The Marie Moore Billy Joel case was a years-long torture scheme in Paterson, New Jersey, in which a 35-year-old woman named Marie Moore convinced the children living in her home that she had been married to the singer Billy Joel, that he was a mafia member watching their every move, and that he would kill their families if they disobeyed. The lie let her run a household of beatings, burnings, and restraint that ended with the death of her 12-year-old goddaughter, Theresa Feury, whose partially mummified body was found behind a bedroom wall in December 1983.1vLex. State v. Moore, 113 N.J. 239 (1988)
How the Billy Joel Lie Worked
Moore had never been married to anyone. Starting around September 13, 1981, at the house on Madison Avenue, she told the children that Billy Joel was her ex-husband, that he belonged to the mafia, and that he was assigning their chores and watching for disobedience. If they stepped out of line, she said, he would set off a bomb in the house or go after their relatives.1vLex. State v. Moore, 113 N.J. 239 (1988)
She had worked as a telephone operator, and she used that experience to fake calls from Joel, holding the receiver and passing along his supposed instructions. The children were made to memorize a set of rules attributed to him and were beaten when they recited them wrong. By late October 1981 the calls stopped, replaced by a new claim: Moore said she had been injected with a drug that let Billy Joel enter her body and speak through her mouth directly.1vLex. State v. Moore, 113 N.J. 239 (1988)
Moore’s own 12-year-old daughter, Tammy, lived in the house believing Billy Joel was her father. She was mostly spared the physical abuse the other children suffered.2Podscripts. Casefile True Crime, Case 319: Theresa Feury
Who Was in the House and What They Suffered
Along with Theresa Feury and Tammy Moore, the household included Harriet Bain, a 12-year-old daughter of a friend; Ricky Flores, a 14-year-old boy who moved in permanently on October 25, 1981; Mary Gardullo, a 50-year-old housemate; and Luis Montalvo, 13.1vLex. State v. Moore, 113 N.J. 239 (1988)
Moore turned Ricky Flores into an enforcer, directing him to beat the other children when they failed to recite the rules or finish their chores to her liking.1vLex. State v. Moore, 113 N.J. 239 (1988) The punishments included beatings with wiffle ball bats and heavy books, cigarette burns, and restraint with thumb cuffs.2Podscripts. Casefile True Crime, Case 319: Theresa Feury Theresa Feury was chained to the bathtub at night.3The New York Times. Court Spares Woman on Jersey Death Row
Warnings Authorities Missed
Two people got out and tried to tell someone. Harriet Bain escaped in November 1981 and reported the abuse to Paterson police and the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services. Investigators saw her injuries but could not get past the Billy Joel story. Instead of pulling the other children from the house, they sent Harriet to a diagnostic center.2Podscripts. Casefile True Crime, Case 319: Theresa Feury
Mary Gardullo escaped in May 1982 and went to police in Toms River. On June 7, 1982, a social worker named Kathy Delapesca and Paterson police went to the Moore home and found Theresa Feury there with injuries that did not match her explanation of a fall.2Podscripts. Casefile True Crime, Case 319: Theresa Feury The case stayed open for months without decisive action. By the time anyone moved, Theresa was already dead.
Theresa Feury’s Death
Theresa Feury died from head injuries caused by striking her head on the bathtub she was chained to. The medical examiner attributed the fatal trauma to “blows to the head and face caused by striking the tub.”3The New York Times. Court Spares Woman on Jersey Death Row She had also been starved and was severely weakened when she died.
On December 22, 1983, police searched an apartment Moore had previously lived in and found Theresa’s partially mummified body in a crawl space behind a bedroom wall.1vLex. State v. Moore, 113 N.J. 239 (1988) Prosecutors later used the concealment of the body to argue that Moore had killed the girl in the course of other crimes and was trying to hide them.4The New York Times. Jersey Jury Sentences Woman, 38, to Death
Conviction, Death Sentence, and Reversal
A Passaic County grand jury returned a 33-count indictment covering the abuse of multiple victims and the murder of Theresa Feury.1vLex. State v. Moore, 113 N.J. 239 (1988) In November 1984, a jury convicted Moore of capital murder and sentenced her to death by lethal injection. She was 38. She was the first woman sentenced to death in New Jersey since the state restored capital punishment in 1982.4The New York Times. Jersey Jury Sentences Woman, 38, to Death
On October 26, 1988, the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed both the murder conviction and the death sentence in State v. Moore, 113 N.J. 239, and ordered a new trial. The court found that the trial judge should have instructed the jury on the defense of diminished capacity and on the lesser-included offenses of manslaughter and aggravated manslaughter. On the death sentence itself, the court held that the evidence was insufficient to support the jury’s finding that Moore had committed the fatal act “by her own conduct,” a statutory prerequisite for the death penalty in New Jersey. Because much of the physical abuse had been inflicted by Ricky Flores at Moore’s direction, that factual question had not been adequately established.1vLex. State v. Moore, 113 N.J. 239 (1988)
What Happened Next
What happened after the reversal is not well documented in published court records. Research into the case has turned up newspaper headlines such as a Courier-Post piece titled “Torturer spared death term,” but the details of any resentencing are not available in the public record.5Casefile Podcast. Case 319: Theresa Feury Moore’s death sentence had already been vacated by 1988, so she was not among the eight men whose sentences Governor Jon Corzine commuted when New Jersey abolished the death penalty in December 2007.6Death Penalty Information Center. New Jersey Abolishes the Death Penalty