A second-grade teacher and her ex-husband were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide in suburban Illinois last week.
It happened after real estate broker Matthew Moore, 64, broke into the home of Amy Moore, 46, in the early morning hours of May 29, police said.
He then confronted her and shot her “multiple times,” according to a Normal Police Department news release, before dying himself “from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
The incident left the former couple’s three children, ages 12, 11 and 7, motherless, and the woman’s family enraged.
They are angered by alleged oversights made in the lead-up to the single mother’s death, during which she was allegedly harassed by her former spouse.
Second-grade teacher Amy Moore, seen here with her three children, was found dead in an apparent murder-suicide in suburban Illinois last week.
It happened after real estate broker Matthew Moore, 64 (seen here with his now-orphaned children in 2022) broke into his ex-spouse’s home in the early morning hours of May 29, police said. .
“There were a lot of red flags, a lot of phone calls, a lot of visits to attorneys to try to figure this out,” his elder Thomas said. WGLT last Sunday, before concluding: “I’m sure the whole system let her down.”
‘This is something that, with the number of incidents we’ve had over the years, should never have been in the same room at the same time. “It should have been impossible for that to happen.”
The same station reported the day after the murder that the couple, who apparently married in 2013, had divorced.
The outlet reported that the divorce paperwork included protective orders filed by a Grove Elementary School teacher in Unit 5 against Matthew, who worked as a broker for Berkshire Hathaway Home Services in Bloomington, his LinkedIn shows.
They showed how the couple’s separation was not clean and lasted almost two years.
Additionally, the final papers to end the marriage came just a week before police say Matthew orphaned the couple’s three children and shot Amy in cold blood.
Court documents continue to detail alleged accounts of toxic behavior by the patriarch, whose social media shows him enjoying days with his brood in 2022.
Some of the evidence was seen on social media and systematically documented by Amy, while others were left in a court-ordered app intended to speed communication between grieving parents.
One of those posts said: ‘Follow the case and you will know the truth. I don’t like starting fights but I will never lose one. I have to protect myself and my children from malicious attacks even if it cost Amy and me $100,000 in legal fees.’
He then confronted her and shot her “multiple times,” according to a Normal Police Department news release, before dying himself “from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
Additionally, the divorce case was filed on July 28, 2022, the record shows, after which, on 11 different occasions, the presiding judge dealt with protective orders involving the parents.
All were presented against Matthew and approved, and one was even lifted after an agreement between the two parties.
The basis of the first order surrounded an incident four days before divorce proceedings were to begin, after which Amy, allegedly living paycheck to paycheck, consistently documented her husband’s actions.
She claimed Matthew had gotten drunk during a family outing in Wisconsin and drove off, taking the family vehicle in the process.
This forced her and the children to rent a vehicle to return home, the case file states, before revealing how the first emergency request for protection in the case came less than two weeks later.
It also cites two emails from early August last year that Amy described as erratic, and which also left her worried about her former husband’s stability.
“Petitioner claims that Respondent has returned to his previous behavior of harassing and discussing the divorce case with the children,” this section reads, without offering further details.
The record does not indicate whether Amy interacted with police in Normal during these alleged incidents, and Normal Police Chief Steve Petrilli said Wednesday that he was not aware of a pattern of abusive behavior.
Pictured is the house on Red Jaspar Street where the apparent murder suicide occurred. It is not yet clear if the children, ages 12, 11 and 7, were home at the time of the incident.
But the court file details more alleged incidents of harassment and protective orders.
This includes a 2022 felony arrest of Matthew for allegedly damaging Amy’s vehicle, an outburst that allegedly occurred after he arrived uninvited to the home on Red Jaspar Street where the murder would eventually occur.
There, he took a series of unspecified items he was supposed to stay away from, documents filed by Amy’s state attorneys.
The documents also show the frequency of protection orders: one long-term lifted in August of that year and another filed just six days later.
“Respondent has sent numerous incoherent, meaningless and threatening messages to the petitioner,” one of these petitions read, while others cited threatening social media posts from the alleged killer.
“See you in jail, nasty woman,” a Facebook post on the teacher’s profile read.
Then, in another emergency order, Amy claimed that her ex stole cash from her wallet while she was away from home and used an app to remotely change the home’s thermostat settings while she was home.
The father, seen posing in a photo with his children wearing a T-shirt praising his fatherhood, also allegedly installed a doorbell with a camera in the house, while she was teaching and the children were at school.
The incident has left the former couple’s three children, aged 12, 11 and 7, motherless, and the woman’s family is furious.
They are angered by alleged oversights made in the lead-up to the single mother’s death, during which she was allegedly harassed by her former spouse, as seen here.
The victim also claimed that her alleged killer put sex toys and condoms in the cart of the family’s Amazon account so the children could see them, and that Matt at one point claimed in a message to have started a fraud investigation against her at a bank. local. .
Despite all this, the record reflected that the two were still working toward some sort of reconciliation, as of February of last year.
At one point there was court-ordered mediation, after which Matthew’s erratic behavior persisted, leading to more protective orders.
Finally, on May 20 of this year, nine days before the yet-to-be-confirmed murder-suicide, the court filing suggested that the former couple had reached an agreement on financial and co-parenting issues surrounding the case.
On May 22, the final papers of the long separation were filed, and a week later, in the middle of the night, police say Matthew snuck into the house to shoot his wife to death.
Later that morning, police surveyed the scene as neighbors gathered in their driveways, and the children were nowhere to be seen. It is unclear if they were home at the time of the incident.
Following her death, Grove Elementary School faculty remembered Amy as an “exceptional mother, daughter, educator and friend,” after 19 years of loyal service.
Following her death, Grove Elementary School faculty remembered Amy as an “exceptional mother, daughter, educator and friend,” after 20 years of loyal service to the neighborhood school.
After the incident, police were seen surveying the scene as neighbors gathered in their driveways, and the children were nowhere to be seen.
An investigation into the incident is underway. Police in Normal said it is still being treated as a murder-suicide.
“Amy, a graduate of Unit 5 Schools, was a talented educator who impacted the lives of thousands of students,” Principal Sarah Edwards wrote in a statement.
“She was a beloved second grade teacher at Grove Elementary School for nearly 20 years and lived her life to serve others, especially her three children.”
Her older brother added to WGLT that Amy was “essentially a single mother at the end of her life, working full time, living paycheck to paycheck; after starting a GoFundMe to help with his now orphaned nephews.
As of this writing, the fundraiser has surpassed its goal of $400,000, intended for the Moore Boys to “help fund their future,” he said.
‘Please consider making a donation… Thank you for your love, support and prayers.’
An investigation into the incident is underway. Police said this week it is still being treated as a murder-suicide.
