Debra Sue Moore (Jack of Clubs, Texas)

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Our card this week is Deborah Sue Moore, the jack of clubs from Texas. When a young mother was stabbed to death outside an apartment complex in Odessa, Texas in the spring of 1986, police initially suspected her estranged husband could be behind the crime.
But when three other women were attacked in the same area that same week, investigators were forced to reconsider their theory and grapple with a bigger question. Did they have a serial predator on their hands?

And that's a question that they are still asking to this very day.

But perhaps with your help, they'll finally get an answer.

I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. Thank you.
Just before 3 a.m. on May 17th, 1986,

a woman's scream rang out in the Viva apartment complex in Odessa, Texas.

Alarmed by the piercing sound of distress,

a man named Dale ran out of his second floor unit and down a set of stairs into the open-air courtyard of the two-story building. And he noticed a trail of blood along the sidewalk leading to the door of apartment 51.
And as he knocked on the door, he heard a man cry out, oh my God. When the door opened, Dale saw a woman soaked in blood lying motionless on the floor.
The man who opened the door had already called police. And as he ran to the parking lot to flag down first responders, Dale started CPR on the unresponsive woman.
When police and paramedics arrived and began assessing the woman, the man who'd flagged them down told them that she was 25-year-old Deborah Sue Moore. They saw that Deborah had been stabbed at least once and they weren't going to be able to care for her there, so they loaded her into an ambulance and rushed her to the local hospital.
But it wasn't long before official word came back that Deborah hadn't made it. By the time they got that news, detectives at the Viva Apartments were already kicked into high gear, speaking with witnesses.
First up, the occupant of apartment 51 and the man who'd called 911. And that's 23-year-old Charles Azel.
In interviews that morning and a few days later, he told them Deborah had come over to his apartment at around 8.15 p.m. on the 16th.
They'd met up with another couple, and the four of them went on a double date to a bar called The Brewery. And Charles estimated that they'd all left the bar sometime between 12.30 and 1.30 in the morning.
Charles said that he and Deborah had gone alone to eat at a Denny's before going back to his place at around 1.45. Here's Odessa Police Department's lead cold case detective, Lauren Gonzalez, who now is overseeing the case.
They had sex. Deborah fell asleep but woke up and told Charles she'd had a nightmare about the time her grandmother died in her arms.
Sometime afterward, she put on his robe and walked out into the living room. And he said he figured she was maybe going to go use the bathroom, but he fell asleep.
And he woke up because he heard her screaming his name, Charles. So he went into the living room and opened the door, the front door, and she was there in the doorway bleeding.
And she fell to the floor. She'd still had the overnight bag strapped onto her shoulder.
And he realized later she must have gone outside to get her bag out of the car because they kind of briefly talked about this. And he's like, oh no, we can just get it in the morning, something like that.
So he knew the bag was in the car. So it's not like she was leaving the apartment with the bag.
She had gone to the car to get the bag and bring it back into the apartment because the intention was to spend the night there. Charles's statement ends with the upstairs neighbor Dale knocking on the door and Charles running out to the parking lot to flag down the ambulance.
It didn't seem that Charles had seen or heard anyone else, but also he probably didn't do much looking around. Like, he had jumped right into action, pulling Deborah inside the apartment for safety and calling police.
The story seemed almost unbelievable, but a quick canvas of the complex actually proved that it was possible. See, the design of the apartment complex meant that lots of people could have heard or seen something that night.

And they did.

Each of the buildings in the apartment complex was two stories with units opening up onto this courtyard.

Plus, at the end of each building was a gated archway that allowed people on the outside to see in.

Detective Gonzalez says officers spoke with a resident named James who lived in the building directly north of Charles. And what James told them backed up his story.
They spoke with him because his apartment was on the second floor and his balcony patio faced south. So he reported that he had heard screaming and went out on his balcony and saw the victim engaged in a struggle with an unidentified man.
And he told police that they were just outside of the gate of Charles's building. And James shouted at the assailant.
And at that time, the assailant fled eastbound through a gate that led to the fair green apartments next door. He saw Deborah stagger through the apartment building gate.
And so he quickly got dressed and went downstairs to try to pursue the attacker, but he could not find him. He described the suspect as a white male with brown chin length hair, approximately six feet tall, slim build, wearing a white t- reported hearing the scream.
And get this, just before he heard screaming, this resident told detectives that he'd been outside talking to a neighbor. This was around 2.55 in the morning.
And that's when a man he didn't recognize walked by. And he described the man as white, about 5 foot 11, 150 pounds, skinny build with long sideburns and brown hair, wearing a light blue button-down shirt with a tail hanging out of his blue pants.
And he saw this man walking towards the apartment where the stabbing had occurred. Several minutes after this man walked by, he'd heard a woman scream, but he didn't go to see where the scream came from, and instead he went to check his mailbox.
When detectives continued to talk to witnesses, other members of law enforcement were collecting evidence in and around the apartment. There was a pool of blood on the concrete sidewalk at the threshold of the north gate of the apartment building.
And looking at photos, it appeared that at least two people had walked through the pool of blood. So there were three bloody right barefoot prints that led from the pool of blood down the sidewalk towards apartment 51.
And that blood trail towards the apartment is accompanied by dozens of blood drops. And that indicated that the person was actively bleeding while walking to the apartment.
And there are blood drips on the front door of apartment 51

where the victim made entry. Then there's numerous pools of blood on the carpet of the living room

in the apartment. And so this blood trail was most likely made by Deborah after she was stabbed.

A second set of bloody prints, shoe prints, also appeared to originate in the pool of blood by the

gate. And they led in the opposite direction, northbound, away from the apartments.
But

I'm going to go particularly useful to investigators. Now, the shoe impressions were not documented very well, and there's no report indicating if the shoe impressions were made by someone other than the killer, like a witness, a paramedic, or officer.

And it's unknown where that blood trail terminates because there's just very few photographs that were taken of the blood trail.

And they did not document any measurements made.

So it does make me wonder if those prints were made by someone they didn't suspect,

like, again, like a paramedic, a police officer, a witness, or something. And that's why they didn't document them.
There wasn't much inside the apartment, since it seems her attacker never made it inside. Her purse and overnight bag were there.
There was actually blood on the outside of her bag, and they collected some items around the apartment, like bloody keys near her, some women's clothes, and a folded pocket knife on the dining table. But it didn't have any blood on it so they weren't very hopeful of that being the murder weapon.
All in all, everything they'd heard and seen led investigators to believe Debra had gone to retrieve her overnight bag from her car in the parking lot. And they think that she had likely made it to the car and was attacked on her way back to the apartment.
But who attacked her was the question. And almost as fast as police could ask the question, someone showed up on scene with a pretty compelling answer.
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slash DECK to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. A man named Curtis had arrived on scene after the ambulance had arrived.
Curtis was the one who'd actually introduced Charles and Debra about a month before. And Curtis had something he wanted to tell police about Debra's past.
He said that his friend Charles had called him and said something was wrong with Debra and she was covered in blood and had come over right away. And he believed Debra was either divorced or separated from her husband and that she lived in Monaghan's, Texas with her two children.
Monaghan's is about a 30-minute drive west of Odessa.

And Curtis said he didn't know Debra's husband's name,

but he did know he owned Moore's Trucking Company in Monaghan's.

Debra had told Curtis about three weeks prior that her husband had beat her so badly

that he had caused her a head injury that required her to go to the hospital. Debra's husband at the time was a man by the name of Timothy Moore, and Curtis wasn't the only one with concerning stories of Tim's abuse.
Over the next day or so, person after person gave them confirmation of Tim's violent history with Debra, including an ex named Jimmy that Debra had dated right before marrying Tim about a year and a half ago. He stated Debra was scared of Tim following her and was worried he would show up where she was.
He said approximately six months before, Debra wanted to stay with him for a week because Tim had been beating her up. So Jimmy let her.
And then approximately two months ago, Debra asked to stay with Jimmy again, and he let her stay another week. She told Jimmy that she wanted to divorce Tim, but she was afraid he would kill her, or have her killed if she did.
And she further told Jimmy that Tim had, quote, the monetary means to do this. When police went looking for Tim that first day to both notify him of his wife's death and ask him some pretty important questions, they found him at his office, Moore's Trucking, where he appeared to have been sleeping.
Now, he flat out denied any involvement in Deborah's murder, and he was cooperative, going down to the station multiple times over the next couple of days. I mean, he even let police search his truck, his house, his business.
None of the searches yielded anything meaningful. But here is what they ended up learning.
Tim said that he and Deborah didn't have any kids together. Her two children were from two previous marriages.
She had a 10-year-old son named Bert that she had with her first husband, Albert Williams, and a five-year-old daughter, Brandy, that she had with her second husband, Ed Simmons. And he told police that Brandy was staying with her father, Ed, because Deborah had been having health issues.
The detective documented in their report that Tim said the health issues were quote, some type of brain ailment. And he advised that Debra had problems with Albert Williams' new wife over child support.
Tim told detectives that he and Debra had only been together about a year and a half. In the last few months of that time,

they'd been separated.

They were getting divorced

because they'd rushed into marriage

and he said he didn't love her.

He also said he'd been sleeping at his shop in Monaghan's,

about 40 minutes away from Odessa since the split.

And the night Deborah died,

he'd been with an employee

until like 1 or 1.30 in the morning.

And he said after the employee left,

he had been there alone until police arrived to notify him about his wife's death at around 4 a.m. When detectives asked him about the abuse allegations, he described two different incidents in which Deborah had been injured.
But he really downplayed them. And he stated that approximately one month ago, he had been at a bar in Monaghan's called The Blue Room with a friend named Jimmy Rollins.
And afterward, the men went to Tim's shop, Morris Trucking, and continued drinking. Tim said that Debra showed up and was giving him a hard time about drinking, so he told her to leave.
And that if she didn't, he would drag her back to the car. and when Debra told him he couldn't do that, he grabbed her by the arm and started to take her outside

when she fell down and hit her head. He said that according to Debra's mother, this injured Debra, but Tim felt Debra often made a bigger deal about things than they really were, so he didn't know if the incident is what caused her head injury.
He described another incident that happened the day before they'd gotten married,

a year and a half earlier.

Tim said he'd gotten into a fight with a guy,

and Deborah was accidental collateral damage.

Tim's mother was there and grabbed one of his arms,

and Deborah grabbed the other in an attempt to pull him away from the fight,

but he didn't know who had grabbed hold of him, so he threw them off.

His mother fell to the ground,

and Debra hit her head against a wall.

That's two incidents in which Tim straight up told police

that he'd injured Debra,

but he insisted he had never followed Debra anywhere.

Now, it took a couple of days

to get all of this information from Tim because investigators were running a parallel path in their investigation. And as suspicious as Tim seemed, there was another lead that felt even more promising.
You see, just 12 minutes after Charles' call to 911, a second call had come in to police. There had been an attempted abduction of another woman about a block away from where Deborah was stabbed, and she had quite the story to tell.
At 3.05 a.m., a female clerk at a 7-Eleven store about a quarter of a mile up the road from the Viva Apartments called police with a chilling story of a man who had come into her store and tried to abduct her. She said that he'd been kind of just hanging around the store for like 20 minutes or so.
But during that time, her husband and his friend were there. But as soon as they left, the man approached her at the counter.
The clerk reported the suspect stated, quote,

if you get into my car, nothing will happen to you. But if not, then I can't be responsible for what happens.
He told her to walk around from the counter slowly so he could watch her. She screamed at him no and grabbed the phone to call for police, and this caused the suspect to flee the store.
He got into a navy blue 1976 to 1979

Oldsmobile two-door car with glass T-tops and a Texas plate, but no front plate. And he was seen driving eastbound on Oakwood at a high rate of speed.
She described the suspect as a white male around 24 to 25 years old, 5 foot 8 or 5 foot 9, 120 to 140 pounds, slim build, with light brown, collar to shoulder length, straight hair, and a thin mustache. And then he was wearing a white t-shirt, cut off blue jeans, and thong sandals, or what we would call flip-flops.
The clerk's description of the suspect, slim build and brown shoulder-length hair, was pretty darn close to what the witnesses at the Viva apartment said the guy they saw look like, even down to the clothes. And it wasn't just the clerk who got a good look at him.
Her husband and his friend both said that they'd be able to recognize the guy if they saw him again. There was another detail described by the witnesses at both the Viva Apartments and the 7-Eleven.
The witnesses at the Viva Apartments said that their guy had run toward the Fairgreen Apartments, which is the complex immediately next door to the Viva Apartments. And the 7-Eleven clerk said that was the direction the suspect drove off in.
So police began a search of the area for a two-door 1970s Navy Oldsmobile, and it wasn't long before they got a hit. At 12.30 p.m., a vehicle matching the description that the clerk gave was located at the nearby University Garden Apartments at 4801 Oakwood.
And the vehicle was an exact match to the clerk's description, except it had an Oklahoma plate on the back, not a Texas plate. And officers were quickly able to make contact with the owner of the vehicle.
And he was identified as David Good. And he was a resident of apartment 406 in that complex of University Garden Apartments.
David Good agreed to go down to the station to be interviewed. Police read him his rights and he started talking.
And this guy did not do himself any favors. He stated that he'd had an argument with his girlfriend Peggy

around 10.30 or 11.30 p.m. that night,

so he left the apartment.

He drove around for a while before going to the Baby Doll Strip Club.

He stayed there until they closed, which was around 2 a.m.,

and he drove around for a while before driving back toward his apartment.

He stopped at the 7-Eleven store at the corner of Oakwood and John Ben Shepard Parkway, which is the same 7-Eleven where the kidnapping occurred. He said he left his car running and went inside the store where he played a video game, which is consistent with the statements given by the clerk and her husband and friend.
He stated he played four to five games and that each game was one minute long. During the interview, he admitted to attempting to kidnap the clerk at the store.
He told a detective that his intention was to rape her and possibly even kill her afterward. The detective reported that David would not admit that he was going to rape or kill the victim in writing, but stated so verbally during the interview.
And when he was asked if he killed Debra Moore at the Viva Apartments, he stated he didn't know if he did or not and asked to be hypnotized. Here's Detective Gonzalez reading the report from the officer who interrogated David that day.
He broke down in tears and was talking freely about his drinking problem, about his problems with women and his tendency to feel violent toward women. David was talking about the murder when I was interrupted and made to leave the room to attend a 10-minute briefing on the case.
Upon my return to the room, David was pretty much done talking. David's roommates, his girlfriend Peggy and her brother Chris, both confirmed David's account that he and Peggy had a fight and that he left the apartment

at around 10 p.m. Both Chris and Peggy said David had come home at around 3 15 in the morning meaning that his story about abducting the clerk totally fits and he had no alibi for the time of Deborah's attack just said he was driving around before the failed abduction that he admitted to So while they arrest him for that, they unfortunately have nothing on him for Deborah's case.
The clerk didn't report seeing any blood on David's white shirt. And the timeline didn't quite fit either.
I mean, she'd estimated that he'd been in the store for about 20 minutes before the attempted abduction. And Deborah had been stabbed about 15 minutes before the abduction.
So if that timing was right, he couldn't have been the killer. But David himself had estimated that he'd only been playing video games in the store for like five minutes before he approached the clerk.
And who knows, maybe he changed his shirt. Or maybe he didn't get any blood on him.
They did end up collecting his clothes, but there is nothing in the file about the results of that. They also searched David's apartment.
They didn't find anything of evidentiary value. Though that doesn't mean he wasn't in the clear.
They weren't quite convinced yet that these two cases weren't connected. And in fact, when they really scoped out, when they looked beyond that incident, beyond Deborah's murder, they noticed some disturbing incidents in the time before.
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Before I tell you what comes next, it's worth pointing out, it's about to get complicated. And because of just how many people are about to enter this picture, we have made a map to help you keep track of all of it.
All of the people that got pulled into this investigation one way or another. You can find that at thedeckpodcast.com or our show notes for this episode.
On May 12th, just five days before Debra's murder and the attempted abduction at 7-Eleven, a college student from University of Texas of the Permian Basin was attacked while she was riding her bike back to her dorm from the nearby Safeway grocery store at around 10.15 or 10.30 p.m. The campus is about a half mile from the Viva Apartments and right across the street from where David Good lived at the University Garden Apartments.
This assailant wrestled the bike away from this woman and then forced her at knife point into a pasture on the west side of the road,

telling her that he wouldn't hurt her if she did exactly what he said. He then sexually assaulted

her. And afterwards, he ordered her to lie down on her stomach and told her not to tell anyone

what had happened. He then piled sticks and dirt on her as if she were already dead and that like

he was trying to bury her. And this made her very afraid that the next thing he was going to do was kill her.
He then threw her clothing a short distance away and left. Once her attacker was gone, the terrorized student got her clothing, put it back on.
And when she looked out onto the road that passes the campus entrance, she saw her assailant in the distance. He was walking on the same side of the street as both the University Garden Apartments, where David Good lived, and the Viva Apartments, where Deborah was stabbed.
She reported the assault immediately to police. Then they took her to the hospital, where they collected her clothing and took a sexual assault evidence kit.

She described him as a white male in his mid-20s, approximately 5'8 or 5'9, 150 pounds, slim but muscular with blonde hair that was cut above his ears and down to the collar of his shirt and a blonde mustache. She described him as wearing a white ball cap with royal blue lettering on the front, a yellow t-shirt, and blue cut-off jeans.
During this interview, she really pointed out his pubic hair was straight and long. While detailed, it wasn't a descriptor that was on display.
And for about a week, they had trouble locating suspects in her case. That is, until now, with David sitting right in front of them.
But like the small time discrepancy in Deborah's case, there was one hurdle here too. The hair color.
In both of the current cases, the assailant had brown hair, but in this earlier attack, the student was positive that the man who assaulted her had blonde hair, like platinum blonde. Now, here's the other thing.
They had initially made an arrest in that case because coincidentally, right around the time of the attack, a picture of a blonde-haired employee at the fair green apartments ran in the Odessa American newspaper. This guy's name was Billy.
Now, this picture, it wasn't in connection to any crime. It was just a black and white picture of him, like inspecting a fountain.
But apparently, police took one look at that picture and thought, this looks like our guy. Then they took that newspaper photo to the student and asked her to make an ID.
But she wasn't sure if it looked like her attacker because the picture was truly so bad. Detectives went ahead and arrested this guy anyway on May 16th.
But Detective Gonzalez says the fact that they showed the victim this picture before they did a photo lineup was a critical mistake. Well, they contaminated horribly a photo lineup they're about to do with the victim is what they did.
And I, looking at the photo, I have, I do not understand at all why they would see that photo and think that looks like the rapist because the photo is terrible the man turns out to have blonde hair you can't tell in the photo the photo was taken like the same day as this alt and in the paper the same day and it says this man at this apartment and I guess they noticed how close it was, but I don't understand. This is not a very credible way to develop a lead.
But that wouldn't be the last one for detectives to follow because in the days after the sexual assault, another woman came forward to share a chilling encounter that happened that very same night. This one at an auto body shop

very close to the Fairgreen Apartments where Billy worked

and that field where the student was assaulted.

She stated that she had closed up the body shop

and she was getting into her car after work

and she had seen a man walking through the vacant lot that was just north of fair green apartments. She got into her car and was having trouble getting it started and the man walked up to her car and he had a knife in his hand and asked her if she needed help with her car.
And she told him no. And then he grabbed at her.
So she took a swing at him and then she reached for underneath the front seat of her car and told him, I have a gun and acted as if she was going to grab one. She didn't really have one.
She just wanted to scare him. And she did scare him away.
And she described him as a white male, thin build, 130 pounds, about 5'8", 5'9", with a gold t-shirt, Levi's, a light-colored baseball cap, and blonde hair. And this is a same clothing description, really, as Jane Doe described the rapist.
This would have happened right before the rape and in the same area. So this kind of corroborates what he looked like.
This sounded like the description of the student's attacker, blonde hair and all. So it's easy to see why they looked at Billy right away for this one.
I mean, it was for all the same unsubstantial reasons they had in the other case from the same night. Now, based on the case file, Gonzalez believes that Billy was released on bond just before Debra was killed on May 17th.
So one might look at this and say, oh, maybe Billy should be on our suspect list for Debra's case, maybe even the 7-Eleven case too. But not so fast.
Because remember David Good, the man who admitted to abducting the 7-Eleven clerk that was a quarter mile away from Viva Apartments? Well, that woman from the body shop actually had a troubling history with none other than David Good. And according to notes from the investigator on the case at the time, one of David Good's past partners had worked at that same body shop, and he had attacked her while she was working there.
Detective Price claimed that when that assault happened, she refused to file charges, but the manager of the body shop filed charges on David. And that manager is the one who reported being assaulted.
The thing that no one was able to get past, though, was the hair color. And don't worry, I checked, David Goode had not previously had

bleached blonde hair that had been dyed brown.

So even though the connection felt like

more than just a weird coincidence,

maybe it really was just that,

a weird coincidence.

Maybe there really were multiple men

preying on women in the same small area.

Now, it seemed pretty clear that Billy wasn't the 7-Eleven perp since David Goode had confessed to that crime. The two crimes on the 12th, the assault of the college student and the woman at the auto body shop, both seemed to be committed by the same perp.
And then Debra's was still in question. On May 22nd, so this is just five days after Debra's murder, David Good voluntarily submitted to a polygraph exam with questions about Debra's death.
But the results were inconclusive. And by May 27th, Good had changed his tune about even his possible involvement.
I mean, he first told police he didn't know if he had or had not, but now he was telling them he definitely did not stab Debra. Detectives didn't just write him off, but they kept following other leads that came in.
And there was a growing list of alternate suspects to vet. A woman who lived at the Viva apartment said that her ex-boyfriend had been stalking her, and she was concerned that he was potentially violent and could have been in the area the night of Debra's death.
Then there was a man named Eroberto. He had been charged with a recent attack on a woman at her home in Crane, Texas, about 30 minutes south.
And his wife lived in Odessa, not too far from the Viva apartments. Eroberto had an attorney representing him on that case, though, so detectives on Debra's case were never able to even question him.
And then there was a Viva Apartments employee who told police about a man who'd been repeatedly kicked off the property for loitering. But that tip also appeared to lead nowhere.
There was even a tip connected to Debra's own brother, Roger. According to the police file,

Debra's mother called Odessa police and told them Roger was in prison for rape and that the brother of his victim had threatened to harm Debra as some kind of revenge for what Roger had done to his sister. Frankly, it is chilling just how many men with and without connections to Debra were menaces to women then and there.

But police didn't seem to find any evidence to support Just how many men, with and without connections to Debra, were menaces to women then and there.

But police didn't seem to find any evidence to support these other guys as real suspects in Debra's case.

There's also no mention in the case file of interviews with Debra's second husband, Ed, or her first husband, Albert.

They don't appear to have been suspects at all.

I mean, Albert didn't even live in the area.

And by all accounts, Ed and Debra maintained a good relationship while co-parenting their daughter, Brandy. In fact, Debra had recently asked him to take custody of the little girl.
That's where their daughter was the night Debra had been murdered. So that left David Good and Tim Moore, Debra's estranged third husband, square in the bullseye.
And Detective Gonzalez says that Tim started to seem less likely when he voluntarily submitted to a polygraph examination on June 26. He was asked, quote, did you stab Debbie in the parking lot of the Viva apartments causing her death? Tim answered no, and the polygrapher's opinion was that Tim was being truthful.
But Detective Gonzalez says the examiner didn't ask Tim other important questions, like if he knew who killed Debra, or if he had paid or asked someone else to do it. And those questions can't be asked now, because Tim died a couple of years ago.
But Detective Gonzalez thinks it is unlikely that he was at the scene that day. I have photographs of Tim from that morning when he initially came to the police department and Tim does not match the description of the attacker at all.
Tim had like perm, short, curly blonde hair. He was wearing glasses.
He's definitely more of a stocky build, not a slender or slim build that is described by the witness. They said that that man had straight brown hair that was kind of longer.
So I really don't think Tim was the one that actually did it. David Good, however, was looking more and more likely.
And his former partner, the one who had worked at the auto body shop, she spoke with detectives on July 2nd, 1986. She described him as physically and sexually abusive during their relationship, and she shared an interesting tidbit of information with detectives.
She did make statements that he had long, straight pubic hair. After three and a half years of marriage to David, she left him.

And she had heard from a friend that David's brother Terry believed David murdered Deborah.

And she told detectives she believed David was capable of committing the murder.

Police noted that this former partner's description of his pubic hair matched the student's description of the man who'd sexually assaulted her days before Deborah's murder. It didn't seem like the student said anything about the color of her assailant's pubic hair.
And regardless, that detail certainly wasn't enough evidence to charge David with that crime. So ultimately, David Goode got off light on the crime that he had admitted to.
He was convicted of a reduced charge of simple assault in the 7-Eleven case, and he was ordered to pay a fine, but he served no time. Then there wasn't enough evidence to charge him with Deborah's murder.
And so the case languished. Although there were other tips that came in over the years,

including one mysterious call from an anonymous woman on August 24th, 1989.

And they stated a woman had been at a bar on 2nd Street in Odessa,

and an intoxicated man named Ricky started crying and told her, quote,

You know that girl that was killed on Oakwood a couple of years ago? I'm the one who killed her, end quote. And the man then sat his full beard down on the bar and just left.
The woman was extremely afraid of the man and that was why she would not report this to the police herself. So this is kind of just an anonymous tip.

We don't know Ricky's last name.

I don't know what Ricky looks like.

And yeah, even the person that was reporting this to police was afraid as well.

They didn't give their name.

They didn't give any information.

Gonzalez would still love to talk to that woman who called in.

Or Ricky, if anyone knows who he is. Over the next few decades, the same names would bubble to the surface.
In 1989, a letter came into police saying Tim Moore confessed to a friend that he killed Deborah. But it didn't do much to move the needle.
Same in 2014 when the department re-examined the case and brought David Good back in for another round of questioning. And he pretty much just said he didn't know anything about Debra's murder and that he would not submit to a polygraph again because he was in poor health.
And he was. He had just gotten out of the hospital when they spoke to him.
That detective also talked to Peggy, the woman who had been dating David at the time of the crimes. Turns out she had gone on to marry and then divorce David.
But both she and her brother Chris, their third roommate back in 1986, told police to just back off. Both Peggy and Chris told the detective that David was a good man and they should leave him alone.
Detective Gonzalez says David Good died sometime after that last interview in 2014. But now that she's taken over the case, she is following up on every old lead, even if they wind up being dead ends.
And she's following up on new leads too. One of them that our reporting team helped her uncover.
As we do with any story, we reached out to Debra's family for this episode. We were able to connect with Debra's older sister, Jana, who, to our surprise, had never been spoken to by police.
So naturally, Detective Gonzalez didn't have anything about her in the case file. And this meant there was also nothing in the case file about the disturbing last call Jana had with her sister just days before she died.
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A few months before she died, Debra called her older sister Jana and told her that she and Tim had been fighting. And she'd had to go to the hospital for a shoulder injury.
She said she was going to leave him and she wanted to take the kids back to Oklahoma to live with their mother and stepfather. But it wasn't just Tim who was scaring her.
Jana now lives in Wyoming and she spoke to our reporter by phone about that last call.

Jana said that a few nights before she died, Debra called her again, very upset. My sister, Ruthie, and if my mother would care if she came back to Oklahoma.
I was hoping to get more information out of her the night that she called me. But what was so weird, when she called, she was hysterical, you know, and I was trying to keep her on the phone to talk to her.
And then there was a loud knock on the door. And then Debbie says, oh, it's Frank, who's going to drink a case of beer and get drunk and hung up on me.
Jana never talked to her sister again. And about four or five years ago, before Tim died, she asked him if he knew anyone named Frank.
And he said, yes, I know two Franks.

He goes, one you don't want to know,

and one of them's my best friend.

I said, well, right before Debbie died,

this Frank guy was here at this house.

And he goes, well, I better not find out that.

Detective Gonzalez says there is nothing in the case file

about anyone named Frank.

She's hoping that someone out there listening could help her with this. Maybe one of you know about a Frank in Deborah's life or a Frank that was Tim Moore's best friend.
She would like to speak with both Franks if you can help her. We're going to have her contact information in the description for this episode.
What's interesting, though, is that Tim's concern, even all those years later when Jana asked him about Frank, wasn't about finding the man who might have killed his wife. He was more upset by the idea that another man might have been in his trailer while he and Debra were separated, which I think paints a picture of what Debra's life must have been like with Tim.
But Jana and Debra's kids can do an even better job of that. Debbie told me that Tim was shooting his gun in the house and bullets went through the bedroom walls where the kids were.
And so she sent Randy to her father. And I guess that's when they separated him, moved into his shop, and she stayed in the trailer.
While Jana only heard Debra's account of the abuse, Debra's children, Bert and Brandy, witnessed it firsthand. And Bert, who was older, remembers more of the violence, carries that trauma to this day.
He and Brandy are now in their 40s and parents themselves.

And they recently sat down with our reporting team

and Detective Gonzalez at the Odessa Police Department.

And she was showing them old family photos

that she'd come across in the case file,

ones that they had never seen.

So, um, these are more for y'all to have,

like, sentimentally and things. But if there's a man or something that you recognize in the picture that I probably don't know who they are, if you recognize them and could let me know, that could possibly help.
I think this one's like a birthday party, though. I recognize Bert in one of the pictures from that other picture of y'all together.
The pictures they were looking at brought memories of their mother just rushing back. Yeah, this looked like a parade or something.
Yeah, I was Were you in the doogie? Yeah, I was Cub Scout. Oh, cool.
And Mom was E.T., and then she had a big old E.T. costume.
And she was so butthurt because she wanted me to hold her hand. Oh, that is E.T.? Is that her? Is that E.T.? Is that her? Is E.T.
on the track? Yeah. Oh, that's it? Oh, okay, she's in the parade.
Yeah, for me, she was upset because she wanted me to hold her hand because she couldn't see very good in the mask.

She was awesome as far as what I knew of as a kid.

My mom was always there for me.

We were her priority.

She was always happy, always joyful.

She always sang.

She used to scare me because when she drove down the road,

on the highway, she'd be driving down the highway,

and she'd be singing, and her hands would be going, and I was yelling, I'd be driving down the highway and she'd be singing and her hands would be going.

And I was y'all and be like, put your hands on the steering wheel.

Bert remembers finding out that his mother was dead.

He'd spent the night with his mom's friend, Lisa, and saw her on the phone just crying the next morning.

She didn't tell him what was wrong.

And he had to go to the home of Debra's second husband, Ed,

who had his and Debra's five-year-old daughter, Brandy, with him. When I got there, my dad, Bert, was there.
Ed was there. There was a close friend in the family that was a pastor in the church.
And they took me in a room. I'm not sure what happened.
I'm not sure what happened.

I'm not sure what happened. a close friend of the family that was a pastor in the church.
And they took me in a room. Basically just said, Mom's not coming.
They didn't say she was married. Anything like that.
Basically told me she was in the head. And I didn't believe them.
And I kept arguing with her and just told her she was late getting home from work.

The rest of it's kind of a blur.

Bert says Debra and his father, Albert, met as teenagers, and their marriage ended after about two years.

Debra wouldn't stay single for long, though.

She soon connected with Ed Simmons, her second husband and the father of Brandy. And for a short time, they were a happy family of four, going to church and doing family activities.
That was the only family I knew at that time. I didn't have a relationship with my real father.
So for a couple of years, I didn't even, I just thought Ed was my dad. I just thought he was my dad.
Neither Brandy nor Bert knew that Debra and Ed's marriage was on the rocks until suddenly they were getting a divorce. And then not long after, Debra entered a new relationship, this time with Tim, someone her family had known for years.
And again, things were good at first, but that didn't last. Everything was rainbows and unicorn farts for like the first six to eight months, and started getting a lot of fights, a lot of yelling.
Brandy, who was a preschooler at the time, also remembers the fear in the household before her mother sent her to live with her dad, Ed. And Bert says that after Brandy left, Tim's abuse of Debra just escalated.
I know we were, we had under the dining room table a couple times.

I started, you know, being physical with her.

Even when, like, his friends were over, they'd be hanging out at the party,

and my mom would whatever, and he'd start yelling at her and call her names.

Sometimes he would just pick her up in front of people, like, take her in the bedroom, you know, have sex with her. A couple times, like I said, he was a big guy.
She was small. I never really seen him, like, hit him with a fist, but just fucking, just like I said, she was small.
He would, like, thrust and push her and knock her down on the floor and stand over the top over her.

Yeah, let her.

And sometimes he would pick her up.

And he would literally throw her from one side of the living room to the other.

And a couple of times my mom would hide me under the...

Thank you. delivering them to the other.
And a couple of times, my mom would hide me under the kitchen table. Her had me go outside.
I didn't know at the time, but as I became an adult, I know what he was doing a lot. I don't know if it was cocaine or whatever it was.

He was snorting shit, and there was a lot of pills,

and my mom just changed.

I don't know if she started doing that stuff with him or not.

I'd never seen it, but I seen him.

And she just changed.

She didn't laugh anymore.

She didn't sing anymore. So,, he might feel like I'm still dead.
Tim's violent abuse of his mother left Bert with serious questions about Tim's potential role in Deborah's murder. Questions that Brandy also has.
In fact, Brandy says that as an adult, she confronted Tim with questions.

Tim has sworn up and down to me that he had nothing to do with it.

He's like, I mean, he's passed on since then.

I'm not trying to, I don't know, but I've had conversations with him as an adult.

And he's just swore up and down.

He's like, I loved your mom and I never had anything to do with this. I did not have anything to do with your mom dying.
They also have questions for another person who didn't get a whole lot of attention during the initial investigation. In one of the very first interviews police had with Tim, he mentioned that Debra was having problems with the second wife of Burt's father, Albert.
Tim said it was all around custody or child support, but there wasn't much more in the case file about that, or her. But Burt and Brandy also said that she had had issues with their mom, and they remember hearing their mom was having problems with another guy who'd been following her.
So there are potentially people who have never been looked into. Burt and Brandy seem to think whoever did this knew their mom pretty well, and they don't believe it was something totally random.
If one of these people didn't do it themselves, then they hired somebody to do it. Just seems too easy.
If they knew where she was. I mean, unless this was just a crime of opportunity.
They were targeting someone else and she just happened to be the one that walked through. I mean, that's always an option, but...
Seems unlikely, though. Yeah.
Today, Detective Gonzalez is re-examining the case with an open mind and considering both men Debra knew and strangers alike. I have to remain open to any possibility right now just because there's not enough evidence pointing either way.
However, I, yeah, I do really wonder if it, she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I mean, there was a lot going on in that neighborhood at the time.
There was a lot of indecent exposure reports. You know, a woman had been raped on campus just a few days before.
You know, David Good tried to kidnap that clerk just a block away from where she was killed. So it does make me wonder if there was a man or multiple men looking to prey on women just caught out alone in the dark at night.
As for some of the other early suspects, like Billy, the Fairgreen apartment employee, police had gotten a perp kit from him, but back in 1986, they weren't doing DNA testing. They were just testing blood type and serology.
But that testing was only good enough to say he couldn't be excluded as the perpetrator, which they must have felt was promising enough, combined with the victim picking him out of a lineup, because they did end up charging him with sexual assault. His first trial ended with a mistrial, and he was acquitted at the second.
The problems with the way the victim made the ID after seeing that newspaper photo, coupled with the fact that Billy's friends had changed their stories and given him an alibi, ultimately undermined the case against him. Detective Gonzalez says that Billy was never charged with any other crimes after that.
As for David Good, after avoiding jail on the attempted abduction of the 7-Eleven clerk, he went on to be charged in an aggravated assault case from 2006. But other than that, he doesn't appear to have any violent criminal history.
Detective Gonzalez says investigators did collect a perp kit from him, including a blood sample in 1986. But she doesn't think it was ever compared to the rape kit collected from the student who'd been assaulted.
Tim was never suspected in any other crimes. Police then and now still believe that if he was involved in Debra's death, the attack was targeted specifically toward her.
His DNA was never collected before his death, which is unfortunate because there may now be DNA in Debra's case after all these years that could lead investigators to their suspect. Hi, everyone, Ashley Flowers here.
If you're like me, diving into true crime is about more than just the details of a case. It is also about giving a voice to the victims and understanding the lives behind the headlines.
And this is what host Kylie Lowe does each week on her podcast, Dark Down East. Every Thursday, Kylie dives into New England's most gripping mysteries, uncovering stories in a way you won't hear anywhere else.
And she digs through archives, connects with families and shines a light on the voices that deserve to be heard. From cold cases to moments of long awaited justice, Dark Down East is the perfect blend of investigations and honoring the stories behind them.
You can find Dark Down East now, wherever you're listening. Back in 1986, there had been a sexual assault kit performed on Deborah.
Not much had been done with it through the years, because police seemed to always believe that the attack happened too quickly for a sexual assault to take place. And it was possible that any sample they would have gotten would have come from Charles, who they knew she had consensual sex with that night.
But Detective Gonzalez says that kit would have collected more than just vaginal swabs. And she thinks that there are other places where she might be able to get much more viable suspect DNA.
I went back to that sexual assault kit that was taken from Deborah that night. And what I found was they had collected her fingernails.
And when I went back and looked at the witness James's written statement, he described Deborah struggling with her attacker. So I felt like the most potentially, yeah, probative things, if maybe she was trying to fight with him, maybe she was trying to fight back.
Maybe his DNA was under her fingernails and she was wearing that robe when she was attacked. So maybe the killer's DNA is on the robe.
So about two weeks ago, I had the fingernails and her DNA sent to the lab as well as the robe to be screened for potential DNA. Thankfully, detectives had collected David Good's blood as well, and we still have that.
So I sent that to be tested as well. If there's anyone in this case that's been suspected of this before, and they know they didn't do it, and they want to clear their name, I would love to speak with them and get a sample of their DNA so they could be cleared from this investigation if that's the case.
And that would help me focus more on, you know, who I do need to look for. So that's kind of what we're doing right now as far as testing.
But I plan on talking with people again as I continue the investigation, you know, re-interviewing witnesses, trying to track down her old friends, things like that, and obviously every tip will be followed up on that we receive. If she gets a profile, she plans to compare it to David Good's DNA.
She also hopes to reach Charles Azelle, the man that Deborah was planning on spending the night with, to ask him for an elimination sample.

She was not yelling Charles because he was doing something to her or she was trying to get away from him.

Charles Azelle is innocent. So we know, hey, is this the killer's DNA or is this Charles' DNA, who is very obviously not the killer? Our reporting team attempted to reach Charles without luck and discovered online records suggesting that he might have died in 2014.
Bert and Brandy say that identifying the killer would be some comfort, even if it can't undo the lifetime of suffering,

especially for Bert,

who went to live with his father Albert and stepmother after Deborah's death.

He says his father was gone on work trips for long stretches of time,

and in his absence, his stepmother abused him,

which caused his grandparents to take custody.

And I remember the day in court when he lost custody of me, I heard him sobbing in his room in the back of the house. Like a kid, you know, like really hard.
At that time, I'd never seen a girl in my own or especially my dad show emotion. I don't know, just came to my face and she kept pointing to him.
She goes, you see what you did? You see what you did? That's your fault. You did this to him.
His father died by suicide a few years later, and he said the impact of losing both parents violently left him with a lifelong fear of abandonment. Always knowing that you're not going to be around forever.
You're either going to die or leave me or decide I'm not good enough or I'm broken. Better than my turn, one of my life, except for my sister and my close, five close best friends.
And my wife and daughter are the only people I've ever been able to depend on or trust. Despite the pain, Bert and Brandy's relationship is close.
And they both credit their mother's early love with their ability to cope with the challenges that came. She was a good mother and a good woman.
And just when she got into that time of her life, you know, with the domestic violence. And it just kind of spiraled, you know, for him.
But that doesn't define who she was, you know. She didn't get a chance to pull herself out of it.
For all we know, she was in the process of pulling herself out of it. But she didn't get a chance to.
It's not fair that she was taken so young and she didn't get to see me and Bert grow up or see our kids and be proud of us and and to make myself feel better she's got to be my guardian angel because some situations I've been in I'm like I had to have an angel taking care of me I had to be mom and I'm sure she's worn out now. They believe the answers to what happened to Debra are out there, and they hope that someone will finally come forward after all these years.
Somebody knows something. They have to.
I mean, you don't just do something like that and then not tell anybody, or know that you've planned to do it. Somebody, somebody knows something.
They have to. So, I mean, it's not like we can get her back.
We can't go back in time and fix things. But, I mean, at least we could have some closure.
I don't know why. Like, you know, we can tell our kids, you know,

she would have loved you if she was here,

but this is what happened and this is why.

Not that that makes anything easier,

but there's just that it's done.

It's closed.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, I'd like to think that it would fix what... Some of the hole? Maybe? I mean, I feel like I've come a long way.
You've come a long way. I'm very proud of you.
And who you've become. They have a message for the killer, too.
What they need to know and understand is they affected so many lives.

Because if they took a lifetime from us, you can't get it back.

I will never know my mom. I was five.

I have a few vague memories, and I will never, I'll never get to know her.

Never had that chance.

She was a good mom. They just, they ripped her away way too young.
She had so much more to give in her life. Detective Gonzalez believes there are more witnesses out there that she would love to talk to.
There is a report in the file of police speaking with a man named Terry, who said that he saw Deborah at the brewery bar in Odessa

on the evening of May 16th, 1986

into the early morning hours of May 17th.

He also gave them a list of names of other people

who had been there that night too.

Detective Gonzalez says that none of those people

were ever interviewed.

Their names are Larry Reimer, Connie Bean, Johnny Williams, Pat Ward, Lynn Stanford, Gina Wessels, and Rhonda Crawford. If that's you or you knew Deborah Sue Moore and have information about the night she died, please call.
And remember, Detective Gonzalez is also hoping to learn more

about a man named Frank who Debra knew around the time of her death. Detective Gonzalez can be

reached at 432-335-4926. You can also call the Odessa Crime Stoppers at 432-333-TIPS if you want

to remain anonymous. The Deck is an audio Chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis.
To learn more about The Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? Here's what people are saying about our true crime podcast, Anatomy of Murder.
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