Michael Moore

Michael Moore

Michael Patrick Moore was born a beautiful, healthy baby in 1963. By 1997, Michael was on death row in Huntsville Prison for murder. What happened in those few years to Michael? Michael wasn't born to grow up and kill someone. No one is I suppose, but there are circumstances that drive people down different roads in life, circumstances that at some point in time might have been altered but weren't, circumstances that accumulate over a period of years, gaining momentum until there's an explosion. Years of pent-up range, years of rejection and abuse come together one day with an outcome that is predictably violent. Michael's story probably echos countless of other stories, all about little lost boys whose lives have been warped from birth by uncaring parents. But Michael is my son, and I know his story better than anyone else.

Michael was born in 1963, ten months into a disastrous marriage. I was young and immature, not ready for the responsibility of a baby. Too much was already wrong in my life. My husband was an alcoholic who frequently gave me beatings, even violently kicking me in the stomach while I was pregnant; it didn't matter to him whether I was pregnant or not when he flew into one of his violent rages.

The whole time I was pregnent he continued to go out with "the boys." The result of his abuse and neglect of me was that I resented being pregnant and therefore resented my unborn baby. Michael's birth didn't improve circumstances, of course. My husband continued to go out, but by now I knew that it wasn't "the boys" he was seeing.

As Michael grew, I noticed a strong resemblance to his father who was becoming increasingly violent. Because Michael looked so much like his father, I resented him more and more. Though the most violent beatings were reserved for me, Michael came in for his own share of abuse. I remember one incident that happened when Michael was still a baby. He toddled over to his sleeping father and tugged on his hair. His father jumped up and yanked the baby's hair so hard that Michael screamed. "There!" he roared at Michael. "That will teach you!"

The violence and abuse continued, and in May of 1966 Michael's brother Shawn was born. For some reason still unknown to me, I wanted Shawn. Michael sensed this and resented him. What must it have been like to have known only hostility and abuse for the three short years of his life, and then to have a brand new baby thrust into the situation who was loved and coddled by the very mother who had rejected him?

Michael was as resentful of Shawn as I had always been of him. Michael began getting into everything. If I didn't get up early enough to prepare his breakfast, he would sneak downstairs to get it himself, making a mess in the kitchen, an offense that always earned him a beating. Often he would get bored and walk down to the corner fire station to visit with the firemen; he was all of three or four years old.

Because he was so "bad" and "out of control" his father put a padlock on his bedroom door where he spent most of the day locked in his room. Imagine the life of that little boy. Imagine how circumstances over which he had no control were shaping him. Imagine being unloved and unwanted, physically and emotionally abused everyday of your life; then imagine you are only four years old. Already the world doesn't make sense to you. There is no safe haven to run to, no place to turn for affirmation, no love in your life. And you can't understand the whys because you are only four years old.

By the time Michael was five, things had gone from bad to worse. I was suffering beatings more often and more violently, and Michael was getting actual beatings by now. Instead of becoming passive, which had been my reaction, he became more rebellious. Now much of my anger at my situation was focused on him.

I clearly remember one time when Shawn snuck downstairs and took some matches. He and Michael sat on the bed playing with them and accidentally started a fire. Of course, I blamed Michael entirely and accused him of trying to murder his baby brother. No wonder he resented Shawn so much. Michael couldn't get a fair shake, for I had started to physically abuse him just as his father did. I had always abused him emotionally, calling him stupid and telling him how bad he was, or pushing him away when he asked me to read him a story. "I don't have time," I would yell at him. "Go on! Get away!" Now I was beating him. That scared me, and I decided to send him 400 miles away to my mother's to live. We told him we were sending him away to help him. We told ourselves the same thing. The truth was I just wanted to get rid of him and he knew it.

All of his life there had been only abuse and resentment; yet somehow, being sent away was proof - if any was needed - of our rejection of him. Circumstances beyond his control were still shaping Michael. At six years old, he was already carrying the weight of the world on his frail little shoulders, but I was too caught up in my own pain to notice his.

Michael started kindergarten at my mother's and spent the entire school year there, not once causing any trouble at her house or at his school. Once school was out, Michael came home. We expected that since he had behaved so well at my mother's that he was now a well-behaved child and that we would have no problems with him. How we expected so much of him when our own abusive relationship had not changed is incomprehensible. As soon as he found out that we still found fault with everything he did and that Shawn could do no wrong, he fell back into his old pattern of behavior. He began to fight with Shawn, nothing violent, just normal sibling rivalry, but the fighting was constant. He ran away a lot and skipped school constantly. We never lost an opportunity to tell him how bad he was.

By 1970, I still couldn't cope with Michael (the problem was mine, not his) and I sent him away once again. This time he was sent to live with my sister just outside of Buffalo, New York, about 400 miles away. Michael was gone, but Shawn stayed home with us, and once again we were a 'family.' While Michael was away staying with my sister, I finally got my divorce. Shawn and I moved to the town that my sister was living in. She was having difficulties with trying to raise my six year old Michael and her own one year old child. She was only twenty-one herself.

Not knowing what the behavior of a six year old child should be, she assumed that some things were bad, based on what I had told her of him. She had been counseling with Child and Family services and when I arrived, she arranged for me to meet with them. After I found out that they might be willing to take him off my hands and place him in a residential treatment home, I lied about his behavior to get him placed. He was admitted to the Connors Children's home for emotionally disturbed boys on December 21, 1970. He spent Christmas there without any of his family, but of course Shawn stayed home with us and we had Christmas together.

In June of 1971, I married my current husband. We went to the Connors home and visited Michael on the weekends and eventually were able to bring him home for weekends and holidays. I began trying to make up for all the lost time and the lost love, but it seems that the one who needs the love the most is the most difficult to love. Michael had suffered so many rejections that he had built a wall around him and wouldn't let anyone through. However, once the new stability of family life started to become apparent, Michael started to respond. Finally, in June of 1975, Michael was discharged from the children's home and he came home. He was now almost thirteen years old, and it was like bringing home a stranger.

At first Michael went to ungraded classes, but by 1976 he went to regular classes for the first time. He was placed two grades behind his age group though his IQ was 150 in the 6th grade. Michael had not matured emotionally because of his surroundings. The other kids were mean to him, teasing him, calling him a retard. They even beat him up, and Michael quit school at the age of sixteen. I was having a difficult time with him just hanging around the house. He was going through normal teenage changes and problems, but I kept thinking it was because he was 'disturbed.' I kept telling him that he was 'sick.'

Again I decided to shift my problems to someone else's shoulders. This time I sent Michael to my two brothers who lived about two hours away. They had offered to let Michael come and live with them as I was threatening to throw him out. Same story! Michael was gone. Shawn stayed and we were a family again. Michael only lived with my brothers a couple of months. At sixteen, he couldn't hold down a job and was threatening to to kill himself. My brothers sent him back, and you can bet that I made sure that he knew that once again he had screwed up.

He continued to say he was going to kill himself. He ran away and when we found his hat floating in the canal, we thought he had. When we found him, we took him to the psyche ward of the city hospital and had him admitted for two weeks observation. When the admitting doctor asked him why he had wanted to kill himself, he stated, "I must be a real piece of garbage if my own (natural) father don't even want me." He had not heard from his real father since 1972. There had been no phone calls, letters, Christmas cards. Nothing! Apparently even hearing from an abusive father would have meant a lot to Michael.

Once the two weeks was up at the hospital, the social worker called to make discharge arrangements. I told her he could Not come home! They placed him in a room at the YMCA and put him on welfare. This was about twenty-five miles from where we lived. While he sat alone in his room at the Y, the three of us enjoyed normal family life without him. Another rejection!

In October of 1981, Michael went into the Navy. Sometime during his tour, he stopped writing to me. I didn't hear from him for almost a year, and I had the Navy chaplain track him down. Once Michael knew that I had been wondering about him and looking for him, he became emotional. For the first time, he felt that perhaps I did love him a little. He was so sorry that he had upset me that he went AWOL and came home to let me know that he did love me. This act would be used against him at his trial.

In November of 1990, Michael was on a hospital ship off the coast of Saudi during Desert Storm. He had put nine years in the Navy and his enlistment was up. He was frightened of the fighting and did not re-enlist. I became angry with him for spoiling a career when he had nothing else going for him. He asked if he could come home until he found a job. I said no. If he could throw away a nine year career, I was not going to support him! When Shawn had gotten out of the Marines in 1985, he had come home with no questions asked. The obvious difference in my treament of Michael and his brother must have seemed so unfair to Michael. He was the one who had always been rejected, was still being rejected.

My brother was living in Virginia close to the place where Michael had been discharged. He called to tell me that Michael had lost the part time job he had and was living in his car. I got the message to him that he could come home. He arrived in late November and stayed with us until we moved to Texas the following July. He found a job at Burger King and earned his GED. During the time he stayed with us, we asked him not to smoke in his bedroom. We were afraid of fire. He continued doing so anyway, and we removed the bedroom door. He left while we were out shopping one day, and when we came home, there was a note telling us he had run away. The note was childish and accused us of adopting him, etc.

He was twenty-seven years old! He did not have to run away like a small child.

No matter how we treated him, we were all that Michael had, and he flew ahead to Texas so that he could have a job by the time we arrived in August. He stayed with my sister and her family. His uncle got him a job at the moving company he worked for. When the three of us arrived in August, Mike moved in again with us.

Things seemed to be settling down some. Michael became engaged to be married and in 1992, he moved in with his fiance. They were planning a nice wedding, but two weeks before the wedding, he found out that she was seeing another man. He called up to help him move out. He showed no anger. He did not trash the place as a lot of other guys would have done, but he did leave a one-word note on the television. "Why?" it asked. Once again, he had been rejected by someone who had purported to love him very much.

He asked if he could move back home as he had nowhere else to go. I again told him that he could not move in with us. I told him that I had to intention of supporting him; yet, when Shawn had broken up with his girlfriend, I had invited him back home until he could find another place. Since I wouldn't let Mike come home, he moved into Shawn's one room apartment and slept on the sofa. I had two empty bedrooms at the time. Shawn lost hie job and couldn't pay his half of the rent, so he moved back in with us. Mike kept the apartment until the time of his arrest.

Michael had suffered one rejection too many. He became a recluse, staying in the apartment all the time and not letting anyone in. We later found out that he had gone into a deep depression with obsessive-compulsive behavior. He started to fantasize about young high school girls (his emotional age level). He was making an extensive list of them with vital information.

The town we had moved to had a population of fewer than 28,000. Everyone knew everyone. There was one family who practically owned the whole town. You know what I mean. We will call them "Smith." They owned Smith Furniture, Smith Oil, Smith School, Smith Medical Plaza, etc. Michael's list included over 300 names. That was just about every young girl in town, so you know just about every family was affected. He quit his job and never told anyone. He started breaking into homes to pay his rent, knowing from past experience that we wouldn't let him come home. This time he never asked. In one break-in he stole a gun, but tried to sell it to a friend because he didn't know how to use it. His friend showed him how.

From his list, he chose five girls and started to write them notes. And yes, I guess you could say that he started to stalk them. He took a particular fancy to one girl and went to her house in the middle of the night to see her, to profess his love to her. She was not home, but her mother was and caught him. He tried to get away, but she grabbed him by his hair and wouldn't let go. One time, when he was about fifteen years old, I had dragged him across the street from my mother's house by his hair in front of all the neighborhood. He had cried and begged me not to do it. He had been so humiliated and perhaps this triggered Michael's response to being grabbed by his hair again. He panicked and killed her.

He ran out of the house in blind terror, speeding away at 100 miles an hour with his headlights off. After he was stopped for the traffic violations, he confessed to the murder immediately. He didn't have to. They even admitted that there probably wasn't enough evidence to convict him. But he felt so devastated by what he had done that the guilt overwhelmed him. Once they had his confession, they did not have to plea bargain for anything.

Two lawyers were appointed by the court. One had never handled any kind of criminal case, let alone a capital murder. The other was a cocky sob who had no use for Michael. He said right to his face that Michael was a sorry piece of sh--. The guilt phase of the trial was a formality. He had confessed. The only question was, did he deserve the death penalty?

During the punishment part of the trial, the DA swore herself in as a witness and read the report from the children's home. The report was full of lies, innuendoes and hearsay. So many things that normal kids do can sound bad if viewed from a courtroom where a trial for murder is occurring. She said that it was a fact that Michael had threatened to kill his parents and blame his younger brother. How could she swear to this being true? Was she at our house? Did she hear him say it? No! So who did? Who put this in the report? Why weren't they at the trial to be cross-examined? Not only did she read this report, which could have been anybody saying anything with no one there to cross-examine, but Michael's so called lawyers never offered a single objection to any of this.

The DA also took the lies that I had told the children's home and used them against him. There is no record of his ever setting fires or trying to kill his brother. She had only my words from a school paper, yet she swore to them in court as the gospel truth.

We had a list of more that twenty character witnesses, most of them local police officers and prison guards. Michael's idea of a fun evening was going over to the local coffee shop and joining the townspeople at the round table drinking coffee all night. When they found out what he did, they all said, "Not our Michael." Yet his lawyers never called a single one of them as character witnesses.

Instead, the DA portrayed him as an "unemployed driferter" with no ties to the town, and his lawyers did nothing to change that image.

Remember the small town of 28,000. Well, a judge's wife was on his list. This judge just happened to be friends with the judge that tried Michael's case. The investigating officer's wife was on the list, etc, etc.

His lawyers, as a formality, did ask for a change of venue. Remember Mr. Smith, the town's leading citizen? They called him to testify if he thought there was undue publicity or prejudice in town. Smith said no and the change of venue was denied, but it just so happens that Smith's sister is married to the victim's family lawyer. The victim was a secretary at the Smith school. One of the jurors was a neighbor of the victim and almost everyone in town knew someone on "the list."

The States Special prosecutor kept winking at Michaels lawyer, the one who had never tried a criminal case before. She did this right in front of Michael while he was on trial for his life. She, the state prosecutor, and Michael's lawyer were heard talking about the missionary position being a great stress reliever. On the day he was given his death sentence, they made a date for dinner right in front of him..

This poem was found in Michael's apartment shortly after he was arrested:

Tears I have not

Tears are dropped when one is lonely, depressed or sad.

Yet I do not cry.

Tears fall when there is pain.

Tears crash when there is sorrow.

Tears rush when there is fear.

And tears roll when there is anger.

Yet I do not cry.

Tears race when there is despair.

Tears trickle when there is laughter.

Tears rain when there is hatred.

And tears run where there is solitude.

I feel the pain, I feel the sorrow.

I sense the fear, I feel the anger.

I feel the despair, and I often laugh

Quite hartly (sic).

I feel the hatred, I feel the solitude.

I feel the sorrow, I feel the anger.

Yet still, I do not cry.

-- Michael Patrick Moore , 1993