Aliza Sherman Case: Attorney Charged, Cold-Case Break, Defense Fight

Aliza Sherman, a 53-year-old Cleveland fertility nurse and mother of four, was stabbed to death on March 24, 2013, outside her divorce attorney’s downtown office. The Aliza Sherman murder case went unsolved for more than twelve years. In May 2025, a Cuyahoga County grand jury indicted that attorney, Gregory Moore, on charges including aggravated murder, murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy, with prosecutors alleging he orchestrated the killing to avoid taking her divorce case to trial.¹

The Stabbing Outside 55 Erieview Plaza

Sherman was arriving for a scheduled meeting with Moore at the Stafford Law Company offices at 55 Erieview Plaza in downtown Cleveland. According to prosecutors, as she waited for the doors to be unlocked, a hooded figure approached from behind, chased her, and stabbed her eleven times.¹ She was taken to MetroHealth Medical Center and pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m.²

Security cameras captured a figure in dark clothing and gloves running from the scene, but the footage was too grainy to identify the attacker’s race or gender. A watch was found on the ground near a pool of blood. It was unclear whether Sherman had been wearing it or whether paramedics had removed it.³

Who Aliza Sherman Was

Sherman earned her nursing degree from Cleveland State University and worked as a fertility nurse in the IVF surgical department at the Cleveland Clinic, first in Beachwood starting in 2003 and later at the main campus from 2006. She had four children, ranging in age from 17 to 29 when she was killed.⁴

She had filed for divorce from her husband, Dr. Sanford Sherman, in 2011. The proceedings were contentious. By the day she died, trial was two days away.⁴

What Prosecutors Say Drove the Killing

Gregory Moore was Sherman’s divorce lawyer at the Stafford Law Company. He had been admitted to the Ohio bar in 2003 and worked at the firm from at least 2011 to 2014.⁵

Prosecutors allege Moore was unprepared for the upcoming trial and had been denied further continuances by the presiding judge.⁶ According to the indictment, he conspired with at least one unnamed individual to kidnap Sherman so he would not have to try her case. The prosecution says he lured her to the office under the guise of trial preparation and had her attacked.⁷ The conspiracy count identifies no co-conspirator publicly, and prosecutors have not named anyone else alleged to have been involved.

How the Cold Case Broke

For years, Cleveland police received tips but lacked enough evidence to present the case to a grand jury. In June 2021, the Ohio Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation took over at the request of Cleveland authorities. Attorney General Dave Yost said his office brought “extra tools, technology, and the bandwidth” to reanalyze existing evidence. BCI’s cold case unit worked alongside Cleveland police, the FBI’s Cleveland office, and the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department.⁸⁹

Yost credited digital and analytical tools “that didn’t exist in 2013” as central to the breakthrough.¹⁰ Investigators analyzed WiFi connection logs, cell tower data, and records from electronic devices to reconstruct Moore’s movements. They found that he disconnected his cellphone from the network for roughly three hours around the time of the murder, apparently to avoid leaving location data. After that gap, he switched the phone back on and placed multiple calls to Sherman’s phone, which prosecutors say was an effort to create a false trail suggesting he had been trying to reach her. Records also showed he obtained a new phone shortly after the killing.⁸

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley acknowledged the case was not “a traditional open-and-shut kind of DNA case” but said the accumulation of digital evidence was enough to take to a grand jury.⁸

The Charges, Arrest, and Bond

On May 2, 2025, a Cuyahoga County grand jury secretly indicted Moore on ten counts: one count of aggravated murder, six counts of murder, two counts of kidnapping, and one count of conspiracy.⁹

That same day, U.S. Marshals arrested Moore near Austin, Texas, at roughly 3:30 p.m. He was held at the Williamson County Jail before being extradited to Ohio on May 24, 2025. At his May 28 arraignment before Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Deborah Turner, bond was set at $2 million. Moore posted a surety bond on July 3, 2025, and was released. The release initially lacked GPS monitoring, prompting an emergency motion from the prosecutor’s office; he is now subject to GPS monitoring, a prohibition on firearms and passports, and travel restrictions.¹¹ Moore has pleaded not guilty to all charges.¹²

The Earlier Bomb-Threat Conviction

Moore was already a convicted felon by the time of the murder indictment. In December 2013 he was charged with calling in bomb threats to courthouses in Geauga, Lake, and Cuyahoga counties during 2012; the Cuyahoga County threat forced an evacuation of a courthouse on Lakeside Avenue.¹³

In May 2017 he pleaded guilty to two counts of felony inducing panic and one count of falsification. The falsification charge came from lying to FBI agents and Cleveland police homicide detectives about his whereabouts on the day Sherman was killed. He was sentenced to 180 days in the Cuyahoga County Jail, 36 months of community control, and 150 hours of court work service.¹⁴ Investigators had determined through key card data and cellphone records that Moore was not in his office at the time of the stabbing, contradicting his account.¹⁵ The Ohio Supreme Court suspended Moore’s law license in June 2017, and he resigned it pending discipline in 2018.⁵

The Defense Response

Moore’s attorneys have moved to dismiss the case, arguing that the twelve-year gap between the murder and the indictment prejudiced his ability to mount a defense because witnesses are no longer available and exculpatory evidence may have been lost.⁷

Pointing at the Estranged Husband

The defense has pointed to Aliza’s estranged husband, Sanford Sherman, as an alternative suspect. In court filings, Moore’s team alleged that Sanford had a financial motive to protect his assets, had forged Aliza’s signature and hidden approximately $1 million, and that Aliza herself believed he was “dangerous” and “capable of violence.”⁷

Prosecutors have dismissed Sanford Sherman as a suspect, citing what they described as “objective evidence of his whereabouts and conduct” on the day of the murder, including phone records, shopping receipts, police reports, and interviews.¹⁶ In April 2022, BCI agents investigated an anonymous Crime Stoppers tip alleging Sanford had confessed to the killing at a medical appointment, but a nurse practitioner said to have received the confession denied it, and investigators concluded the tip was unreliable.¹⁷ Sanford Sherman died in Florida in 2024 and was never named an official suspect.²

The DNA and Missing-Evidence Fight

The defense has requested independent DNA testing of the watch found near Sherman’s body, arguing that earlier testing revealed an “unknown man” and that further analysis could identify a new suspect. Prosecutors oppose the request, noting the watch has already been tested twice without producing leads, has been extensively handled, and that the attacker appeared to be wearing gloves. A 2020 search of the offender DNA database for familial matches came up empty. Judge Kira Krivosh was expected to rule on the request at an August 2025 hearing.³

Both sides have raised questions about the integrity of key evidence. Prosecutors allege that 21 minutes of security footage from Erieview Plaza went missing and that a voicemail Sherman left on the Stafford Law office phone system was deleted.³ The defense has flagged what it describes as a “jump in the recording at the time of the homicide” in the building’s security video. The prosecution also alleges Moore destroyed a Blackberry device he was using around the time of the murder.¹⁶

The Family’s Civil Lawsuit

On April 30, 2026, Sherman’s daughter Jennifer, acting as executor of her mother’s estate, filed a 61-page civil lawsuit in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court against Moore, the Stafford Law Firm (now Stafford Cruz Law Co.), and ten unnamed defendants.¹⁸ The suit alleges wrongful death against Moore and negligence, legal malpractice, evidence destruction, and cover-up against the firm.¹⁹

The complaint alleges that Stafford Law knew Moore had used firm-issued phones to call in bomb threats to courthouses and, rather than reporting this, provided him with a new cellphone, a 4G data plan, and a mobile hotspot on the firm’s Verizon business account in January 2013. The suit further claims the firm failed to turn over that device to investigators, that staff attempted to cancel the mobile hotspot on the day of the murder, and that a voicemail Sherman left on the firm’s phone system was deleted that same night. It seeks compensatory and punitive damages exceeding $25,000.¹⁸²⁰ Attorneys for Stafford Cruz Law had not publicly responded as of early May 2026.¹⁹

Where the Case Stands

Moore’s criminal trial is expected in the fall of 2026. A September 14, 2026, trial date has been reported, though as of early 2026 the defense was still seeking dismissal and pretrial hearings were ongoing before Judge Kira Krivosh.¹⁶¹⁹ Moore remains free on $2 million bond with GPS monitoring.

1
Court TV. Divorce Attorney Charged in Cold Case Murder of Aliza Sherman
2
Fox 8 Cleveland. Unsolved for 12 Years: A Timeline of the Aliza Sherman Murder Case
3
Cleveland.com. Prosecutors Oppose Additional DNA Testing in Aliza Sherman Murder Case
4
Cleveland 19. Who Was Aliza Sherman
5
Cleveland 19. Who Is Gregory Moore
6
Cleveland.com. Charges in Aliza Sherman’s Case Bring Relief to Those Who Waited Years for Answers
7
Court TV. Attorney Accused of Killing Client Pushes for Dismissal and Points to Another Suspect
8
News 5 Cleveland. How Technology Led to an Indictment in the Aliza Sherman Cold Case
9
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor. Gregory Moore Indicted in 2013 Downtown Cleveland Homicide of Aliza Sherman
10
Cleveland Jewish News. Aliza Sherman’s Family in Shock, Her Lawyer Gregory Moore Charged With Her Murder
11
Akron Jewish News. Former Attorney Gregory Moore Posts $2M Surety Bond in Aliza Sherman Murder Case
12
Cleveland 19. Cleveland Attorney Accused of Killing His Client Aliza Sherman Back in Court
13
Cleveland 19. Lawyer Accused in Bomb Threats Heads to Trial
14
Court TV. Former Attorney Accused in Aliza Sherman Murder Leaves Jail
15
Cleveland.com. Aliza Sherman’s Former Attorney Sentenced
16
Fox 8 Cleveland. How Prosecutors Built the Case on Suspect in Aliza Sherman’s Murder
17
Fox 8 Cleveland. Aliza Sherman’s Estranged Husband Spoke to Investigators Prior to His Death
18
Cleveland Jewish News. Sherman Family Sues Former Attorney, Firm, and Others
19
Cleveland.com. Aliza Sherman’s Daughter Sues Firm That Employed Her Accused Killer
20
Cleveland 19. Cleveland Attorney Accused of Murdering Aliza Sherman Now Faces Civil Lawsuit