In October of 2010, a Durham man calling himself Pete Moses decided that it was time for four-year-old Jadon Higganbothan to die.
Jadon had slapped another boy’s buttocks. This angered Moses, then 27, a self-described prophet and the cult leader of a Black Hebrews offshoot. Moses’ aversion to homosexual behavior knew no bounds. The boy lived under his roof with eight other children and a number of women including Jadon’s mother, Vania Rae Sisk. The adults were all Moses’ disciples. They called him “Lord.”
Trembling, Jadon watched as Moses waved a gun around and started screaming at Sisk: “I told you to get rid of him!” “How am I going to do this?” Moses considered Jadon’s bottom-slap proof that the boy was gay. Something had to be done.
He told Sisk and another follower to set up a computer and speakers in the garage. Then, as music featuring the Lord’s prayer in Hebrew was blasting forth, Moses led Jadon into the garage while the two women stayed outside. The “Lord” raised the gun to the boy’s terror-stricken face, and squeezed the trigger.
Sisk and her friend cleaned up the blood, patched the wall where the bullet had hit, stuffed Jadon’s body into a suitcase, and put it in Moses’ master suite. Days later, when Moses began to complain of the smell, they moved the suitcase and buried Jadon in a nearby spot that would also become the makeshift grave of Antoinetta McKoy, another disciple. Moses strangled and shot her — the same music playing loudly — after he learned she couldn’t have children and wanted to abandon the cult.
A few days after, the sect threw a party during which Moses showed McKoy’s body to his mother, brother, and sister. No one called the police. Moses and his accomplices were only arrested after a plumber fixing a clogged pipe coincidentally began digging where the grave happened to be.
On YouTube, in video selfies that have since been removed, Moses revealed himself to be your classical misogynist and faux-pious madman. Watch this compilation of snippets; he proclaims himself angry at the world’s wickedness, and, at 2:02, says
“I don’t know it all. I don’t claim to know it all. But I know enough to know right from wrong.”
A jury has found Moses guilty of murder. He’ll be sentenced next Friday, no doubt to a whopping term. Jadon’s mother, Vania Rae Sisk, just received her prison sentence: at least 30 years behind bars.
I hope those years pass slowly.
(illustration via loopyrocket)