Jennie Blankenship

Reporting

(CBS 42) ROUND ROCK Why Round Rock police accused Michael Moore of killing Christina Moore was revealed Wednesday in court. The capital murder trial of Michael Moore, who is not related to his alleged victim, got underway shortly after 9 a.m. in Williamson County.

Moore is charged with capital murder, aggravated robbery and aggravated kidnapping of Christina Moore and her unborn child in her home on Sept. 23, 2003. Christina Moore was three months pregnant when she was killed.

In the prosecutors opening statements they said Christina Moore’s husband, Robert, left their home in the affluent Forest Creek subdivision early that morning to attend a Bible study class at the couple’s church. After Christina Moore did not show up to work at Dell later that morning, he went to check on her.

Prosecutors said Robert Moore found the door to their home unlocked. The couple’s 15-month-old daughter was wandering inside the house, crying. Then Robert Moore made a gruesome discovery -- his wife’s bloody body, apparently stabbed by a knife or sharp object, and a handcuff hanging from her right wrist. Her wedding bands, purse, a jewelry box and money were missing. The FBI later found that a bloody footprint left at the scene was from an Ariat brand boot.

Prosecutors say Dell Employee Jill Phillips was walking down Cobra Crossing in Forest Creek the morning of the murder. It was early in the morning and still dark, but Phillips told investigators she saw a man and a Red Ford Ranger pickup near Robert and Christina Moore’s home. Phillips worked with a police forensic artist to come up with a sketch of the man.

Prosecutors’ other witness is Deborah Turner. They say Turner was jogging on Hamlet Circle near the Moore home just before 6:30 a.m. when she heard a terrible scream. It frightened Turner and she called a friend.

But according to prosecutors, Round Rock Police initially focused on Moore’s husband as a suspect. But four days later, they say, the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office received an anonymous phone call from a pay phone at a gas station along Interstate 35 that changed everything.

Prosecutors told jurors the caller was a man claiming to have found some checks belonging to Robert and Christina Moore. The caller would not tell the dispatcher his name, but claimed he would call the Round Rock Police. He never did.

In early 2004, a woman named Betty Johnson went to Round Rock Police. She told investigators her father-in-law Michael Keith Moore had checks belonging to Robert and Christina Moore. She also told investigators Michael Moore drove a Red Ford Ranger pickup truck, and that he gave his then-wife Rebecca a wedding set he claimed to have bought from a man at a day labor center.

Prosecutors claim Michael Moore’s family also found items hidden in the wall of their trailer home, including an earring like the pair Christina Moore wore on her wedding day. Johnson confirmed that the voice on the anonymous pay-phone call recorded by the WCSO sounded like Michael Moore. Prosecutors say Jill Phillips positively identified Michael Moore in a photo lineup as the man she’d seen that morning she was walking in Forest Creek.

When police arrested Michael Moore in February 2004, they say he denied ever owning handcuffs, or driving his Ford Ranger pickup the morning of Sept. 23, 2003. He denied having anything to do with the murder of Christina Moore.

Since then, the prosecution contends Michael Moore has claimed he might have intimate knowledge of who killed Christina Moore.

Michael Moore’s defense attorney then presented his opening statement.

He said the hard evidence needed to convict his client of capital murder and consider the death penalty just doesn’t exist. He continually used the phrase, “Maybe, perhaps, possibly.” Michael Moore’s defense team pointed out there was never any sign of forced entry or sexual assault. He contends there were also no fingerprints and no DNA left at the scene, which match Michael Moore.

Defense attorneys also blasted the state’s witnesses -- a woman in the area who thinks she saw someone who looks like Michael Moore and a red pickup truck, another woman who thinks she heard a scream, and a slew of jail inmates who claim Michael Moore confessed the murder to them.

Michael Moore has never confessed to investigators the murder of Christina Moore.

After nearly 13 minutes, Michael Moore’s defense attorney rested, saying the state has, “Nothing, almost nothing, probably something, or what could be something.”

Christina Moore’s mother, Janina Boel, was the first person to take the stand.

Boel had just left her daughter’s home before Moore was murdered to fly back home to California.

Boel told jurors about Christina’s childhood, growing up in California, Washington, D.C., and Washington state. She said her daughter graduated from the University of Oregon and worked for the Governor’s office in California for 8 years. But at the age of 29, Christina decided to go to the University of Michigan and get her Master's degree in Business Administration. There she met Robert Moore and the two became engaged. The couple found work as executives at Dell Computers. They moved to Round Rock less than a month after their wedding in June 2000, and built a house in Forest Creek.

Boel said she would visit her daughter and son-in-law often. She said she and Christina were very close. “She was my star,” Boel said, “She was wonderful. We’d talk all the time.”

Boel told jurors her daughter’s ultimate ambition was to get married and have children. Almost exactly two years after Robert and Christina married, their daughter was born.

Robert Moore faced his wife’s accused killer in the courtroom Wednesday. He spent most of the day giving tedious testimony to jurors. Wednesday morning he recounted phone calls and e-mails he received from Christina Moore’s coworkers on the day of his wife's murder.

Robert Moore told jurors he was in a meeting until after 10 a.m. that day before he got those messages.

This afternoon Robert Moore described and identified in photographs detailed items, such as his wife’s wedding bands, the couple’s personal checks and the earrings Christina wore on her wedding day.

Prosecutors then showed jurors photographs of every room in the Moore’s home and asked Robert about the layout of the house.

Robert Moore told defense attorneys for Michael Keith Moore that a stranger would probably not have noticed Christina was pregnant, that it was something that only he, she and a few close friends knew about.

Michael Keith Moore’s defense attorneys questioned Christina’s husband exhaustively about what items he noticed were stolen.

Robert Moore cried when he talked about how he learned the sex of his and Christina’s unborn child. Moore said he read about it in a local newspaper, which had obtained the autopsy report that was supposed to have been sealed. The unborn child was a boy, which is what the Moore's wanted.

11.28.2006

reply

Hi, thanks, and have posted it.

Brian

11.29.2006

You have been sent a News 8 Austin Article by Robin De La Fuente

Re: Case #102

Michael Keith Moore is charged with the murder of Rachel Cooke. Moore was expected to plead guilty Thursday in court as part of a plea deal to avoid the death penalty. Instead, he pleaded not guilty - throwing a wrench into the proceedings.  Moore is currently serving three life sentences for the 2003 murder of Christina Moore; the two are not related.

http://news8austin.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=174419&

reply

Thanks, will post this.

Brian

2.7.2009