can find out if you have any weak spots,” the accused supervisor and former Rose Club member tells The Pitch.
The supervisor says she told her husband about the accusation. She quit and detailed the problems with Carter in writing. “This was very demeaning to me, and I felt that my integrity had been attacked,” the supervisor wrote in her exit interview.
In 2004, Carter sent a survey to the entire staff asking if they trusted the administration. Former supervisors say Carter asked department supervisors to help her identify the authors of any negative handwritten surveys. The supervisors refused to help Carter. The Rose Club was dead.
The new tension was clear during supervisor meetings. Supervisors and former Rose Club members sat at one end of the table. Carter and her new clique, the Doll Club, sat at the other.
“You could tell this was a very hostile environment,” a Doll Club member says.
Carter berated the supervisors daily. They say they dreaded turning on their computers for fear of the daily e-mails ridiculing them and their staffs. Carter chided the supervisors for coddling their employees.
“You were always in fear for your job,” a former supervisor says.
Meanwhile, Carter forbade the Doll Club from socializing with other supervisors. Just as she had with the Rose Club, Carter mined the Dolls for information over dinner and drinks. Again, Carter promised to keep the Doll Club’s secrets locked away.
The Doll Club met daily in Carter’s office. Behind closed doors, Carter talked about her sex life. They spent as long as an hour and a half listening to Carter’s stories. She spoke in graphic detail about sex acts she would perform, a former Doll Club member says. She talked about anal sex, oral sex, threesomes, costume play. Carter added emphasis by making slurping noises while walking past the desk of a Doll Club member.
“She managed to gross all four of us out at the same time,” a former Doll Club member says.
Objections only fueled Carter as she asked her subordinates to reveal their kinks. She wanted the squeamish to squirm. “Sit down,” Carter chided. “Stop being so naïve.”
Even those who played along started to think that they had gone too far.
“I knew that I could never complain about her or the environment that she created because I had helped,” a former supervisor and Doll Club member says.
Around the same time, Carter started losing weight. She lost nearly 50 pounds and ditched her conservative business attire for leopard-print miniskirts, matching shoes and an unzipped blue-leather jacket with no shirt underneath.
“It was just, in my opinion, an older, desperate woman trying to act young and pretty,” a former support staff member says.
Morrison and Carter discussed having an affair during a business trip to New York City in June 2005. “I can’t do this,” Morrison told Carter when they returned from the trip, The Topeka Capital-Journal would later report. But the flirting continued.
In September 2005, Carter and Morrison sneaked into the spacious sixth-floor office that used to belong to the district attorney. In the empty office, Carter gave Morrison a blow job.
A month later, on October 25, Morrison announced that he was leaving the Republican Party to run for attorney general as a Democrat against Kline. Meanwhile, Carter and Morrison met in hotel rooms in Kansas and Missouri. Morrison rarely stayed the night. According to the Capital-Journal, Carter booked and paid for the rooms.
[page]
By mid-2006, Carter was considering plastic surgery. She asked a female district attorney if she was too flabby. “You have to squeeze my butt,” Carter demanded. She also insisted that a male assistant district attorney feel her breasts to see if she needed a boob job.
Morrison and Carter fell in love. They discussed leaving their spouses and getting married, and Morrison bought Carter an engagement ring. But Morrison also refused to leave his wife.
Back in the office, Carter’s antics continued. In a supervisors’ meeting, Carter introduced a new economic fraud unit supervisor as “our new boy toy.”
That supervisor tells The Pitch he thought Carter’s “boy toy” comment was a joke. The supervisor says he didn’t complain about the comment. “What are you going to do?” he says. “She’s the director of administration.”
Carter often winked and blew kisses to law-enforcement officers and attorneys who came into the office. She ogled a male attorney whenever he walked down the hallway. “Too bad you’re married,” she teased a male co-worker. Carter asked another male co-worker how it felt to ejaculate. Whenever a Leawood detective came into the office, Carter declared, “I’d do him.” She also dispensed sex tips, talking about things a man could eat to make his semen taste sweet.
“You’re just like, What? Is that really coming out of your mouth?” a former staffer says. “You’re just kind of in shock that your boss is talking about that.”
In the November election, Morrison defeated Kline. A month later, Johnson County Republicans picked Kline to replace Morrison as district attorney.
In the transition from Morrison to Kline, Carter became the only person from the Morrison era on Kline’s transition team. Why Kline retained Carter in such a powerful position and as the sole member of the transition team from Morrison’s staff isn’t clear. “She fits in whenever she needs to fit in,” a former staff member explains.
Carter not only survived the purge but also helped determine which attorneys and support staff members would keep their jobs. Carter met with Kline daily. “She came back and let us know who was on the chopping block,” a Doll Club member says.
In March 2007, Morrison and Carter’s relationship began to crumble. Meanwhile, a departing support staff supervisor detailed in her exit interview Carter’s inappropriate behavior. The exit interview catalogs Carter’s “flirtatious manner with defense attorneys, law enforcement officers and other individuals.” The supervisor sent copies of the exit interview to Carter; Kline’s chief deputy, Eric Rucker; County Manager Mike Press; and the Johnson County Board of Commissioners.
“To my knowledge, Kline never acted on it [the exit interview],” the supervisor tells The Pitch. “And neither did the commissioners.”
Later that month, Kline received an anonymous letter containing details of the affair. The Pitch obtained a copy of the letter, dated March 19, 2007, and addressed to Kline. The letter cites Morrison and Carter’s affair as “the source of a lot of dysfunction in Morrison’s administration” and a “negative influence” on Kline’s office. The letter also lists two specific instances in which Morrison and Carter were overheard having sex in the District Attorney’s Office.
Kline claims that he read only the first paragraph of the letter before turning it over to his top prosecutor, Steve Maxwell.
Carter and Morrison’s affair may have been on the rocks, but Carter was as flirtatious as ever in the office. An administrative staff member tells The Pitch that she witnessed Carter flirt with Tom Williams, the office investigator, last summer. The staff member recalls Carter telling Williams that they could have a sleepover at his house. Williams did not respond to a message from The Pitch.
[page]
In September 2007, Morrison told Carter that he wanted to prove his love for her. Morrison had a heart with Carter’s initials — L.C. — tattooed on his hip. Carter was supposed to get a matching tattoo. She never did.
On October 23, 2007, Carter detailed the affair to Kline and Maxwell, according to a Harris News Service report. Eight days later, Morrison called Carter 22 times between 11:58 a.m. and 12:47 p.m. Morrison threatened to destroy Carter’s attempt to get a job in Arkansas if she didn’t talk to him about their relationship, the Capital-Journal reported. Morrison, the paper reported, called Carter a “monster, [expletive] sociopath, liar, [expletive] and bad manager.”
Chambless and Maxwell overheard four of the calls, Harris News reported.
Kline wanted an internal investigation. Johnson County’s sexual harassment policy required Kline to give written notice of the allegation to the director of human resources. Human resources and the county’s legal department would then decide whether to investigate. Kline ignored the policy. Instead, he had Williams take a sworn statement from Carter on November 1, 2007. Williams conducted the interview with Carter. Chambless was also present for the interview.
On November 16, Williams completed his investigation. Williams’ report begins: “On November 1, 2007, Linda Carter was contacted at a discreet location in Johnson County, Kansas, for the purpose of providing an interview concerning a federal Equal Employment Opportunity [Commission] Complaint that Carter had filed against the Johnson County District Attorney’s Office and former Johnson County District Attorney Paul Morrison, the current Kansas Attorney General.”
In the statement, Carter claims that Morrison sexually harassed her and wanted her to spy on Kline’s investigation of Planned Parenthood.
A complaint was faxed to the EEOC on November 2 from the District Attorney’s Office. In a letter to the Attorney General’s Office, which would defend the state against Carter’s claims, one of Morrison’s attorneys, Michael L. Blumenthal, claimed that the EEOC complaint contained “no detail, alleging only, ‘I was discriminated against by my supervisor who left in January, 2007.'” Blumenthal says the complaint alleges that the improper conduct continued after Morrison’s employment ended.
On November 21, Kline sent an e-mail to his staff titled “Wishing Linda Carter success in her future endeavors.”
“I am sorry to announce that Linda Carter has submitted her resignation as Director of Administration effective November 30th,” Kline wrote. “Linda is pursuing other opportunities and we wish every success. Linda has been an effective, professional and capable member of our leadership team and I ask that you join me in expressing our appreciation for her efforts.”
When she resigned, Carter’s annual salary was $90,001. The resignation to pursue “other opportunities” was sudden. “She was truly in her queen form up until that point,” a longtime supervisor says.
Paul Morrison has never denied having an affair with Linda Carter. He has publicly stated that he regrets their “consensual relationship.” But Morrison denies harassing Carter. And he claims that he never asked Carter to spy on Kline.
Blumenthal, Morrison’s attorney in the EEOC case, says Carter relentlessly pursued a relationship with Morrison. “Unfortunately for him, he took the bait,” Blumenthal tells The Pitch.
Blumenthal describes the relationship as manipulative, saying Carter played mind games with Morrison. When Morrison took steps to make his affair with Carter long-term, Carter would withdraw from the relationship. But she’d come back. And when Morrison again pursued the relationship, she would again withdraw. Blumenthal says when it became clear that Carter had no intention of being in a relationship, and Morrison broke it off, “She cried sexual harassment.”
[page]
“I’ve been doing this type of work exclusively for 16 years, and I’ve never had a case where a woman who is involved in ongoing sexual relations over two years accepts an engagement ring, makes plans to leave her husband and then — only when that all falls apart — claims she was the subject of sexual harassment,” Blumenthal tells The Pitch. “I find that to be absurd and I find that to be manipulative, too.”
The Capital-Journal received a copy of the investigative report about the affair from Kline’s office and broke the story on December 8, 2007. Six days later, on December 14, Morrison resigned as attorney general. Making the announcement, Morrison stood alone. His wife and family were not at his side. Morrison acknowledged that many of his supporters felt betrayed by his actions.
“I’ve made mistakes in my personal life, but I have always obeyed our laws and done the right thing as a professional,” Morrison said. “My actions caused pain and sadness to many people I love. I have been working for some time to get right with God, get right with my family, and get right with friends and address my personal problems — and I will continue to do so.”
Eight months later, Morrison is now a defense attorney in private practice. His office is across the street from the Johnson County Courthouse — the place of his greatest courtroom triumphs and personal failures.
The special investigation into criminal charges of blackmail and telephone harassment against Morrison will likely wrap up this month. Kline handpicked Robert Arnold and Tim Keck to investigate the allegations against Morrison. Kline kicked the investigation to outside investigators to avoid the appearance of bias. But Keck served as an assistant district attorney under Kline until February 2008. Keck also contributed money to Kline’s attorney general campaign against Morrison.
Keck and Arnold’s findings may be public as early as September.
Kline may have been defeated earlier this month in his bid for re-election, but before he leaves office in January, his special prosecutors could bring criminal charges against Morrison.
Morrison’s attorney in the criminal probe, Trey Pettlon, says Morrison didn’t see what he calls Linda Carter’s “extremely manipulative” ways. Pettlon says Carter filled a void in the District Attorney’s Office during Morrison’s campaign for attorney general. “It was a perfect opportunity for a power-hungry person to step into, and she did,” Pettlon says. “During that last year that Paul was in office, Linda was allowed too much control over the office. And in some ways, she became the Nurse Ratched of the office.”
On April 11, the EEOC held a mediation hearing in an attempt to settle the case. In a letter to the Kansas Attorney General’s Office, Blumenthal insisted that the state not lend credence to Carter’s claims by settling the case.
“I know that it was not settled, and it still remains an open claim,” Blumenthal tells The Pitch. “I have no reason to believe a lawsuit has been filed. If it had, that would be public record.”
Carter disappeared from the public eye after news of the affair broke. Her former friends and colleagues believe she now lives in Western Grove, Arkansas, and has a house on the outskirts of town. But weeks ago, rumors spread of Carter patching things up with her husband.
In mid-July, only one car was parked in the driveway of Carter’s Roeland Park home. The house was dark, but John Carter answered the door. Behind a glass door, John Carter held back a fluffy white dog as a Pitch reporter asked if Linda Carter lived at the house.
[page]
“No,” John Carter said politely before closing the door.
Click here to write a letter to the editor.
