Marie Moore: The Billy Joel House

In 1981 Marie Moore, 35, a former telephone operator, made her Paterson, New Jersey, apartment a hangout for local kids, who called her Ma. Regulars included her daughter Tammy, Ricky Flores, Luis Montalvo and her goddaughter, Theresa Feury, 12. That September she told them her ex-husband was Billy Joel, that he was a mobster and that he would bomb their homes if they disobeyed.

Moore relayed his supposed orders by phone and later claimed he spoke through her. The children were beaten, burned and restrained, and Ricky was made to carry out the punishments. Harriet Bayne fled in November 1981 and Moore’s friend Mary Gardullo in May 1982, yet the children stayed. From September 1982 Theresa was kept there, starved and chained. That winter she fell and struck her head, and she was wrapped and hidden in an attic, then behind a bedroom wall. Moore led police to the body on December 22, 1983.

In November 1984 a Passaic County jury convicted Moore of murder and sentenced her to death, the only woman on the state’s death row at the time. Ricky Flores, charged as a juvenile, admitted manslaughter and testified. In October 1988 the state Supreme Court overturned the murder conviction and death sentence, ruling that the evidence did not show she personally caused Theresa’s death. In 1989 she was resentenced to 135 years for kidnapping and assault.