NEWS 8 INVESTIGATES
AUSTIN — Alicia Moore was no stranger to Child Protective Services.
In fact, two-and-a-half months before the Greenville teenager's body was found stuffed in a trunk, a CPS investigation had been opened.
Documents recently obtained by News 8 now detail what a former CPS caseworker failed to do in that case. That caseworker was Rebekah Thonginh Ross.
"What I found was — what stood out in that investigation — was that there was nothing done," said Jose Carrizal, the former inspector general who investigated the actions of CPS. "She left a child vulnerable."
The decorated former El Paso police officer is speaking out for the first time about his belief that Alicia would be alive today if Ross had done her job.
Alicia Moore's body was found stuffed in a trunk in November 2012 along the side of a rural road in Van Zandt County. Months after her killing, DNA connected her uncle, Michael Moore, to the killing. He is awaiting trial on capital murder charges.
Based on Carrizal's investigation, Ross and two supervisors — Laura Ard and Natalie Reynolds — were indicted on charges of tampering with physical evidence connected to Alicia's case. They were also indicted on other charges related to allegations of illegal searches.
Ross was originally scheduled to go on trial Monday on an official oppression charge related to one of those searches; the trial was delayed due to the icy conditions.
Ross's attorney, Pete Schulte, said she did nothing wrong.
"She did her job and she saved some kids, and now she's paying the price because of a witch hunt," Schulte said.
Documents obtained by News 8 reveal that two-and-a-half months before Alicia died, a police detective asked CPS for help due to "concerns for her lack of protectiveness." Alicia had been raped, and police were investigating.
The CPS intake form completed by Ross raised numerous concerns, including describing the special needs teen as "self-harming," "sexually acting out," having sex with a "considerably older male," and having been removed from her mother's home twice before, the documents state.
The records characterize Alicia's mom "as hostile," "not protective of Alicia," and failing to adequately supervise Alicia's activities.
Still, Alicia remained in the home.
On November 2, 2012, Alicia disappeared from a Greenville bus stop. She was reported missing the following day, and Laura Ard issued an order to close Alicia's case if authorities did not suspect a family member in her disappearance, records show.
Alicia's body was found four days after she disappeared, the same day Ross closed out the CPS investigation.
Ard and Reynolds signed off on it, according to the records.
The case was closed "despite the lack of an investigation, the lack of contact with Alicia in over 2-1/2, months, the lack of contact with Alicia prior to the closure of the case, a falsified risk assessment, a falsified safety assessment, no services being provided, no collateral contacts being made, [and] no home visits being conducted," Carrizal wrote.
Carrizal, who was a member of an inspector general's task force to investigate child deaths with CPS case histories, was assigned to the case after a Hunt County assistant county attorney reported concerns to Austin officials about how CPS handled the case.
According to Carrizal's investigative report, a CPS investigative supervisor said she checked the case file the day Alicia disappeared and found that "no tasks" had been completed.
Mysteriously, entries had appeared in the file by the time her body was found.
"It brought up a lot of red flags," Carrizal said.
The supervisor "became emotional and wept," the report says. "She advised that the majority of the entries made in the Moore case were copied and pasted from other sources."
The report describes Reynolds as weeping throughout the interview, and confirming that "the Moore case was not handled appropriately."
She said she had received instructions from Ard to get the Moore case closed, along with all of Ross's other cases, since she was about to go on maternity leave.
"When asked if the 29 cases were all closed out in the same manner that the Moore case was closed, Reynolds responded by saying, 'I hope not,'" the report says. "She states that the Moore case was not handled 'thoroughly' and that it was a 'crappy' investigation.'''
Carrizal asked a CPS worker to look at those 29 cases, and three of those cases were subsequently reopened.
The report also recounts his interview with Ard.
"When asked about Alicia not being seen in over 2-1/2 months and not being seen before the Moore case was closed, Ard responded by saying … that it 'happens all the time,'" according to the report. "Ard states that 'State Office' is aware of how these cases are being handled, and until they start paying a worker more money, this is the type of work they're going to get."
Ard also told Carrizal that she didn't have a "crystal ball" to know when a child is going to die."
The report said Ard and Reynolds had previously been involved with the Moore family in 2007 when they sought removal of Alicia from her mother's home.
Carrizal sought criminally negligent homicide indictments against Ross, Ard and Reynolds. The grand jury declined to indict them on that charge, but did indict them on several others.
Ross resigned her job. Ard retired. Reynolds remains on paid administrative leave.
Carrizal believes Alicia Moore would be alive today if her case had been handled differently.
"I reviewed thousands of documents, and one of the things that stood out was that these same people who were charged dealt with the same juvenile, petitioned the court to have that juvenile removed from that environment because it was harmful," he said.
Schulte, Ross's attorney, calls that assertion ridiculous.
"We can play the 'what-if' game all day long," Schulte said. "This is a horrible situation. There's nothing given the information that was reported to CPS and to the police department that there was any indication that an alleged uncle was going to murder this poor girl."
Carrizal is no longer employed by the inspector general. He was accused of insubordination and fired last year.
Carrizal claims he was let go after complaining that child deaths with CPS histories were not getting the attention they deserved. He said the inspector general had at one point been doing what he called "checklist investigations."
"We weren't doing anything that you would normally do in an investigation," he said. "I said, 'Hey, this isn't the way we should be handling this. There's a child attached to each one of these.'"
Carrizal is appealing his dismissal, and has since filed a whistleblower lawsuit.
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