In 1983, Pinkerton company was purchased by American Brands, Inc. In 1988, American Brands sold Pinkerton to California Plant Protection. According to the company manual, the two companies "joined forces to become the largest nongovernmental force of uniformed security officers and investigation services in the world."
Biggest, of course, doesn't necessarily mean best -- or in some cases, even good enough. Morey's attorney, B.J. Walter Jr., suggests that Pinkerton's low-cost security is also low-quality security; he blames poor background checks and inadequate psychological screening of potential employees. For example, says the lawyer, Morey's attacker Bryan Gibson flat-out lied on his Pinkerton employment application.
"The guy was supposed to have stability in his employment," says Walter. "The guy was supposed to have a minimum of a high school diploma or GED. He didn't, and they didn't check up on him to find out that he didn't."
As for the company's psychological testing, Walter charges that it is a watered-down version. At the time Gibson was hired by Pinkerton, the company used the Minnesota Multi-Phasic Inventory, a proven psychological examination geared toward pointing out character flaws. But instead of the full test's 500-plus questions, Pinkerton used an abbreviated MMPI with only 168.
In a 1997 deposition, Pinkerton's own psychologist, Arthur C. LeBlanc, disparaged the short-form MMPI. "The short version doesn't measure everything," said Walter. "It doesn't give you enough data to make an informed decision about a potential employee. And it gives potential clients a false sense of security."
These days, Pinkerton uses a test called the Stanton Survey. The reason for the switch, says Pinkerton senior Houston district manager Marion Hambrick, is simple: Pinkerton bought the company that owned the test. Never mind that even Pinkerton psychologist LeBlanc, in his 1997 deposition, gave the Stanton Survey low marks as a pre-employment screening tool.
Still, Hambrick argues steadfastly that Pinkerton is the class of the security industry. "I'm proud of the background work that Pinkerton does," says Hambrick, who says the company always checks every applicant's credit, criminal history and employment history -- the Bryan Gibson case notwithstanding. Says Hambrick, "We probably have one of the lowest incident rates amongst security companies."
Hambrick also points out that of 130 current or former Pinkerton guards convicted between 1991 and 1995, all but two had been terminated by the company before the state board revoked their licenses.
Hambrick, the former head of the Houston office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, acknowledges that those numbers point to some sort of problem in screening -- but, he says, "you also have to look at the total number of people processed and hired during that time." He estimates that number at around 8,000 in Houston alone. He points out, proudly, that many of Pinkerton's guards have been with the company for "over a year."
This September, Pinkerton Security paid Jennifer Morey an undisclosed sum to settle her personal-injury lawsuit. And in the meantime, Morey has begun to rebuild her life.
Two weeks after the attack, unable to face her apartment, she moved to the Woodlands. She returned to work as an attorney for a Galleria-area law firm. Two weeks later, while working alone late on a Sunday night, Morey came unglued when she spotted a man she didn't recognize walking on her floor of the office building. The following day she packed her belongings and drove to her mother's house in Fort Worth. For the next six months, she rarely left her mother's side. If the cat bumped into something accidentally, Morey called 911. At night she prowled the house, not sleeping until almost sunrise, then staying in bed until after noon.
At Thanksgiving, more than seven months after the attack, her brother decided he'd had enough. He told Morey she had to snap out of it, that she was weak and pathetic. Her parents could not afford to pay her $400-a-month car note. She had to get a grip.
Morey began by applying for work with temporary agencies. Most told her she was overqualified. And at her few assignments, she felt that the regular workers treated her shabbily. But she stayed with the work. After a Houston jury sentenced Gibson to only 20 years in prison, she felt devastated -- but held on to her job as a way to hold on to her sanity.
After a few months, Morey was assigned a temporary job at Fort Worth's Justin Boot Company, where she worked in product development. For the first time since the attack, she made new friends, and with their support began contemplating returning to law.
This April, she met the man who would become her husband. With his encouragement -- and with the money from Pinkerton's settlement -- she finally opened her own shop, a family law practice in Fort Worth. "My life right now," she says, "I'm very proud of it."
In many ways, Morey considers herself lucky. When Bryan Gibson slashed her throat, he missed her right jugular vein by only a couple of millimeters. So deep was the cut, doctors have no explanation why the nerve that controls her facial muscles wasn't severed. As Gibson slashed her, the knife caught the corner of her right eye, but the blade somehow missed her eyeball. The knife also caught on a gold chain her mother had given her for her high school graduation; otherwise the blade might have pierced her larynx. "There was a series of little miracles that prevented me from dying," says Morey.
But the experience changed her forever. "I have a theory that the Jennifer Morey that existed on April 15, 1995, died," she says, "and that a new one had to come out of that."
Pinkerton Security, however, remains the same.
