Speaker 1: The first clue was not found in a court room
Speaker 1: or buried in an old case file. It was found
Speaker 1: in an apartment where police had expected to find a suspect.
Speaker 1: On December eighth, twenty twenty two, officers in Montgomery County, Maryland,
Speaker 1: were responding to a shooting at a convenience store. A
Speaker 1: sixty one year old cashier identified in the supplied case
Speaker 1: information as Ilu, had been fatally shot during an altercation
Speaker 1: inside the store. Investigators initially had a straightforward question who
Speaker 1: had walked into the store, confronted the cashier and opened fire.
Speaker 1: Surveillance footage quickly gave them an answer. The footage reportedly
Speaker 1: showed a man leaving the store after the shooting. A
Speaker 1: witness who had been nearby described seeing the suspect carrying
Speaker 1: a firearm and a bottle of sweet tea. She contacted
Speaker 1: nine one one and provided police with a description while
Speaker 1: the details were still fresh in her mind. The investigation
Speaker 1: led officers toward a nearby apartment complex. There, investigators obtained
Speaker 1: information identifying the suspected shooter as thirty one year old
Speaker 1: Tory More. But Moore's connection to the shooting was only
Speaker 1: the beginning of what police were about to uncover. According
Speaker 1: to the supplied information, Moore had already been causing problems
Speaker 1: at the convenience store. The store manager had reportedly contacted
Speaker 1: police several times about his escalating behavior. There had been
Speaker 1: previous confrontations involving employees, and on the day of the shooting,
Speaker 1: surveillance footage allegedly captured another dispute. The disagreement reportedly began
Speaker 1: over a bottle of sweet tea and other merchandise. The
Speaker 1: situation escalated, Objects were thrown, and the cashier eventually confronted
Speaker 1: More with a bar in an attempt to make him leave.
Speaker 1: Then the firearm appeared. Investigators believed More fired several rounds,
Speaker 1: fatally striking Elu. By itself, that case was already serious,
Speaker 1: but when officers went to Moore's apartment, something immediately changed
Speaker 1: the direction of the investigation. There was a strong odor inside.
Speaker 1: Investigators followed it. Near the side of Moore's bed, they
Speaker 1: discovered human remains. The condition of the remains reportedly made
Speaker 1: it difficult at first to determine the person's identity or
Speaker 1: even their sex, and more was still there. Discovery raised
Speaker 1: an immediate question, who was the person inside the apartment?
Speaker 1: Investigators initially wondered whether the remains could belong to Moore's mother.
Speaker 1: Moore himself reportedly asked about contacting his mother, adding to
Speaker 1: the uncertainty surrounding the identity of the deceased person, but
Speaker 1: the answer would eventually be far more personal. The remains
Speaker 1: were identified as Denise Middleton. Denise was twenty six years old.
Speaker 1: She had been in an on and off relationship with Moore,
Speaker 1: and according to the supplied information, she was approximately eight
Speaker 1: and a half months pregnant with a baby the couple
Speaker 1: plan to name Ezekiel. Her life had already been difficult.
Speaker 1: Denise had struggled with homelessness and had been involved in
Speaker 1: a program intended to help her regain stability. Investigators reportedly
Speaker 1: learned that Moore had encouraged her to leave that program.
Speaker 1: The relationship that followed was unstable, with the two moving
Speaker 1: between different places and states and repeatedly arguing. Then came
Speaker 1: the final known footage of Denise. She was seen entering
Speaker 1: an elevator with Moore. She appeared frightened, and she would
Speaker 1: never be seen alive again. For investigators, the shooting at
Speaker 1: the convenience store had suddenly become connected to something much larger.
Speaker 1: They were no longer dealing with a single violent incident.
Speaker 1: They were trying to understand how Denise had died, how
Speaker 1: long her remains had been inside the apartment, and what
Speaker 1: had happened between her and More before that elevator ride
Speaker 1: became the last known image of her life. Those questions
Speaker 1: would become central to the investigation. The questions surrounding Denise
Speaker 1: became even more difficult when investigators began comparing what they
Speaker 1: knew about her relationship with More against the account More
Speaker 1: gave them. More reportedly described their relationship in a way
Speaker 1: that placed much of the conflict on Denise. He spoke
Speaker 1: about arguments, disagreements, and incidents between them, portraying himself as
Speaker 1: someone who had been caught in escalating situations rather than
Speaker 1: someone responsible for creating them. But investigators had another source
Speaker 1: of information. They had the footage, and they had Denise's absence.
Speaker 1: According to the supplied case information, Denise had been struggling
Speaker 1: with homelessness when she entered a program designed to help
Speaker 1: her get back on her feet. She was pregnant and
Speaker 1: trying to establish some of stability before the birth of
Speaker 1: her child. Instead, More allegedly convinced her to leave the program,
Speaker 1: and the couple continued moving from place to place. The
Speaker 1: relationship became increasingly unstable. There were arguments, there was reportedly
Speaker 1: at least one physical confrontation. Moore later described one of
Speaker 1: those incidents during questioning, presenting his own interpretation of what
Speaker 1: had happened. But there was something investigators could not overlook.
Speaker 1: Denise was not there to tell them her side. She
Speaker 1: could not explain what happened during the final days of
Speaker 1: her life, She could not correct Moore's version of events,
Speaker 1: and she could not explain why she had ultimately ended
Speaker 1: up inside his apartment. That left investigators with a difficult
Speaker 1: task reconstructing a relationship from the statements of the person
Speaker 1: accused of killing her and from whatever physical and digital
Speaker 1: evidence remained behind. The apartment itself became an important part
Speaker 1: of that reconstruction. According to the supplied information, Denise's remains
Speaker 1: had been inside the apartment while Moore continued living there.
Speaker 1: Investigators also reportedly found evidence connected to the broader investigation,
Speaker 1: including forensic material and DNA that they believed could link
Speaker 1: more to the shooting at the convenience store. Meanwhile, Moore
Speaker 1: continued talking during questioning, investigators discussed the store shooting with him.
Speaker 1: He reportedly argued that the cashier had confronted him and
Speaker 1: that the situation had escalated after the employee struck him
Speaker 1: with a bar, but investigators did not accept that explanation
Speaker 1: as a justification for what happened. Surveillance footage had captured
Speaker 1: the encounter. That footage gave investigators something extremely important in
Speaker 1: a case like this, a record that did not depend
Speaker 1: entirely on someone's memory. It could show what happened inside
Speaker 1: the store, how the confrontation developed, and what more did afterward.
Speaker 1: The sweet tea was also an oddly important detail. The
Speaker 1: same type of drink that had been at the center
Speaker 1: of the confrontation at the store reportedly became something more
Speaker 1: asked for after his arrest. Two investigators. The coincidence was
Speaker 1: difficult to ignore, but the store shooting was no longer
Speaker 1: the only question. There was Denise, and there was her
Speaker 1: unborn child. As investigators worked to establish what had happened
Speaker 1: to her, they also had to examine the circuit stances
Speaker 1: leading up to her death. The relationship between Denise and
Speaker 1: Moore was not simply a matter of two people who
Speaker 1: had recently met, they had a history together, and, according
Speaker 1: to the supplied information, that history included repeated arguments, instability,
Speaker 1: and attempts by Denise to find a safer and more
Speaker 1: stable life. Then at some point that life ended. The
Speaker 1: last known footage showed Denise entering the elevator with Moore.
Speaker 1: She was heavily pregnant, she appeared afraid, and whatever happened
Speaker 1: after those elevator doors closed would have to be reconstructed
Speaker 1: from evidence left behind by someone who could still speak,
Speaker 1: but whose version of events investigators had reason to question.
Speaker 1: That evidence would become increasingly important because the investigation was
Speaker 1: no longer based on a single witness or a single
Speaker 1: piece of footage. Investigators were assembling different fragments of the
Speaker 1: same story and asking whether those fragments could fit together.
Speaker 1: At the center of it all was Moore's explanation of
Speaker 1: what had happened with Denise. During questioning, he reportedly acknowledged
Speaker 1: that the two had been together and that their relationship
Speaker 1: had become complicated. He described arguments and physical confrontations, but
Speaker 1: his account placed emphasis on circumstances that he believed explained
Speaker 1: his actions. Investigators, however, were looking at the situation from
Speaker 1: another angle. They had found Denise's remains inside the apartment,
Speaker 1: they knew she had been pregnant, and they had information
Speaker 1: suggesting that she had been frightened during the final known
Speaker 1: encounter captured on video. The question was no longer simply
Speaker 1: whether More in Denise had argued. The question was what
Speaker 1: happened after those arguments ended. More reportedly told investigators that
Speaker 1: Denise was still alive when he last left her. That statement,
Speaker 1: if accurately represented in the supplied case material, became one
Speaker 1: of the most important claims to test against the physical evidence,
Speaker 1: because once investigators know a person is dead, the timeline
Speaker 1: becomes everything. When was the victim last seen alive, who
Speaker 1: was with her, where did she go, how long could
Speaker 1: she have remained alive, and what evidence could establish what
Speaker 1: happened during the missing period. For Denise, that period was
Speaker 1: particularly significant because she had no opportunity to describe what
Speaker 1: happened herself. Investigators therefore had to rely on the apartment,
Speaker 1: surveillance footage, forensic evidence, and the statements surrounding the relationship.
Speaker 1: At the same time, the convenience store investigation was developing
Speaker 1: its own evidentiary trail. Police reportedly recovered shell casings from
Speaker 1: the scene and examined them alongside evidence connected to more
Speaker 1: Investigators also discussed DNA evidence, including what they described as
Speaker 1: touch DNA, which can sometimes provide identifying information from material
Speaker 1: left behind through physical contact. The significance of that evidence
Speaker 1: depended on what was actually recovered, where it was recovered,
Speaker 1: and how it compared with known samples, but investigators appeared
Speaker 1: confident that the forensic work could strengthen their case. That
Speaker 1: mattered because Moore had continued to characterize the store incident
Speaker 1: as something that happened because another man had confronted him,
Speaker 1: investigators saw the events differently. The surveillance footage provided a
Speaker 1: record of the confrontation, and according to the supplied information,
Speaker 1: officers believed it contradicted more suggestion that he had simply
Speaker 1: been defending himself. But even as the evidence surrounding the
Speaker 1: store's shooting became clearer, Denise's death remained the more haunting mystery.
Speaker 1: Why was she inside Moore's apartment, why had she remained
Speaker 1: there while he continued living in the same space, and
Speaker 1: what happened between the last footage of Denise and the
Speaker 1: moment investigators discovered her remains. There was another heartbreaking detail
Speaker 1: investigators had to confront. Denise had been preparing for the
Speaker 1: arrival of her son. She reportedly wanted to build a
Speaker 1: family and had been looking toward a future that would
Speaker 1: include her child. Instead, investigators were now reconstructing the final
Speaker 1: days of a woman who had disappeared from that future entirely.
Speaker 1: The apartment had become a crime scene, the convenience store
Speaker 1: had become another and more stood at the intersection of
Speaker 1: both investigations. For detectives, the challenge was no longer simply
Speaker 1: identifying the suspect. They needed to establish what could be proven,
Speaker 1: separate evidence from Moore's explanations, and determine exactly how Denise's
Speaker 1: final hours unfolded. Because somewhere between the elevator footage and
Speaker 1: the discovery inside that apartment was the missing sequence of
Speaker 1: events that could explain how a woman so clear close
Speaker 1: to giving birth ended up becoming the second victim in
Speaker 1: an investigation that had begun with a bottle of sweet
Speaker 1: tea and a gunshot, and that missing sequence became the
Speaker 1: focus of the investigator's attention. The more they examined Moore's account,
Speaker 1: the more important the timeline became. His statements could be
Speaker 1: compared against surveillance footage, physical evidence, and the circumstances in
Speaker 1: which Denise was found. Every detail mattered because a single
Speaker 1: contradiction could change how investigators understood the final days of
Speaker 1: her life. More reportedly continued to describe the relationship as complicated.
Speaker 1: He spoke about arguments and incidents in which he claimed
Speaker 1: Denise had confronted him or attempted to create a scene.
Speaker 1: Investigators listened, but they were not simply accepting his interpretation.
Speaker 1: Their job was to determine what could actually be supported.
Speaker 1: That distinction mattered. A person's explanation of a violent event
Speaker 1: is not the same thing as proof of what happened,
Speaker 1: and in this case, there was a woman who could
Speaker 1: never provide her own account. According to the supplied information,
Speaker 1: Denise had been struggling to find stability before her death.
Speaker 1: Her pregnant and seat made that situation even more urgent.
Speaker 1: She was approaching the end of her pregnancy, and the
Speaker 1: future she had been preparing for was close enough to imagine. Instead,
Speaker 1: her remains were discovered beside the bed where Moore had
Speaker 1: continued living. The investigator's discovery also raised questions about time.
Speaker 1: How long had Denise been there, what had more done
Speaker 1: during that period, who, if anyone, knew that she was missing,
Speaker 1: and why had nobody intervened before police entered the apartment
Speaker 1: because of an entirely different investigation. Those questions gave the
Speaker 1: case an unsettling dimension. The shooting at the convenience store
Speaker 1: had effectively exposed something investigators might otherwise have taken much
Speaker 1: longer to discover. If Moore had not allegedly shot eye
Speaker 1: Lou on December eighth, police might not have had an
Speaker 1: immediate reason to identify him, locate his apartment, and enter
Speaker 1: the place where Denise was found. One violent incident had
Speaker 1: led investigators directly to another. The investigation also revealed how
Speaker 1: many warning signs had surrounded Moore before the shooting. The
Speaker 1: store manager had reportedly contacted police multiple times about his behavior.
Speaker 1: Employees had allegedly experienced confrontations with him before December eighth.
Speaker 1: Yet those earlier incidents had not prevented the confrontation that
Speaker 1: ultimately ended with Ailu's death. Now investigators had to reconstruct
Speaker 1: what had gone wrong at the convenience store. Surveillance footage
Speaker 1: offered a relatively clear sequence. Moore entered the business, took
Speaker 1: a bottle of sweet Tea and became involved in a
Speaker 1: dispute with the cashier. The confrontation escalated and Alieu was
Speaker 1: fatally shot. Afterward, More reportedly walked away from the store.
Speaker 1: A witness saw him. Police received a description. Surveillance footage
Speaker 1: helped establish where he went, and that trail brought officers
Speaker 1: to his apartment. Inside. However, the investigation changed forever. The
Speaker 1: remains discovered there belonged to Denise Middleton. She was not
Speaker 1: simply another name connected to Moore. She was the woman
Speaker 1: who had been carrying his child, the woman whose final
Speaker 1: known image showed her entering an elevator with him. For investigators,
Speaker 1: the contrast was difficult to ignore. The footage showed Denise alive,
Speaker 1: the apartment showed what happened afterward, but the exact chain
Speaker 1: of events between those two points still had to be established,
Speaker 1: and Moore's own words would become part of that effort.
Speaker 1: Investigators continued questioning him, testing his explanations, and looking for
Speaker 1: details that could be independently verified. Because the central question
Speaker 1: was no longer whether Denise had died. That was already known.
Speaker 1: The question was how her final hours unfolded, and whether
Speaker 1: the evidence could establish Moore's responsibility for her death beyond
Speaker 1: his competing explanations. That distinction would become critical as the
Speaker 1: case moved forward. As investigators continued working through the evidence,
Speaker 1: they were left with two separate crime scenes that appeared
Speaker 1: to be connected by the same man. At the convenience store,
Speaker 1: there was surveillance footage, eyewitness information, and forensic evidence surrounding
Speaker 1: the death of Ilieu. Inside the apartment, there were Denise's
Speaker 1: remains and the complicated history between her and Moore. The
Speaker 1: challenge was proving exactly what happened in each location. For
Speaker 1: Ilu's death, the sequence appeared comparatively straightforward. A dispute began
Speaker 1: inside the store, More reportedly became involved in an argument
Speaker 1: with the cashier. The confrontation escalated, and Moore fired the weapon,
Speaker 1: but Moore's explanation reportedly attempted to place the shooting in
Speaker 1: the context of a confrontation. Investigators did not appear persuaded.
Speaker 1: They had the surveillance footage, and that footage allowed them
Speaker 1: to compare Moore's account against what actually happened inside the store.
Speaker 1: It also helped establish his movements afterward. That evidence became
Speaker 1: especially important because the investigation had begun with a witness
Speaker 1: who did not know More personally. She simply saw a
Speaker 1: man leaving the store. She remembered what he looked like.
Speaker 1: She called police, and that description helped give investigators their
Speaker 1: first path toward identifying him. Then came the apartment. The
Speaker 1: discovery of Denise meant investigators had to go backward in time.
Speaker 1: They had to understand the relationship, the movements of both people,
Speaker 1: and the circumstances surrounding Denise's final days. According to the
Speaker 1: supplied information, Moore and Denise had moved between different locations
Speaker 1: and states. Their relationship was unstable, and their arguments sometimes
Speaker 1: became physical. More reportedly described one confrontation in which he
Speaker 1: claimed Denise had pushed or struck him, and that he
Speaker 1: was attempting to restrain her, but investigators had reason to
Speaker 1: question whether that account represented the complete story. The final
Speaker 1: known footage of Denise became particularly significant. She was seen
Speaker 1: accompanying More toward the apartment. She appeared frightened. There was
Speaker 1: no indication from that footage that she was willingly walking
Speaker 1: into a situation that would end her life, but appearance
Speaker 1: alone could not establish what happened afterward. Investigators needed evidence.
Speaker 1: They examined the apartment, They reviewed available video, They questioned more,
Speaker 1: They considered forensic findings, and they attempted to build a
Speaker 1: timeline that could survive scrutiny. Meanwhile, the pregnancy added another
Speaker 1: layer to the investigation. Denise was reportedly about eight and
Speaker 1: a half months pregnant, The child was expected soon, and
Speaker 1: the couple had reportedly discussed naming him Ezekiel. That meant
Speaker 1: the loss extended beyond Denise herself. There was a child
Speaker 1: who would never be born into the future she had
Speaker 1: been preparing for. For detectives and those who knew Denise,
Speaker 1: that reality made the case especially difficult to process. Yet
Speaker 1: investigations cannot be solved by emotion alone. The evidence had
Speaker 1: to establish what happened. That was why more statements mattered
Speaker 1: so much. Investigators reportedly tried different approaches during questioning. Rather
Speaker 1: than immediately confronting him with every piece of evidence, they
Speaker 1: sometimes allowed him to explain events in his own words.
Speaker 1: He continued talking about the store incident and his relationship
Speaker 1: with Denise. At times, investigators reportedly appeared sympathetic, even suggesting
Speaker 1: explanations that might make more and more comfortable discussing what happened.
Speaker 1: But behind those conversations was a simple investigative strategy. They
Speaker 1: were listening for inconsistencies, they were comparing his words against
Speaker 1: what they already knew, and they were waiting to see
Speaker 1: whether more would provide information that only someone involved could
Speaker 1: reasonably know. The case had started with a shooting at
Speaker 1: a convenience store, but by this point investigators were trying
Speaker 1: to reconstruct the life and death of Denise Middleton, a
Speaker 1: pregnant twenty six year old whose final known moments had
Speaker 1: been captured on video, and somewhere within that time line
Speaker 1: was the answer to the question that mattered most, what
Speaker 1: happened after the elevator doors closed. The elevator footage could
Speaker 1: show where Denise was going, but it could not show
Speaker 1: what happened after the doors opened. That gap in the
Speaker 1: timeline became one of the most important pieces of the investigation.
Speaker 1: By then, detectives knew that Denise had entered the apartment
Speaker 1: with Moore. They knew she was later found dead inside.
Speaker 1: They also knew that Moore had remained in the apartment afterward.
Speaker 1: What they did not have was a complete, independently verified
Speaker 1: account of the events that connected those moments. More statements
Speaker 1: therefore came under increasing scrutiny. He reportedly maintained that there
Speaker 1: had been conflict between him and Denise, and he attempted
Speaker 1: to describe their relationship as a series of arguments in
Speaker 1: which both sides played a role. But investigators were not
Speaker 1: interested in simply deciding who had won an argument. They
Speaker 1: were trying to determine how Denise died. The difference was enormous.
Speaker 1: A disagreement could explain tension, it could not, by itself,
Speaker 1: explain to death, and it could not explain why Denise's
Speaker 1: remains were discovered inside the apartment. Investigators also had had
Speaker 1: to consider the possibility that some details of Moore's account
Speaker 1: were designed to shift responsibility away from himself. That is
Speaker 1: why they continued comparing his statements with physical and digital evidence,
Speaker 1: rather than relying on his explanation alone. The apartment provided
Speaker 1: another important piece of the puzzle. According to the supplied information,
Speaker 1: Moore had been living there without functioning heat because utility
Speaker 1: bills had reportedly gone unpaid for months. When police arrived,
Speaker 1: Moore appeared more concerned about the cold, his clothing, his belongings,
Speaker 1: and even the money in his possession than about the
Speaker 1: discovery inside the bedroom. That behavior did not prove what
Speaker 1: had happened to Denise, but investigators could not ignore it.
Speaker 1: Neither could they ignore the fact that More reportedly asked
Speaker 1: police to count his money multiple times while the investigation
Speaker 1: around him was unfolding. His behavior after the discovery became
Speaker 1: part of the overall picture investigators were documenting. Still, detectives
Speaker 1: had to remain focused on evidence. The forensic investigation continued.
Speaker 1: According to the supplied information, investigators examined shell cases and
Speaker 1: other evidence from the convenience store. DNA evidence was also
Speaker 1: discussed during questioning, including what investigators described as touch DNA.
Speaker 1: That evidence was potentially important because physical material left behind
Speaker 1: at a crime scene can sometimes establish a connection between
Speaker 1: a person and a location or object, But investigators still
Speaker 1: had to determine exactly what the evidence demonstrated. They could
Speaker 1: not simply assume that every forensic finding proved the entire case.
Speaker 1: The same principle applied to Denise's death. The fact that
Speaker 1: she was found in Moore's apartment was significant, but investigators
Speaker 1: still needed to establish the circumstances of her death and
Speaker 1: determine what evidence connected more directly to it. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: store manager's earlier warnings took on a different meaning. Before
Speaker 1: December eighth, Moore had reportedly been known to employees. His
Speaker 1: behavior had allegedly escalated over time, with confrontations and disturbances
Speaker 1: inside the store. The manager had reportedly contacted police repeatedly.
Speaker 1: Those earlier complaints did not predict exactly what would happen
Speaker 1: on December eighth, But after I louw We killed, they
Speaker 1: became part of the history investigators had to examine. There
Speaker 1: was now a documented pattern of conflict surrounding more in
Speaker 1: the store, and there was a second death connected to
Speaker 1: his apartment. The investigation had moved far beyond the original
Speaker 1: question of who shot a cashier. It had become an
Speaker 1: attempt to reconstruct two tragedies and determine whether they were
Speaker 1: part of a larger pattern. For Denise's family, however, the
Speaker 1: investigation carried a different weight. They were not simply waiting
Speaker 1: for detectives to identify a suspect. They were waiting for
Speaker 1: answers about a woman who had been preparing to become
Speaker 1: a mother, and the closer investigators came to the end
Speaker 1: of the timeline, the fewer unanswered moments remained between the
Speaker 1: last image of Denise alive and the discovery that she
Speaker 1: would never walk out of that apartment again. The remaining
Speaker 1: questions could not be answered by the apartment alone. Investigators
Speaker 1: needed to establish a sequence that connected the evidence to
Speaker 1: the people involved. They needed to know what happened to Denise,
Speaker 1: when it happened, and what role Moore played in the
Speaker 1: events leading to her death. That meant going back through
Speaker 1: the relationship. According to the information provided, Denise had been
Speaker 1: trying to rebuild her life while dealing with homelessness and pregnancy.
Speaker 1: The program assisting her offered some structure, but more reportedly
Speaker 1: encouraged her to leave. After that, the couple moved between
Speaker 1: different places, and their relationship continued to deteriorate. Arguments became
Speaker 1: part of their lives. Moore later described some of those
Speaker 1: conflicts during questioning. He reportedly presented certain encounters as situations
Speaker 1: in which Denise was aggressive toward him or attempting to
Speaker 1: make him look like the aggressor, but investigators had something
Speaker 1: more could not control. The final surveillance footage it showed
Speaker 1: Denise shortly before her death, and investigators reportedly believed her
Speaker 1: behavior was significant. She appeared frightened as she accompanied more
Speaker 1: toward the apartment. That did not by itself establish exactly
Speaker 1: what happened inside, but it created a stark contrast with
Speaker 1: the way More described their relationship. For detectives, that contrast
Speaker 1: demanded further examination. They also had to consider the circumstances
Speaker 1: surrounding Denise's pregnancy. She was reportedly approximately eight and a
Speaker 1: half months pregnant, The baby was expected soon, and the
Speaker 1: couple had reportedly discussed the name Ezekiel. The future Denise
Speaker 1: had been preparing for was therefore extremely close. Instead, investigators
Speaker 1: were examining the circumstances of her death. The tragedy was
Speaker 1: compounded by the fact that the investigation had not begun
Speaker 1: because anyone had reported Denise missing. It began with another killing.
Speaker 1: I Lou's death at the convenience store brought police to More,
Speaker 1: Moore brought investigators to the apartment, and the apartment brought
Speaker 1: Denise's death into the case. That chain of events was crucial.
Speaker 1: Had the shooting not occurred, investigators might not have had
Speaker 1: the same immediate reason to locate Moore's apartment. The discovery
Speaker 1: of Denise was therefore directly connected to the investigation that
Speaker 1: followed the store shooting, but investigators still had to separate
Speaker 1: what they knew from what they suspected. They knew Ilu
Speaker 1: had been killed. They knew Moore had been identified as
Speaker 1: the person investigators believed was responsible for the shooting. They
Speaker 1: knew Denise's remains were discovered inside Moore's apartment. They knew
Speaker 1: Denise and Moore had been in a troubled relationship. They
Speaker 1: knew she had been heavily pregnant. They also had surveillance
Speaker 1: and forensic evidence to examine what remained. Was determining precisely
Speaker 1: how those facts connected. The interrogation became another source of information.
Speaker 1: More reportedly continued speaking with detectives, offering explanations for his
Speaker 1: behavior at the store and describing his relationship with Denise.
Speaker 1: Investigators listened carefully, sometimes appearing to accept his framing of
Speaker 1: events before returning to specific details. That approach allowed them
Speaker 1: to keep the conversation moving. More importantly, it gave them
Speaker 1: opportunities to compare his statements with evidence already collected. Every
Speaker 1: explanation could be tested, every timeline could be checked, Every
Speaker 1: claim about what happened could be measured against the physical record,
Speaker 1: and the investigation was no longer about whether Moore had
Speaker 1: a troubled relationship with Denise. It was about whether the
Speaker 1: evidence could establish what happened when that relationship reached its
Speaker 1: final and most devastating moment for Denise's family, The unanswered
Speaker 1: questions were painfully simple. What happened to her? Why did
Speaker 1: she never make it home? And why did the final
Speaker 1: known footage show h entering that elevator with the man
Speaker 1: who would become the central figure in the investigation. Those
Speaker 1: questions remained at the heart of the case as investigators
Speaker 1: continued assembling the evidence surrounding two deaths that had initially
Speaker 1: appeared to be completely separate. The investigation now had to
Speaker 1: move from what appeared suspicious to what could actually be established.
Speaker 1: That distinction is important in any homicide investigation. A disturbing
Speaker 1: discovery can raise questions, but questions are not answers. Investigators
Speaker 1: needed evidence capable of showing what happened to Denise and
Speaker 1: what happened inside the convenience store. At the store, the
Speaker 1: evidence was more immediate. Surveillance footage reportedly captured the confrontation
Speaker 1: involving Moore and Ailu. Investigators could examine the sequence frame
Speaker 1: by frame, comparing it with Moore's explanation. The witness who
Speaker 1: called nine to one one had also provided a description
Speaker 1: of the person she saw leaving the store. Then there
Speaker 1: was the forensic evidence. Investigators reportedly recovered shell casings and
Speaker 1: examined them alongside evidence connected to More. They also discussed
Speaker 1: DNA finding during the interrogation. According to the supplied information,
Speaker 1: investigators believed some of that evidence could connect More to
Speaker 1: the shooting for the storecase. The pieces were beginning to
Speaker 1: reinforce one another, but Denise's death required a different kind
Speaker 1: of reconstruction. There was no eyewitness account from Denise. There
Speaker 1: was no recording of everything that happened inside the apartment. Instead,
Speaker 1: investigators had to work backward from the discovery of her
Speaker 1: remains and forward from the last known footage of her alive.
Speaker 1: That created a gap, and gaps are where investigators have
Speaker 1: to be most careful. More statements occupied part of that gap,
Speaker 1: but his version of events could not simply be accepted
Speaker 1: without corroboration. Investigators had to determine whether the details he
Speaker 1: provided matched the physical evidence. The relationship itself also became
Speaker 1: evidence of context. Denise had reportedly been experiencing homelessness and
Speaker 1: was receiving assistance through a program intended to help her
Speaker 1: regain stability, more allegedly encouraged her to leave. The couple
Speaker 1: then moved between locations while continuing to experience conflict. Point,
Speaker 1: Denise's circumstances became increasingly dangerous, yet she remained connected to
Speaker 1: more that may have been influenced by practical circumstances, emotional ties, pregnancy,
Speaker 1: or a combination of factors. The supplied information does not
Speaker 1: establish a single definitive reason. What investigators could establish was
Speaker 1: that she eventually ended up inside Moore's apartment, and she
Speaker 1: never left alive. The final footage therefore carried enormous emotional weight.
Speaker 1: Denise was not simply walking into an ordinary room. She
Speaker 1: was approaching the place where investigators would later find her remains.
Speaker 1: The footage captured a moment before the outcome was known.
Speaker 1: That is what made it so significant. To anyone watching afterward,
Speaker 1: Every movement could feel like a warning. But investigators could
Speaker 1: not allow hindsight to determine their conclusions. They had to
Speaker 1: ask what the footage actually proved and what it merely suggested.
Speaker 1: That distinction continued throughout the investigation. The same was true
Speaker 1: of Moore's behavior after police discovered the remains. He reportedly
Speaker 1: appeared concerned about clothing because the apartment was cold. He
Speaker 1: asked about his mind, and had officers counted. He requested
Speaker 1: something to drink. At one point, he reportedly asked for
Speaker 1: sweet tea, the same drink associated with the store confrontation.
Speaker 1: Those details were disturbing, but disturbing behavior is not itself
Speaker 1: proof of a homicide. Investigators needed to build the case
Speaker 1: through evidence, and the evidence was accumulating. Two deaths, one
Speaker 1: suspected the center of both investigations, a convenience store shooting
Speaker 1: captured on surveillance, a second victim discovered inside an apartment,
Speaker 1: a troubled relationship, a heavily pregnant woman whose final moments
Speaker 1: had been recorded, and a series of statements that investigators
Speaker 1: would have to compare against everything they had already discovered.
Speaker 1: The more evidence they assembled, the more the original shooting
Speaker 1: appeared to be only the beginning of the story. The
Speaker 1: case had started with a gunshot at three in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: It had led police to a nearby apartment, and inside
Speaker 1: that apartment they had found a question far more painful
Speaker 1: than the one they had originally come to answer how
Speaker 1: had Denise Middleton's life ended there, and could the evidence
Speaker 1: finally tell her side of the story. The evidence could
Speaker 1: tell investigators where Denise had been found. It could show
Speaker 1: who had been with her before her disappearance from public view.
Speaker 1: It could document the troubled relationship that surrounded her final days.
Speaker 1: But evidence also has limits. A surveillance camera cannot explain
Speaker 1: what someone was thinking, a forensic finding cannot automatically establish motive,
Speaker 1: and a suspect's unusual behavior, no matter how disturbing, cannot
Speaker 1: replace proof. That was why detectives continued working methodically. They
Speaker 1: had to reconstruct the timeline without filling its gaps with assumptions.
Speaker 1: Moore had provided his own account of the relationship. He
Speaker 1: reportedly described arguments and physical encounters, and attempted to explain
Speaker 1: his actions as reactions to circumstances involving Denise. Investigators challenged
Speaker 1: that narrative by returning to what they could verify. The
Speaker 1: final footage showed Denise appearing frightened, her pregnancy was advanced.
Speaker 1: Her remains were found inside Moore's apartment, and Moore had
Speaker 1: continued living there after her death. Those facts did not
Speaker 1: answer every question, but together they created a timeline that
Speaker 1: investigators could investigate further. They also had to establish the
Speaker 1: circumstances surrounding the discovery itself. When officers entered the apartment
Speaker 1: because of the convenience store shooting investigation, they reportedly noticed
Speaker 1: the odor almost immediately following it led them toward the bedroom.
Speaker 1: There they discovered Denise. The discovery transformed the entire operation.
Speaker 1: Officers were no longer simply searching for evidence related to
Speaker 1: a robbery or shooting. They were now standing inside a
Speaker 1: potential second homicide scene. The condition of the remains reportedly
Speaker 1: made immediate identification difficult. Investigators initially wondered whether the person
Speaker 1: could be Moore's mother. That uncertainty did not last forever.
Speaker 1: The victim was Denise. For anyone who had known her,
Speaker 1: the identification would have turned an already frightening investigation into
Speaker 1: something deeply personal. She was twenty six, she was pregnant, and,
Speaker 1: according to the supplied information, she had been hoping to
Speaker 1: build a stable life for herself and her child. Instead,
Speaker 1: her final chapter was being reconstructed by investigators who had
Speaker 1: never known her while she was al That is one
Speaker 1: of the cruel realities of homicide. Investigations after a person dies,
Speaker 1: strangers begin learning the smallest details of their life because
Speaker 1: those details may help explain how the person disappeared. Investigators
Speaker 1: look at relationships. They examine movements. They review phone records
Speaker 1: and surveillance when available. They examine physical evidence. They interview
Speaker 1: people who may have seen the victim, and they listened
Speaker 1: carefully to anyone who was with the victim shortly before death.
Speaker 1: In this case, More was one of those people. He
Speaker 1: reportedly spoke extensively with investigators. At times, his statements appeared
Speaker 1: to minimize his responsibility or explain his behavior through conflict
Speaker 1: with others, but detectives were not simply trying to obtain
Speaker 1: an admission. They were trying to determine whether his version
Speaker 1: could survive comparison with the evidence. That process also applied
Speaker 1: to the convenience store shooting. More reportedly claimed the confrontation
Speaker 1: had escalated after the cashier struck him with a bar,
Speaker 1: but investigators had surveillance footage showing the encounter, and they
Speaker 1: believed the footage contradicted the idea that the shooting was
Speaker 1: simple an act of self defense. The forensic evidence could
Speaker 1: then provide another layer. Shell casings could help connect ammunition
Speaker 1: and weapons to the scene. DNA could potentially establish contact
Speaker 1: with objects or locations. Surveillance could establish movements. Each piece
Speaker 1: had a limited meaning. Together, however, they could form a
Speaker 1: much stronger picture, and the picture investigators were assembling was
Speaker 1: becoming increasingly difficult for more to explain away. Still, Denise's
Speaker 1: death remained the most important unanswered part. The store shooting
Speaker 1: had a visible confrontation. Denise's final moments did not. There
Speaker 1: was a beginning, there was an ending, but somewhere between
Speaker 1: them was the truth. Investigators were still trying to recover.
Speaker 1: The gap between those two moments was where the investigation
Speaker 1: became most difficult. Investigators could establish that Denise had been
Speaker 1: with more shortly before her death. They could establish where
Speaker 1: her remains were found. They could document the condition of
Speaker 1: the apartment and the evidence collected there. But establishing a
Speaker 1: complete timeline required more than simply connecting two locations. It
Speaker 1: require are determining when Denise died and what happened during
Speaker 1: the period when no camera was recording her. That was
Speaker 1: why the forensic examination was so important. Investigators needed the
Speaker 1: medical evidence to help establish the circumstances surrounding Denise's death.
Speaker 1: The physical evidence could potentially answer questions that statements could not.
Speaker 1: It could help determine whether Moore's account was consistent with
Speaker 1: what investigators found, and Moore's account remained a central issue.
Speaker 1: He reportedly insisted that Denise had still been alive when
Speaker 1: he left her. If that statement was accurate, as provided,
Speaker 1: it created a direct question for investigators. If Denise was
Speaker 1: alive at that point, what happened afterward. The answer could
Speaker 1: not come from Moore's statement alone. It had to be tested.
Speaker 1: This is where homicide investigations often become less dramatic than
Speaker 1: the public imagines. There are no instant revelations. There are interviews,
Speaker 1: laboratory examinations, surveillance reviews, records, photographs, timelines, and repeated attempts
Speaker 1: to reconcile information that does not initially fit together. For
Speaker 1: Denise's case, every minute mattered. Beast known footage placed her
Speaker 1: with more The later discovery placed her inside his apartment.
Speaker 1: The space between those two facts represented the final period
Speaker 1: of her life. Meanwhile, investigators were also dealing with the
Speaker 1: consequences of the convenience store shooting. Eilu's death had devastated
Speaker 1: the people who worked at the store, According to the
Speaker 1: supplied information, employees had previously warned authorities about Moore's behavior.
Speaker 1: They had reportedly experienced disturbances before the fatal confrontation. Now
Speaker 1: one of their coworkers was dead. That history raised difficult
Speaker 1: questions about whether earlier intervention might have changed what happened
Speaker 1: on December eighth, but investigators could only examine the evidence
Speaker 1: available to them. They could not rewrite earlier decisions or
Speaker 1: know what might have happened under different circumstances. Their immediate
Speaker 1: responsibility was to establish the facts of the crimes that
Speaker 1: had already occurred. The investigation into More therefore continued on
Speaker 1: two tracks, one concerned Ailu, the other concerned Denise. The
Speaker 1: evidence surrounding the store's shooting reportedly included surveillance footage, eyewitness information,
Speaker 1: shell casings, and deanarelated findings. The evidence surrounding Denise included
Speaker 1: the apartment, the circumstances of her discovery, the relationship between
Speaker 1: her and More, the final footage, and the forensic examination
Speaker 1: of her remains. Each investigation had its own questions, but
Speaker 1: they shared one central figure. More had gone from being
Speaker 1: a suspect and a shooting to being connected to his
Speaker 1: second death discovered inside his home. For investigators, that meant
Speaker 1: every statement he made had greater significance. When he explained
Speaker 1: the story incident, detectives could compare his words with video.
Speaker 1: When he described his relationship with Denise, they could compare
Speaker 1: his account with the known history of their movements and conflicts.
Speaker 1: When he described the final time he saw her alive,
Speaker 1: investigators could compare that statement with the physical evidence and
Speaker 1: the medical findings, and slowly the space for explanations began
Speaker 1: to narrow. Yet there was one thing no investigator could
Speaker 1: recover through evidence alone, Denise's own voice. She could not
Speaker 1: tell detectives what she experienced during those final hours. She
Speaker 1: could not explain why she had entered the apartment. She
Speaker 1: could not cat firm or challenge Moore's version of their relationship.
Speaker 1: So the investigation had to speak for her. Every recording,
Speaker 1: every forensic result, every documented movement, every statement, every inconsistency,
Speaker 1: they all became pieces of a story that Denise could
Speaker 1: no longer tell herself. And as investigators continued assembling those pieces,
Speaker 1: the case moved closer to the question that would ultimately
Speaker 1: determine Moore's legal future, not simply whether he had been
Speaker 1: present when Denise died, but whether the evidence could prove
Speaker 1: beyond the required legal standard what he had done to her.
Speaker 1: That distinction would become critical as investigators prepared to move
Speaker 1: from suspicion toward charges. A homicide investigation can produce a
Speaker 1: disturbing collection of circumstances, but prosecutors eventually have to explain
Speaker 1: how those circumstances connect. They must show what the evidence establishes,
Speaker 1: what witnesses can support, and what remains uncertain. In Moore's case,
Speaker 1: investigators had already established enough to place him at the
Speaker 1: center of the investigation. The convenience store shooting had led
Speaker 1: directly to him, the apartment had led directly today, but
Speaker 1: the two deaths still required separate examinations. For AILU, investigators
Speaker 1: had a location, surveillance, footage, witnesses, and forensic evidence. The
Speaker 1: confrontation inside the store could be reconstructed from the available evidence,
Speaker 1: giving investigators a clearer understanding of the events immediately before
Speaker 1: the shooting. Denise presented a different challenge. Her death had
Speaker 1: occurred away from public view. There was no witness in
Speaker 1: the supplied information who could describe the moment she died.
Speaker 1: There was no recording showing what happened inside the apartment. Instead,
Speaker 1: investigators had to reconstruct the circumstances through everything that remained.
Speaker 1: That included more statements. During questioning, he reportedly continued discussing
Speaker 1: Denise and the arguments they had experienced. He offered his
Speaker 1: interpretation of their relationship and described incidents that he believed
Speaker 1: explained why tensions had developed between them, But investigators were
Speaker 1: looking for something more precise. They wanted details that could
Speaker 1: be independently verified. If Moore said Denise had been somewhere
Speaker 1: at a particular time, could that be confirmed. If he
Speaker 1: described an argument, was there evidence supporting it? If he
Speaker 1: claimed that Denise was alive when he last saw did
Speaker 1: the forensic evidence agree. These were the kinds of questions
Speaker 1: that could turn a complicated story into an established timeline.
Speaker 1: And there was another issue investigators could not ignore. Denise
Speaker 1: had been close to giving birth. Her pregnancy meant that
Speaker 1: the consequences of her death extended beyond the loss of
Speaker 1: one person. The child she had been preparing to welcome
Speaker 1: into the world would never experience the future she had imagined.
Speaker 1: That fact also made the investigation especially sensitive. Detectives had
Speaker 1: to document Denise as a victim, not merely as evidence
Speaker 1: in a case against Moore. Her history mattered, The people
Speaker 1: who knew her mattered, the circumstances that had left her
Speaker 1: vulnerable mattered, And the final footage mattered because it was
Speaker 1: one of the last surviving records of her life. The
Speaker 1: image of Denise entering the elevator with Moore would become
Speaker 1: a powerful reference point in understanding the timeline. At that moment,
Speaker 1: she was alive, she was pregnant, and she appeared frightened.
Speaker 1: After that, the trail led to the apartment, then it stopped.
Speaker 1: Investigators could not allow the emotional impact of that footage
Speaker 1: to replace the need for proof. They had to determine
Speaker 1: exactly what it demonstrated. It demonstrated that Denise was with Moore,
Speaker 1: It demonstrated that she entered the building. It did not
Speaker 1: by itself establish what happened inside. That required the rest
Speaker 1: of the investigation. The apartment became the physical center of
Speaker 1: that inquiry. Every relevant item had to be examined in context.
Speaker 1: Investigators needed to determine what belonged to Denise, what belonged
Speaker 1: to more, and what could potentially establish when and how
Speaker 1: the crime occurred. At the same time, the forensic examination
Speaker 1: of the remains could provide information about the circumstances of
Speaker 1: Denise's death. Those findings would be essential because eventually investigators
Speaker 1: would have to tell a court not merely that Denise
Speaker 1: was found in Moore's apartment, but why they believed Moore
Speaker 1: was responsible for her death, and that meant the investigation
Speaker 1: could not end with the discovery. The discovery was only
Speaker 1: the moment when investigators realized what they were dealing with.
Speaker 1: Now they had to prove it. The difference between discovering
Speaker 1: a body and proving a homicide would now shape everything
Speaker 1: that followed. Investigators had to determine what the physical evidence
Speaker 1: could establish about Denise's death, and how that evidence compared
Speaker 1: with more statements. The apartment had become more than the
Speaker 1: place where Denise was found. It was now a record
Speaker 1: of the final period of her life, preserved in objects, locations,
Speaker 1: and forensic traces. The investigation also had to account for
Speaker 1: the time Denise had apparently remained there. According to the
Speaker 1: supplied information, her remains had been inside the apartment while
Speaker 1: more continued living there that ment. Investigators were not simply
Speaker 1: examining a scene where a death had recently occurred. They
Speaker 1: were examining a space in which the victim had reportedly
Speaker 1: remained for an extended period without being discovered by authorities.
Speaker 1: That raised another question, who knew Denise was there and
Speaker 1: who did not. Her history of homelessness made the question
Speaker 1: particularly difficult. A person without stable housing can move between
Speaker 1: places without leaving the kind of predictable trail that investigators
Speaker 1: might expect. Friends and relatives may not immediately know where
Speaker 1: she is. Programs assisting people experiencing homelessness may I know
Speaker 1: where someone was last seen without knowing where they went afterward.
Speaker 1: For investigators, that meant Denise's movements had to be reconstructed carefully.
Speaker 1: The relationship with Moore became increasingly important. According to the
Speaker 1: supplied information, Moore had encouraged Denise to leave a program
Speaker 1: that was helping her regain stability. The couple then moved
Speaker 1: between locations and continued experiencing conflict. At some point their
Speaker 1: relationship brought Denise to the apartment, and the next confirmed
Speaker 1: location connected to her was the crime scene. The final
Speaker 1: footage therefore became more than a piece of surveillance evidence.
Speaker 1: It was a time stamp in the reconstruction of Denise's life.
Speaker 1: She entered the elevator, Moore was beside her. She appeared frightened.
Speaker 1: Then the footage ended. Investigators had to determine what happened
Speaker 1: after that moment. Meanwhile, the case against more concerning Ailu
Speaker 1: continued developing. The convenience store manager had reportedly warned police
Speaker 1: about Moore's behavior before the shooting. Employees had allegedly experienced
Speaker 1: repeated confrontations with him. On December eighth, another confrontation began,
Speaker 1: but this time it ended with the else death. The
Speaker 1: surveillance footage reportedly captured enough of the encounter for investigators
Speaker 1: to challenge Moore's description of the shooting. His explanation reportedly
Speaker 1: focused on the confrontation and suggested that he had been
Speaker 1: reacting to the cashier, but investigators believed the footage showed
Speaker 1: something different. That disagreement between Moore's account and the recorded
Speaker 1: evidence became important because it demonstrated a broader problem facing investigators.
Speaker 1: They could not simply take Moore's explanations at face value.
Speaker 1: Every statement had to be tested. The same principle applied
Speaker 1: to Denise. If Moore said she was alive when he
Speaker 1: last saw her, investigators had to examine whether the physical
Speaker 1: evidence supported that claim. If he described an argument, they
Speaker 1: needed to determine whether there was independent evidence of it.
Speaker 1: If he suggested that Denise had been responsible for escalating
Speaker 1: a confrontation, they needed to establish whether that characterization was
Speaker 1: supported by evidence or existed only in his account. This
Speaker 1: process gradually separated the story More wanted investigators to hear
Speaker 1: from the story the evidence could support, and distinction mattered
Speaker 1: because Denise could not challenge him. Her silence was not consent.
Speaker 1: It was the consequence of her death. Every missing detail, therefore,
Speaker 1: became an investigative problem. Every contradiction became something to examine.
Speaker 1: Every piece of evidence became another opportunity to reconstruct the truth.
Speaker 1: The investigation had begun with a witness calling nine to
Speaker 1: one one about a shooting, It had expanded when officers
Speaker 1: identified More, and it had changed completely when they discovered Denise.
Speaker 1: Now investigators were faced with two victims, two locations, and
Speaker 1: a growing body of evidence connecting both investigations to the
Speaker 1: same suspect. But the case still had to survive the
Speaker 1: next stage. The evidence had to be organized, the timelines
Speaker 1: had to be established, and the investigators had to determine
Speaker 1: whether everything they had uncovered could explain not only how
Speaker 1: Denise died, but why the evidence pointed toward Moore as
Speaker 1: the person responsible. By this point, the investigation had moved
Speaker 1: beyond the shock of the initial discovery. Detectives were now
Speaker 1: working toward a case that could withstand scrutiny, and that
Speaker 1: meant separating what they believe from what they could demonstrate.
Speaker 1: The evidence surrounding Ailu's death provided one of the clearest
Speaker 1: starting points. The store's surveillance system had recorded the confrontation.
Speaker 1: A witness had reported seeing More leave the area. Investigators
Speaker 1: had traced his movements to the apartment complex, where they
Speaker 1: obtained information identifying him. That sequence gave detectives a relatively
Speaker 1: strong timeline for the shooting, but Denise's death remained different.
Speaker 1: The evidence showed where she was found and established her
Speaker 1: connection to More. Investigators also had the final known footage
Speaker 1: in the history of the relationship, Yet the precise circumstances
Speaker 1: surrounding her death required further forensic analysis. The medical examination
Speaker 1: of Denise's remains therefore became essential. Investigators needed to determine
Speaker 1: the cause and manner of death and establish whether the
Speaker 1: findings were consistent with the circumstances they were investigating. Those
Speaker 1: findings could then be compared with more statements and the
Speaker 1: physical evidence recovered from the apartment. This is where a
Speaker 1: homicide investigation often becomes a painstaking process. A detective may
Speaker 1: have a theory within hours, a prosecutor needs evidence that
Speaker 1: can support that theory. Those are not the same thing.
Speaker 1: For Denise, investigators had to build the case piece by piece,
Speaker 1: her last known movements, her relationship with more, the condition
Speaker 1: and location in which she was discovered, the evidence inside
Speaker 1: the apartment, more statements, and whatever forensic findings could establish
Speaker 1: about her final moments. The pregnancy remained an important part
Speaker 1: of the human story, but investigators could not allow the
Speaker 1: tragedy of that fact to determine their conclusions. They still
Speaker 1: had to follow the evidence wherever it led. The same
Speaker 1: discipline applied to Moore's behavior after his arrest. His apparent
Speaker 1: concern about his clothing, the cold apartment, his money, and
Speaker 1: getting something to drink could seem extraordinary in the context
Speaker 1: of what police had discovered, but investigators still had to
Speaker 1: document behavior rather than treat it as proof of guilt.
Speaker 1: A suspect's demeanor can be misleading. Evidence is stronger and
Speaker 1: in this case, the evidence continued to accumulate. The store
Speaker 1: manager's previous complaints became part of the background, the surveillance footge,
Speaker 1: which became part of the record. The forensic evidence became
Speaker 1: another component. The discovery of Denise became the second major
Speaker 1: investigation surrounding More. As investigators examined all of it together,
Speaker 1: a pattern began to emerge, but patterns must still be proven.
Speaker 1: The most important unresolved issue remained the period between the
Speaker 1: elevator footage and the discovery of Denise. What happened after
Speaker 1: she entered the apartment, how long was she alive, what
Speaker 1: caused her death, and what did More do afterward? Those
Speaker 1: questions were not merely narrative mysteries. They were questions that
Speaker 1: could determine the legal outcome of the case. Moore had
Speaker 1: his own version of events, investigators had. Theirs between them
Speaker 1: was the physical evidence. That evidence had no reason to
Speaker 1: protect anyone's reputation. It did not care whether a suspect
Speaker 1: appeared calm or whether a victim had a complicated personal history.
Speaker 1: It could only reveal what the investigators were able to
Speaker 1: recover and interpret, and that made the forensic examination of
Speaker 1: Denise one of the most important stages of the entire investigation,
Speaker 1: because once investigators understood how she died, they could begin
Speaker 1: asking an even more specific question. Did the evidence support
Speaker 1: Moore's explanation or did it tell a completely different story.
Speaker 1: The answer would determine how investigators understood the apartment, the relationship,
Speaker 1: and the final hours of Denise Middleton's life, and while
Speaker 1: that investigation continued, the death of Ailu remained the event
Speaker 1: that had brought police to Moore in the first place.
Speaker 1: Two victims, one investigation, and an increasingly narrow path between
Speaker 1: what more claimed happened and what investigators believed the evidence showed.
Speaker 1: The forensic findings began to give investigators a clearer picture
Speaker 1: of the timeline, but they also introduced another important question,
Speaker 1: when exactly had Denise died. According to the available case reporting,
Speaker 1: investigators determined that Denise had been dead for approximately two
Speaker 1: months when her remains were discovered in December twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: That placed her death around early October, significantly earlier than
Speaker 1: the convenience store shooting that ultimately brought police to Moore's apartment.
Speaker 1: That timing changed the way detectives viewed the case. The
Speaker 1: shooting at the convenience store was no not the event
Speaker 1: that caused Denise's death. Instead, it appears to have accidentally
Speaker 1: exposed a separate homicide that had already occurred weeks earlier.
Speaker 1: For investigators, the timeline now stretched backward. The last known
Speaker 1: footage of Denise showed her entering the elevator with Moore.
Speaker 1: She was heavily pregnant and appeared frightened. After that footage,
Speaker 1: there was no known public record of her alive. Approximately
Speaker 1: two months later, police discovered her remains inside Moore's apartment.
Speaker 1: The gap between those points became central to the investigation.
Speaker 1: According to reporting on the case, the autopsy indicated that
Speaker 1: Denise had suffered multiple gunshot wounds. That finding was significant
Speaker 1: because it provided investigators with a medical explanation that could
Speaker 1: be compared against Moore's account of what had happened. And
Speaker 1: there was another important connection. Investigators were examining evidence from
Speaker 1: both crime scenes, Shell casings, and other forensic material recovered
Speaker 1: during the investigation reportedly became part of the effort to
Speaker 1: connect more to the killings. DNA evidence was also discussed
Speaker 1: during his interrogation. The investigation was therefore no longer based
Speaker 1: only on the fact that Denise had been found inside
Speaker 1: Moore's apartment. There was a growing collection of independent evidence.
Speaker 1: There was the surveillance footage, There were the witness accounts,
Speaker 1: there were the forensic findings, There was the timeline, and
Speaker 1: there were moore'sone statements. Each piece had to be considered separately,
Speaker 1: then compared with the others. That process also made Moore's
Speaker 1: earlier explanation of his relationship with Denise more significant. If
Speaker 1: he claimed that Denise had been alive when he last
Speaker 1: saw her, investigators needed to establish whether the medical evidence
Speaker 1: and timeline supported that claim. The answer would ultimately depend
Speaker 1: on the complete forensic record and the evidence presented in court.
Speaker 1: But one thing had already become clear. The woman investigators
Speaker 1: found in that apartment had not simply disappeared. She had
Speaker 1: been there for weeks, and during that time, Moore had
Speaker 1: continued living in the same space. The discovery also meant
Speaker 1: that the December eighth shooting had exposed something that might
Speaker 1: otherwise have remained hidden. Police had gone to the apartment
Speaker 1: looking for the man suspected of killing a store cashier. Instead,
Speaker 1: they found Denise, a woman who had been approaching motherhood,
Speaker 1: a woman whose final known moments had been captured on surveillance,
Speaker 1: and a second death that transformed a single homicide investigation
Speaker 1: into a much larger case. Now investigators had to establish
Speaker 1: not only what happened to Denise, but whether the evidence
Speaker 1: could prove that Moore was responsible for her death. That
Speaker 1: question would eventually move beyond the interrogation room and into
Speaker 1: the court room. By then, investigators had a much clearer
Speaker 1: picture of the timeline, but the case was still moving
Speaker 1: toward the stage where every piece of evidence would have
Speaker 1: to withstand legal scrutiny. The investigation reportedly established that Denise
Speaker 1: had been dead for roughly two months before police discovered
Speaker 1: her remains. That placed her death around early October, meaning
Speaker 1: the shooting at the convenience store in December had unexpectedly
Speaker 1: exposed a much older crime. That timeline also brought renewed
Speaker 1: attention to the final known footage of Denise. She had
Speaker 1: entered the elevator with Moore, She was heavily pregnant, she
Speaker 1: appeared frightened, and sometime afterward, according to the reported timeline,
Speaker 1: she was killed. Investigators now had to examine whether the
Speaker 1: circumstances surrounding her death matched the account More had given them.
Speaker 1: The medical findings reportedly indicated that Denise had suffered multiple
Speaker 1: gunshot wounds. That evidence became particularly important because it could
Speaker 1: be compared with More's statements about the relationship and the
Speaker 1: events leading up to her death. But investigators were not
Speaker 1: relying on one discovery. The case was becoming a collection
Speaker 1: of different evidence streams. There was the surveillance footage, there
Speaker 1: were witness statements, there were the remains discovered inside the apartment,
Speaker 1: There was forensic evidence from the investigation, there were statements
Speaker 1: More made during questioning, and there was the timeline connecting everything.
Speaker 1: The convenience store shooting remained the event that had brought
Speaker 1: police to Moore's apartment in the first place. What began
Speaker 1: as an investigation into Ailu's death had unexpectedly revealed Denise's death,
Speaker 1: turning the case into something far larger. According to reporting
Speaker 1: on the case, investigators also examined Moore's Internet search history.
Speaker 1: Reports said searches included questions related to decomposition, disposal of
Speaker 1: a body, and pleading insanity. If accurately reported, those searches
Speaker 1: would have been potentially significant because they could provide investigators
Speaker 1: with evidence of what More was thinking or planning after
Speaker 1: Denise's death. But even evidence that appears powerful must be
Speaker 1: interpreted carefully. A search history can show that something was searched,
Speaker 1: it does not automatically establish why it was searched. That
Speaker 1: is why investigators would have needed to present those searches
Speaker 1: alongside the rest of the evidence, rather than treating them
Speaker 1: as a complete explanation by themselves. The same principle applied
Speaker 1: to the forensic evidence reportedly connecting more to the crimes.
Speaker 1: Each piece had to fit into the larger timeline, and
Speaker 1: increasingly investigators believe the pieces were fitting together. For Denise's family, however,
Speaker 1: the most important issue was not the complexity of the investigation.
Speaker 1: It was that Denise was gone. She had been approaching
Speaker 1: the birth of her son. She had reportedly hoped to
Speaker 1: create a family and find stability. Instead, her final known
Speaker 1: image became a piece of evidence in a homicide investigation.
Speaker 1: The apartment where she had died became a crime scene,
Speaker 1: and the man beside her in the last known footage
Speaker 1: became the central figure in the investigation. The case was
Speaker 1: now moving toward its next stage. Investigators had gathered evidence,
Speaker 1: they had developed their theory of what happened, and prosecutors
Speaker 1: would eventually have to take that evidence and presented in
Speaker 1: a form that could be tested in court. The story
Speaker 1: that began with a bottle of iced tea was about
Speaker 1: to become a court room battle over two lives, a pregnancy,
Speaker 1: and the evidence investigators believe connected them to one man.
Speaker 1: The courtroom would eventually become the place where the competing
Speaker 1: versions of events had to be tested, But before that
Speaker 1: could happen, investigators still had to finish assembling the case.
Speaker 1: The evidence surrounding Denise's death had to be organized into
Speaker 1: a timeline that could explain the period between her final
Speaker 1: appearance on surveillance footage and the discovery of her remains
Speaker 1: approximately two months later. The reported medical findings were important
Speaker 1: because they indicated that Denise had suffered multiple gunshot wounds.
Speaker 1: That information gave investigators a clearer understanding of the manner
Speaker 1: of her death and allowed them to compare the physical
Speaker 1: evidence with more statements. There was also the question of
Speaker 1: the firearm. The shooting at the convenience store had already
Speaker 1: established that Moore had allegedly used a gun during the
Speaker 1: December incident. Investigators now had to examine whether evidence from
Speaker 1: the two scenes could establish a connection between the weapon, ammunition,
Speaker 1: and the deaths. The supplied information indicates that investigators examined
Speaker 1: shell casings and other forensic evidence, and discussed DNA findings
Speaker 1: during Moore's interrogation. If those findings were ultimately admitted and
Speaker 1: established in court, they could become important links in the
Speaker 1: prosecution's case. But investigators also had to examine Moore's behavior
Speaker 1: after Denise's death. According to reporting about the case, investigators
Speaker 1: found Internet searches allegedly involving subjects such as decomposition, disposal
Speaker 1: of a body, and pleading insanity. Those searches were potentially
Speaker 1: significant because of their timing and their relationship to the
Speaker 1: broader investigation. Yet again, context mattered. A search does not
Speaker 1: automatically prove a person's intention. Investigators would need to establish
Speaker 1: when the searches occurred, what devices or accounts were involved,
Speaker 1: and how they related to the other evidence. That careful
Speaker 1: approach was especially important because the case contained emotionally powerful circumstances.
Speaker 1: Denise was pregnant, her remains had reportedly remained inside the
Speaker 1: apartment for weeks, Moore had continued living there, and police
Speaker 1: had only discovered her because they were investigating another shooting.
Speaker 1: Those facts could create an overwhelming emotional reaction, but a
Speaker 1: criminal case still had to be built on admissible evidence.
Speaker 1: The same was true of more statements. He reportedly attempted
Speaker 1: to explain the relationship and the confrontations that had occurred
Speaker 1: between him and Denise. Investigators listened, but they also challenged
Speaker 1: his version of events. At one point, investigators reportedly tried
Speaker 1: to encourage more to view the situation as an argument
Speaker 1: that had simply gone too far. They appeared to appeal
Speaker 1: to his emotions and suggest that he might have acted impulsively.
Speaker 1: That approach was investigative strategy. Detectives sometimes allow a suspect
Speaker 1: to believe that an explanation may be accepted if it
Speaker 1: encourages the per person to provide more information. The important
Speaker 1: issue is what the suspect actually says and whether those
Speaker 1: statements can be verified. Moore's account therefore became another piece
Speaker 1: of evidence for investigators to examine, and the more they
Speaker 1: compared his statements with the physical evidence, the more important
Speaker 1: the contradictions became. The case was no longer about one moment.
Speaker 1: It was about a chain of events extending from the
Speaker 1: relationship between Moore and Denise through the final footage to
Speaker 1: the apartment, and then forward to the December shooting that
Speaker 1: exposed everything. Two deaths had become connected through one investigation.
Speaker 1: One victim had been killed in a public business, the
Speaker 1: other had been discovered inside a private residence. One death
Speaker 1: had witnesses and surveillance, the other depended heavily on forensic reconstruction.
Speaker 1: But both investigations now pointed toward the same central question,
Speaker 1: what could prosecutors actually prove about Tory More and as
Speaker 1: investigators prepared to turn their evidence over to the legal system,
Speaker 1: the distinction between allegation and proof would become more important
Speaker 1: than ever. The legal process would now have to answer
Speaker 1: a ques question the investigation had been circling from the beginning.
Speaker 1: Could the evidence establish responsibility for both deaths rather than
Speaker 1: simply place more near the scenes. According to reporting on
Speaker 1: the case, prosecutors ultimately alleged that Moore was responsible for
Speaker 1: the deaths of both Ailu Wandu and Denise Middleton, as
Speaker 1: well as the death of Denise's unborn child. Those allegations
Speaker 1: would have to be tested through the court process, rather
Speaker 1: than accepted simply because investigators believe them. The evidence surrounding
Speaker 1: the convenience store killing remained a major part of that case.
Speaker 1: Surveillance footage reportedly captured the confrontation that preceded Ailu's death,
Speaker 1: while investigators examined forensic evidence connecting More to the scene.
Speaker 1: The history of earlier confrontations at the store also provided
Speaker 1: prosecutors with background about the relationship between More and the employees,
Speaker 1: but Denise's case carried a different evidentiary burden. The prosecution
Speaker 1: had to explain how a pregnant woman who was last
Speaker 1: seen alive with More ended up dead inside his apartment
Speaker 1: weeks later. According to the reported case summary, investigators believed
Speaker 1: Denise had suffered multiple gunshot wounds. They also reportedly found
Speaker 1: evidence connecting More to the crime scenes, including DNA evidence
Speaker 1: associated with shell casings. Then there was Moore's own behavior
Speaker 1: after the discovery. He had continued living in the apartment
Speaker 1: where Denise's remains were found. During his interaction with police,
Speaker 1: he reportedly appeared focused on ordinary concerns such as clothing, money,
Speaker 1: and getting something to drink. None of those behaviors could
Speaker 1: independently prove a homicide, but when investigators placed them alongside
Speaker 1: the physical evidence the surveillance footage, the timeline and more statements.
Speaker 1: They became part of the overall picture prosecutors would eventually present.
Speaker 1: There was also reportedly evidence from Moore's phone. Investigators found
Speaker 1: searches concerning subjects such as decomposition, disposal of a body,
Speaker 1: and pleading insanity. Those searches were potentially significant, although their
Speaker 1: meanings still depended on when they were made and the
Speaker 1: circumstances surrounding them. For Denise's family, however, the most important
Speaker 1: evidence was not a search history or a shell casing.
Speaker 1: It was the final image of Denise alive. She had
Speaker 1: entered that elevator, she had been approaching the end of
Speaker 1: her pregnancy, and she appeared frightened. After that. Her life
Speaker 1: became a collection of evidence recovered by investigators, her remains,
Speaker 1: the apartment, the surveillance footage, the forensic findings, the statements
Speaker 1: of the man who had been with her, peace by peace.
Speaker 1: Prosecutors would attempt to turn those fragments into a complete
Speaker 1: account of what happened, and eventually the case would reach
Speaker 1: the point where a jury would have to decide which
Speaker 1: version of events was supported by the evidence. The investigation
Speaker 1: had begun with a cashier killed during an argument over
Speaker 1: a drink. It had uncovered a woman who had apparently
Speaker 1: been dead for weeks. Now, the justice system had to
Speaker 1: determine whether those two deaths and the death of an
Speaker 1: unborn child could be legally attributed to the same man.
Speaker 1: The answer would come not from the apartment, not from
Speaker 1: the surveillance cameras, and not from Moore's explanations alone, but
Speaker 1: from the evidence presented when the case finally went before
Speaker 1: a jury. Before the case could reach that final judgment,
Speaker 1: prosecutors had to turn the investigation into a coherent legal narrative.
Speaker 1: The story they were preparing to present was not simply
Speaker 1: about what happened on December eighth. It stretched back to
Speaker 1: the relationship between Moore and Denise and forward to the
Speaker 1: discovery that changed the entire investigation. For the prosecution, the
Speaker 1: chronology mattered. Denise had been struggling with homelessness and attempting
Speaker 1: to rebuild her life. She was pregnant and reportedly close
Speaker 1: to giving birth. Her relationship with Moore had become unstable,
Speaker 1: and the two had moved between different locations. Then came
Speaker 1: the final known footage. Denise entered the elevator with Moore.
Speaker 1: She appeared frightened that footage established an important point in
Speaker 1: the timeline, but prosecutors still needed to connect it to
Speaker 1: the evidence discovered later. Approximately two months afterward, according to
Speaker 1: the reported timeline, police entered Moore's apartment while investigating the
Speaker 1: convenience store shooting. They found Denise's remains. That discovery became
Speaker 1: the central link between the earlier relationship and the later
Speaker 1: homicide investigation. Then came the medical evidence. Investigators reportedly determined
Speaker 1: that Denise had suffered moreultiple gunshot wounds. If established through
Speaker 1: admissible forensic testimony, that finding would help prosecutors explain how
Speaker 1: she died. The prosecution could then place that evidence beside
Speaker 1: more statements and the physical evidence recovered from the apartment,
Speaker 1: but the defense would have an opportunity to challenge every
Speaker 1: part of that narrative. That is how the criminal justice
Speaker 1: system is supposed to work. A prosecutor can present a theory,
Speaker 1: a defense attorney can challenge the evidence, question witnesses, dispute interpretations,
Speaker 1: and offer an alternative explanation. Where appropriate, The final decision
Speaker 1: belongs to the court or jury, depending on the stage
Speaker 1: and charge. That distinction matters, particularly in a case as
Speaker 1: emotionally difficult as this one. Denise's pregnancy, the circumstances of
Speaker 1: her death, and the discovery of her remains naturally create
Speaker 1: a powerful emotional response, but the legal question remains specific,
Speaker 1: what did the evidence prove the same standard applied to
Speaker 1: eilose death. Prosecutors could point to the surveillance footage, witness information,
Speaker 1: and forensic evidence surrounding the convenience store shooting. They could
Speaker 1: also describe the history of reported disturbances involving more at
Speaker 1: the store, but the jury would still have to decide
Speaker 1: whether those facts established the charged offenses beyond a reasonable doubt.
Speaker 1: And there was another unusual feature of the case. The
Speaker 1: investigation into Denise had effectively been triggered by the investigation
Speaker 1: into Ailu. Police were not searching Moore's apartment because they
Speaker 1: already knew Denise was there. They went there because they
Speaker 1: were looking for the suspect in a separate shooting. That
Speaker 1: coincidence became one of the most striking elements of the case.
Speaker 1: A homicide investigation had accidentally exposed another homicide. Without the
Speaker 1: December shooting, the discovery inside the apartment might have happened
Speaker 1: much later were under completely different circumstances, But on that
Speaker 1: December afternoon, one investigation led directly into another. For Denise's family,
Speaker 1: the discovery could never undo what had happened, but identifying
Speaker 1: what happened was still important. It gave investigators an opportunity
Speaker 1: to reconstruct her final days, It gave prosecutors an opportunity
Speaker 1: to seek accountability, and it gave the public a clearer
Speaker 1: understanding of how her death came to light. Yet the
Speaker 1: most haunting part of the case remained unchanged. The last
Speaker 1: known footage showed Denise alive. She was walking beside more,
Speaker 1: she was nearing the end of her pregnancy, and she
Speaker 1: appeared afraid. Everything investigators discovered afterward had to be measured
Speaker 1: against that final image, because once the elevator doors closed,
Speaker 1: Denise disappeared from the public record. What remained was the evidence,
Speaker 1: and now that evidence was heading toward a courtroom where
Speaker 1: the competing stories surrounding two deaths would finally be tested.
Speaker 1: The case was no longer simply an investigation unfolding behind
Speaker 1: closed doors. The evidence was now being transformed into allegations
Speaker 1: that would have to survive the scrutiny of a courtroom.
Speaker 1: According to reporting on the case, prosecutors ultimately alleged that
Speaker 1: More was responsible for the deaths of both Ailu Wandu
Speaker 1: and Denise Middleton, as well as the death of Denise's
Speaker 1: unborn child. The reported outcome was a conviction on three
Speaker 1: first degree murder counts, followed by three consecutive life sentences
Speaker 1: in an additional eighty years. That outcome gave the investigation
Speaker 1: a definitive legal conclusion, but it did not make every
Speaker 1: detail of the story equally certain. Some facts came from surveillance,
Speaker 1: some came from forensic examination, some came from statements More
Speaker 1: made during questioning, and some came from the prosecution's interpretation
Speaker 1: of the evidence. The distinction mattered for Eilu's death. The
Speaker 1: reported evidence included surveillance footage of the confrontation, witness information,
Speaker 1: and forensic evidence. Investigators had been able to trace More
Speaker 1: from the store toward his apartment, where the discovery of
Speaker 1: Denise changed the entire case. For Denise, the prosecution's case
Speaker 1: was built around a different collection of evidence. She had
Speaker 1: been Moore's girlfriend. She had been approximately eight and a
Speaker 1: half months pregnant. She was last known to have been
Speaker 1: alive when she entered the elevator with Moore and Roughly
Speaker 1: two months later, her remains were discovered inside his apartment.
Speaker 1: Investigators reportedly determined that she had suffered multiple gunshot wounds.
Speaker 1: They also examined forensic evidence that they believed connected more
Speaker 1: to the killings. There was another reported piece of evidence
Speaker 1: that prosecutors could use to challenge Moore's explanation, searches found
Speaker 1: on his phone. According to the case reporting, investigators found
Speaker 1: searches concerning body decomposition, disposal of a body, and how
Speaker 1: to plead insanity. Those searches were not important because a
Speaker 1: search history could magically reveal someone's thoughts. They mattered because
Speaker 1: of their alleged timing and their relationship to the other
Speaker 1: evidence placed alongside the discovery of Denise's remains. Investigators viewed
Speaker 1: them as part of a larger pattern. But the most
Speaker 1: important evidence remained the evidence that could independently establish what
Speaker 1: happened the apartment. The surveillance footage, the forensic findings, the timeline,
Speaker 1: and more zone statements. Together, prosecutors argued those pieces told
Speaker 1: the story that was very different from the explanations more
Speaker 1: had offered during questioning. The case had begun with a
Speaker 1: cashier being killed during a confrontation over a drink. It
Speaker 1: had led police to an apartment. Inside that apartment, they
Speaker 1: discovered a pregnant woman who had apparently been dead for weeks,
Speaker 1: and from there investigators uncovered evidence that prosecutors would eventually
Speaker 1: use to argue that the two cas Billings were connected
Speaker 1: to the same defendant. For Denise's family, however, the legal
Speaker 1: conclusion could never change the personal loss. The woman in
Speaker 1: that elevator had been preparing for a child she would
Speaker 1: never hold. The future she had reportedly hoped to build
Speaker 1: ended before it began, and the discovery that brought her
Speaker 1: death to light happened almost by accident. Police had gone
Speaker 1: looking for a suspect in one killing, they found evidence
Speaker 1: of another. That unexpected connection is what made the case
Speaker 1: so difficult to forget. But even after the verdict, one
Speaker 1: image remained at the center of the story, Denise walking
Speaker 1: into that elevator, alive, pregnant, and unaware that the footage
Speaker 1: would eventually become part of the record of the final
Speaker 1: hours of her life. The verdict gave the investigation its
Speaker 1: legal conclusion, but it did not erase the uncertainty surrounding
Speaker 1: every minute of Denise's final days. According to the available reporting.
Speaker 1: Moore was convicted of three counts of first degree murder
Speaker 1: for Ailu Wandhu, for Denise Middleton, and for Denise's unborn child.
Speaker 1: He was reportedly sentenced to three consecutive life terms, along
Speaker 1: with an additional eighty years for the prosecution. The conviction
Speaker 1: represented the culmination of an investigation that had begun almost
Speaker 1: by accident. Police had originally responded to a shooting at
Speaker 1: a convenience store. That investigation led them to more, and
Speaker 1: more led them to an apartment where Denise had already
Speaker 1: been dead for approximately two months. The timeline was therefore crucial.
Speaker 1: The December shooting did not cause investigators to discover Denise
Speaker 1: immediately after her death. According to the reported timeline, her
Speaker 1: death occurred around early October, leaving weeks between her final
Speaker 1: known appearance and the moment police found her. During those weeks,
Speaker 1: More reportedly continued living in the apartment. That detail remains
Speaker 1: one of the most disturbing elements of the case, not
Speaker 1: because it proves anything by itself, but because of what
Speaker 1: it meant for investigators. When they finally entered the room,
Speaker 1: they were not looking at the aftermath of a crime
Speaker 1: that had just happened they were looking at evidence that
Speaker 1: had been hidden in plain sight. The investigation also reportedly
Speaker 1: uncovered digital evidence that prosecutors could use to argue that
Speaker 1: Moore had thought about what would have happened after Denise's death.
Speaker 1: Searches involving decomposition, disposal of a body, and pleading insanity
Speaker 1: were reportedly found on his phone. Again, the meaning of
Speaker 1: digital searches depends on their context, but prosecutors could place
Speaker 1: those searches alongside the physical evidence, the timeline, the surveillance footage,
Speaker 1: and more statements. Taken together, they argued that the evidence
Speaker 1: showed far more than a tragic accident or an act
Speaker 1: of self defense, and the jury ultimately agreed. For Ailu's family,
Speaker 1: justice came after a shooting that had begun with a
Speaker 1: confrontation inside a neighborhood store. For Denise's family, justice came
Speaker 1: after weeks of uncertainty and the devastating discovery of what
Speaker 1: had happened to a woman who had been preparing to
Speaker 1: become a mother. But a verdict cannot restore the future
Speaker 1: that was lost. Denise would never hold the child she
Speaker 1: had been carrying. Alu would never return to the store
Speaker 1: where he had been working and the people who knew
Speaker 1: them would have to live with the knowledge that their
Speaker 1: lives had ended in circumstances that began as ordinary moments
Speaker 1: and turned into irreversible tragedy. There was also an uncomfortable
Speaker 1: lesson in how the case was discovered. The investigation into
Speaker 1: Denise's death did not begin with someone finding her missing
Speaker 1: person case and walking investigators directly to more. It began
Speaker 1: with another violent crime. That crime produced surveillance footage. The
Speaker 1: footage produced an identification, The identification produced a search, and
Speaker 1: the search revealed something nobody had initially expected to find.
Speaker 1: One investigation opened the door to another, and behind that
Speaker 1: door was the final chapter of Denise Middleton's life. Her
Speaker 1: last known image remains the beginning of that final chapter,
Speaker 1: a pregnant young woman entering an elevator beside Moore, unaware
Speaker 1: that the footage would eventually become part of the evidence
Speaker 1: used to reconstruct what happened after the doors closed. The
Speaker 1: image of that elevator is difficult to separate from everything
Speaker 1: investigators would discover later. At the time the camera recorded Denise,
Speaker 1: there was no way for anyone watching the footage to
Speaker 1: know that it would eventually become evidence. In a murder case.
Speaker 1: There was no warning written across the screen, no explanation
Speaker 1: of what was about to happen, just a few moments
Speaker 1: preserved by a surveillance system. That is often how the
Speaker 1: most important evidence begins. A camera record something ordinary. Weeks
Speaker 1: or months later, investigators returned to it because the people
Speaker 1: in the footage are no longer living ordinary lives. For Denise,
Speaker 1: that recording became one of the last known pieces of
Speaker 1: evidence showing her alive. For investigators, it helped establish the
Speaker 1: timeline for her family. It represented something even more painful,
Speaker 1: one of the final images they could have of her
Speaker 1: before her life ended. The case also demonstrated how quickly
Speaker 1: an investigation can change direction. Officers responding to the convenience
Speaker 1: store shooting were initially focused on Ailu's death and the
Speaker 1: person responsible for it. They followed surveillance footage, gathered witness information,
Speaker 1: identified more, and went to his apartment. They did not
Speaker 1: know they were about to uncover another homicide. Then came
Speaker 1: to smell, then the search, then the remains, and suddenly
Speaker 1: the investigation expanded backward in time. The December shooting was
Speaker 1: no longer the beginning of the story. It was the
Speaker 1: event that exposed what had happened months earlier. Acording to
Speaker 1: the reported case information, Denise had been dead for roughly
Speaker 1: two months when officers discovered her. During that period, the
Speaker 1: world outside the apartment continued moving. People went to work,
Speaker 1: stores opened, families continued their routines. Life went on. But
Speaker 1: inside that apartment, the truth about Denise's death remained hidden
Speaker 1: until December eighth. The investigation that followed ultimately produced a
Speaker 1: legal conclusion. More was convicted of the reported killings of Ailu, Denise,
Speaker 1: and Denise's unborn child, and received three consecutive life sentences
Speaker 1: along with an additional eighty years. That verdict answered the
Speaker 1: central legal question of responsibility, but it could never answer
Speaker 1: every personal question left behind. Why did Denise remain connected
Speaker 1: to a relationship that had become so unstable. What might
Speaker 1: have happened if she had been able to remain in
Speaker 1: the program that was helping her. Could someone have recognized
Speaker 1: the danger earlier? Could the violence at the convenience store
Speaker 1: have been prevented? Those questions belong to a different part
Speaker 1: of the story. They are questions about warning signs, vulnerability,
Speaker 1: intervention in the moments when circumstances can still change. By
Speaker 1: the time police entered Moore's apartment, those moments were gone.
Speaker 1: All investigators could do was reconstruct what had already happened.
Speaker 1: They gathered the footage, They examined the physical evidence, They
Speaker 1: listened to more statements, They followed the forensic trail, and
Speaker 1: they presented what they found through the justice system. The
Speaker 1: final outcome could not give Denise the future she had
Speaker 1: been preparing for. She had reportedly been only weeks away
Speaker 1: from becoming a mother. Her son, Ezekiel, would never experience
Speaker 1: the life she had imagined for him. Altho would never
Speaker 1: return to the convenience store, and the people left behind
Speaker 1: would have to carry the consequences of two violent deaths
Speaker 1: that became connected only because one investigation unexpectedly uncovered another.
Speaker 1: That is what makes this case so unsettling. It did
Speaker 1: not begin with investigators searching for Denise. It began with
Speaker 1: a shooting. A witness made a call, Police followed a trail,
Speaker 1: a door opened, and inside was the answer to a
Speaker 1: mystery nobody had known they were about to uncover. The
Speaker 1: case ultimately ended in a court room, but the story
Speaker 1: began much early in the complicated lives of people who
Speaker 1: were still hoping for ordinary futures. For Denise, that future
Speaker 1: ended behind a door that investigators would eventually open. And
Speaker 1: for the detectives who entered that apartment, the case they
Speaker 1: thought they were solving would never again be just one shooting.
Speaker 1: It had become the discovery of two lives lost, one
Speaker 1: unborn child lost, and a trail of evidence that had
Speaker 1: remained hidden until a completely different crime brought police to
Speaker 1: the door. The legal conclusion did not change the sequence
Speaker 1: that had brought investigators to that apartment. It only gave
Speaker 1: the sequence a final place in the justice system. For detectives,
Speaker 1: the case had begun with a call from a witness
Speaker 1: who did not know how important her decision would become.
Speaker 1: She had heard gunshots, seen a man leaving the store,
Speaker 1: and called police. Her description gave investigators something to work
Speaker 1: with when the scene was still unfolding. That decision ultimately
Speaker 1: led them to more, and finding more led them somewhere
Speaker 1: nobody expected. The apartment became the point where two investigations collided.
Speaker 1: One concerned Eilieu, a sixty one year old cashier who
Speaker 1: had been working when the conference taation erupted. The other
Speaker 1: concerned Denise, a twenty six year old woman whose death
Speaker 1: had remained hidden for weeks. The connection between them was
Speaker 1: not immediately obvious. It emerged peace by piece. The surveillance footage,
Speaker 1: the witness description, the apartment information, the discovery of Denise,
Speaker 1: the forensic examination, the statements made during questioning, and the
Speaker 1: evidence investigators believe connected more to both killings. Each piece
Speaker 1: answered one question while creating another. That is what made
Speaker 1: the case so difficult to understand. In the beginning, the
Speaker 1: shooting at the store appeared to be an isolated act
Speaker 1: of violence. Then the apartment revealed that it was not
Speaker 1: the only tragedy surrounding more. Denise's story also showed how
Speaker 1: complicated the circumstances leading up to a violent crime can become.
Speaker 1: According to the supplied information, she had struggled with homelessness
Speaker 1: and was trying to establish stability while pregnant. Her relationship
Speaker 1: with Moore was unstable, and the couple repeatedly moved from
Speaker 1: one place to another. There were arguments, there were reported
Speaker 1: physical confrontations. There were attempts to explain what had happened
Speaker 1: from different perspectives, but only one person from that relationship
Speaker 1: was still alive to give an account. That imbalance matters.
Speaker 1: When investigators questioned more he could describe events in his
Speaker 1: own words. Denise could not. Her side had to be
Speaker 1: reconstructed from evidence. The surveillance footage could show her movements,
Speaker 1: the forensic examination could provide information about her death, the
Speaker 1: apartment could reveal what investigators discovered after she was gone,
Speaker 1: and the legal proceedings could determine what prosecutors were able
Speaker 1: to prove. Eventually, the jury reached its decision. One was
Speaker 1: convicted of the reported killings and received the substantial sentence
Speaker 1: that followed. For the justice system, the case had reached
Speaker 1: its conclusion. For the people who knew Denise and Eilu,
Speaker 1: there was no equivalent ending. A verdict can establish responsibility.
Speaker 1: It cannot restore a life. It cannot return a mother
Speaker 1: to a child she never had the chance to raise.
Speaker 1: It cannot give a family another conversation with someone they lost,
Speaker 1: And it cannot erase the image of the final moments
Speaker 1: that investigators preserved on surveillance. That image remains powerful, precise
Speaker 1: because nothing about it looks like the ending of a life.
Speaker 1: Denise enters the elevator, the doors close, the recording continues,
Speaker 1: with no understanding of what it will eventually mean then
Speaker 1: the footage becomes part of an investigation into her death.
Speaker 1: That is the unsettling reality of surveillance evidence. Cameras often
Speaker 1: record people without anyone realizing that their ordinary movements may
Speaker 1: someday become the final record of their lives. For Denise,
Speaker 1: that recording became a bridge between the life she was
Speaker 1: living and the crime investigators would later reconstruct. For Ailu,
Speaker 1: the store surveillance helped preserve the confrontation that preceded his death,
Speaker 1: and for investigators, both recordings helped turn fragments into a timeline.
Speaker 1: The case ultimately demonstrates how one violent event can expose
Speaker 1: another hidden tragedy. A call about gunshots led police to
Speaker 1: a suspect. The suspect led them to an apartment. The
Speaker 1: apartment revealed Denise, and Denise's discovery forced investigators to look backward,
Speaker 1: searching through weeks of missing time for answers. By the
Speaker 1: time those answers reached a court room, the most important
Speaker 1: people in the story could no longer speak for themselves.
Speaker 1: The evidence had to speak for them, and that evidence
Speaker 1: had to be strong enough to survive a process designed
Speaker 1: to challenge it. The prosecution could present its timeline, but
Speaker 1: the defense could question how each conclusion had been reached.
Speaker 1: A surveillance recording could be examined for what it showed
Speaker 1: and what it did not show. A forensic result could
Speaker 1: be challenged on methodology or interpretation. A statement could be
Speaker 1: examined for context. A digital search could be questioned for
Speaker 1: its meaning. That process mattered because the case contained several
Speaker 1: different layers of evidence. At the center was the physical evidence.
Speaker 1: Denise had been discovered inside Moore's apartment. Her remains had
Speaker 1: reportedly been there for an extended period. The medical examination
Speaker 1: provided information about how she died. Investigators then compared those
Speaker 1: findings with everything they had learned about More and Denise's relationship.
Speaker 1: Around that physical evidence was the digital evidence. Surveillance cameras
Speaker 1: had captured movements connected to the case. Investigators could establish
Speaker 1: where Moore went after the convenience store shooting and where
Speaker 1: Denise had been shortly before her death. Then there were
Speaker 1: the statements More had spoken to investigators about the store
Speaker 1: confrontation and about Denise. His explanations gave detectives a version
Speaker 1: of events, but that version had to be tested against
Speaker 1: everything else. And finally, there were the people left behind
Speaker 1: the store employees who had known Ilu, the people who
Speaker 1: knew Denise, the investigators who had entered the apartment, the
Speaker 1: witness who made the emergency call. Each person saw a
Speaker 1: different part of the story. None saw all of it.
Speaker 1: That is why the investigation had to be assembled rather
Speaker 1: than simply told. A witness could describe what happened outside
Speaker 1: the store, a camera could show what happened inside. A
Speaker 1: forensic examination could reveal information about a victim's death. A
Speaker 1: suspect could provide his own explanation. But the complete picture
Speaker 1: only emerged when investigators placed those pieces beside one another.
Speaker 1: For Denise, that process was especially important because her final
Speaker 1: hours had no surviving eyewitness account in the supplied information.
Speaker 1: The last known footage therefore became a crucial reference point.
Speaker 1: She entered the elevator, more was with her, she appeared frightened,
Speaker 1: then the trail disappeared from public view. When investigators eventually
Speaker 1: found her, the timeline had already stretched backward for weeks.
Speaker 1: That gap between the last footage and the discovery was
Speaker 1: where the most important questions remained. The investigation had to
Speaker 1: establish what could be proven about those missing moments, and
Speaker 1: that is also where the difference between an allegation and
Speaker 1: a proven fact becomes essential. A documentary can describe what
Speaker 1: investigators believed. It can explain what prosecutors argued. It can
Speaker 1: present what a suspect claimed, but those things should not
Speaker 1: be blended together as though they are identical. In Denise's case,
Speaker 1: the prosecution's theory was ultimately tested through the legal process.
Speaker 1: The reported conviction established the legal outcome, but understanding how
Speaker 1: that outcome was reached requires looking at the evidence that
Speaker 1: came before it. The story was not solved by one
Speaker 1: dramatic discovery. It was solved through accumulation, one clue, one recording,
Speaker 1: one forensic finding, one statement, one timeline, one contradiction, and
Speaker 1: eventually enough evidence for the justice system to reach its conclusion.
Speaker 1: Yet even after that conclusion, one fact remains impossible to change.
Speaker 1: The person whose story investigators were trying hardest to reconstruct
Speaker 1: was no longer alive to tell it. Denise could not
Speaker 1: explain the relationship from her own perspective. She could not
Speaker 1: describe the final moments inside the apartment. She could not
Speaker 1: answer the questions surrounding her death. So investigators had to
Speaker 1: recover her story from what she left behind, and sometimes
Speaker 1: in a homicide investigation, that is the closest thing to
Speaker 1: a victim speaking from beyond the grave. The evidence did
Speaker 1: not speak with one voice. It came from different places,
Speaker 1: at different times, and under very different circumstances. Investigators had
Speaker 1: to determine which pieces could be independently verified and which
Speaker 1: depended on someone's interpretation. That distinction became particularly important when
Speaker 1: examining Moore's explanations. During questioning, he attempted to describe his
Speaker 1: relationship with Denise and the events that had taken place
Speaker 1: between them. He presented his own interpretation of their arguments
Speaker 1: and confrontations. But detectives already had evidence that could be
Speaker 1: compared against what he was saying. They knew Denise had
Speaker 1: been found inside the apartment, They knew she had been
Speaker 1: dead for an extended period. They knew she had been
Speaker 1: heavily pregnant, they knew she had been seen alive with
Speaker 1: more before her death, and they had the forensic evidence
Speaker 1: surrounding both homicide investigations. The more investigators examined the timeline,
Speaker 1: the harder it became to treat the two deaths as
Speaker 1: isolated incidents. The December shooting had revealed the apartment the
Speaker 1: apartment had revealed Denise, and Denise had revealed a period
Speaker 1: of time that investigators had to reconstruct. That reconstruction was
Speaker 1: also important for understanding the human side of the case.
Speaker 1: Denise was not simply a name in a police report.
Speaker 1: She was twenty six years old. She had been struggling
Speaker 1: to find stability, She was preparing for the birth of
Speaker 1: her son, and according to the information provided about her life,
Speaker 1: she wanted to build a family and create a better future.
Speaker 1: The final footage, therefore, carries a significance that goes beyond
Speaker 1: its evidentiary value. It shows a person at the edge
Speaker 1: of a future that would never happen. There is no
Speaker 1: narration inside the elevator, no explanation, no warning, only Denise
Speaker 1: and more moving toward the apartment. For investigators, the footage
Speaker 1: became a timestamp. For the people who love Denise, it
Speaker 1: became something much more painful, one of the last preserved
Speaker 1: moments of her life. Meanwhile, the death of Ailu had
Speaker 1: its own consequences. He had been working behind the counter
Speaker 1: when the confrontation began. The investigation indicated that the dispute
Speaker 1: escalated into gunfire, and he died at the scene. His
Speaker 1: death was the event that brought police to more. Without
Speaker 1: that call, that surveillance footage, and that investigation, the discovery
Speaker 1: of Denise might have taken a very different path. That
Speaker 1: connection is one of the most striking elements of the case.
Speaker 1: Sometimes a hidden crime is uncovered because investigators deliberately search
Speaker 1: for it. Other times it is exposed by an entirely
Speaker 1: separate event. Here, according to the reported timeline, the second
Speaker 1: scenario occurred, a shooting in a convenience store opened a
Speaker 1: door into a much older tragedy, and once investigators crossed
Speaker 1: that threshold, there was no way to separate the two investigations.
Speaker 1: The case eventually produced a conviction and a lengthy sentence,
Speaker 1: giving the criminal justice system a definitive outcome. But legal
Speaker 1: closure is not the same as emotional closure. A sentence
Speaker 1: can punish a defendant, it cannot restore the people who
Speaker 1: were lost. It cannot give Denise the opportunity to raise
Speaker 1: her child, It cannot return Ilud to his family, and
Speaker 1: it cannot erase the questions that naturally remain around lives
Speaker 1: that ended so suddenly. What remains is the record, the
Speaker 1: emergency call, the surveillance footage, the apartment, the forensic findings,
Speaker 1: the interviews, the court room evidence, and the final image
Speaker 1: of Denise entering an elevator while carrying a future she
Speaker 1: would never live to see. That image became the quiet
Speaker 1: beginning of the end of her story, but for investigators,
Speaker 1: it was also the beginning of understanding what had happened.
Speaker 1: After the elevator doors closed, and when those doors finally
Speaker 1: opened again, the life Denise had been building was gone,
Speaker 1: leaving behind only the evidence from which investigators would reconstruct
Speaker 1: her final chapter. The reconstruction of that final chapter was
Speaker 1: never going to restore what had been lost, but it
Speaker 1: could establish a record of what investigators believed had happened
Speaker 1: and why the case ultimately resulted in a conviction. By then,
Speaker 1: the evidence had traveled a long distance from the apartment
Speaker 1: where Denise was found. It had moved through forensic examination, interviews,
Speaker 1: digital evidence, surveillance footage, and eventually the court room. Each
Speaker 1: stage served a different purpose. The surveillance footage established movements.
Speaker 1: The forensic evidence helped establish what happened to the victims.
Speaker 1: The interviews revealed competing accounts, the digital evidence provided investigators
Speaker 1: with additional material to examine, and the court determined whether
Speaker 1: the prosecution had proved its case for more. The investigation
Speaker 1: had started with the December shooting. For investigators, however, the
Speaker 1: apartment had transformed that case into something much larger. They
Speaker 1: had entered expecting to find a suspect. Instead, they found
Speaker 1: the remains of a woman who had apparently been dead
Speaker 1: for weeks. That discovery meant that the December shooting could
Speaker 1: no longer be understood on its own. There was now
Speaker 1: a second victim, and there was a relationship that investigators
Speaker 1: had to understand. Denise and Moore had reportedly been together
Speaker 1: on and off. Their circumstances were unstable, and the relationship
Speaker 1: had included arguments and conflict. Denise was also approaching the
Speaker 1: end of her pregnancy. That fact made the investigation even
Speaker 1: more difficult for those involved. Because the death was not
Speaker 1: limited to one life, The prosecution ultimately treated the unborn
Speaker 1: child as another victim, and Moore was convicted on three
Speaker 1: first degree murder counts. According to the reported case outcome,
Speaker 1: he received three consecutive life sentences in an additional eighty years.
Speaker 1: That sentence marked the formal conclusion of the criminal case.
Speaker 1: But there is another kind of ending that only the
Speaker 1: people left behind can experience. Families have to continue. They
Speaker 1: have to live with empty spaces. They have to remember
Speaker 1: birthdays that will never be celebrated with the person they lost.
Speaker 1: They have to hear the names of their loved ones
Speaker 1: in court documents and news reports instead of ordinary conversations.
Speaker 1: For Denise's family, the story would forever include the knowledge
Speaker 1: that she was carrying her unborn son when her life ended.
Speaker 1: For Eilu's family, it would this include the memory of
Speaker 1: a man who went to work at a convenience store
Speaker 1: and never returned home. The investigation had answered who prosecutors
Speaker 1: believed was responsible, the jury had reached its verdict, the
Speaker 1: sentence had been imposed, but the human consequences did not
Speaker 1: end when the courtroom proceedings ended. That is often the
Speaker 1: part of a homicide case that disappears from headlines. The
Speaker 1: investigation gets a conclusion, the defendant receives a sentence, the
Speaker 1: cameras leave, but the victim's families remain, And in this case,
Speaker 1: there was another painful detail that would remain impossible to ignore.
Speaker 1: Denise's final known image was not taken in a hospital,
Speaker 1: at home with family, or during an ordinary moment of
Speaker 1: preparation for her baby's arrival. It was surveillance footage inside
Speaker 1: an elevator, a brief recording that nobody would have considered
Speaker 1: remarkable at the time. Yet after her death, those few
Speaker 1: seconds became a permanent record of the woman investigators were
Speaker 1: trying to understand. The camera could show where she was,
Speaker 1: it could show who was beside her, It could show
Speaker 1: her apparent fear, but it could not tell investigators everything
Speaker 1: that happened after the doors closed. That gap had to
Speaker 1: be filled through the evidence gathered later, and that is
Speaker 1: where the case leaves its most enduring impression. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: most important evidence is not the dramatic discovery. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: is the small fragment that survives. A recording, a statement,
Speaker 1: a forensic result, a phone search, a witness call, a
Speaker 1: trail that begins with one crime and unexpectedly exposes another.
Speaker 1: In this case, those fragments ultimately formed a chain that
Speaker 1: led from a convenience store shooting to an apartment, from
Speaker 1: an apartment to Denise Middleton, and from Denise's death to
Speaker 1: a court room conviction. The chain began with violence, but
Speaker 1: it ended with a record of what investigators and prosecutors
Speaker 1: were able to prove, and somewhere at the center of
Speaker 1: that record is still the same image, Denise entering the elevator, alive, pregnant,
Speaker 1: and unaware that those few seconds would become part of
Speaker 1: the final evidence surrounding her life. The elevator footage could
Speaker 1: not answer every question, but it preserved something investigators desperately needed,
Speaker 1: a reference point. It showed Denise alive, it showed her
Speaker 1: with more, and it established moment before the long silence
Speaker 1: that followed After that recording, investigators had to work backward
Speaker 1: from the discovery of her remains. They had to determine
Speaker 1: what happened during the missing weeks and compare the available
Speaker 1: evidence with Moore's explanations. That process eventually brought together the
Speaker 1: different strands of the investigation. The December eighth shooting, the
Speaker 1: surveillance footage from the convenience store, the witness who called police,
Speaker 1: the identification of Moore, the search of his apartment, the
Speaker 1: discovery of Denise, the forensic examination, the evidence recovered from
Speaker 1: the crime scenes, and the statements more made during questioning.
Speaker 1: None of those pieces existed in isolation. Together they formed
Speaker 1: the case that prosecutors presented against him. The store's shooting
Speaker 1: had been the immediate trigger. Ailu a sixty one year
Speaker 1: old cashier, was killed during a confrontation inside the store.
Speaker 1: Moore was identified as the suspected shooter, and investigators followed
Speaker 1: the trail to his apartment. What they found their transformed
Speaker 1: the investigation. Denise Middleton had apparently been dead for weeks.
Speaker 1: She had been heavily pregnant, and, according to the report timeline,
Speaker 1: she had been living through an increasingly unstable relationship with
Speaker 1: More before her death. Her disappearance had not ended with
Speaker 1: someone discovering her body in a public location. It had
Speaker 1: ended inside the apartment where investigators found her. That discovery
Speaker 1: also meant that the December shooting had done something investigators
Speaker 1: could never have anticipated. It exposed a hidden homicide. The
Speaker 1: case eventually reached its legal conclusion, with More convicted of
Speaker 1: the reported murders of Ailieu and Denise, and the killing
Speaker 1: of Denise's unborn child. The sentence reflected the seriousness of
Speaker 1: those convictions, but there is a difference between a case
Speaker 1: being legally finished in a tragedy being emotionally finished. For
Speaker 1: Denise's loved Once the verdict could not restore the future
Speaker 1: she had imagined, she had reportedly won its stability, she
Speaker 1: had been preparing for the arrival of her son, and
Speaker 1: whatever plans she had for motherhood ended before she could
Speaker 1: experience them. For Isilu's family, the same truth applied. He
Speaker 1: had gone to work and never returned. His death became
Speaker 1: the first visible piece of a much larger investigation, and
Speaker 1: for the detectives and the apartment discovery ensured that the
Speaker 1: December shooting would never be remembered as an isolated crime.
Speaker 1: It became the doorway into Denise's final chapter. Perhaps that
Speaker 1: is why the surveillance footage remains so haunting. There is
Speaker 1: no dramatic explanation inside that elevator. There is no indication
Speaker 1: of what investigators would eventually discover. Denise simply enters. She
Speaker 1: is alive, she is pregnant, she appears frightened, and the
Speaker 1: doors close. Everything that followed had to be reconstructed afterward.
Speaker 1: The camera could not follow her into the future. It
Speaker 1: could only preserve the moment before it disappeared. Investigators eventually
Speaker 1: followed the evidence through that darkness, from the store to
Speaker 1: the apartment, from the apartment to the forensic examination, and
Speaker 1: from the investigation to the court room. The final result
Speaker 1: gave the case a legal ending, but Denise's story is
Speaker 1: more than the circumstances of her death. It is also
Speaker 1: the story of a young woman who had been trying
Speaker 1: to build a life while facing instability, a woman whose
Speaker 1: future was reduced to evidence after she was gone. Eilu's
Speaker 1: story is also more than the shooting that killed him.
Speaker 1: He was a person with a life and a family
Speaker 1: before he became a name in a homicide investigation. That
Speaker 1: is the part that can disappear when true crime becomes
Speaker 1: focused only on suspects and shocking discoveries. Behind every case
Speaker 1: file are people who had futures, people who expected tomorrow
Speaker 1: to arrive, people who never knew that an ordinary day
Speaker 1: would become their last. And in this case, tomorrow never
Speaker 1: came for Denise Ilieu or Denise's unborn child. What remained
Speaker 1: was evidence, testimony, surveillance footage, and the painstaking work of
Speaker 1: investigators trying to reconstruct what happened. The investigation began with
Speaker 1: gunshots at a convenience store. It ended with a conviction
Speaker 1: connected to three deaths, But between those two points was
Speaker 1: a much darker discovery. Sometimes one crime does not simply
Speaker 1: end a life. Sometimes it opens a door to another
Speaker 1: tragedy that had been hidden all along, because the full
Speaker 1: story is never the one they told you. This is
Speaker 1: us Dark Crimes