On a hot July afternoon in Brevard County, Florida, a judge doing yard work on his waterfront property spotted something floating near the shoreline. He thought it was a manatee. When he walked closer, he saw it was the body of a woman. She was naked, bloated from decomposition, and weighted down with plastic grocery bags tied to her frame.
Sheriff’s agents Jerry Herrell and Ally Roberts arrived to find a crime scene that would set the tone for a long and frustrating investigation. The victim was bound with nylon rope, black rubber cord, and window spline. Her head was wrapped in tape. She had been controlled, restrained, and discarded in the Indian River with deliberate care.
She was not meant to be found quickly, if at all. The first challenge was identifying her. The body was fingerprinted, and she was determined to be 22-year-old Misty Morse of Indian Harbor Beach. She was a local girl who lived with her mother, just a short distance from where her body was found.
That detail gave investigators hope. In most homicides, the killer is someone the victim knows, and that gave them a direction to work from. The condition of the body suggested she had been in the warm July water for several days. The heat, the insects, and the animals made an exact time of death difficult, but the physical evidence offered a grim picture of her final moments.
She had been bound and gagged, and the bags tied to her body were weighted down with rocks. Whoever killed her wanted her to stay at the bottom of the river. When detectives went to inform her family, her mother opened the door and immediately knew why they were there. She had seen news coverage of a woman found in the water and had feared the worst when Misty did not come home.
The mother described Misty as a free spirit, a young woman who marched to her own tune and was still figuring out what she wanted from life. She had recently moved back in with her mother and was working and socializing, doing the ordinary things a 22-year-old does. The last time her mother saw her was on a Wednesday night, shortly after Misty came home from work around midnight. Misty received a phone call, then another about twenty minutes later.
She popped her head into her mother’s room, asked how she looked, and said she was going out with someone she was excited about, someone she knew. Her mother did not know who it was. Misty left, and her mother went back to sleep. When Misty never returned, her mother started calling.
She never got an answer. Her body was found on Sunday afternoon. Investigators believed Misty had been placed in the water soon after she left the house that night. The way she left, happy and eager to meet someone she knew, told them she was going to meet her killer voluntarily.
She had been seen alive in the early morning hours of Thursday. The person who called her that night was almost certainly the person responsible for her death. The family gave detectives a list of people in Misty’s life, and one name stood out early: Teddy Underwood. He was a good-looking man she had dated briefly through a mutual friend.
A background check revealed he had prior arrests for burglary and a sexual assault or battery charge. That put him at the top of the list. When detectives interviewed him, he was calm, cooperative, and denied any involvement. He said he had not seen Misty in over a week and had been with friends on the night in question.
He claimed he had nothing to do with the river or boats, and his alibi held up. Despite his record, investigators did not get a guilty feeling from him, and they moved on. Next, Misty’s father provided a new name: Brent Huck. He was an ex-Navy SEAL, good-looking, and known for bragging about his money.
He had a bad-boy persona that attracted friends and women alike, and Misty had been seeing him off and on. Her father had warned her to stay away from him, saying he was bad news. Detectives went to Brent’s parents’ upscale home on Merritt Island, unannounced. He came to the door after a delay, with a dog barking inside.
During the conversation, Agent Herrell noticed abrasions on Brent’s knuckles and hands. When asked how he got them, Brent said his dog had pulled him on a skateboard and the leash had burned his hands. It was not a burn. It was an abrasion, and it looked off.
Brent was brought to the station for questioning. He admitted his relationship with Misty was not truly over. They had known each other for about two years and had dated. She had even moved in with him for a few months.
He said he could still go over to her place and have sex with her whenever he wanted. He kept her on a string. He claimed he had last slept with her nine days before she disappeared. But then he admitted things had become complicated.
Friends had told him Misty was telling people she was pregnant with his baby. On the night she disappeared, he called her to confront her. He said he “bitched her out” because he had a new girlfriend and did not want the rumor spreading. He claimed he called her back about five minutes later to say thanks, then went home.
Brent said he arrived home around three-thirty or four in the morning, after a night of heavy drinking and partying with a group of friends at several bars. A young woman gave him a ride home. His friends confirmed he was dropped off and stayed at his parents’ house for the rest of the night. His alibi seemed solid, at least for the moment, and there was no direct evidence tying him to the murder.
He was released. Investigators continued working through Misty’s contacts, and another name surfaced: Bobby Cooper. He was a man Misty had recently met. When detectives interviewed him, he was emotional, crying and insisting he really loved her.
He said they had a whirlwind few days together, went to a movie, and then she stopped answering his calls. He assumed it was her way of ending things. But he told police he did speak to her on the night she disappeared, around seven-thirty on Wednesday evening. He said he tried calling again on Thursday afternoon, and when she did not answer, he left several messages.
Then, without being asked, he admitted he had her driver’s license. That was a red flag. Misty’s license had been missing, and detectives could not account for it. Bobby explained he had been holding onto it since their movie date, because her pants had no pockets.
He even joked that it was one way to guarantee they would see each other again. He claimed he was home with his family when Misty was killed, and his father verified his whereabouts. Bobby was cleared. After weeks of interviews, phone records finally arrived and changed the course of the investigation.
The records showed Bobby Cooper had indeed called Misty repeatedly, which matched his story. But they also showed something else: two incoming calls from Brent Huck’s number, just as he had said. The problem was the timing. Brent had insisted the calls were around four in the morning.
The records showed they were actually around two and two-twenty, right in the window when Misty’s mother heard her daughter leave. Brent had lied about the time. Detectives dug deeper into his personal life. Brent had a new girlfriend in South Florida, someone from a wealthy, well-connected family.
The two were buying a house together and making wedding plans. A pregnancy rumor reaching that girlfriend could have destroyed everything Brent was building. Investigators believed that was his motive to silence Misty for good. The girlfriend had no idea Brent was still involved with Misty.
She agreed to help. In a recorded call, she told Brent the police wanted to speak with her about Misty’s murder and pressed him to explain himself before it came out. He refused to talk on the phone, grew angry, and hung up. With Brent back in the spotlight, investigators revisited his alibi.
They tracked down Lauren, the young woman who had driven him home that night. She said she picked him up at two in the morning, two hours earlier than he had claimed. That meant he could have driven to Misty’s house after getting home. Lauren also said she saw no injuries on his hands that night, meaning the abrasions had to have happened during the killing.
Investigators searched Brent’s house again, this time with a warrant. In the garage they found window spline, sail rope, and Publix bags under the sink. The window spline matched the exact same factory and machine as the bindings on Misty’s body. The tape was the same company, same make, same physical characteristics.
And the hair found on Misty’s body was determined to be dog hair. Brent Huck had a dog. DNA testing confirmed the hair belonged to his dog specifically. Not just the breed, but the animal itself.
In October 2002, Brent Huck was indicted on charges of kidnapping and first-degree murder. The reconstruction of the timeline was key to the case. The evidence suggested he came home around two in the morning, angry about the pregnancy rumor. He called Misty under the pretense of their usual arrangement, drove to her house, made a very short call to tell her he was outside, and she came down and got in the car.
He took her to his house, where he tied her up with rope and window spline, weighed her down with bags full of rocks, wrapped her head in duct tape, put her in a boat, and dumped her in the deepest part of the river while she was still alive. She had struggled, worked the tape loose from her mouth, and begged for her life before she sank. Brent Huck pleaded not guilty, but the physical and circumstantial evidence against him was overwhelming. The jury found him guilty on both counts.
He was sentenced to life in prison. Misty’s father said he did not want Huck dead, only that he spend the rest of his life in jail and remember every day what he had done. The most important thing, he said, was that Brent Huck could never do it to anyone else.