Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Bobby Moore

Episode Date: February 2, 2026

What began as a whirlwind romance in the midst of a murder in 1970s DC, ended in a mysterious tragedy in small-town Indiana. Separated by five months, the deaths of Bobby and his wife, Barbara Moore, tore a town and a family apart.If you know anything about the death of Bobby Moore, please reach out to the Indiana State Police Cold Case Investigations at: 1-800-453-4756 or you can reach out anonymously through Crimestoppers at crimetips.org. Head over to our Crime Junkie YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjr7JTw7SfMSource materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit:  https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-bobby-moore/Did you know you can listen to this episode ad-free? Join the Fan Club! Visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/fanclub/ to view the current membership options and policies.Don’t miss out on all things Crime Junkie!Instagram: @crimejunkiepodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @CrimeJunkiePod | @audiochuckTikTok: @crimejunkiepodcastFacebook: /CrimeJunkiePodcast | /audiochuckllcCrime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat. Instagram: @ashleyflowers | @britprawatTwitter: @Ash_Flowers | @britprawatTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

High Crime Junkies, I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today reads more like an old film noir than real life. It starts with a mistaken identity and murder in D.C. Pivots to small town power politics, spirals into domestic violence, and ends with a town marshal gun down on his own doorstep in Indiana. And the reason I know about this case is because I actually got a call from Captain Smith with the State Police, who's known for cracking cold cases and who urged us to cover this story in hopes that someone somewhere can bring him answers to a question that has haunted the small town of Fremont, Indiana, for decades. Who killed Bobby Moore?

It's July 13, 1974 in D.C., a time of epic unrest in the capital city. Watergate just broke. Nixon is like a month away from resigning from the president. and when this is happening, Metro PD homicide detective Bobby Moore gets a call that a judge has been shot. He rushes to the hospital and finds Judge Lewis A. Sistler

dying in a bed. And some of his final words to the detective are telling him that he had been at his father-in-law's house and when he opened the door, there was a group of people who shot at him as they tried to get into the house. They didn't, but they got him. And shortly after giving that information

to the detective, Lewis dies. With only those few facts to go on, Bobby sets out investigating what is now a homicide. So he goes back to the scene of the crime, which, as Lewis told him, was at his father-in-law's house, Samuel Haynes. Samuel's daughter Barbara had married Lewis 23 years before,

and they'd built a life together in northern Indiana, where Lewis had been a state judge. They'd left their three adult children and moved to D.C. for Lewis's work, because after he retired as a judge, he went to work for a senator on Capitol Hill, and he was also a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association. So, for a hot minute, considering the political climate, they probably wondered if Lewis was targeted for his work.

But the real motive was much different. And as it turns out, had nothing to do with politics at all. Apparently, earlier that night, a young woman who is referred to as Mrs. Brannon in the court records, she was walking home from a neighborhood bar when a guy grabbed her, forced her into a garage and sexually assaulted her. After the assault, she made it back to her mom's house, told her mother Mary what had happened, and right away, Mary went to police to report that assault.

Now, I don't know what their response was, but probably not great, because it seems like Mary thought she needed to take matters into her own hands. So she got her grandson and his friends together, and they decided that they were going to go back to that bar she had been at to find this guy themselves. Now, he wasn't there, so they came up with another idea. Mary's daughter identified two garages in the neighborhood that looked like the ones she was assaulted in. But it's not totally clear from the limited records that we were able to get why she thought that the guy who assaulted her might have owned the garage that she was attacked in. But this is all she has to go on.

So they go to one house and they determine this isn't the right guy. So then they go back to the bar, started a bar fight, and then left, possibly. possibly after several drinks, and when they leave, they go to the second home that Mary's daughter had picked out. And that second home is Sam Haynes' house. So Mary and several others

march up to the front door, knock, and when Lewis opens the door, the New York Times reported that they said, quote, we're looking for the guy that raped our sister. And Lewis is like, listen, you must have the wrong house, and he tried to close the door.

And it was then that two people in the group started shooting through it. The judge gets hit several times, and as we know, later dies in the hospital. So once Detective Bobby Moore pieces all of this together, he comes to the conclusion that this must have been a case of mistaken identity and all the arrests are made. According to an appeal document,

which was one of the only records we could get for this case, Mary Harris, who is the mother of this woman, she ends up getting convicted of conspiracy to commit assault with a dangerous weapon, felony murder, and attempted first-degree burglary, aren't. Now, the burglary charge was because someone in the group allegedly tried to push past the judge into the house and the court suspected it was to commit a burglary. Now, I know two other men were convicted too. They were the ones police that actually pulled the trigger or triggers,

but I don't have as much detail because there weren't any court records for them that we could get. Wait, so who actually committed the assault on Mary's daughter? So short answer? I don't know. We couldn't find anything saying that a suspect had been arrested for that sexual assault. Like, in all the court documents, the perp is referred to as an unknown assailant. But they know it's not the judge? That's what they said. Mistaken identity. How do we know it's not the judge?

Because it's not like they were shooting at everyone's front door. They went to someone else's house first and they, like, knew it wasn't the right guy. Like, did they say they got the wrong guy? Are they standing behind the ID? You're asking. All the right questions, the same ones I did, but they're the questions I can't get answers to. At first blush, I'm like, um, how hard did we look at former Judge Lewis Sistler who works for a senator in D.C.? Right.

Like, did Mary and her crew say that they got the wrong person? Or like you said, were they standing by their statements? What weight did they give their statements, whatever they were, compared to that of Lewis and his family? Who have all these political connections, all these friendships. So is Mary or any of her family still around? Girl, I tried to find them. I can't. I'm, like, weirdly obsessed with this part of the story now, which like...

I'm just kind of sad you said part of the story because that means we can't, like, hang out here and dig deep. It's literally just like the setup for our main story. But I don't know. I don't know. There's like layers here I can feel. So if this story makes anyone listening, like, their ears perk up, if you knew Mary or her family, like, I'm still down to talk.

Email me, tips at audiochuk.com. But I'm kind of wondering, what if it's... everything. Like, what if it was mistaken identity? What if it wasn't Lewis, but it was someone else at the house? Like, what if it's, like, he's not even in his own house, right? Like, he's not, he doesn't own the house. No, it's his in-laws, but I don't even know if they were there. I don't know if anyone else was there. This is where the investigative records would have been really helpful, but I don't have those. Based on everything that's been reported and documented, it seems like the judge was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And at the end of the day,

Bobby got what he was after, a conviction for a judge's shooting. But like I said, that is just the start of our story. Because believe it or not, the murder investigation ends up changing the course of Bobby's life. Because through investigating the death of Lewis Sistler, Detective Bobby Moore meets his wife, Barbara Sistler. And they get married three years later. Wait, you meant his wife like Lewis's wife. Yes. He, you're telling me he marries the victim's wife.

Yes. I don't know what it would be, but like, is there not a policy against dating a murder victim's wife after you investigated the murder? I don't know. It's definitely, it's weird to me. Yeah. But for Bobby, this is like a Hollywood ending. He solves the crime. He gets the girl.

And he eventually retires from Metro PD. And now that they can live anywhere, he and Barbara decide to move back to Fremont, Indiana in 1984. My guess would be so that Barbara could be closer to her grown children, Barbara Jr., Samuel, and Debbie. One big happy family. But apparently things weren't as movie-esque as they appeared on the outside. And this move to Indiana marks the beginning of a very twisted end. Not long after moving, Bobby gets appointed as town marshal, which is like the chief of police in small towns. And he is viewed as this like hero, right?

This big shot homicide detective from D.C. And all these deputies seem to look up to him. According to the Washington Post, Bobby is officially appointed in June of 1984. Captain Kevin Smith with the Indiana State Police says that Bobby was the town marshal you picture, like when you think of a 1960s TV show, he's friendly, he's pretty lax. He probably wasn't always that way. But, you know, as a homicide detective, especially in D.C., he would have seen it all,

like the worst of the worst. And Captain Smith says that he was at that point in his career where he probably wanted to be, as laid back as he could. Like, let things slide a little, you know? And like Small Town versus D.C. Like, it feels like an easier job maybe. Yeah. There might have been more to it than just where he was in his career.

Because you see, Bobby has a pretty severe alcohol use disorder. And it just seems to worsen once they moved to Indiana. So along with all the ways that that could affect his job, it also affects his home life. His and Barbara's marriage begins to fall apart over the next. couple of years. They're fighting all of the time, and Barbara confides to her daughter that she thinks Bobby's actually having an affair. So by the end of 1987, the two of them are barely coexisting. They're still in the same house, though, like Barbara lives on the main floor of their home, and Bobby stays out of her way, paying his wife rent to live in the finished basement.

And it was done up like almost like a little apartment. It had a bedroom, a kitchen, separate entrance, separate phone line, everything. And by the way, like, this fairy tale ending is dissolving publicly. In small towns, everybody knows everybody's business. I mean, specifically small town, Northern Indiana, we know that place. So it doesn't come as much of a surprise to anyone when Bobby and Barbara both file for a divorce. But it is not amicable. Nothing like, oh, you know, we just realized like we're not good together. Like it's not. Yeah, they're living in the same house. Like even they're, they're in different parts of it. Like, yeah. Yeah, it's and toxic. But the Clock is on now. Divorce papers have been filed, and I assume that once the divorce is final,

one of them will have to move out, and they can both move on. I don't know what the arrangement was. They might have still been figuring that out, but they won't need to. Because just three days before their divorce is set to be finalized, Barbara is shot dead in their home, and Bobby is the one holding the gun. But when he calls police at 1041 p.m. and they show up five minutes later, he says it's not what it looks like. What really happened in the basement of Bobby and Barbara's home on the night of February 26, 1988 is still a mystery, one that divided a town and turned locals against one another. Only two people were in the house that night. One of them is now dead. Here is Bobby said happen according to the probable cause affidavit that we got.

Bobby says that around 10.30 p.m., he was downstairs in his apartment area of the shared house talking to someone on the phone in his kitchen when his wife Barbara, who wouldn't be his wife in three days when the divorce was finalized, started pounding on the door of the basement. He hung up the phone and went to unlock the door at the end of the hall. And when the door open, Barbara was on the other side just live it. She came in hot and accused him of having an affair with the person that he was speaking to. He says that she had come all the way in and was in the kitchen by that point. And he says that Barbara was so angry that she like swept this stack of papers off the counter and threw his phone at him.

And at that moment, he says that Barbara's phone line rang. Now she had a receiver like in the main floor but also at the bottom of the basement stairs. So she went to pick up that one in the basement. And the next thing Bobby knew she was yelling at him to come to the phone. But Bobby didn't want anything to do it. He said he went back into his bedroom and Barbara followed him. He tried to close the door to keep her out, but Barbara was pushing against it, trying to force her way in. I mean, she's smaller than him, but she's got a little leverage since the door opens inward.

So she's pushing in. He's pushing out against it, trying to hold it closed. But he said that he was pushing the door so hard to try and close it that he pushed the door through the frame and broke the door off the hinges. And when that happened, he says that Barbara rushed into the bedroom where he was, brandishing a cocked pistol in her right hand. He shouts at her to put the gun down, but she keeps coming at him. So he grabbed his own gun off a nearby shelf and shot her.

Oh, my God. Now, his phone was out of commission because she'd thrown it at him. So he immediately went to the phone by the bottom of the stairs. It's still off the hook. So he hangs it up and calls 911. Now they're here and he's like, you know, this is terrible. But it's all self-defense. The thing is, the receiver was off the hook because someone was on the line, someone who heard everything.

And between her story and what the crime scene is showing, something isn't adding up. So here's the story from the person on the other end of that receiver. That was Barbara's oldest daughter, Barbara Schuford. And I know them having the same name. get a bit confusing, so I'm just going to call her by her married last name, Shuford. So Shuford says that her mom called her earlier that evening, and in that time, she seemed to be in a good mood. To my surprise, based on what we know, Barbara told her daughter that even though her divorce from Bobby was imminent, she and Bobby were getting along, and they'd actually

just gone out to a nice dinner. So they have that conversation, they hang up, that's that. Nice call with mom. But later that evening, Barbara calls back and now she's upset. And she said that she found out who Bobby was having an affair with. The record doesn't say who it was or explain how Barbara allegedly caught them. I mean, I wonder if she was like listening in on their phone conversations. I don't think she could. So there was that phone in the basement, but it's connected to her main line, not his. So like, I don't know what she thought she knew or how she knew it.

But regardless, at this point when she thinks she knows, Barbara's so angry that she didn't even want to be in the same house anymore. She wanted her daughter to come pick her up. So her daughter hangs up, is like, listen, I'm going to talk to my husband about this. And then she calls her mom back. This is the call that Barbara went to answer on the basement phone mid-fight. So Barbara picks up on the first ring and her daughter could tell that she was even more upset now. So she's trying to like calm the situation down. And at some point her mom said that she wanted her to speak to her stepfather, meaning Bobby.

And she could hear her mom put the receiver down. and then she heard Barbara and Bobby shouting at each other. Her mom was yelling to Bobby that he needed to come to the phone and, like, admit what he'd done. And Bobby just replied by yelling profanities. And then he told her to, quote, shut up. She then heard a loud noise. And then the next thing she knew,

Bobby was on the phone telling her to hang up because he had to call 911. Now the second she heard him say that, she and her husband got in the car and headed to her mom's house. And the first thing her husband Tom says when he walks up to the scene leaves little room for doubt about what they think happened. He looked right at Bobby and he said, why did you kill her? And Bobby's only response was that he didn't mean to.

But they don't believe him. Not just because of what Barbara Schuford heard on the other end of that phone that night. She's basing a lot of her feelings on what she heard on a tape that her mother made her three months before her death, a tape that she hands over. over to police where from beyond the grave, Barbara talks of Bobby trying to kill her before. And that if something ever happens to her, no one should believe that she took her own life. Basically, if I die, look at Bobby. Did she hear anything more than shut up on the phone?

I mean, he said he told her to put the gun down. She tells police in no uncertain terms that she did not hear Bobby say put the gun down. There was no talk of any gun ever. And by the way, she had no reason to believe her mom would even be holding a gun. And moreover, she says that her mom usually kept her gun in a closet upstairs. And she didn't hear her mom go up or down the stairs, which she feels like she would have because the phone is right there by the stairs. And she says that she wouldn't even had enough time based on the length of the call in what she was hearing and everything happening. But there might be an explanation.

Just not one that really helps Bobby's position much. Allegedly, Barbara's son-in-law, Tom, had heard from Barbara's other daughter, Debbie, that within the last week or so, her mom told her that Bobby had taken her gun from her. So that gun was probably in the basement? If he took it, yeah. But that still doesn't line up with his story. I mean, in his version of events, the phone call comes in and then she tries to get into his bedroom. He breaks the door off the hinges, which, by the way, I feel like you would hear.

I feel like that would be a little bit of a commotion, especially with two people kind of battling it out on either side of the door. And the door coming off the hinges. Yeah. So they're fighting. The door comes off the hinges. Then Barbara supposedly comes at him with the gun. He fires. Her daughter only hears one loud noise.

It just doesn't that up. No, it doesn't. I also don't like physically get how he pushes the door so hard it breaks through the door frame and comes out into the hallway. Yet she's left standing to pull a gun on him. I guess that's what I'm thinking. Like, when I say commotion, I mean, the door is coming through and it's got to knock her over, knock her into the wall. Or I guess push her back if it happened kind of slowly or. It just feels like there would be so much more, again, commotions.

And like right away, like, right, she's pulling the gun on him. He shoots her. Like, it's all happening so fast that I just can't make heads or tails of it. Also, none of the stories explain how Barbara ended up where she did. Bobby said that Barbara was well inside his bedroom holding the gun in her right hand. But officers found Barbara's body outside of the bedroom in the hallway. But there is blood spatter from Barbara's exit wound inside the bedroom. Which would have like exit wound would have been like kind of behind her if she's in the hall, not the bedroom.

Or her body was moved. So the question is like if she shot inside, how does she end up in the hallway or outside of the room? And where exactly on her body was she shot? Her chest just to the left of center. Okay. But listen, if you want to ignore all of the above, weird logistic things, everything happening so fast, he did the moment, he doesn't remember whatever, fine. Okay, let's just look at Barbara. So according to Bobby's version of events, he pushes the door out of its frame.

She comes advancing at him with the cocked gun in her right hand. He grabs a gun off his shelf, shoots, and hits her while she's still, quote, well inside his room. There's what they call the back spatter, which is like the blood material thrown from the bullet inside Bobby's room. But we know Barbara herself is found outside of the room. The gun is laying next to her hand. And honestly, listen, the position of her body could work. So there's some blood on a wall across from Bobby's room that suggests that maybe she's staggered back, like out of his room, hit the other wall before collapsing.

But the state police at the time could not figure out how to make sense of the gun if that is what happened. They're like, it makes more sense that she would have dropped the pistol either when she was shot. Or even if she had held onto it, she would have dropped it when she hit the wall as she staggered back. The weapon could have gone off at any point, but it didn't. And even if it didn't, it should not have landed next to her hand. Her right hand, by the way. The very right hand, which, oh, by the way, she physically couldn't have pulled a gun on him with, according to her daughter. Barbara's daughter told police that her mom recently had surgery on her right hand for carpal tunnel syndrome,

and she wouldn't have been able to grip anything as heavy as a revolver in that hand. What's more, when the police dust the gun that Barbara was allegedly holding for her prints, none come back. So she never even held it? Not so fast. Are you ready for a crime junkie first? Always and never at the same time. I did not know that this was a thing until this case. But in this case, police talk with Barbara's doctors, and they basically say,

okay, yes, she had carpal tunnel syndrome, but they actually say she probably would have been able to hold a gun at that size and weight, whatever, so that's not shocking. As far as her prints not being on it, they say that's actually not surprising either, because apparently she had a number. another condition where she could not leave fingerprints. What? I'm sorry. I've, no. What? I'm actually going to have you read this right from the prosecutor's motion to dismiss.

It's wild. It says the victim was 59 years old. The skin of her right hand, according to her family doctor, was atrophied, tightly drawn, and very, very thin. In interviewing the victim's physicians, it was learned that she suffered from a medical condition known as reflex, sympathetic dystrophy of her right hand. One of the symptoms of this condition is a diminution and or cessation of perspiration in the affected hand. Given this fact, the lack of the victim's fingerprints or smudges on the weapon she

allegedly was holding at the time of her death is not a significant evidentiary datum. So, legally as a side and like medical jargon, basically, Barbara couldn't secrete oils in her fingers to leave fingerprints. I mean, not 100% of the time. So what that all means is that, like, this syndrome would make it less likely that she, yeah, would leave any fingerprints. Like, it's not weird to them. They're like, yeah, she could touch something and not leave a print.

That is bonkers. I know. And it all really ends up working in Bobby's favor. Because even though he's been arrested and held on murder charges, over the course of about a the special prosecutor that's brought in realizes that their case just isn't super solid. How? There was an ear witness. So even that falls apart.

Investigators actually set up this experiment where they did a kind of sound test reenactment, and they had one officer and Barbara's daughter listening on the phone at the bottom of the stairs, and then they had two other officers, like, shouted each other in the basement, and they found that very little could actually be heard. So they were basically like, while the daughter didn't hear, the mom go upstairs or hear Bobby yelling at her to put the gun down, that doesn't prove that those things didn't happen. Okay. What about the tape that Barbara made saying that Bobby was going to kill her? You know, they don't even mention that in the court record. My thinking is like, even though Barbara may have had a good reason to think that her life might have been danger, they were going through what sounds like a contentious divorce.

And it even might prove the opposite, that Barbara was already scared for her life and that she was. She had reason to grab her gun to protect herself against Bobby. So because they can't prove Bobby's lying about anything, the prosecution decides that they don't have enough evidence to win a trial against him for murdering his wife on purpose. And a little more than six weeks after the shooting, prosecutors dismiss all charges and they let him out of jail. Did they ever figure out if he really was having an affair? Might have. But it's not in the few documents that are publicly available. And if they did, it didn't help.

them build their case, which, as you can imagine, was not very comforting to Barbara's children. Like, they are angry. And they start to rally the people in Fremont against Bobby. Like, how could they let this man who they all believe so clearly killed their mom just like get away? And it's important to mention that at the time, they didn't have the benefit of actually reading through the evidence, like we can now. The prosecution didn't have a case beyond a reasonable doubt to prove that Bobby definitely killed his wife in anything other than self-defense. But as far as everyone outside the investigation knows, Bobby's story is murky at best. And as a former homicide detective, they think he would definitely know how to stage a crime scene to make it look like a self-defense shooting.

And to add fuel to the fire, four days after Bobby is let out of jail, dude wants his job back. A bold move. Yeah, the town board has to hold. hold a vote to decide whether or not to give it to him. And this meeting draws a crowd. Oh, I'm sure. Oh, people come out with what local reporters describe as torches and pitchforks. But despite this, just about two months after the shooting, the board votes two to one to reinstate him as the town marshal.

And people are big map. It's not like they can just elect someone new. The position of town marshal isn't elected. It's appointed by this board. And listen, I went down. down a rabbit hole on this, like, board and, like, some weird stuff. I think there might have been, like, something up going on there. I don't want to derail our episode, but I will do a short little video on social for

anyone who wants to know what I found about this board makeup and what I think is a little sus. But anyways, the decision to reinstate Bobby ignites this firestorm. Literally. People are making threats against Bobby. And someone even plants pipe bombs at the homes of two board members who were, I assume, like the two that voted for his reinstate. And both of these actually explode, though it's unclear if anyone got hurt.

Now, people are so mad that a senior county official warns Bobby to leave town for his own safety. But Bobby's like, nah, I'm just going to sell the home, I'm going to move a little closer to town, and get back to work. I'm going to be fine. But he is not fine. Five months to the day that Barbara was shot, someone comes for Bobby. And it is so clear. that they're sending a message. On July 26, 1988,

Bobby gets off duty and guides his cruiser into the driveway of his new home at around 10.30 p.m. He gets out of the car and mounts the stairs up to a little side porch

when suddenly a shot rings out. The first shot doesn't hit him, but a second bullet rips through Bobby's right shoulder and out through his left cutting a clean path through his aorta in both lungs. He drops to the ground,

I mean, within minutes, he's dead. Now, this is a much more populated area than where he and Barbara lived just a few months ago. So neighbors hear the gunshots and call police. Bobby is the one who would normally respond, but it's his deputy that arrives. Then the Indiana State Police. Investigators eventually find two shell casings from a high-powered rifle in a vacant lot across the street. So it sounds to me like whoever shot Bobby was probably laying in wait. And that could suggest that the killer knew Bobby's schedule well enough to know when he would be getting home.

The current investigator on Bobby's case, Captain Kevin Smith, says that the fact that the killer missed the first shot doesn't say anything about their experience with a gun. Because he says even if you're an experienced shot, shooting at a human is way different and like your nerves can get in the way. I just keep coming back to five months to the day of when he shot Barbara. Like that feels like such a message. It's not even just the day, though. It's to the hour. Yeah, and this ends up being a critical clue for investigators. Like, if the timing was intentional, which it sure feels like it was, then that tells them that

whoever shot Bobby may have been avenging Barbara. And that is motive, folks. So although there could be a long list of culprits, police pretty quickly have one person that they want to talk to most. Barbara's son, Samuel Sistler. I feel like we haven't talked about him at all. Yeah, because there's nothing about him in the court documents for Barbara's case where he's mentioned. But I know he'd split his time between Fremont and Lafayette, which is like a town a couple of hours away.

He was a new grad of the Indiana State Police, and so that's where he'd been stationed. But come July, when Bobby is killed, he's actually in a whole different position. So he had been dismissed from the Indiana State Police job in May. He was definitely in Fremont the night of the shooting. Someone saw him like 25 minutes before. But in the days after, no one can find him. All police can find is Sam's car, which is at his sister's property at Crooked Lake,

which is like 15 minutes at the most from Fremont. So rumors quickly swirl that Sam could be involved in Bobby's death. Turns out, Sam was in Colorado Springs, and when police do reach him, he's like, yeah, I'll talk, but later. But by the time he gets back to Indeastern, Deanna, seems like he's had a change of heart. And he tells police basically to stuff it and he's not talking to them. Him not wanting to help in the murder investigation of the guy who killed his mom.

Like, I don't know. I'm not shocked. Yeah, I get it. But there is a lot that they would love to talk to him about. According to a local reporter, Mike Martrello, Samuel had allegedly bought a long rifle at a local gun shop about 15 minutes away from Fremont, like three or four days prior to Bobby's shooting. Mike said that a couple of Fort Wayne TV news stations at the time reported this,

but we could not independently confirm that. He also was said to have bought similar caliber ammunition as the bullet that killed Bobby. And again, this is just according to Mike. But when police got wind of this, they could not find the gun that Samuel allegedly bought. Still have not found anything like it to this day. Were you able to find out why he got dismissed from the state police? Like, that feels important.

It sure does. I couldn't really get a straight answer. We tried, though. So the South Bend Tribune reported that he had been dismissed for, quote, unsatisfactorily completing his probation period, end quote. We tried to get official records on this, but because it involved an internal affairs issue, we weren't able to confirm that. I, of course, asked Captain Smith, and he said he couldn't comment on why he got dismissed. but I know he knows. Not just because he's the lead investigator now.

In a weird twist made only for Hollywood, Captain Smith, who is now in charge of Bobby's cold case, he went to the academy with Samuel Sistler. Smith, Sistler, they sat near each other in every class. They room right next door to one another, graduated in the same class December 19, 1987. Oh, I hear before we were bored. Our birthday, pre-birthday.

Our reporter asked Mike, like what he remembered from back then. Does he know why he got dismissed? And he did confirm the dismissal for us, but he said it's been a really long time and he's not totally sure. But he remembers the police telling him that Samuel was dismissed because he made comments about wanting revenge for his mom. Translation, he wanted to either hurt or kill Bobby. Captain Smith did say that it certainly seems like revenge is a motive here, considering the timing of the shooting. But there's actually no real evidence that connects Samuel or anyone, for that matter, to the murder. Captain Smith said it could be anyone.

And we tried reaching out to Sam on two occasions, but we're not even sure if our contact information is correct, because no one ever got back to us. Smith said that they've had a lot of leads in this case, and they continue to follow up on them. Bobby was a cop. Cops make enemies, and it could be anyone with reason to murder him. And, you know, as we know, lots of people were angry with Bobby before he died. Was there ever a definitive connection made between, like, the pipe bombs that were planted and exploded into the murder? We asked that, too, but Captain Smith declined to comment on that. And I don't, like, this whole case, I don't know, like, for me, it lives in the gray area.

Like Bobby's story is steeped in tragedy, and it is so complicated because Bobby was far from a perfect victim. Right. But he was a victim. We all want justice. We want right and wrong to be super clear, but sometimes it's not. He was ultimately cleared of murder. And to most people who knew him, Captain Smith said that Bobby was known as a peacekeeper, like this quiet, agreeable man. And murdering Bobby for whatever motive was wrong.

And I can feel it, you guys, already in the comment section, it's going to light up. It's hard not to have an opinion about this case. I want you to have an opinion. I want you to tell us what you think. But keep it productive. Like, let's talk about it. What does this case make you feel? What does justice look like for Bobby?

This case is personal for Captain Smith. He knew Bobby and Barbara. He knew Samuel. And he still wants a chance to talk to the guy that he room next door to. There were only a couple of unsolved police shootings in the state of Indiana, and Bobby is one of them. So Captain Smith is determined to get to the truth. If you live in Fremont, Indiana in July of 1988 and you know anything about the shooting of Bobby Moore, please reach out to the Indiana State Police Cold Case Investigations at 1-800-453-4756.

Or you can reach out anonymously through crimestoppers at crimetips.org. Crime Junkie is an audio Chuck production. I think Chuck would approve.