MURDERED: Bobby Moore

15:23Brit Prawat:Someone who heard everything. And between her story and what the crime scene is showing, something isn't adding up. So here's the story from the person on the other end of that receiver. That was Barbara's oldest daughter, Barbara Shuford. And I know them having the same name could get a bit confusing, so I'm just going to call her by her married last name, Shuford. So Shuford says that her mom called her earlier that evening, and in that time she seemed to be in a good mood. To my surprise, based on what we know, Barbara told her daughter that even though her divorce from Bobby was imminent, she and Bobby were getting along, and they'd actually just gone out to a nice dinner.

16:05Brit Prawat:So they have that conversation, they hang up, That's that. Nice call with mom. But later that evening, Barbara calls back and now she's upset. And she said that she found out who Bobby was having an affair with. The record doesn't say who it was or explain how Barbara allegedly caught them.

16:23Ashley Flowers:I mean, I wonder if she was like listening on their phone conversations.

16:26Brit Prawat:I don't think she could. So there was that phone in the basement, but it's connected to her main line, not his. So like, I don't know what she thought she knew or how she knew it. But regardless, at this point, when she thinks she knows, Barbara is so angry that she didn't even want to be in the same house anymore. She wanted her daughter to come pick her up. So her daughter hangs up. It's like, listen, I'm going to talk to my husband about this. And then she calls her mom back. This is the call that Barbara went to answer on the basement phone mid-fight. So Barbara picks up on the first ring and her daughter could tell that she was even more upset now.

17:02Brit Prawat:So she's trying to, like, calm the situation down. And at some point, her mom said that she wanted her to speak to her stepfather, meaning Bobby. And she could hear her mom put the receiver down. And then she heard Barbara and Bobby shouting at each other. Her mom was yelling to Bobby that he needed to come to the phone and admit what he'd done. And Bobby just replied by yelling profanities. And then he told her to, quote, shut up. She then heard a loud noise. And then the next thing she knew, Bobby was on the phone telling her to hang up because he had to call 911. one. Now, the second she heard him say that, she and her husband got in the car and headed to her mom's house.

17:40Brit Prawat:And the first thing her husband, Tom, says when he walks up to the scene, leaves little room for doubt about what they think happened. He looked right at Bobby and he said, why did you kill her? And Bobby's only response was that he didn't mean to.

17:57Ashley Flowers:But they don't believe him.

17:58Brit Prawat:Not just because of what Barbara Shuford heard on the other end of that phone that night. She's basing a lot of her feelings on what she heard on a tape that her mother made her three months before her death. A tape that she hands over to police, where from beyond the grave, Barbara talks of Bobby trying to kill her before. And that if something ever happens to her, no one should believe that she took her own life. Basically, if I die, look at Bobby.

18:29Ashley Flowers:Did she hear anything more than shut up on the phone? I mean, he said he told her to put the gun down.

18:35Brit Prawat:She tells police in no uncertain terms that she did not hear Bobby say, put the gun down. There was no talk of any gun ever. And by the way, she had no reason to believe her mom would even be holding a gun. And moreover, she says that her mom usually kept her gun in a closet upstairs and she didn't hear her mom go up or down the stairs, which she feels like she would have because the phone is right there by the stairs. And she says that she wouldn't even have enough time based on the length of the call that, like, and what she was hearing and everything happening. But there might be an explanation.

19:07Brit Prawat:Just not one that really helps Bobby's position much. Allegedly, Barbara's son-in-law, Tom, had heard from Barbara's other daughter, Debbie, that within the last week or so, her mom told her that Bobby had taken her gun from her.

19:25Ashley Flowers:So that gun was probably in the basement.

19:28Brit Prawat:If he took it, yeah. But that still doesn't line up with his story. I mean, in his version of events, the phone call comes in and then she tries to get into his bedroom. He breaks the door off the hinges, which, by the way, I feel like you would hear.

19:42Ashley Flowers:I feel like that would be a little bit of a commotion, especially with two people kind of battling it out on either side of the door.

19:48Brit Prawat:And the door coming off the hinges. Yeah. So they're fighting. The door comes off the hinges. Then Barbara supposedly comes at him with the gun. He fires. Her daughter only hears one loud noise. It just doesn't add up. No, it doesn't. I also don't, like, physically get how he pushes the door so hard it breaks through the doorframe and comes out into the hallway, yet she's left standing to pull a gun on him? I guess that's what I'm thinking.

20:13Ashley Flowers:Like, if, like, when I say commotion, I'm like, the door is coming through and it's got to knock her over, knock her into the wall. Or, I guess, push her back if it happened kind of slowly or.

20:23Brit Prawat:It's just like, it just feels like there'd be so much more, again, commotions. And like right away, like, right, she's pulling the gun on him. He shoots her. Like, it's all happening so fast that I just can't make heads or tails of it. Also, none of the stories explain how Barbara ended up where she did. Bobby said that Barbara was well inside his bedroom holding the gun in her right hand. But officers found Barbara's body outside of the bedroom in the hallway. But there is blood spatter from Barbara's exit wound inside the bedroom.

20:55Ashley Flowers:Which would have, like, exit moon would have been, like, kind of behind her if she's in the hall, not the bedroom.

21:01Brit Prawat:Or her body was moved. Like, so the question is, like, if she's shot inside, how does she end up in the hallway or outside of the room? And where exactly on her body was she shot? Her chest, just to the left of center. Okay. But listen, if you want to ignore all of the above, weird logistic things, everything happening so fast, heat of the moment, he doesn't remember, whatever. Fine. Okay, let's just look at Barbara. So according to Bobby's version of events, he pushes the door out of its frame. She comes advancing at him with the cocked gun in her right hand. He grabs a gun off his shelf, shoots, and hits her while she's still, quote, well inside his room.

21:44Brit Prawat:There's what they call the back spatter, which is like the blood material thrown from the bullet inside Bobby's room. But we know Barbara herself is found outside of the room. The gun is laying next to her hand. And honestly, listen, the position of her body could work. So there's some blood on a wall across from Bobby's room that suggests that maybe she staggered back, like out of his room, hit the other wall before collapsing. But the state police at the time could not figure out how to make sense of the gun if that is what happened. They're like, it makes more sense that she would have dropped the pistol either when she was shot.

22:20Brit Prawat:Or even if she had held onto it, she would have dropped it when she hit the wall as she staggered back. The weapon could have gone off at any point, but it didn't. And even if it didn't, it should not have landed next to her hand. Her right hand, by the way. The very right hand, which, oh, by the way, she physically couldn't have pulled a gun on him with, according to her daughter. Barbara's daughter told police that her mom recently had surgery on her right hand for carpal tunnel syndrome, and she wouldn't have been able to grip anything as heavy as a revolver in that hand. What's more, when the police dust the gun that Barbara was allegedly holding for her prints, none come back.

23:01Ashley Flowers:So she never even held it?

23:04Brit Prawat:Not so fast. Are you ready for a crime junkie first? Always and never at the same time. I did not know that this was a thing until this case. But in this case, police talk with Barbara's doctors and they basically say, OK, yes, she had carpal tunnel syndrome, but they actually say she probably would have been able to hold a gun of that size and weight, whatever. So that's not shocking. As far as her prints not being on it, they say that's actually not surprising either because apparently she had another condition where she could not leave fingerprints. What? I'm sorry. I've, no. What? I'm actually going to have you read this right from the prosecutor's motion to dismiss.

23:45Brit Prawat:It's wild. It says,

23:48Ashley Flowers:The victim was 59 years old. The skin of her right hand, according to her family doctor, was atrophied, tightly drawn, and very, very thin. In interviewing the victim's physicians, it was learned that she suffered from a medical condition known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy of her right hand. One of the symptoms of this condition is a diminution and or cessation of perspiration in the affected hand. Given this fact, the lack of the victim's fingerprints or smudges on the weapon she allegedly was holding at the time of her death is not a significant evidentiary datum. So, legalese aside and, like, medical jargon, basically, Barbara couldn't secrete oils in her fingers to leave fingerprints.

24:36Brit Prawat:I mean, not 100 % of the time. So, what that all means is that, like, this syndrome would make it less likely that she, yeah, would leave any fingerprints. Like, it's not weird to them. They're like, yeah, she could touch something and not leave a print.

24:51Ashley Flowers:That is bonkers.

24:52Brit Prawat:I know. And it all really ends up working in Bobby's favor. Because even though he's been arrested and held on murder charges, over the course of about a month, the special prosecutor that's brought in realizes that their case just isn't super solid. How?

25:10Ashley Flowers:There was an earwitness.

25:12Brit Prawat:So even that falls apart. Investigators actually set up this experiment where they did a kind of sound test reenactment. and they had one officer and Barbara's daughter listening on the phone at the bottom of the stairs. And then they had two other officers like shout at each other in the basement. And they found that very little could actually be heard. So they were basically like, while the daughter didn't hear the mom go upstairs or hear Bobby yelling at her to put the gun down, that doesn't prove that those things didn't happen.

25:40Ashley Flowers:Okay, what about the tape that Barbara made saying that Bobby was going to kill her?

25:46Brit Prawat:You know, they don't even mention that in the court record. My thinking is like, even though Barbara may have had a good reason to think that her life might have been danger, they were going through what sounds like a contentious divorce. And it even might prove the opposite, that Barbara was already scared for her life and that she had reason to grab her gun to protect herself against Bobby. So because they can't prove Bobby's lying about anything, the prosecution decides that they don't have enough evidence to win a trial against him for murdering his wife on purpose. And a little more than six weeks after the shooting, prosecutors dismiss all charges and they let him out of jail.

26:24Ashley Flowers:Did they ever figure out if he really was having an affair?

26:27Brit Prawat:Might have, but it's not in the few documents that are publicly available. And if they did, it didn't help them build their case, which, as you can imagine, was not very comforting to Barbara's children. Like, they are angry. and they start to rally the people in Fremont against Bobby. Like, how could they let this man, who they all believe so clearly killed their mom, just, like, get away? And it's important to mention that at the time, they didn't have the benefit of actually reading through the evidence like we can now. The prosecution didn't have a case beyond a reasonable doubt to prove that Bobby definitely killed his wife in anything other than self-defense.

27:05Brit Prawat:But as far as everyone outside the investigation knows, Bobby's story is murky at best. And as a former homicide detective, they think he would definitely know how to stage a crime scene to make it look like a self-defense shooting. And to add fuel to the fire, four days after Bobby is let out of jail, dude wants his job back. A bold move. Yeah, the town board has to hold a vote to decide whether or not to give it to him. And this meeting draws a crowd. Oh, I'm sure. Oh, people come out with what local reporters describe as torches and pitchforks. But despite this, just about two months after the shooting, the board votes two to one to reinstate him as the town marshal.

27:50Brit Prawat:And people are big mad. It's not like they can just elect someone new. The position of town marshal isn't elected. It's appointed by this board. And listen, I went down a rabbit hole on this like board and like some weird stuff. I think there might have been like something up going on there. I don't want to derail our episode, but I will do a short little video on social for anyone who wants to know what I found about this board makeup and what I think is a little sus. But anyways, the decision to reinstate Bobby ignites this firestorm. Literally, people are making threats against Bobby and someone even plants pipe bombs at the homes of two board members who were, I assume, like the two that voted for his reinstatement.

28:30Brit Prawat:And both of these actually explode, though it's unclear if anyone got hurt. Now, people are so mad that a senior county official warns Bobby to leave town for his own safety. But Bobby's like, nah, I'm just going to sell the home. I'm going to move a little closer to town and get back to work. I'm going to be fine. But he is not fine. Five months to the day that Barbara was shot, someone comes for Bobby. and it is so clear that they're sending a message. For decades, some cold cases have been reduced to files in a cabinet, but not anymore. I'm Ashley Flowers and me and my team on the deck have been traveling across the country to report on these forgotten cases and in some instances, it's resulted in these cases being solved after decades.

29:22Brit Prawat:Join me every Wednesday as we revive these stories one card at a time. Listen to The Deck now, wherever you get your podcasts.

29:34Brit Prawat:On July 26th, 1988, Bobby gets off duty and guides his cruiser into the driveway of his new home at around 10.30 p.m. He gets out of the car and mounts the stairs up to a little side porch when suddenly a shot rings out. The first shot doesn't hit him, but a second bullet rips through Bobby's right shoulder and out through his left, cutting a clean path through his aorta and both lungs. He drops to the ground. I mean, within minutes, he's dead. Now, this is a much more populated area than where he and Barbara lived just a few months ago. So neighbors hear the gunshots and call police. Bobby is the one who would normally respond, but it's his deputy that arrives, then the Indiana State Police.

30:20Brit Prawat:Investigators eventually find two shell casings from a high-powered rifle in a vacant lot across the street. So it sounds to me like whoever shot Bobby was probably laying in wait. And that could suggest that the killer knew Bobby's schedule well enough to know when he would be getting home. The current investigator on Bobby's case, Captain Kevin Smith, says that the fact that the killer missed the first shot doesn't say anything about their experience with a gun. because he says even if you're an experienced shot, shooting at a human is way different and like your nerves can get in the way.

30:54Ashley Flowers:I just keep coming back to five months to the day of when he shot Barbara. Like that feels like such a message.

31:02Brit Prawat:It's not even just the day though. It's to the hour. Yeah, and this ends up being a critical clue for investigators. Like if the timing was intentional, which it sure feels like it was, then that tells them that whoever shot Bobby may have been avenging Barbara. And that is motive, folks. So although there could be a long list of culprits, police pretty quickly have one person that they want to talk to most. Barbara's son, Samuel Sisler.

31:29Ashley Flowers:I feel like we haven't talked about him at all.

31:32Brit Prawat:Yeah, because there's nothing about him in the court documents for Barbara's case where he's mentioned. But I know he'd split his time between Fremont and Lafayette, which is like a town a couple of hours away. He was a new grad of the Indiana State Police. And so that's where he'd been stationed. But come July, when Bobby is killed, he's actually in a whole different position. So he had been dismissed from the Indiana State Police job in May. He was definitely in Fremont the night of the shooting. Someone saw him like 25 minutes before. But in the days after, no one can find him. All police can find is Sam's car, which is at his sister's property at Crooked Lake, which is like 15 minutes at the most from Fremont.

32:16Brit Prawat:So rumors quickly swirl that Sam could be involved in Bobby's death. Turns out Sam was in Colorado Springs, and when police do reach him, he's like, yeah, I'll talk, but later. But by the time he gets back to Indiana, seems like he's had a change of heart, and he tells police basically to stuff it, and he's not talking to them.

32:38Ashley Flowers:Him not wanting to help in the murder investigation of the guy who killed his mom. Like, I don't know. I'm not shocked.

32:45Brit Prawat:Yeah, I get it. But there is a lot that they would love to talk to him about. According to a local reporter, Mike Martrello, Samuel had allegedly bought a long rifle at a local gun shop about 15 minutes away from Fremont, like three or four days prior to Bobby's shooting. Mike said that a couple of Fort Wayne TV news stations at the time reported this, but we could not independently confirm that. He also was said to have bought similar caliber ammunition as the bullet that killed Bobby. And again, this is just according to Mike. But when police got wind of this, they could not find the gun that Samuel allegedly bought.

33:23Brit Prawat:Still have not found anything like it to this day.

33:25Ashley Flowers:Were you able to find out why he got dismissed from the state police? Like, that feels important.

33:32Brit Prawat:It sure does. I couldn't really get a straight answer. We tried, though. So the South Bend Tribune reported that he had been dismissed for, quote, unsatisfactorily completing his probation period, end quote. We tried to get official records on this, but because it involved an internal affairs issue, we weren't able to confirm that. I, of course, asked Captain Smith, and he said he couldn't comment on why he got dismissed. But I know he knows, not just because he's the lead investigator now. Well, in a weird twist made only for Hollywood, Captain Smith, who is now in charge of Bobby's cold case, he went to the academy with Samuel Sisler.

34:13Brit Prawat:Smith, Sisler, they sat near each other in every class. They roomed right next door to one another. Graduated in the same class December 19th, 1987.

34:26Ashley Flowers:Oh, a year before we were born.

34:27Brit Prawat:Our birthday, pre-birthday. Our reporter asked Mike, like, what he remembered from back then. Does he know why he got dismissed? And he did confirm the dismissal for us, but he said it's been a really long time and he's not totally sure. But he remembers the police telling him that Samuel was dismissed because he made comments about wanting revenge for his mom. Translation, he wanted to either hurt or kill Bobby. Captain Smith did say that it certainly seems like revenge is a motive here, considering the timing of the shooting. But there's actually no real evidence that connects Samuel, or anyone for that matter, to the murder.

35:10Brit Prawat:Captain Smith said it could be anyone. And we tried reaching out to Sam on two occasions, but we're not even sure if our contact information is correct, because no one ever got back to us. Smith said that they've had a lot of leads in this case, and they continue to follow up on that. Bobby was a cop. Cops make enemies and it could be anyone with reason to murder him. And, you know, as we know, lots of people were angry with Bobby before he died.

35:36Ashley Flowers:Was there ever a definitive connection made between like the pipe bombs that were planted and exploded into the murder?

35:44Brit Prawat:We asked that too, but Captain Smith declined to comment on that. And I don't, like this whole case, I don't know, like for me, it lives in the gray area. Like, Bobby's story is steeped in tragedy, and it is so complicated because Bobby was far from a perfect victim. Right. But he was a victim. We all want justice. We want right and wrong to be super clear, but sometimes it's not. He was ultimately cleared of murder. And to most people who knew him, Captain Smith said that Bobby was known as a peacekeeper, like this quiet, agreeable man. And murdering Bobby for whatever motive was wrong. And I can feel it, you guys, already in the comments section.

36:25Brit Prawat:It's going to light up. It's hard not to have an opinion about this case. I want you to have an opinion. I want you to tell us what you think. But keep it productive. Like, let's talk about it. What does this case make you feel? What does justice look like for Bobby? This case is personal for Captain Smith. He knew Bobby and Barbara. He knew Samuel. And he still wants a chance to talk to the guy that he roomed next door to. There were only a couple of unsolved police shootings in the state of Indiana, and Bobby is one of them. So Captain Smith is determined to get to the truth. If you live in Fremont, Indiana, in July of 1988, and you know anything about the shooting of Bobby Moore, please reach out to the Indiana State Police Cold Case Investigations at 1-800-453-4756.

37:14Brit Prawat:Or you can reach out anonymously through Crime Stoppers at crimetips.org. Thank you.

38:00Brit Prawat:Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. I think Chuck would approve.

38:09Ashley Flowers:Okay, Crime Junkies, you know I absolutely love a twist and a turn, especially when it comes to people who turn out to be someone they're not. That's why I have been obsessed with the podcast Chameleon. Every Thursday, host Josh Dean deep dives into a scam so bizarre, it will leave you wondering, how did they get away with that? It is truly one of my favorite podcasts right now, and I've been listening for years. I think you'll love it too. Listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts.