Expert: Mom not psychotic in kids death case

NEW HAVEN — A state hired psychiatrist testified Thursday that LeRoya Moore has had a “sad” life of “simmering longstanding stress,” but the witness maintained Moore was not psychotic when she allegedly killed her two children.

Dr. Catherine Lewis, a professor of psychiatry at the UConn Health Center, spent the entire day on the witness stand being cross-examined by Supervisory Assistant Public Defender Jennifer Bourn. The three judges hearing the case absorbed hours of complex psychological testimony.

The defense team is trying to prove that Moore, now 39, was in a psychotic state when her children were killed in their East Haven home four years ago. The key witness hired by the defense, Dr. Paul Amble, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, testified earlier that Moore was indeed psychotic at that time.

Moore is charged with two counts of murder for the deaths of 6-year-old Aleisha Moore and 7-year-old Daaron Moore.

Lewis said she spent a total of about 11 hours interviewing Moore in 2017 at the York Correctional Institution. Moore has been held there in lieu of $2 million bail since her arrest in June 2015.

Lewis diagnosed Moore with having an anti-social personality disorder.

Bourn asked Lewis about her testimony Wednesday that a text message Moore received from her boyfriend a day or two before the children apparently died might have “triggered” the events that followed. The boyfriend told Moore: “My heart’s not in this relationship anymore.”

Lewis told Bourn that rather than being the sole “trigger,” the text message could have contributed to Moore making a fateful decision.

“Working all the hours she did was a contributing factor too,” Lewis said, noting Lewis was working at the Gateway Community College bookstore during the day hours and holding down a second job at Yale in the evenings.

“She had simmering, longstanding stress,” Lewis said. “And then came the rejection over a text. I think that contributed substantially.”

Lewis said she had tried in vain to find the boyfriend for an interview but for a long time she didn’t know his name. She said Moore wouldn’t tell her the man’s name, saying only that he was “a white man from Glastonbury.”

Lewis testified Moore was also angry at her exhusband, Michael Moore, who had moved out of the residence they were sharing around 2011. Lewis testified Wednesday that LeRoya Moore had expected him to share fully in the child-rearing and she felt abandoned and betrayed by his inability to spend more time at home. He worked a double shift.

Lewis said the Moores got married in January

2007 and Daaron was born later that year. Aleisha was born two years later. Moore had given birth to three children previously via other men and had lost custody of two of them, apparently because of concerns by the state Department of Children and Families over how she was treating them.

“Her hope was that when she married Michael

Moore, ‘I can have children in a marriage. I don’t want to be a single mother again,’” Lewis testified. “She’s trying to make a

better life for her family and it didn’t work out. That’s the sadness.”

Lewis said she did interview Michael Moore. She said he was angry at his former wife.

Lewis testified LeRoya Moore had “gotten into trouble” with DCF for the way she disciplined her kids. “The fact she hit her children, that’s what she grew up with.”

Lewis said Moore told her that her father beat her with a leather belt and her mother was an alcoholic.

Lewis recalled Moore also told her she was sexually abused for years by a relative who was a few years older than she was. “She said they would exchange candy for oral sex. She alleged a long period of molestation. She said it stopped when she was 9 or 10.”

Lewis had testified Wednesday she could find no written record in which Moore had reported this allegation.

Lewis reaffirmed her testimony from Wednesday that Moore never told her she had heard the “voice of God” telling her to kill herself and her children so that they could go to Heaven together. Amble had testified Moore told him she had heard this “voice.”

Lewis recalled Moore telling her she had received a “message from God” that it was “time to come home.” But Lewis added, “That was not a hallucination.

She never described a command that was hallucinatory.”

Lewis later said, “I can’t say it’s delusional. People hear messages from God all the time and it’s not psychotic.”

Lewis stated Moore told her “My children are happy” and “They’re in Heaven, they’re at peace, they’re not crying anymore.” But Lewis noted: “It’s common in bereavement to hear voices” of lost loved ones.

Moore, who slit her wrists in an apparent suicide attempt after her kids died, told Lewis: “I’m sorry I didn’t die,” according to Lewis’ testimony. “But she told me, ‘I’m not sorry the kids are dead. They’re where they need to be.’”

Lewis also quoted Moore telling her: “The children didn’t suffer. they did not die in vain.”

Lewis repeated her skepticism, first expressed Wednesday, over Moore’s account of “baptizing” her children by drowning them in the bathtub so that they could go to Heaven with her.

Lewis noted a state medical examiner ruled Daaron died from acute intoxication of diphenhydramine and Aleisha died from acute intoxication of diphenhydramine and alcohol. “Why would she also give them Benadryl?” Lewis asked. “That isn’t related to ‘baptism’ in any way. And she (Moore) told me she wasn’t baptized. How is she going to get into Heaven? It doesn’t hang together. Delusions, even if they’re psychotic, tend to hang together.”