Crime Time ~ Murder Comes to Town ~ “He’d Do it Again”

#CrimeTime with Alicia Dean ~ 

Murder Comes to Town, Season 2 Episode 5, He’d Do it Again

South Bend, Washington November 2, 2010

On the morning of November 3, 2010, Tim Moore’s best friend receives a call from Tim’s son, Devon, saying he doesn’t know where his father is. The friend searches for Tim but is unable to find him. They call police, who cannot consider him missing until he’s been gone 24 hours. Once that deadline passes, police begin investigating. They learn that Tim is a stable, good man and a loving, single father. Devon lives with Tim, and Tim supports Devon’s mother, Tim’s ex-girlfriend, because he is afraid if he doesn’t, she will go after custody of Devon, and Tim wants his son to live with him. From what police can gather, Tim has no enemies and no one has a reason to wish him harm, nor would he just disappear and abandon his son.

The police question Tim’s son, his friends, his ex, but receive no information that leads them to Tim’s whereabouts. They use a sniffer dog to try to pick up Tim’s scent. The dog leads them to a garage where he appears to get a hit. The garage belongs to a known drug offender with a record. The police think they have a solid lead, but it turns out to be a dead end.

The investigators are slightly suspicious about Devon’s manner. He doesn’t seem distraught that his father is missing, but they are aware that people, especially teenagers, don’t always show the expected emotions. When they question Devon, he tells them that he and his father had watched TV together the night before he discovered him missing until 11:30, when Devon went to bed. When he awoke the next morning, his father was gone, and his bed was made, leading Devon to believe he hadn’t slept in it.

The police learn that Devon’s ex has moved into the house with Devon, which seems a little suspicious. They go to the home to speak with her again, but since she doesn’t own the home and Devon isn’t 18, neither of them can give permission for the authorities to search the house. This fact surprised me. I wasn’t aware that was a law, or would even be an issue. I suppose it’s different in various jurisdictions.

A few weeks after Tim’s disappearance, hunters find remains in the woods near his home that turn out to be his. It’s apparent that the victim was shot in the head. Once the body is found, police are able to get a warrant to search the home. They find blood droplets in the garage and when they enter Tim’s bedroom, they see sheets that match the ones found with the body. They turn over the mattress and find a large blood stain. They speak to Devon once again, and ask if he heard the shots the night before his dad disappeared. The coroner determined he’d been shot four times. The police don’t understand how Devon could sleep through that. He states that he’s a heavy sleeper. The police determine that a silencer was used, so it would make sense that the boy hadn’t heard the shots. The blood in the garage turns out to be deer blood, but the blood on the mattress belongs to Tim.

A break comes when the police chief, who is a friend of the missing man, is having dinner with his family. His son mentions a friend of his who has this awesome shotgun with a silencer. The chief asks him if he’s sure, and the son says definitely. The chief goes to talk to the friend and asks if he can see the shotgun. The kid shows it to him, and it indeed has a silencer. The chief asks him how long he’s had the gun, and he tells him a week. By now, it’s been five months since Tim Moore was murdered. The chief asks where he got the shotgun. The kids tells him he got it from a friend. The chief asks for the friend’s name, and the kid tells him it’s Devon Moore.

Police bring Devon in for questioning once more and tell him they know what happened, now is his chance to tell his side of it. At first, Devon sticks to his story, although he does mention that he and his dad argued. But, he insists he went to bed and awoke the next morning to find his father gone. With a little more pressure by police, Devon finally tells the truth. He says he and his father argued, his father had told him he could drive the truck as long as he was on the honor roll. He fell off the honor roll, and his dad took his driving privileges away. He said that, after his father went to bed, he got the shotgun and went into his room. He placed the barrel near his dad’s skull and pulled the trigger. It was a bolt-action shotgun, so he had to manually open and close the breech, eject the spent casing and load a new one. He had to do that three more times, which shows slow, deliberate calculation. The police asked if he had any remorse and he said no, and if he had it to do over again, he’d do it again. They ask him why, and he says that his dad wasn’t the great guy everyone thought he was, he’d been abusing him his entire life. However, there was no indication at all of the abuse. No marks whatsoever on Devon, no medical reports, no complaints to officials, nothing, ever. It appeared that Devon simply was tired of his dad’s parental control.

Devon was tried as an adult, found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to the max, which is 31 years. I’m always baffled when a first degree murder charge does not result in a life sentence, if not the death penalty. How can you cold-bloodedly murder your own father, a father who loved you and sacrificed for you, and be able to walk out of prison when you’re fifty years old? It’s so disturbing when a child kills a parent. What is missing from their humanity that they would do something so heinous?

A question I have that wasn’t answered in the episode is why the sniffer dog hit on the garage. I don’t know if Tim had been there for some reason, or if the dog had a false hit. It bugs me when there are unanswered questions. 😊

[I love true crime shows, and I watch them every night. (Since I write suspense, thriller, and mystery, it’s not a waste of time…it’s research, right? 🙂 ) I love Investigation Discovery and watch many of the various shows, although some are a little too cheesy. However, there are plenty of shows that are done well enough to feed my fascination with murder. Each week, I’ll blog about some of the recent episodes I’ve seen and I’d love to know your thoughts.]