Blue Mist #22

Robert Henry Moorman, whose surname also appears as Moormann in court records, was serving nine years to life at Arizona State Prison in Florence for a 1972 kidnapping. In January 1984, at age 35, he was granted a 72-hour compassionate furlough, and his 74-year-old adoptive mother, Roberta “Maude” Moorman, came to stay with him at the Blue Mist Motel near the prison.

In their room, Moorman beat, bound and suffocated his mother. On the morning of January 13 he bought knives and dismembered her body, then spent the day trying to get rid of what he called spoiled meat and “cow guts,” asking the motel owner and nearby businesses about their dumpsters. Late that night, he called a prison officer he knew and talked him into taking a box of what he called dog bones back to the prison. Police, already alerted to his behavior, opened the box and found human remains. Moorman confessed, and officers found the blood-stained motel room.

A jury convicted Moorman of first-degree murder in April 1985, and he was sentenced to death in May. His appeals, including a late challenge to Arizona’s lethal injection procedures, failed. He was executed by lethal injection at the state prison in Florence on February 29, 2012, at age 63, after nearly 27 years on death row.