Micah Moore of Missouri charged with murder made to look like suicide

KANSAS CITY, MO - A Grandview, Mo., man charged with murdering a nurse told authorities he did it because he was afraid the woman would reveal that he and other men had sexually assaulted her while living together over several months.

Micah Moore, 23, was charged Saturday with the murder of Bethany Deaton, whose body was found Oct. 30 in a van parked near a shelter house in Missouri.

According to court records, when police found Deaton’s body, there was a plastic bag over her head and an apparent suicide note nearby. The note read, in part, “My name is Bethany Deaton. I chose this evil thing. I did it because I wouldn’t be a real person and what is the point of living if it is too late for that?”

Police treated the case as a suicide until Friday, Nov. 9, when Moore went to Grandview police headquarters and confessed to a Jackson County Sheriff’s detective that he killed Deaton.

Moore reportedly said he killed the woman because, while he and several other men had shared a residence with Bethany Deaton and her husband, Tyler Deaton, “they had sexually assaulted (Bethany) Deaton over the last few months … and they were afraid she was going to tell her therapist of the assaults.”

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Moore told the detective that another man, whose name is blacked out in the probable cause statement, told him to kill Bethany Deaton, “saying he knew Micah had it in him to do it.”

Probable cause statement

The supporting document states that “Moore admitted to being at Longview Lake with Bethany Deaton and said he placed a bag over her head and held it there until her body shook.”

Moore apparently spoke to Shelly Hundley, a pastor from the International House of Prayer in south Kansas City, Mo., while he was at Grandview police headquarters, telling the pastor that he had video recordings of the sexual assaults against Bethany Deaton on an iPad at his apartment.

Detectives interviewed four other roommates of Bethany and Tyler Deaton after they waived their Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. The roommates told tales of sexual activity with the Deatons that were said to be part of a “religious experience.”

Moore was being held in jail Sunday in lieu of a $500,000 bond.