Dateline Originals - Killer Role - Ep. 3: A Drop Dead Moment

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

The gun fired in an instant, but the backstory that preceded the shooting took years to unfold.This episode was originally published on April 20, 2021. 

Are you ready? Here it is. The climax of the low-budget, high-drama horror movie, From the Dark. The lead character, Valerie, produces a gun and... Hey! Don't move! Please stop! A drop-dead moment? Cinematically speaking, the gun-toting actress seemed so convincing. But of course, the director, producer, writers who praised her had no idea she had real- life experience to draw from.

Who has the gun and where is it? She needs to be told to put that gun down. What consequences can spring from a single moment? And I started screaming and this is where it gets hazy for me. One second in a life. I picked up the gun off the table. Hit pause for a moment and imagine it. One second before, Tucker Reed was on several things. Young, intelligent, attractive, a published author, a talented actress. A grand life was so possible. On the stage, in movies, and maybe within her reach. And then she pulled

the very real trigger of a snub-nosed 38. And now here she was in a cramped little room, telling a couple of men she had just met why she killed her Uncle Shane. Because I felt like there was a knife to my throat and I didn't have anywhere to run. When detectives questioned Tucker, they already knew she wasn't the only player in this family drama. Maybe she wasn't even the lead. As Tucker explained things, her uncle Shane was a drug addict who might have wanted to hurt her to get back at a very important someone else. Did you think Shane was going to cause you harm coming through the door? Yes.

Cause who harm? Actually, to be honest, realistically, probably me. Probably me. And why? Because he knows that my mom doesn't care about anybody else in the world as much as she cares about me. Mothers and daughters. What other relationship in the life of a young woman could be as close, as fraught, as warm, as loving, as controlling? Maybe all at once.

On this evening in the sheriff's office, the family's lead player wasn't in doubt at all It was Tucker's protective mother, Kelly You know, my side of what happened there is that Shane has been terrorizing us for nine months Terrorized, terrorized And you know what? We were terrorized I know, I'm so glad he's dead I am so, I can't tell you

I don't grieve for my brother. I am glad this man is dead. I am so glad that he can't do this to us anymore. In this episode, things generally happen for a reason. Or reasons. A deadly shooting in the family circle doesn't just happen. There had to be a backstory, as they say in the movies. And indeed, there was. It's a story of family, of mothers and daughters, sisters and brothers, wills and inheritance.

And our love, like money money is not always boundless. This is Dateline NBC's newest podcast, Killer Roll. The investigation into the shooting death of Shane Moore was, in one way, quite simple. Detectives knew Tucker was the one who pulled the trigger. No mystery there. But we found one of the detectives' early case summaries, in which they named Tucker as Suspect 1 and her mom, Kelly, Person of Interest. The Person of Interest is someone that could potentially be a suspect at

some point. Remember Jackson County Sheriff's Detective Gabe Birchfield, the John Krasinski lookalike? He explained what it meant, investigatively speaking, for Kelly Moore to be declared a person of interest. She's involved to a point where she's more than a witness, but a little bit less than a suspect. So we want to keep our eyes on her as well as Tucker. And so we focused our investigation on those two as, I mean, we could be like suspect one and like suspect 1A or something. Not quite, but she didn't just witness what happened. She had some involvement in the case. Imagine you were in the sheriff's office that strange night in southern Oregon.

By now, Shane Moore had been dead several hours. Detectives, trying to sort out what happened, were crowded into a cramped, 8-by-8-foot interview room, talking to Tucker. Hi, Tucker. Hi. Hi, Tucker. Hi. Hi. I'm the detective with Medford. My name is Tony Young.

I'm a detective with Medford Police. We take a case like this and try to learn as much as we can about what was going on. We know some family dynamics are involved here we know that there's some history going on here okay and it's vital that we get it in your words and what you saw what you were thinking and things like that because i can tell by talking to you in just a brief amount of time this is not a normal day for you to end up here doing this.

No. Okay. All right. But the person you, the casual observer, would have seen and heard was Tucker's mother, Kelly, downstairs in the lobby, making it very clear to anyone and everyone she was not happy. She caused a lot of problems for our records staff in the lobby. Like what? She would demand to go back upstairs and she would yell

and she would bring up that Tucker needs an attorney again. And she used to be an attorney and our records staff didn't know what to do. So we had to go down there multiple times and tell her to calm down. And it was a problem that she was down there just because we had to divert our attention several times to her in the lobby, which is probably what she wanted anyways. By then, Kelly had already talked to the detectives herself, had agreed to do so without a lawyer present, other than herself, of course. You're smart. You have a law degree?

Yes, I've practiced law for 20 years. And that was a very strange interview, too, said Detective Birchfield. Kelly, he said, seemed much more interested in airing past family grievances than in talking about the actual shooting death of her brother, Shane. The last 10 years since my father died, he's been, you know, increasingly terrorizing all of us. And yet, somehow, the detectives couldn't help but notice, Kelly and Shane had allowed their lives to become remarkably entangled.

Shane lived in a kind of guest house on their mom's 60-acre ranch. Their mom, Lori Moore. Kelly and her three children lived in town, a 30-minute drive away, in an historic Victorian home

also owned by Lori Moore. So both adult children, Shane and Kelly, once big city lawyers, were entirely dependent on their mother. My mother is taking care of my family with her property wealth. And listening between the lines, as it were, the detectives got the impression that much of the bad blood between Kelly and Shane seemed to be about who Mom favored most. Though Kelly didn't put it quite that way. She told the detectives it was all Shane's fault, that Shane was scary and violent, and that nine months earlier, during a heated argument,

Shane threw a plastic oil can that hit Tucker in the face. He picked up a, one of those, what is that, two quarts or half gallon thing of motor oil, plastic container, mostly full, leaned back and overhanded it through my ancient screen into Tucker's face, knocked her down to the floor. It hit her so hard, could have taken out her eye, but it hit her on the cheekbone, split open her skin. She's permanently scarred from it. And she called the police. Shane was charged with assault then, said Kelly.

And Tucker took out a no contact order, meaning Shane could not darken her door, could not go anywhere near Tucker. But, Kelly told the detectives, that wasn't protection enough. He has, for the last nine months, been threatening us directly on the phone, through my other daughter, endlessly, that he was going to kill us if Tucker didn't take, drop the charges, Tucker didn't drop the charges, he's going to kill us. My mother called me, drop the charges. Tucker didn't drop the charges. He's going to kill us.

My mother called me on the phone weeping, weeping. Please, Kelly, please, please get Tucker to drop the charges. On the day of the shooting, Kelly and Tucker were not at their house in town. They were out at the ranch, Tucker's grandmother's house, Laurie Moore, meaning they were just a hundred yards or so from Shane's place, sitting around Laurie's kitchen table, staring intently at some documents. And whatever those documents were,

the scene was too much for Shane. And he, all upset, according to Kelly, came roaring over to the house to object to what are you doing? And I'm trying to shut the door and he's shoving it into me, shoving it into me. And I'm leaning forward trying to shut the door. Take your time. It's okay. And he was trying to come in and he was trying to hurt me. And God only knows what else he was going to do. Dramatic? Oh my, yes. But Kelly brought her story to this emotional crescendo. And then, stopped.

That's the end of my statement. You don't want to tell us what happened after that? No, I don't. Are you not wanting to give a statement because you're upset right now and it's going to get emotional for you? No. Is that what's going on? No.

So I've been asking... You're not in trouble here. You understand that. I understand that I'm not in trouble. You're not in trouble. We're just trying to figure out what happened after he's pushing his way in the door. But that was that. Kelly declared she would say no more.

The interview was over. Except that's not quite the way it worked out. The detectives, it turned out, had something to tell Kelly. Tucker's mom, Kelly Moore, while being questioned by detectives, gave a detailed account, her account at least, of the day and events leading right up to the point Shane was at the door of her mother's house. But the shooting itself was not something Kelly wanted to talk about. At least, not with investigators.

Which was her right. So, of course, the detectives would have no choice but to thank her and let her be on her way. Except, just one more thing, they said. Just a curious little loose end. Maybe she could help them understand. They'd received this strange audio recording. On it was the voice of Kelly's brother, Shane. Phone calls to the property so close to Shane,

just hours before a gun was fired into Shane? So they asked Kelly, could she help them with that? And Kelly wasn't finished talking after all. My daughter had found a gun recently, I'm not sure when, and she wanted to see what it fired like. She asked my mother if she could shoot it out into the field, and my mother told her she could. Okay, were you there when she shot the gun? Yeah, I was. She shot it once. What kind of gun is it?

Some little revolver. A little gun? It was a snub-nosed.38, the type commonly referred to as a Saturday night special. Anyway, here was the order of events. Tucker fired the revolver. Shane, alarmed, called the sheriff's office to ask for some sort of protection. Which is why the detectives asked Kelly this next question. Was this a cold-calcul out thing or was this for the moment?

Jesus Christ. No, no, I'm giving you, I'm telling you what people can assume. I just am. Not us. This is just such a. Or was this self-defense? Oh God. You see what I'm saying?

Kelly most assuredly did not. She had a lot to say about that. It's just so absolutely typical of my brother that he would call and do this smarmy thing. It's so typical. He's going to terrorize us for nine months and then he's going to call and whimper to the police that he's afraid and he's the one who's hurting us. Well, he obviously can't do that now. He's deceased. I know. I'm so glad he's dead. I can't tell you. I don't grieve for my brother. I am glad this man is dead. I am so glad that he can't do this to us anymore. Kelly, there's more at stake here.

You know that. Yeah, I'm telling you that moments before my brother died, he was assaulting me with the door. He was causing me physical injuries. He was screaming at me. He was trying to force his way into a house he had no right to be in. Kelly's furious outburst was another first for Detective Young. I did not expect that, to be honest, especially in the moments, the hours immediately after such a horrible event took place. I kind of describe her tone as venom, just very direct and forward and not in the least bit upset that her brother's dead. And she had been a practicing attorney, which adds a layer of interest. Yes, and that kind of played into the interview,

and I felt like she was being somewhat cagey. Cagey? Might be putting it mildly. Did he have a weapon? I have no idea. All I know is I can tell you that I was so scared I can hardly even picture the moment. It's like mice memories. Okay. Can you tell us why you think Tucker might have shot him? I don't, I can't tell you if Tucker shot him. I didn't say Tucker shot him. I have no idea who shot him.

Did you shoot him? I don't think so. I don't know. You don't think so, you don't know. I can hardly remember. The trauma of that moment was so appalling and horrifying i didn't know what shane was going to do i didn't know what shane was going to do it was horrifying the detectives kept pushing who did what and you can't tell whether or not who shot the gun you can't tell us that no i can't or you won't be honest with us i i i can't and i wouldn't if i could so if you knew who shot the gun you wouldn't tell us that's right okay

this is kind of your opportunity to tell us what happened i told you what happened this man was trying to break into a house he had no right to be in after threatening all our lives for nine months. Did he have any weapons? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe he had a knife. Maybe he had a gun. I don't know. If he would have had a knife or gun, would you have seen that? The door was like this. I was on this side of it. You know, the door was here and I'm pushing against it, trying to shut it it and it's opening and shutting. How far, what's the most it opened you said?

I don't know. Did Tucker come to help you shut, try to shut the door? Did he come try to help you push the door shut? Nobody tried to help me push the door shut. To be quite frank with you and straight with you is I'm wondering, wonder why she's not telling us the rest of the story? Wonder away. I'm telling you what happened.'s not telling us the rest of the story. Wonder away. I'm telling you what happened. A man was busting into the house, threatening me, threatening us all.

Men can't possibly understand how frightening a man is to a woman. Most of the time, men are despicable. Like, for example, Kelly seemed to say, these very detectives. We don't take sides on these cases, Kelly. Oh, God. We don't. I've never seen anything where I have been involved with police where the police did not lie. I have never.

Okay, well, I can't talk to you if you think I'm a liar because you're insulting my integrity as a detective. I'm telling you I don't trust police. Okay, well, I can't talk to you if you think I'm a liar because you're insulting my integrity as a detective. I'm telling you I don't trust police. Okay, well, I've not sat here and called you a liar, have I? I never lie. I don't either. I never lie. Why all the rage and anger toward her brother, toward these detectives? Where did that come from?

The story Tucker and her mom Kelly told the police was astonishing, like the plot of some Hollywood thriller. And he was trying to come in and he was trying to hurt me. Their story starred Tucker, who came to the aid of her mother as she was being attacked by her violent, drug-addicted brother, Shane. My mom ran and I could hear her making noises and I started screaming. And this is where it gets hazy for me. I picked up the gun off the table, but I didn't,

I don't remember pulling the trigger. I don't, I just remember sort of waving the gun around and brandishing it so he could see it. Does that make sense? Detective Gabe Birchfield, you may remember, was not in the interview room with Tucker or her mother. He wasn't asking the questions. He was sitting in an office down the hall, watching it all on a monitor, like a fly on the wall. There's a video recorder going. Record this audio video.

And as he watched and listened, his own internal call- what you want, alarm system, BS detector, that thing. It went off when he heard Tucker and Kelly's versions of the shooting. They were too similar, is what Birchfield thought. Like a script almost. Her and Kelly's story were like a perfect match with each other. So, as if they had been talking about it beforehand. Yeah, which is very probable, considering it took Sheriff's Department like over 30 minutes to get to the house. To give you an idea what Birchfield was talking about, we did some editing.

We intercut Kelly and Tucker's police interviews as they both describe the moments leading up to the shooting. Listen carefully. The two women practically complete each other's sentences. Mom Kelly goes first. And Shane was outside the sliding glass doors looking in. As soon as my mom tore up the document, he ran towards the front door, which was unlocked. And I thought to myself, oh my God, I didn't lock the front door.

And my mom and I ran, and I started screaming. And I started for the front door, and I was trying to lock the door when he opened the door. And Shane started opening the door and entering the house. And I'm trying to shut the door and he's shoving it into me, shoving it into me. And I'm leaning forward trying to shut the door. And he was banging the door into my mother and my mother was screaming and he was screaming. And he was trying to come in. He was trying to hurt me. But then, given the memory-searing events Tucker and her mom described,

an assault followed by a violent death, why wouldn't their stories sync up in cinematic detail? I believe I saw his hands on either side of, like, you know how in horror movies the hand goes around the door? Right. And he was, like, wedging himself so the door couldn't be closed again. But it wasn't just Tucker and Kelly in the house that day. There were three generations of women. And Kelly's mom, Tucker's grandmother, told the same story, same specific details. Shane was trying to get into the house

And he lunged for the gun that Tucker was holding That is Laurie Moore And remember, she's Shane's mother too Mrs. Moore told us on the phone That it was Shane's fault that Tucker shot him She said this too When I knew that it was Shane's fault that Tucker shot him. She said this, too. When I knew that he was dead, I was just relieved.

What? That your own son was dead, it made you feel relieved? I felt relieved to know that he was dead and would not be able to threaten and frighten me anymore. This from a woman who was in the room when her own son was shot to death by a beloved granddaughter. How did this come to be? Well, not all family histories are like Hallmark cards. No, indeed. But they're often, as in this case, such a useful guide to understanding.

Once upon a time, Shane Moore was an attorney in San Francisco. Brilliant guy. Clearly going places. Shane finished college, went to Santa Clara, went to Hastings in San Francisco, passed the bar without studying. Smart guy. But then he never practiced. I mean, who does that? Ryan Moore is a calm, matter-of-fact, retired software engineer and Shane and Kelly's little brother.

What can you tell me about your family dynamic growing up? Four siblings, and I was the youngest. The oldest is 10 years older. My brothers helped my father with the property, taking care of it. My mom did antique shows, and my brothers would load and unload and set up the antique shows, and so they were all functional. They just didn't want to do a nine-to-five life. Kelly, though, the only girl, seemed to embrace that office life. She graduated from one of the top law schools in the country at UC Berkeley, and then landed a position at a big L.A. law firm.

And one night at a party, Kelly met the man who became her husband and Tucker's father, Daniel Reed. I thought she was completely different from anybody I'd ever met before, above and beyond that first impression. So I thought it was an unexpected appearance in my life of something new, and our relationship went on from there. Daniel and Kelly went on to become an LA power couple of sorts. Daniel, a handsome actor slash screenwriter, and Kelly, the corporate attorney. Together, they wrote a true crime bestseller called Deadly Medicine. She helped in quite a few ways. Her brain is very logical, and she's smart, and she's a lawyer,

and it was a legal case, so she could bring that perspective to a lot of things. She also landed the follow-up movie deal. But that may have been the moment when Daniel and Kelly fell from Hollywood grace. And that was not a happy experience for us, but it did... Why? We made it clear that we wanted this opportunity to lead to others,

so that we wanted to be in on story meetings, and then it never happened. We never were invited. He said it was almost like they'd been shunned. For several years, we're trying to put more projects together, writing more proposals, and none of them were picked up. The tensions, personal tensions and the financial tensions,

just grew and grew and grew and grew. And the money they did make from the book and the movie meant to pay off bills and IOUs, many of those owed to Kelly's own parents. We were so in debt to her parents who had been sort of floating us along by our living that it didn't make any dent in the financial hole that we were in. But Kelly was a lawyer, right? So was she not practicing law?

She didn't, did, but she didn't like it. Both of us went back to work in the 90s because our writing projects weren't being picked up. She went back to being a lawyer and I did several things. I became a paralegal and was the manager of a citrus orchard in Santa Clara. So, the dream of making it big in Hollywood had come and gone. There were bitter arguments, mostly over money. How do you deal with that? If both of you want to work it out, then you can find a way to work it out. But if one person needs to win, then the other person just has to cave,

just has to give in, just has to submit or rebel or leave. Yeah, okay. And you picked the latter. I did. I thought it was the least offensive thing. By 2000, the marriage was over, which happened to be just about the same time Kelly's parents moved onto that 60-acre ranch in southern Oregon. Though, said the brother, Ryan, the timing was not great.

They just always wanted property, my mom and my dad. When my dad and my mom moved up there, my dad had ALS. He'd already been diagnosed, which for me, that was an insane move. And he chose to move to the middle of nowhere in Oregon. At that time, he was barely able to raise his hands above his shoulders. So Shane agreed to move north to tend the land and his dad. As my dad deteriorated, Shane took care of him. They didn't have to bring in a home care aide or a nurse. As he got worse, he was wheelchair-bound,

and my brother would carry him from the chair to his bed or to the shower. And there was plenty to do, and he did it. Cheerfully, willingly, good guy, in other words. A good guy. I personally think he was the kindest, nicest person in our family after my dad. Kelly, meanwhile, now a single mother with three young children, soon came to live on the ranch as well. It was a bit crowded.

So Kelly's parents bought that Victorian house in Jacksonville for Kelly and her children. Kelly didn't own the place, mind you. It stayed in her parents' name. She just lived there for free. Brother Ryan and his wife Rhonda kept in touch, and as far as they could see, Shane helped take care of things for the parents and for Kelly. He would fix their cars. He would go over to the Jacksonville house and make repairs. He was contributing labor constantly. He was a good guy. He wasn't just some drugg, sprawled out on the couch. He was either working on the property or, you know, helping whatever Kelly needed.

He was the man that was up there doing what needed to be done. Ryan and Rhonda, by the way, have made their own way in life. They wanted nothing to do with the family estate and said they were fine with his parents' plan, which was this, that when they died, Kelly would keep the house in town and she and Shane would split ownership of the ranch. 50-50. It seemed to satisfy everybody. But stick a pin in a reasonable deal like that and watch it blow up.

There were complications. His dad was the soul of the family. He was an amazing man. When he passed away, there was a big hole. Things went downhill dramatically after my dad died. Once my dad died, everything changed. It did indeed. Without the glue that held them together,

Shane and Kelly waited in their separate corners and I the dwindling prize. The thing at stake. The thing that mattered. Next on Killer Roll. And Shane looked at me and he said, don't you f*** up my deal, Kelly. the thing that mattered. Next, on Killer Roll. And Shane looked at me and he said, don't you f*** up my deal, Kelly.

Don't you f*** up my deal. Or you and Tucker. And he made a gesture across his throat. And I said to him, I'm not afraid of you, Shane. I'm not afraid of you. I'm terrified of him, but that's what I said to him. Always face down a mad dog. He said, I don't care whether you're afraid of me or not. And he walked away.

And I told my daughter to come out because I'm frightened. I'm really frightened. I'm screaming, Tucker, where are you? Come on. Come. Killer Roll is brought to you by Dateline NBC. For Dateline NBC, Vince Sterla is our producer. Linda Zhang is the associate producer. Joe Delmonico is the senior producer.

And Susan Null oversees our digital programming. Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer. Liz Cole is our executive producer. And David Corvo is our senior executive producer. From Neon Hum Media, supervising producer is Samantha Allison. Associate producers are Liz Sanchez and Evan Jacoby. Producers are Crystal Genesis and Alex Schumann. Executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch.

Sound design and mixing by Scott Somerville. And music by Andrew Eapen. you