Virginia man arrested in girlfriend’s death, facing murder charge

Linda Morris was found dead inside a Buckingham County home after a report of an unattended death came in at 12:07 p.m. on Monday, June 1, at a house in the 1000 block of Slate River Mill Road. What started as a routine emergency call quickly shifted into a homicide case, and investigators moved fast from the scene to a suspect.

Deputies with the Buckingham County Sheriff's Office responded to the residence and found Morris dead inside. By that afternoon, authorities had identified Anthony Ray Shifflett as a person of interest and arrested him in Albemarle County. A local Pantops-area police alert and shelter-in-place warning around 1,500 State Farm Blvd. came around the same time, underscoring how quickly the search for Shifflett moved beyond the original Buckingham County scene.

Shifflett now faces second-degree murder under Virginia Code 18.2-32 and concealing a dead body under Virginia Code 18.2-323.02. He is being held without bond at Piedmont Regional Jail. The case has already taken the shape investigators were building toward from the moment the call was logged: a dead woman in a home, a man tied to her as a boyfriend, and an arrest that came less than a day after the body was discovered.

Public obituary listings identify the victim as Linda Louise Morris, 58, of Buckingham, Virginia. One listing says she was born on June 9, 1967. That identity adds a personal edge to a case that otherwise began with an anonymous dispatch note and an unattended-death label, the kind of wording that often masks a much darker story.

Authorities have not publicly released the cause or manner of death, and no motive has been confirmed. For now, the key facts remain the same: a dead woman in Buckingham County, a suspect identified and detained in Albemarle County, and a murder case that is still waiting on the forensic findings and court records that will show how Linda Morris’s death moved from an emergency call to a homicide arrest.