Personal-injury lawyer John Morgan has crafted a career in Central Florida sticking it to the bad guys, using television commercials to lambaste negligent nursing homes and reckless drivers whose misdeeds are fertile ground for lawsuits.
Morgan now hopes to cash in on history’s rich gallery of rogues and outlaws. Early next year, he plans to open the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, charging all comers a fee to gawk at Jesse James’ handguns, personal effects of Al Capone and hundreds of other bits of criminal memorabilia.
Morgan, who operates several tourist attractions in Orlando and Tennessee, has picked a location not far from the White House. The museum will include displays that allow visitors to solve cases, learn how to diffuse a bomb and do target practice on a simulated FBI firing range.
“After sex, the biggest fascination for Americans is crime and punishment,” Morgan said. “America has an obsession with crime.”
Morgan has a deal with John Walsh, host of America’s Most Wanted, to produce segments inside the attraction, giving the venue a built-in publicity machine.
“John Morgan came to us with the idea years ago, but it just wasn’t right for us at the time,” said Lance Heflin, America’s Most Wanted executive producer. “We were originally talking about something in Orlando. He came back a couple years ago with the idea of putting it in D.C., which we liked.”
Morgan plans to open a hybrid attraction that mixes crime memorabilia — he has assembled 350 pieces so far — with high-tech games.
“I’ve been buying collectors’ pieces for the last couple of years,” Morgan said. “I have curators out there procuring for me right now. They are looking at things like John Dillinger’s tommy gun and Ma Barker’s sweater.”
Morgan said the crime museum will give visitors a sweeping retrospective of seriously bad behavior.
“We will tell the history of crime and punishment from the days of the pirates of the Caribbean to the outlaws of today,” Morgan said. “And then there will be an interactive section that will demonstrate all sorts of crime-fighting techniques.”
Morgan said the attraction will have a mock CSI lab that will give customers an assortment of clues and a challenge to move from evidence to conclusion.
“It will look just like the lab on TV,” Morgan said. “Very realistic.”
After a tour past high-speed-chase simulators and other wizardry, the guests will arrive at the America’s Most Wanted area where they will meet a virtual John Walsh and get a peek at production of the show.
“We want to set up a studio in there,” AMW’s Heflin said. “It will probably be a backdrop for a lot of our crime stories that appear on cable-network shows.”
Morgan has long-running ties to the entertainment business. He worked as a Disney World theme-park character in his teens. He owns three small attractions: WonderWorks in Orlando and Pigeon Forge, Tenn., and the Magical Midway on International Drive.
Showmanship has long been part of the Morgan persona. Morgan, Colling & Gilbert, the law firm he co-founded in 1988, relied on Morgan as its frontman. Central Florida commercials and billboards featured a steely-eyed Morgan telling the injured and abused to exercise their legal rights by using his legal team. The campaign’s slogan: “For the People.”
Morgan, Colling & Gilbert broke up two years ago, and Morgan and his wife, Ultima, now own Morgan & Morgan.
Walsh will likely play a bigger role promoting the Washington attraction than Morgan. He has a national following, a widely watched television show and a reputation for zealous advocacy.
Morgan said Walsh’s image, and the nation’s fascination with criminals, makes the attraction a natural. And he said it has a good location near the International Spy Museum in a neighborhood thick with tourists.
“It will be WonderWorks meets a museum,” Morgan said. “Washington, D.C., gets 16 million tourists a year. It gets a lot of school groups. And Washington itself has a very transient population. So there should be plenty of customers.”
