Robert & Ben Moore

Robert & Ben
Moore

There were no two kids I got closer to working these cases than Robert & Ben ("Benihana") Moore.

This case took place in my 'backyard' in neighboring Price County. I was brought into the case by the boys' mother, Roberta to work with an ex-detective turned private investigator, Dale Miller. (An alias)

Author Kathryn Jewel would come to write a book about the case, called Brothers Silenced.

Although it's an interesting read, the book was the result of Jewel getting into a pissing match with Roberta Moore. She didn't get all of her facts straight - especially regarding the psychics involved. To be far to Jewel she did contact me to be interviewed for the book. Given that I was working the case with Dale, I felt like I was bound by confidentiality at the time.

To set the record straight: The psychics Roberta brought into the case did not introduce Satanism into the case s Jewel charged. Roberta Moore

did that herself. The only way to describe Roberta would have been batchit crazy like a fox. She was on a vendetta against her ex-husband and the Jehovah Witness church for killing her favorite child, Ben - even though she was involved in their deaths up to her eyeballs.

Dale and I worked with Roberta for four years and they were the four lonnnnnnnnnnnnngest years of our lives. She was attempting to steer our investigation at every turn - to get revenge against her ex-husband and the Jehovah Witnesses without exposing her own role in her sons' deaths. It was the first real taste I got of just how dysfunctional Illuminati families are that they will kill their own children to protect themselves and their cult.

The case was virtually unknown to the public so I was surprised to find in the years since, several videos have been done on the case, most of them coming from Roberta's orchestrated point of view, that of being a "grieving mother". However, the video below is the most accurate of them:

Note: I was the female officer working with the private investigator mentioned in the video

You can hear a good podcast of the case here

Definitely worth listening to! Very comprehensive!

Background

John Moore was the boys' father.

He refused to speak to anyone about the case, having been completely brainwashed by the Jehovah Witnesses.

John was a self employed logger, which didn't provide more than a marginal living for the family, Roberta claiming they lived on welfare most of the time.

By accounts of people who knew him, John always had a scowl on his face and there were allegations he was physically abusive with

his family. He kept the family isolated and to themselves. If there was anything notable about John it was how brainwashed he was via the Jehovah Witness religion. He hated anyone who wasn't Jehovah's Witness - to the

point of once aiming a gun at one of Roberta's sisters who'd left the Jehovah Witnesses. Nor was he above bribing his own children to attend Kingdom Hall - namely Robert and Ben with a motorcycle. At the time I thought Odd, the family's on welfare but he can afford to buy a motorcycle?

John did force his family to work in the woods with him cutting trees, even very young Robert and Ben. John was told by the county he was not to take the boys into the woods using chainsaws doing such dangerous work.

This didn't sit well with John as reported. He pulled the boys from working in the woods only temporarily, then returned them to working in the woods, chainsaws in hand.

According to Roberta (later verified by her sister) John would force Roberta to help him cut wood immediately after giving birth to their youngest child, Lisa - even forcing Roberta to bundle up newborn Lisa and take her into the woods in the dead of winter for hours at a time.

John Moore was anything but a likeable guy in my opinion. I sensed violence around him and it's true...he had a perpetual scowl on his face.

Roberta Moore was the boys' mother and as I said, she was batchit crazy like a fox. Literally.

It didn't take long for Dale and I to discover not only was Roberta a pathological liar but she spent the entire four years trying to steer our investigation in the direction she wanted it to go.

She could've cared less that her son Robert died. She seldom even mentioned his name in the four years we worked with her.

Ben was a different story. He was very obviously her favorite child and although involved in her sons' death she was going for the jugulars of her ex-husband John and the Jehovah Witnesses for killing Ben. Ind you, she went on this vendetta YEARS after the boys were murdered.

What was striking about Roberta was her complete lack of emotion and monotone way of speaking. This was an emotionally detached woman for certain. She also fancied herself a detective (in her own delusional mind) and absolutely loved being in the limelight and the center of attention as long as she was seen as the pitied victim, the poor mother whose sons had been murdered.

She was an extremely manipulative woman - or at least tried to be. At one point she told me the only reason she'd married her next husband (also named John) was because he'd promised to buy her a dishwasher. On another occasion Roberta was at a store similar to Home Depot and an object fell off a shelf, glancing Roberta in the head. She sent me a photo of her injury, which was nothing more than a slight scratch. Roberta then proceeded to sue the store for her "injury". This was typical Modus Operandi for Roberta Moore.

At one point she asked me if I wanted to see a picture of her father, Cy Paul. I really didn't...but played along and said "Sure". Imagine my shock when I opened the email to discover she'd sent me a photo of her father lying in his casket! But this was typical Roberta.

Ron Thieriault was John and Roberta's eldest son.
Mostly he was in and out of jail on drug charges but I couldn't stand being around the guy. He was just plain creepy.

I'd discover why when Roberta accidentally sent me an email that was meant for Ron.

This email referred to me and what I'd picked up psychically, Roberta saying to Ron "She has it almost right but not quite!" Roberta then instructed Ron to dispose of evidence related to

Robert's and Ben's deaths, that Ron supposedly had stored in his barn. Very shortly after I received that email Ron tore his barn down. Leveled it to the ground. Dale and I realized we likely had one of the two shooters in our sights.

John Jr. was the next eldest son. In the middle of the night on his 18th birthday John snuck out of the house and hightailed it to Florida, never being in contact with his family since.
Smart move on his part.

Robert Moore was only 13 years old when he was killed.

Robert and I communicated after his death and for the duration of our investigation so he and I formed a close bond with one another.

He was angry about what had been done to them, more so to Ben as he acted as Ben's protector when the boys were still alive and he took that role very seriously.

I found him to be very forthright in answering my questions.

I almost had to chuckle when in typical teenage fashion he blew a gasket over Roberta going through his school backpack, yelling "THAT WAS MY PERSONAL STUFF!" So typical teenager. When I pointed out to him "Do you really need what was in your backpack now?" He had to laugh at himself when I said that.
Robert was a laid back kid, very intelligent and yes, protective even of me. I still think of him frequently to this day.

Ben was John and Roberta's fourth child and very obviously Roberta's favorite.
Ben always appeared at Robert's side but wouldn't say anything about what happened to them. I sensed he was afraid to, especially regarding Roberta so I didn't push him to answer questions.

He would speak to me, instructing me to call him "Benihana" but never about anything having to do with his parents. He had to have been the family comedian, he was an adorable little imp with me. He captured my heart from the get go.

Lisa Moore was John and Roberta's youngest child and only daughter. She struck me as someone who hated everyone and everything. She was very sullen like her father and the child most like him in personality. This probably explains why she seemed to have any kind of relationship with John, and I'm sure from John's point of view this was because Lisa was also involved with the Jehovah Witnesses.

She didn't appear to have any emotional connection to Roberta at all apart from loathing. So I wasn't surprised when it surfaced she'd written in her diary that she wanted to shoot and kill Roberta. That scared me given how dysfunctional the Moore family was and that her brother Ron had participated in killing his own brothers.

The Crime Scene

I apologize I don't have the original crime scene photos, video, autopsy reports, etc. to show you. When I moved to my new house I decided I wasn't going to move anything unnecessary. It had been years since I'd worked the Moore case or even looked at the files so tossed them out, seeing no further need for them.

Ogema Rails to Trails where the boys' bodies were found

There were actually two trails - and upper trail and a lower trail. On the sides of both trails were very steep wooded embankments with a small gully between them. The boys' car and their bodies were found on the lower trail. Below is a diagram of how the boys bodies were positioned behind the car.

Robert's head was facing the trail entrance, his feet and lower legs under the car.

Ben's body was facing the opposite direction with an old Remington .22 rifle placed squarely between his legs.

Both boys had a gunshot wound to the head, Robert's wound being to the left side of his head.

The scene had very obviously been staged to look like a suicide. In fact, EMT Neil Holmes stated his first impression was the scene had been staged. It stuck him as something that would've been staged for an EMT drill.

Mike Roberts was the first deputy from the Price Sheriff's Office on the scene and he too felt the scene had been staged.

Dale and I immediately knew the scene had been staged to look like a suicide, so many mistakes had been made in staging it:

Robert's gunshot wound was to the left side of his head but Robert was right handed. For a 13 year old's arms to be long enough to reach the trigger of a rifle, much less shoot himself in the left side of the head would've been next to impossible.
Spent shell casings were found at the scene, .22 longs. The rifle planted at the scene took .22 shorts and John had stated he didn't have any ammunition for that old rifle.
This old Remington rifle jammed after every shot. You have to pry the spent shell casing out of the chamber after the gun was fired. It took Dale a full 6 minutes using a pliers to pry a spent shell casing out of that gun. I was unable to pry it loose at all. There was a butter knife found in the boys' car. There's no way Ben could've pried the shell casing out of that gun, much less using a butter knife. Robert was shot first so he couldn't have pried the casing out in order for Ben to then shoot himself.
Even if he had been able to get the casing out, then shoot himself, the rifle would not have fallen neatly between his legs, the way it was positioned!

The rear window of the boys' car was covered in blood spatter (above). It would indicate at least one of the boys was shot at the tailgate of the car if not both for there to be that much blood spatter on the window.
The car was found with the driver's seat pushed back as far as it would go, meaning neither Robert nor Ben's legs would've been long enough to reach the accelerator to drive the car with the car seat pushed that far back. John Moore was a shorter man however, Ron was tall. It had to have been Ron that drove the car. This would explain why Robert's feet and lower legs were found underneath the car. Ron had backed the car up to stage the scene, covering Robert's feet and legs. Had Robert actually committed suicide, his body would not have fallen in such a manner that his feet and lower legs ended up beneath the car.
In the crime scene photos it was evident at least of couple of inches of the boys' underwear was showing above the waist of their jeans. The waistband of their jeans was also much lower than they should have been on both boys. This was also noted in their autopsy report. This indicated the boys' bodies had been dragged over the gravel trail by their arms to be positioned behind the car in staging the scene.
Robert had been shot first and much sooner than Ben had. When EMT's arrived on the scene, Ben still had color in his face and his body was still warm. John Moore had told investigators that when he found the boys' bodies Ben was making a gurgling sound, indicating he was still alive.
Roberta claimed she heard a single gunshot while John Moore was on the trail himself discovering the boys' bodies. Her story about hearing this gunshot changed several times. I believe she did hear one gunshot - that of John Moore finishing the gurgling Ben off.

On the crime scene video I pointed out to Dale that a blowfly was filmed on Ben's body. Blowflies will find a dead body within 15 minutes of death so Ben hadn't been dead very long when EMT's got to him.

There was most definitely a cover up by the Price County Sheriff's Office and the coroner that the boys had committed suicide. Mike Roberts was the only cop with any homicide investigative experience within the Price County SO. He reported he was thwarted at every turn by then Sheriff Richard Heitkamper and all evidence points to this being the case.

Roberta Moore placed a phone call to 911 to report the boys had committed suicide sometime at 9:25 am that morning, shortly before the Price Co. Sheriff's Department and EMT's arrived on the trail.
The crime scene was never cordoned off to preserve evidence until hours later. John and Roberta were never separated to be interviewed. Mike Roberts wanted to get the clothing they were wearing as evidence as well as perform GSR (gun shot residue) tests on both of them. Heitkamper wouldn't even allow Roberts to see or speak to them until 5 pm that evening, which had given John and Roberta ample time to get their stories straight, clean up to erase any GSR residue, change clothes out of the clothes they'd been wearing that morning. Odd given Mike Roberts was the only person in the Sheriff's Department to have any experience whatsoever in investigating homicides whereas Heitkamper had no such experience. That was just the start of the cover up and what Dale and I would discover.

There were absolutely glaring inconsistencies in the Moore case that were deliberately overlooked. Even Roberta's own father, Cy Paul seemed to have known who shot the boys and that his daughter was involved, although he maintained John (Moore) had shot the boys, then walked 10 minutes home through the woods as he knew those woods like the back of his hand from having been a logger working in them.

Cy Paul also stated Roberta hadn't been acting like herself that morning. He said she was very fidgety and kept looking at the clock, waiting for that phone call to come from John saying the boys were "missing". As soon as she got that call she raced home.

She knew beforehand Robert was going to be killed but she never expected Ben to be killed as well. That wasn't part of the original plan and Ben was her favorite. Nonetheless, she helped John with the cover up, fully cooperated with it. And for many years after Robert's and Ben's murder she said nothing to anyone about John and Ron killing the boys and most certainly not about her own involvement.

I can only imagine Ben's death eating her up all those years before she launched her vendetta, plastering every Internet source she possibly could that would portray her as the grieving mother and claiming she had no idea who killed the boys. Roberta did love being in the limelight - as long as no fingers of guilt pointed in her direction.

But the closer she got to realizing Dale and I knew she'd been involved, the more she went off the rails emotionally. She bombarded my email with photos of various locations, shacks and whatnot, asking me "Is this the satanic place you saw?" (I hadn't told her I'd seen anything satanic even though I had my suspicions by that point. As I said, author Kathryn Jewel got it wrong, blaming psychics for introducing "the ridiculous notion" that we'd introduced satanism into the case. It was Roberta herself who did this trying to steer the investigation in the direction she wanted it to go.

The last photo she sent me was of a plastic baby doll she'd marked up with red and purple magic marker. I made a mockup of that doll at left.
She told me this was a doll the Satanists involved had used in their rituals - which was patently ridiculous. They don't use plastic dolls in their rituals.

I countered with "Well, if you weren't directly involved with these Satanists how would you have gotten a hold of a doll they used in their rituals? They don't leave ritual stuff just lying around for people to find, you know..."

Crickets chirping on Roberta's end as she tried to come up with an answer for that one.

I followed this up with what Robert had told and shown me to ask her:
"Why don't you tell me about Ben hiding under the bed and the green Lego, Roberta? Why don't you tell me why Ben was hiding under the bed with that green Lego you found?" Kill shot. She knew Dale and I knew she was involved

up to her wazoo and at that point she turned on both of us.

This was how she and Kathryn Jewel had gotten into a pissing match that Jewel wrote Brothers Silenced.

Jewel saw how off the rails Roberta had gone too and figured out what she was up to.

Roberta had read an account of another young boy who'd died and been autopsied at Ramsey Medical Center, the same place Robert and Ben had been autopsied at. This boy's mother was suspicious regarding his death so had his body exhumed to be re-examined by her own independently hired ME. What they discovered was that all of his body organs were missing and that his body had been filled with kitty litter. (No doubt his organs had been sold on the Illuminati body organ black market.)

Roberta claimed that because Robert and Ben had been autopsied at the same medical center, the same thing had been done to them. Which was impossible because only four days after their deaths, John and Roberta had rushed to have their bodies cremated, Roberta now claiming she'd never signed any papers to have her sons cremated. John Moore refused to pay for a grave marker for his sons, so Roberta went out and bought one herself. What she buried there (if anything), who knows?

At any rate, Jewel didn't appreciate being played for a fool by Roberta so wrote Brothers Silenced in a kind of retaliation against Roberta.

I believe I got the true and accurate story from Robert and Dale later personally confirmed to me I got everything on the psychic front 100% correct.

The Moore's, their friends, an elder from the Jehovah Witness church had been sexually abusing Robert for years. But he was now 13, too old to be of interest to them and he knew they were starting in on younger Ben.

(This is why Ben was hiding under the bed with the green Lego) Being the protective older brother, he wasn't going to allow them to do that to Ben and threatened he'd tell about the sexual stuff going on. There's no faster way for the kid in an Illuminati family to get themselves killed.

He'd also witnessed his father doing drug deals out of the trunk of his car. Robert was a threat to the cult so he had to go.

The early morning of their deaths Robert saw the face of the Jehovah Witness elder appear at his and Ben's bedroom window. Robert knew what that meant so he grabbed Ben and took off out of the house so Ben couldn't be sexually abused. Although it was cold and rainy that morning, the boys were found wearing no jackets. socks or shoes. Robert had stayed up all night to protect Ben so was still dressed in the clothes he'd worn the day before. Ben had dressed for school already by that time.

John and Ron came after Robert with their guns and Robert knew they were going to kill them on the trail. Robert shouted "RUN!" at Ben and Ben took off running. The ME had found numerous scrapes on their legs and dirt beneath their fingernails that he claimed he couldn't explain. This was noted on their autopsy reports as well.
I don't know if the boys were on the upper trail or lower trail at that point but they took off running/sliding down the steep embankment that lead to the other trail, then had to claw their way up the steep embankment on the other side of the gully between the two trails to get to the second trail. This is how their legs got all scratched up and they got dirt beneath their fingernails.

John and Ron caught Robert and shot him in the head, killing him. Then they went in search of Ben who'd managed to get away. Little Ben was no match for the two of them. They caught him and dragged him down onto the lower trail along with Robert's dead body, then shot Ben in the head. Ben had witnessed what they were about to do to Robert so he was collateral damage that had to be disposed of. John and Ron then staged the scene to look as though the boys had committed suicide.

Robert's version of their murders fit the case evidence perfectly.

Dale and I found yet more evidence of the boys' murders being Illuminati related.
Dale found a drug trafficking ring being run out of the Price County D.A.'s office and I found 7 more highly suspicious deaths in Ogema prior to Robert's and Ben's deaths, ALL of which had been ruled "suicides".

As is so often the case in working cold cases, we just couldn't get enough evidence to support the three Moore's being prosecutable. I felt horrible, as though I'd let the boys down as I'd promised them I'd do everything possible to nail those responsible for their deaths. However, Robert told me they both knew I had done everything possible and it was okay.

Case Aftermath

John V. Moore passed away March 2, 2021.

You can read his obituary here but you might want to grab a barf bag before you do. I certainly wouldn't rave a father who killed 2 of his own children a "good father".

Ron still lives in Ogema with his wife.

John Jr. still remains estranged from the family.

Lisa graduated high school but I don't know where she's living now. I hope she got the psychological help she needed and is living a happy life.

Mike Roberts retired from the Sheriff's Department.

Neil Holmes retired as an EMT.

Upon realizing that no one was any longer believing she wasn't involved in her sons' deaths, Roberta pulled everything she could that she'd posted online about Robert's and Ben's deaths and crawled back under the rock from whence she came.

Her second husband (John) divorced her. After buying her the obligatory dishwasher.

Roberta died on March 6, 2017.

May she and John rot in hell for what they did to those boys.

Had Robert and Ben lived they'd be grown men now with families of their own. They still pop in on me from time to time just to say hi.