On January 7, 1998, a 32-year-old woman named Lisa Maureen Moore vanished into thin air. Officials tried everything to find her; however, even after months of searches and speculations, they couldn’t find anything. A year after her disappearance, Lisa’s husband, James Moore, came forward and admitted to killing his wife.
James Moore told the police that he choked his wife to death. The then-36-year-old led officials to the skeletal remains of his wife, whom he buried in a shallow grave in a wooded lot in the City of Manassas. According to The Washington Post, Manassas Park investigator Anthony DeFelice said that James strangled Lisa during a violent argument.
A night before her disappearance, Lisa had gone to James’s house to discuss divorce and the custody of their children. They had been separated for three months.
Prince William County Circuit Court sentenced James to 25 years in prison for the murder of his wife. James Moore is currently serving his sentence in prison in Virginia. His 25-year jail sentence will end next year, in 2024.
Details of this tragic case will be showcased in detail on ID’s Missing in Manassas Park. It is scheduled to air on the channel on December 9 at 10:00 p.m. ET.
The synopsis of Missing in Manassas Park reads, “Lisa Moore and her husband decide to split in the fall of 1998; months later, Lisa fails to show up for work one day, and her sister files a missing persons report; it will take a year before police discover what happened to this devoted young mom.”
Lisa Moore’s family’s reaction to the case
According to The Washington Post, after Lisa’s disappearance, her sister, Cathy Banks, found her abandoned truck in a Prince William County hotel parking lot. Furthermore, she began investigating the location to find something that could lead to Lisa. James too was overwhelmed with grief; however, little did Lisa’s family know that the woman’s body was in the trunk of his husband’s car the whole time.
In her testimony, Cathy Banks said, “Then James came up to the hotel and hugged me and thanked me for finding the truck. And all the time he knew she was in the trunk of his car, dead. During that year, we were obsessed with finding her. That year he continued his lie, and we continued looking for her.”
“It’s no longer about him. It’s about us moving on and about his and Lisa’s children. Now we can live our lives. None of this is going to put her back into our lives. I hope that this is hurting Jimmy as much as it is hurting us. That year was a year of hell,” she added.
During his hearing, James Moore said that he regretted his actions and that he loved Lisa. He turned toward his deceased wife’s family members and said, “Nothing I can say will ever make up for what I put you all through. I loved your daughter. Every day since the night of her death, I’ve suffered. I just want you to know that I am truly sorry for what I put you through.”
James Moore’s attorney, William R. Stephens, said that it took his client to surrender himself so that he could have time to prepare his children for life in his absence. At the time, his children were aged 13, 9, and 5.
