Police Ronald Lee Moore
Ronald Lee Moore is a now deceased suspected killer whose name was raised in the popular Serial podcast investigating the death of teenager Hae Min Lee. Authorities have now connected Moore to at least two other murders, raising the possibility that he was a serial killer.
In the last episode of Serial, the podcast’s creators argued that Moore was a plausible suspect in Lee’s death – not her former boyfriend Adnan Syed, who is serving a life prison term. Moore had already been connected to another homicide, but he was not tried for it because he was already deceased when authorities pinpointed him as a suspect. Now, in February 2020, authorities in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, said new DNA evidence leads them to believe that Moore also strangled a woman there named Shawn Marie Neal. That revelation has Syed’s supporters believing all the more that Ronald Lee Moore should be more thoroughly investigated as a suspect in Hae Min Lee’s homicide as well. Authorities have not linked Moore to Hae Min Lee’s death.
“This man was a dangerous person,” police said of Ronald Moore in a news conference announcing his connection to Neal’s death. “He was a very violent individual that liked to prey on people.”
Here’s what you need to know:
1. DNA Evidence Now Ties Moore to the Strangulation Homicide of Shawn Marie Neal
New DNA evidence in the case of an old homicide now ties Moore to the strangulation death of an escort named Shawn Marie Neal. This has bolstered supporters of Syed, who think that Moore is the more plausible killer of Hae Min Lee as well.
On June 2, 1996, Neal was found deceased in a condominium in North Myrtle Beach, police said in a news conference. She was the victim of a homicide, and the crime “shocked our community,” said Chief Greg Purden. He said the case went cold.
“We are announcing the closure of the death investigation of Shawn Marie Neal,” Purden said. The suspect is deceased, he said, adding that, were he alive, sufficient evidence existed to support an arrest of the suspect in Neal’s death.
Lt. Michael Swarthout said the victim’s daughter reached out in 2017 seeking a new investigation. A new investigation was launched. In 2019, DNA evidence was sent out for independent DNA testing. In April, results came back in. Most results yielded no usable information. But in December 2019, a bedspread and some towels were submitted for testing; they had been found located about a quarter of a mile away from the scene of the crime in a dumpster. They were from the scene of the crime, which police also knew initially.
The bedspread was analyzed again in the lab, and police found some new stains. They sent it out for testing. The results showed there was DNA on the bedspread that came back to a CODIS hit, in the national DNA system, and it matched Ronald Lee Moore of Maryland. Reanalyzing that DNA and comparing it to samples that weren’t previously in CODIS, Moore’s DNA was also located on some of Neal’s clothing. “That’s how we were able to determine that Mr. Moore was the person that most likely committed this crime,” Swarthout said.
As far as motive, authorities aren’t clear. Moore had no ties to the area. He was from Baltimore and spent most of his time incarcerated. From talking to his friends and family, he spent a lot of time in Ocean City Maryland. Police don’t know why he was in Myrtle Beach. They think Moore might have been headed to Louisiana, and he was wanted at that time so he might have been hiding out. “I think it was just random,” Swarthout said, as to why Moore chose Neal. Moore was 23 years old.
Shawn lived in Myrtle Beach part time. She was from North Carolina. She worked for an escort agency, authorities said. At the time she was killed, she was called out to a call in North Myrtle Beach. Neal was struck in the head and then manually strangled. She was then hung from a door knob after she was already dead.
2. Adnan Syed Is Serving Life in Prison for a Murder Some People Think Moore Could Have Committed
Adnan Syed (Woodlawn High School Yearbook)
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 declined to hear an appeal filed by Adnan Syed, who was convicted in 2000 of strangling his former girlfriend Hae Min Lee in Baltimore. In 2016, a state court had ordered a new trial but a state appeals court decision did not go Syed’s way.
You can see a court decision in that case here. According to those court documents, the victim was a high school senior.
According to Biography.com, Syed was also a senior in high school at the time that Lee was found half buried in a city park in January 1999, dead of manual strangulation. Syed says he didn’t do it, and his cause received significant publicity when journalist Sarah Koenig excavated the case in her podcast. The case against Syed featured Syed’s friend Jay Wilds, who “confessed he had helped Syed bury Lee’s body,” according to Biography.com. Another witness Jennifer Pusateri told authorities that Wilds told her about Syed, but there was no physical evidence tying him to the crime. Prosecutors also used cell phone tower records and claimed that Syed was angry because Lee broke up with him.
Syed’s supporters point out that Wilds has changed his story and accuse police of coaching him, Biography.com reports. Syed has also tried to produce an alibi witness named Asia McClain.
According to the University of Virginia, Syed’s supporters believe that key evidence was not tested for DNA in Lee’s case. “The final episode of the podcast revealed the name of one alternate suspect, Ronald Lee Moore, who the U.Va. students identified and developed as a possible lead. Third-year law student Mario Peia identified Moore as a suspect after finding a website that categorized Baltimore’s unsolved murders. Moore, who is now deceased, has been linked by authorities to two rapes and a woman’s murder. He was released from a Maryland prison on Jan. 1, 1999 – about two weeks prior to Lee’s murder,” says a release from the University of Virginia.
3. Moore Had a Lengthy Criminal History, Including a Sexual Assault With a Cattle Prod
Ronald Lee Moore.
The podcast delved into Moore’s lengthy criminal history. He was released from jail in Baltimore County on January 1, 1999, and the Lee murder occurred 12 days later. He was also accused of burglary and sexual assault in Maryland.
He was first incarcerated in 1986 on burglary charges and released in 1994, police said. From 1994-1996, he was completely out. He was arrested in 1996 for attempted murder. He was released on bail in early May and the Neal homicide took place in early June, and then he was rearrested in Baltimore. He was in prison until 1999. From January 1999 to April 2000, he was out. He committed “hundreds of burglaries and as we later found out, a murder up in Baltimore (that of Annelise Hyang Suk Lee),” said Swarthout. He was held from 2000 to 2007 and was released in 2007. He was then captured in Louisiana in 2007. He died on January 4, 2008. The timeline came from Swarthout in the press release.
According to the Baltimore Sun, the sexual assault case involved a cattle prod. Moore was accidentally released from prison and went on the run, eventually being found in Louisiana, the newspaper article states.
It describes him as a “former crack addict with a long history of burglaries.” In the sexual assault case, according to the Sun, he’s accused of breaking into a woman’s apartment while wearing a mask, making her perform a sex act, punching her, and shocking her with the cattle prod.
4. Moore Was Linked to the 1999 Murder of Annelise Hyang Suk Lee
Annelise Hyang Suk Lee.
Annelise Hyang Suk Lee is believed to be another one of Moore's victims. The Baltimore County government's news release states that DNA match helped Baltimore County Police “clear the murder of Annelise Hyang Suk Lee. In March of 2013, several items of evidence were re-examined and a DNA profile was developed from one of the items. That profile was later found to match a profile on file with the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).”
The CODIS match “indicated the identity of the suspect who had a criminal record. The suspect was incarcerated after the murder on other charges. When he was released, he fled the state. He committed suicide after being arrested on charges unrelated to this incident,” says the release, referring to Moore. Prosecutors determined he committed Annelise’s murder. The release does not mention the suspect’s name, but it’s been widely reported that Moore is who they were accusing.
On December 13, 1999, the body of 27-year-old Annelise Hyang Suk Lee “was found in her apartment located in the unit-block of Hartley Circle in Owings Mills, Maryland 21117. An autopsy revealed she died of blunt force trauma and strangulation. Her body was discovered by a maintenance worker at about 10:10 a.m. at the door of her bedroom. The apartment was checked at the request of Ms. Lee’s employer who was worried when she did not arrive at work and she couldn’t be reached on the telephone,” the release says.
“Ms. Lee was last seen alive at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, December 10, 1999, on the parking lot of her residence after she was dropped off by her employer. Detectives have conducted numerous interviews and reviewed evidence recovered from her residence, but they need the public’s help in developing additional information. Ms. Lee had no family members in the Baltimore area.”
5. Moore Committed Suicide in Prison
19 years ago to day Hae Min Lee left Woodlawn high school and disappeared. Nearly a month later her body was found in Leakin park in Baltimore city. 3 years ago #Serial brought the story to the world. But there is much more to the story than Serial. Thread: 1/
Ronald Lee Moore died of suicide in prison, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
According to Refinery29, some people believe other alternative suspects might have killed Hae Min Lee – not Ronald Lee Moore. Reddit fans have long explored the case, as well. Authorities have not connected Moore to the death of Hae Min Lee, at least not at this point.
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