PLANTATION, Fla. — A 5-year-old boy held a pair of scissors in his tiny hands, smoke filling the room around him, his adoptive mother still bound at the wrists and ankles beside him. Hours earlier, he had watched a masked intruder press a gun to his father’s head.
Now, as flames consumed the family home, Patrick Morrissey did what no one else could do. He cut his mother free.
The boy who was supposed to be asleep became the only surviving witness to one of the most brutal home-invasion murders Florida has ever seen. And for days, the killer believed he had gotten away with it. What Randy Tundidor Sr.
did not know was that the 5-year-old had seen everything — and that the child’s account would eventually help send him to death row.
The nightmare began on the night of April 5, 2010, at 601 Northwest 7th Street in the quiet, upper-middle-class neighborhood of Plantation, just outside Fort Lauderdale. Joe Morrissey, a 43-year-old adoptive father and respected businessman, had dozed off in front of the television. His wife, Kay, was awake in her craft room, working late.
Their son Patrick, just 5 years old, was lying in the master bedroom, eyes closed but not yet asleep.
What Patrick witnessed next would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Around 10 p. m. , the silence of the Morrissey home was shattered by the sound of screaming.
Patrick, pretending to sleep, heard his parents pleading with strangers. He would later tell investigators that the intruders put “little time things” — zip ties — on his mother and father so they couldn’t walk. The boy lay motionless beneath the covers, frozen by fear, listening to his father beg for his family’s life.
Joe Morrissey’s final words to his son were a desperate plea. As he knelt beside the bed, with a gunman looming over him, Joe spoke calmly to Patrick. He told the boy to lay down and pretend to be asleep.
“Please do it for Daddy,” he said. Those were the last words Patrick ever heard from his father.
The intruders, later identified as Randy Tundidor Sr. and his son Randy Tundidor Jr. , forced Joe into the family room.
Patrick could still hear his father’s voice, begging for mercy, and then — silence. The boy lay still for what seemed like an eternity, listening for a voice that would never come again.
The home invasion took a horrifying turn when the attackers set the house on fire. Flames began to consume the residence as Patrick’s mother, still bound, struggled to free herself. It was then that the 5-year-old sprang into action.
Running through the rising smoke to his mother’s craft room, Patrick grabbed a pair of scissors and returned to cut her bonds.
“I saved my mom and got the scissors to cut those,” Patrick later told investigators. “Wow, you’re like a hero,” the detective replied. “My mom said,” Patrick answered.
At approximately 12:30 a. m. , Kay’s daughter Christina, who lived 10 minutes away, received a frantic phone call from her mother.
Amid the sirens and chaos, Kay’s voice was barely audible. “You have to come here. You have to get here right now,” she said.
When Christina arrived, the road was blocked off. She pushed past officers and ran down the street to find her mother standing in the middle of the road in her pajamas, completely covered in blood. “I just remember thinking how small she looked and how helpless she looked,” Christina recalled.
Kay cried out that “he’s gone.” Christina initially thought she meant the attackers had gotten away. But her mother clarified with devastating precision: “No, no, no.
Joe is gone. They killed him.”
As the flames rose from the Morrissey residence, Patrick was taken to a neighbor’s home. The 5-year-old boy, who had just witnessed his father’s murder, sat alone waiting for someone to ask him what he had seen.
The investigation quickly focused on the family’s tenant, Randy Tundidor Sr. , a 43-year-old father of two who lived in a townhouse owned by Joe Morrissey. Tundidor was suing Joe over a fall he claimed happened due to lack of repairs.
Detectives found him frail and ill, wearing an oxygen mask and walking with a limp. He appeared to be in no condition to have committed the home invasion.
But when police spoke with his son, Randy Tundidor Jr. , the picture became murkier. Randy Jr.
was a crack addict with an outstanding warrant for parole violation. He denied any involvement in the murder. “I don’t have no connection with this murder.
I don’t know who did it. I want to clear my name because I did not commit this murder,” he told detectives.
The investigation was heading toward a dead end. Police had a person of interest but no motive, no physical evidence placing either Tundidor at the scene, and a 5-year-old witness whose credibility was uncertain. Joe Morrissey’s murder threatened to remain unsolved.
Then came the phone call no one predicted.
Shawn Tundidor, Randy Sr.’ s younger son and Randy Jr.’ s brother, walked into the police station with a bombshell revelation.
“I’m going to tell you straight up,” he told detectives. “My dad did it.”
Shawn described how his father had watched the news coverage of the murder that morning and stepped onto the back porch to smoke a cigarette. When Shawn confronted him, his father threatened him. “He said you need to shut up, said I’ll 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 you if I have to,” Shawn recounted.
The elder Tundidor’s chilling words to his son when asked about the murder were even more damning: “A dead man can’t evict me.”
Shawn revealed the full extent of his father’s manipulation. On the night of April 5, 2010, Randy Tundidor Sr. had given his eldest son $100 worth of crack cocaine and told him to smoke it.
Once Randy Jr. was high, his father manipulated him into breaking into Joe Morrissey’s house, telling him there was a customer’s house they could rob for cash to buy more drugs.
“He was a crackhead,” Shawn said of his brother. “You’re not asking my brother. You’re asking a crackhead.”
Determined to bring his father to justice, Shawn agreed to wear a wire. Detectives gave him a recording device hidden inside a car key. That same night, Shawn confronted his father at home, one hand in his pocket activating the device.
For two stressful hours, he probed his father, pretending to be concerned for both his well-being and his brother’s.
“I was scared,” Shawn later admitted. “But I wanted my dad to pay for what he did to his family.”
When police attempted to download the audio files, there was significant background noise and potential obstruction. For a moment, investigators feared they had missed a golden opportunity. But then the audio revealed the conversation between Shawn and his father — and the real mastermind behind the murder was 𝓮𝔁𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓭.
When detectives searched Gator Tint, a shop owned by Randy Tundidor Sr., they found the computer stolen from the Morrissey home, zip ties recently disposed of in a trash container, an empty box of hunting knives, two-way radios matching the ones the killers had used, and foreign currency bills that had been reported stolen from the Morrissey residence. Burnt marks on the ground suggested someone had disposed of additional incriminating evidence.
That same day, Randy Tundidor Sr. opened his front door to police officers carrying a warrant for his arrest. Both father and son were taken into custody and held for trial.
April 2012. The trial began.
The jury was presented with the facts surrounding the murder of Joseph Morrissey, the attempted murder of his wife, and the trauma endured by their 5-year-old son. But no one in the courtroom was prepared for what they would see when Patrick’s interrogation footage was played.
In the video, Patrick sits across from a detective, his small legs dangling from the chair. The detective asks him if he knows what a lie is. “It’s when you don’t tell the truth and you do something bad,” Patrick answers.
“And what happens when you tell a lie?” the detective asks. “You get in trouble,” Patrick replies.
Patrick recounted the events of that night with a clarity that left everyone speechless. He described waking to screaming, hearing his parents pleading with a stranger, and hiding under the covers. He described the man putting zip ties on his mother and father.
He described his father’s final words to him — to lay down and pretend to be asleep.
“Then the guy came over and said to Joe that he had to go with him,” Patrick said.
He described his father begging for his family’s life. Then silence. Then the flickering flames of the fire starting in the kitchen.
In the courtroom, Patrick’s account of the night he lost his father was met with stunned silence. The 5-year-old who had saved his mother’s life had also provided the evidence needed to bring his father’s killers to justice.
Kay Morrissey took the stand and recounted the horror of watching her husband being led away. “He was fighting for his life and trying to protect my mom and Patrick,” she said. She described the moment when the intruders tied her up and forced her to kneel beside the bed, not knowing if her son was still alive.
Patrick’s testimony, delivered through the interrogation footage, was the emotional centerpiece of the trial. “He never answered me. I kept calling him and he didn’t,” Patrick said of his father.
Those words reverberated through the courtroom.
Then came the surprise no one expected. Randy Tundidor Jr. , in a stunning turn, took the stand and confessed to his role in the crime — and testified against his own father.
He told the jury how his father had manipulated him, given him crack cocaine, and sent him to rob the Morrissey home. He described his father’s plan to blame everything on him while escaping justice himself.
“The fact that he would sit here and say that it was me and my brother who did this and planned this, I feel like that’s wrong,” Randy Jr. said from the stand. “You shouldn’t do anything to hurt your kids.
I think that a father’s job is to protect his kids, not to hurt his kids.”
The contrast between the two fathers was not lost on the jury. Randy Tundidor Sr. had betrayed both of his sons to save himself.
Joe Morrissey had shielded his 5-year-old son with his final words, telling him to play dead so the gunman wouldn’t turn his attention to the child.
The verdict was unanimous.
Randy Tundidor Jr. was sentenced to 40 years in prison for his role in Joe Morrissey’s death. Prosecutors acknowledged that he was a manipulated pawn in his father’s scheme, but he still participated in a brutal home invasion that ended a man’s life.
Randy Tundidor Sr. was found guilty of 10 felony charges, including arson, armed robbery, kidnapping, attempted murder, and first-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to death.
“I remember the day they put the handcuffs on him after he was found guilty,” Shawn Tundidor said. “The click of those handcuffs is something that I still don’t forget.”
Shawn, who lost both his brother and his father because he chose to do the right thing, was hailed as a hero by prosecutors. “I’m proud of Shawn,” Detective Kendall said. “I’m not sure if we would have had Randy Sr.
convicted if we didn’t have that recording. Shawn Tundidor is a very brave person. In all of this hatred, he was trying to do a little bit of good.”
Shawn has no regrets. “If you think I’m a snitch and I didn’t do the right thing, then you’re just as bad as the guy that committed that murder,” he said. “So I don’t care.”
Today, Patrick and his mother Kay continue to heal from the trauma of that night. Patrick, now a young man, has become a symbol of resilience and bravery. Kay credits her son with saving her life in more ways than one.
“I definitely feel Patrick is my hero,” Kay said. “He not only saved my life but also helped me save his life.”
They continue to support each other, determined not to let Joe Morrissey’s sacrifice be forgotten. Joe, a devoted father who adopted Patrick and loved him unconditionally, gave his life protecting his family. His last words to his son were not a goodbye, but an instruction to survive.
“I wanted other people to see that they can survive,” Kay said. “And I think my son also does the same thing.”
Patrick and his mother are living proof that even after unimaginable tragedy, there is a life worth living. The boy who witnessed his father’s murder and saved his mother’s life with a pair of scissors grew up to be the hero his father believed he would be.
This is not a normal Christmas morning at the Morrissey home. The decorations on the tree and the presents on the floor are a backdrop to something more significant. Look at the woman’s face.
She isn’t smiling at all. Look closer at her shirt. It says, “Find Jessica.”
This is a family that has known loss, but also knows that even in the darkest moments, a 5-year-old boy with a pair of scissors can change the course of justice.
The Morrissey case stands as a testament to the power of a child’s testimony, the courage of a brother who chose truth over family loyalty, and the enduring love of a father whose final words protected his son from the very man who murdered him. Randy Tundidor Sr. thought he had gotten away with murder.
He didn’t know that a 5-year-old boy was watching — and that the boy would never forget what he saw.
