Raising the dead to resolve a Md. family's bitter feud

Family, lawyers and gravediggers, probably a few dozen in all, gathered at the cemetery at Calvert County's Mount Hope United Methodist Church last month. They built a makeshift barrier around a particular grave so no one could see what they were doing.

Inside those flimsy blue walls, the body of a decorated World War II veteran, bricklayer and tobacco farmer -- dead and buried for nearly 14 years -- was exhumed and dismantled. His teeth were removed, his leg bone cut. All in the name of obtaining a DNA sample that would determine, once and for all, who is his rightful heir.

At the center of this story is Charles Dunbar Morsell, who died without a will. Also key is 67-year-old Patsy Morsell, a retired cafeteria worker who lives in Huntingtown and thinks she is Charles Morsell's daughter.

By Patsy's account, she was told as a young girl that she was the unintended result of a one-night stand between Charles Morsell and her mother, Helen Reid. Patsy said she always went by Morsell, and to top it off, she had a birth certificate with Charles Morsell listed as her father.

If only it were that simple.

Patsy said she had no relationship with the man she thought was her father, and it wasn't until Charles Morsell died in 1995 at 77 that she went to his brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews seeking money from his estate.

"I asked them to give me something, and they make a squawk about it," Patsy said. "All I wanted was a little bit of money or something."

The nieces and nephews were unwilling to bend, they said, because they do not think Charles Morsell had any children. Patsy was never around when all the cousins would can quarts of blackberries and string beans on Charles Morsell's farm in their youth, said nephew Timothy Morsell Sr., 55. And Patsy was never around, he said, when Charles Morsell was taking his last breaths.

But daughter or not, it was Patsy who made the first move to settle Charles Morsell's estate. That's when matters got really complicated.

Timothy Morsell said his family made a slight misstep. Charles Morsell had no will, and for 13 years, his brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews never went to court to get his estate settled. They figured there was no reason to. Timothy Morsell lived next door to the family farm in Sunderland, and he tended his uncle's land and paid the required taxes. The brothers and sisters had not decided whether to sell the farm or keep it, he said.

In May 2008, they received a rude awakening: They might lose the land.

The notification came by way of an ad in the local newspaper: a simple, procedural notice to "unknown heirs" that Patsy Morsell thought she was the rightful representative to the estate of Charles Dunbar Morsell.