Lisa Moore’s husband, James Moore, last saw her on January 7, 1998. The latter claimed she left their Manassas Park home sometime around midnight after he went to sleep. The couple had been separated for three months. Moreover, James claimed the mother-of-three was heading towards her parents’ house but never arrived. The following day, her concerned family reported the 32-year-old missing.
According to the Washington Post, a theory surfaced that Lisa fled Manassas Park in search of a better life. However, a year later, authorities discovered her skeletal remains in a grave in a wooded area in the City of Manassas. Police reportedly made the discovery after James came in for a scheduled interview with them and led them to the body. They soon charged her estranged husband with murder.
ID’s Missing in Manassas Park will chronicle Lisa Moore’s mysterious disappearance and the shocking murder case. It airs on the network on Saturday, December 9, 2023, at 10 p.m. ET.
The official synopsis stated, “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 missing case: Who was the suspect & what happened to him?
At the time of her disappearance, Lisa Moore had been living off and on with her husband, James Moore. The latter, a clerk at a Kmart, claimed he and Lisa were discussing whether to divorce or reconcile. They had been separate for over three months at the time but had maintained a close relationship. The estranged husband even suggested that she was seeing another man since then, as per Washington Post.
The outlet reported that Lisa’s missing case from January 7, 1998, set off a months-long fruitless investigation. Detectives claimed her estranged husband was the sole suspect in the case. However, they were unable to arrest him due to a lack of sufficient evidence. A year later, the suspect admitted to police during a regular briefing that he choked his wife to death. After this, he led authorities to her remains in a wooded lot in Manassas.
Manassas Park investigator Anthony DeFelice alleged that James murdered his wife during a heated argument. DeFelice stated that Lisa Moore had gone to James’ house on the night of January 6, 1998, to discuss divorce and the custody of their children. He claimed that James strangled the victim and drove her pickup truck to a Days Inn hotel in Prince William County. From there, he jogged home and put her body in his car trunk before wrapping it in plastic and burying it.
At first, James had reportedly told police that he last saw his wife the night before she disappeared. He had called her “a very, very caring and devoted mother,” alleging that she was “under a lot of pressure from what’s going on in her other life versus her family life.” Lisa was a nurse and a mother of three children, ages 4 to 12.
In September 1999, James Moore pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received a 25-year prison sentence for the murder.
