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Two Guilty Verdicts In Moore Murder Case
By
Garth Johnston
Published Mar 24, 2006
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Garth Johnston
Published Mar 24, 2006
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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The tragic story of Romona Moore finally saw some justice yesterday as the two men who kidnapped, raped, tortured, sodomized and eventually killed the 21-year-old Hunter College student were both found guilty. Troy Hendrix, 22, and Kayson Pearson, 24, now face maximum penalities of life in prison without parole.
The Moore case has been one ordeal after another from the onset. When police were first informed by her family that Romona was missing they responded that "many women her age fail to check in with their families for benign causes." When her body was found, her name was misspelled in the press release. And that's just the start. The first trial ended in a mistrail when one of the defendents tried to kill their own defense attorney in court and the second was almost a mistrail as well. And that isn't even getting into the very legitimate charges of institutional racism that Romona's mother has been talking about to everyone who will listen.
The details of the murder paint a picture of about the worst that humanity can offer: Hendrix and Pearson, both reputedly members of the Bloods, lured Moore into Hendrix's basement for kicks. Once inside "she was chained, stripped, draped in a sheet, drugged, sodomized and beaten to death." Even worse, "four days after her disappearance, a 15-year-old girl was raped in the same basement, a crime also attributed to Mr. Hendrix and Mr. Pearson." The other victim, who testified at the trail, only escaped after she licked the adhesive off of the duct tape covering her mouth and "worked herself free while the two men were asleep."
Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes said in a statement that "I am hard-pressed to find a more evil case. I am satisfied that these defendants will never see the outside of a prison cell." Gothamist certainly hopes so!
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