Marie Moore was a Paterson, New Jersey woman convicted in 1984 of torturing and murdering her thirteen-year-old goddaughter, Theresa Feury, inside a household Moore controlled through fear and a fabricated mafia persona. A Passaic County jury returned guilty verdicts on the capital murder count and twenty-nine other charges and sentenced Moore to death, making her the first woman sentenced to die under New Jersey’s restored death penalty. Four years later, the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed both the conviction and the death sentence and ordered a new trial.1vLex. State v. Moore, 113 N.J. 239
The Paterson Household
Beginning around September 1981, Moore ran what prosecutors and news accounts described as a “house of horrors” at 1031 Madison Avenue in Paterson. She presented herself to neighborhood children as a permissive, fun parent, letting her twelve-year-old daughter Tammy have friends over constantly and taking groups on outings. Several young people drifted into regular residence: fourteen-year-old Ricky Flores, thirteen-year-old Luis Mantalvo, twelve-year-old Harriet Bayne, and Theresa Feury. A fifty-year-old friend of Moore’s, Mary Gardullo, also lived there.1vLex. State v. Moore, 113 N.J. 239
Moore controlled the household through an invented character she called “Billy Joel,” whom she claimed was a member of the mafia. At first she pretended to pass along his orders by telephone, directing chores and punishing disobedience. By late October 1981, she escalated the deception, telling the household that mafia associates had injected her with a drug that let “Billy” inhabit her body and speak through her directly. Threats of violence against the victims and their families kept everyone silent.1vLex. State v. Moore, 113 N.J. 239
Moore directed Ricky Flores to act as an enforcer, ordering him to beat other household members with a baseball bat when they failed to follow rules. Harriet Bayne, Theresa Feury, and Mary Gardullo were all subjected to ongoing physical abuse under this system. At trial, a boy testified that he had beaten other youths on Moore’s orders.
What Happened to Theresa Feury
Theresa Feury was Moore’s goddaughter. Over months inside the Madison Avenue household, she was tortured. The medical examiner’s findings cited by the New Jersey Supreme Court described her as chained to a bathtub every night. She died from blows to the head and face caused by striking the tub.2The New York Times. Court Spares Woman on Jersey Death Row The fatal injuries were physically inflicted by Ricky Flores, acting under Moore’s direction, not by Moore herself. That distinction would later matter at the state’s highest court.3CaseMine. Clarifying Own Conduct and Diminished Capacity in Capital Murder: State of New Jersey v. Marie Moore
On December 22, 1983, police searched an apartment formerly occupied by Moore and found Feury’s partially mummified body concealed in a crawl space behind a bedroom wall.1vLex. State v. Moore, 113 N.J. 239 The investigation that followed uncovered the two years of abuse behind that door.
Conviction and Death Sentence
Moore was charged under a thirty-three-count indictment covering conduct from September 1981 through December 1983. The charges covered Feury’s murder along with kidnapping, sexual assault, and other offenses against four additional juveniles and one adult victim.4The New York Times. Woman’s Cell on Death Row
The defense argued that Moore was insane and pointed to the “Billy” alter ego as proof. Prosecutors contested that account, and Moore was ruled fit to stand trial. In November 1984, a Passaic County jury convicted her of the capital murder of Feury and twenty-nine additional counts and sentenced her to death by lethal injection.5The New York Times. Jersey Jury Sentences Woman, 38, to Death Prosecutors had argued that the murder was committed during the commission of other crimes and to escape detection, an aggravating factor under the state’s capital punishment statute. Moore was the first woman sentenced to death under New Jersey’s restored death penalty law.
Why the New Jersey Supreme Court Reversed
Moore appealed to the New Jersey Supreme Court as a matter of right. On October 26, 1988, the court issued its decision in State v. Moore, 113 N.J. 239, reversing the murder conviction and the death sentence and ordering a new trial.1vLex. State v. Moore, 113 N.J. 239
The court identified several errors. The trial judge had not instructed the jury on the defense of diminished capacity, nor on the lesser-included offenses of manslaughter and aggravated manslaughter, even though Moore’s mental state was central to the defense. The sentencing-phase instructions on weighing mitigating against aggravating factors fell short of what State v. Biegenwald (1987) required. And the evidence was insufficient to show that Moore had committed the killing “by her own conduct,” which the state’s death penalty statute required, because the fatal blows were inflicted by Ricky Flores under her direction rather than by Moore personally.3CaseMine. Clarifying Own Conduct and Diminished Capacity in Capital Murder: State of New Jersey v. Marie Moore
The practical consequence was that Moore could not face the death penalty on retrial for Feury’s murder. The ruling also set New Jersey precedent on the “own conduct” requirement: a person who orchestrated a killing but did not personally deliver the fatal injuries was outside the reach of the capital statute as written.2The New York Times. Court Spares Woman on Jersey Death Row
What Came After
The available records do not establish the outcome of Moore’s retrial after the 1988 reversal or her current incarceration status. New Jersey legislatively abolished the death penalty on December 17, 2007, when Governor Jon Corzine signed the law replacing capital sentences with life without parole and commuted the sentences of the eight men then on death row.6NPR. New Jersey Abolishes Death Penalty7Death Penalty Information Center. New Jersey Abolishes the Death Penalty Moore was not among those eight; her sentence had been vacated almost two decades earlier.