An East Haven woman who was found guilty of killing her two children in 2015 was sentenced Thursday to 120 years in prison.
“I loved my children. I love my children. I love all of them,” LeRoya Moore told a panel of three judges in New Haven.
Moore ended her lengthy statement to the court during sentencing saying, “My children are not going to have lost their lives in vain because no matter where I go I will flourish and I will do it in the name of Daaron Moore and Aleisha Moore.”
Moore will only have the opportunity to flourish in prison. The panel of judges sentenced her to 60 years in prison for each child, to be served consecutively with no opportunity for parole for the murder in the deaths of her 6-year-old daughter, Aleisha, and her 7-year-old son, Daaron.
Her lawyers had pursued an insanity defense. “She laid there for days with her decomposing children and strong odors and again this speaks to mental illness who does this,” said Scott Jones to the judges.
Outside the courtroom he told media, “We’re disappointed that mental health is so misunderstood.”
Autopsies showed the children died from antihistamine intoxication, but a defense psychiatrist said Moore told him she drowned them while trying to "baptize" them after God told her she was supposed to kill them and herself.
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The arrest affidavit for Moore said she told police, "I stabbed them, I released them."
“I still believe she has no remorse for doing it.” Michael Moore isn’t having a word of what LeRoya Moore had to say in court.
The father of one of Leroya’s older children also reflecting on the crimes after court, “My son Dominic lost a lot. He lost his mother. He lost his brother. He lost his sister,” said Marlon Graham.
He tells us it’s hard to think what could have happened with the 21-year-old they share, “Me personally I want to see her get help.”
While he has mixed emotions about Moore’s sentence, Graham says “I believe she loved the kids, she showed she loved the kids dearly. She loved them. They were her whole life but you mix the extreme with the being irrational. Mix that with her mental issues and look what happened.”
Relatives of the young children we spoke to are satisfied LeRoya Moore will spend the rest of her life in prison. “But like the judge said, the time that she serves won’t bring the kids back,” said Michael Moore.
Moore’s defense team says they plan to appeal the sentence.
