The surveillance footage is grainy, the kind of low-resolution blur that makes everyone look like a shadow. But the body language is unmistakable. A man in a black hoodie walks into the Dashin convenience store in White Oak, Montgomery County, at 2:45 on a winter afternoon.

He moves straight to the drinks aisle without hesitation. The cashier, a 61-year-old man named Aaloo Wandu who came to America from Ethiopia chasing a dream, watches him carefully. Something about this customer makes him uneasy.

The man picks up an iced tea bottle and brings it to the counter. He holds it out to be scanned but doesn’t let go. The cashier reaches to take it. The man keeps his grip firm. Then, without paying, he twists the cap open.

The cashier reacts by pulling items off the counter, a reflexive gesture of frustration. There’s no audio, so no one will ever know exactly what words were exchanged. But the body language says enough. The man is steady, almost unnaturally calm. The cashier is clearly frustrated, pushing back, trying to assert control.

Outside the store, a group of teenagers gathers near the entrance, drawn by the commotion. The man finally sets the bottle down on the counter and briefly looks over his shoulder toward them. They can hear the cashier raising his voice.

The second the cashier grabs the bottle to scan it, something snaps. The man starts throwing items across the counter. The cashier suddenly reappears holding a steel pipe and swings it toward the man. And then it happens.

He pulls out a handgun and fires. Then he fires again. And again. And again.

When the shots stop, he calmly picks up his iced tea, turns, and walks out of the store. Multiple gunshots echo through the parking lot in broad daylight at a busy gas station. The teens scatter in different directions the moment they see the weapon.

A blue SUV pulls into the lot, but as the driver hears the shots, she quickly backs out and drives away, dialing 911 as she leaves. “Montgomery County 911. What’s the address of the emergency?” “I don’t know the exact address, but it’s the Shell station on the corner of Lockwood and New Hampshire Avenue. They just got robbed and somebody got—I don’t know if somebody got shot, but I heard gunshots.”

“Okay, ma’am. Please take a deep breath. I need you to try and give me the address.” “I don’t know the exact. It’s on the corner. I’m pulling back up. I had to wait for the suspect to leave. Can I give you his description while it’s still in my head?” “Yes. Go ahead.” “He had on khaki pants, a blue shirt with a blue do-rag covering his head, a gray hat, a blue hoodie, and then a tan coat.”

By 3:06 p.m., first responders arrived to a scene of chaos. They rush inside and immediately begin working on the cashier, doing everything they can in those critical first moments. But it’s already too late.

Aaloo Wandu has succumbed to his injuries before help could truly make a difference. A 61-year-old man who worked long hours at a convenience store, who sent money back to family in Ethiopia, who was trying to build something steady in a country that never felt quite like home, gone over a bottle of iced tea.

Officers secure the store and spread out, searching every corner inside and outside for evidence that could lead them to the shooter. Several 9mm shell casings are found near the cash register. The suspect, they learn, is no stranger to this store.

He’s been here before and has caused problems in the past. In fact, the manager had called police just the week prior because of this same man. But by the time officers arrived that day, he had already disappeared. “No, this guy, we already called last week,” the store manager tells a detective, his voice shaking.

“The police doesn’t show up. They don’t catch this guy.” “He was here last week,” another employee adds. “I already mentioned to the cops.” The store manager plays the CCTV footage from the previous week. The same man, wearing a brown vest with a blue hoodie, blue jeans, white shoes, and a white and black baseball cap, causing trouble, refusing to leave.

“We caught so many times for this guy,” the manager says. “Cops, they don’t catch him.” The manager tells detectives this wasn’t the first time he’d dealt with this man. Just a week earlier, on December 1st, the same man had walked into the store and started asking customers for money.

The manager was behind the register that afternoon and told him to leave, but he refused. The exchange escalated quickly. He got right in the manager’s face and, just like today, began throwing items toward him. When he wouldn’t stop, the manager grabbed that same metal pipe from behind the counter.

The suspect didn’t retreat. If anything, he pressed forward. A female clerk was on the phone with 911, but he ignored it. He kept throwing things, and the manager swung the pipe again. That’s when the man warned him: “I’m going to kill you. I’m going to get you outside.”

Nothing seemed to break the tension until a woman nearby intervened and talked him down enough for him to finally walk out. The man had become a regular presence at the store, but no one knew his name. “Do you know his name?” the detective asks. “From interactions with him, did you know his name?”

The manager shakes his head. “He always say, ‘I’m the king. I’m the fool.’ That’s what he used.” “I’m the king?” “Yeah, that’s what he say so many times. He have a kind of some belief. I think he always doing something on his hand like this. I don’t know what he does.”

The manager had even formally trespassed him from the property before, but that order never seemed to matter. The man kept coming back anyway. The store had three separate trespassing incidents on record in recent weeks. One of them has his details, but no one is sure which one it is.

At this point, detectives still don’t have a confirmed name, but they have a clear image from the surveillance. Patrol units from nearby districts are pulled in. The victim is identified, and the investigation shifts into high gear. “Right now, we’re doing everything,” a detective assures the manager.

“We have more officers coming in from other districts to try to find him. We have the helicopter up right now.” The manager nods, but his eyes are hollow. “Yeah, I understand that. You know the problem is, we called so many times. We were asking for protection because this place is a business and a lot of times a lot of stealing happens.”

“We called a hundred times the cops, but they always come late because they have so many issues too.” He pauses, gathering himself. “But last week when I called, they supposed to catch him because he don’t drive. He walks. He walks everywhere. So you can easily get him.”

“And still, I don’t think he went far away. Most of the time he stay in Silver Spring downtown. Even when I’m driving, I look for him so many times. This guy, he don’t drive. He just walks.” Homicide detectives arrive and take control of the scene. Now they have to comb through those trespassing reports and narrow it down.

They lean on the store manager, asking for anything that could help them put a name to a face. The manager confirms that he recognizes the man from the video, that he knows his face, that he’s dealt with him multiple times. But the name remains elusive. The man calls himself “the king.” He mumbles to himself. He seems to live in a world of his own making.

Directly across the street from the Dashin sits the Enclave apartment complex. Surveillance footage from the complex shows the suspect walking toward that building right after the shooting. He isn’t running. He isn’t looking over his shoulder. He moves at a normal pace, a man on a casual stroll, the iced tea bottle still in his hand.

At 3:03 p.m., just minutes after the gunfire, cameras capture him climbing the stairs inside the complex. He’s calm, unhurried, as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Investigators now know they likely have an armed suspect inside a residential building. They can’t afford to wait.

With a no-knock search warrant approved, a SWAT team assembles outside an apartment unit, preparing to make entry. They breach the door, flood inside with weapons raised, and find him asleep on a mattress. He’s taken into custody before he can react, still groggy, still confused, still wearing the clothes from the surveillance footage.

“Why you want to sit on the cold?” an officer asks him as they secure his hands. The suspect mumbles something unintelligible. The apartment is cluttered and neglected, a space that seems to have given up on itself. Dishes pile in the sink. Garbage bags line the walls. The air is thick and stale.

As officers move through the mess, they locate a firearm that matches the weapon used in the shooting. But there’s something else. A heavy odor hanging in the air, an odor that immediately catches their attention, an odor that seasoned officers recognize instantly. “You don’t want to go back there if you don’t have to,” one officer says to another. “It’s pretty bad.”

They follow the smell down a short hallway toward a back room. The door is closed. They open it. “Jesus Christ,” someone whispers.

Inside, they find a body. The condition makes it difficult to recognize who it is. Advanced decomposition has blurred the features, erased the identity, turned a person into something that is barely recognizable. “Mike, you think a female?” one officer asks. “Yeah, it’s a female. Wonder if that was mom.”

It’s December in Montgomery County, and the apartment has no heat running. In these cold conditions, the state of the body suggests it has been there for a long time. Possibly over a month. Possibly longer. The officers back out of the room, trying to process what they’ve just seen. They’ve come to arrest a man for a convenience store shooting. They’ve found something far worse.

The suspect, now identified as 34-year-old Tori Damian Moore, sits on the edge of the mattress while officers search his apartment. He seems disoriented, not fully present. An officer notices that the oven in the kitchen is turned on high, yet there’s no food inside. “Hey, is your oven off or on?” the officer asks.

Tori looks up. “I had it on because the heat doesn’t really work. So just turn it to the left. Hold it to the left.” The suspect appears unable to afford basic utilities. There’s no working heat, and his closet is nearly empty. He lives on the margins, in the spaces that society forgets, in an apartment that smells of death and desperation.

“You want something besides a t-shirt, bud?” an officer asks him. “I got a sweater and a hoodie over there. Right there.” “Is there anything in there that they could get you, pal?” “Is there a reason why I can’t have my clothes?” “I’m just here, pal. I’m low man on the totem pole. I’m just trying to help you out, get you some clothes.”

“I don’t have a lot of clothes.” “That’s okay. So, are you saying all your clothes are in here?” “Most the ones I be wearing.” According to his lease agreement, Tori is listed as the sole occupant of the apartment. No one else was supposed to be living there. No one else was supposed to be in that back room.

“Could this be mom?” an officer asks, still trying to process the discovery. “Yeah, I don’t know,” another replies. Then Tori makes a request that stops everyone cold. “My glasses,” he says. “Somebody got my glasses. They were on the floor.”

An officer retrieves them. “Mr. Moore, look at me so I can put these on straight.” They gather his personal belongings, secure the apartment, and begin transporting him from the scene. “Mr. Moore’s already ready,” an officer calls out. “All right, Mr. Moore. Let’s go.” “Oh, hold up,” Tori says. “My phone. Can I need to text my mother and send her some message?”

The officers freeze. If he wants to call his mother, then who is lying in the bedroom? “I really thought that was mom,” one officer says after Tori has been led away. “I was shocked when he’s like, ‘Can I text my mom?’ I figured it was his mom.” “The leasing office said no one else was supposed to be in here,” another officer replies.

“That was just—” “I mean, did you see her? Would you agree? I think it looks like a woman.” “Yeah, I believe so.” If the deceased woman inside the apartment isn’t his mother, then who is she?

To answer that question, detectives return the next morning for a second, more detailed search. What they uncover raises even more questions. Additional firearms are found inside the apartment, a small arsenal hidden among the clutter. In that same room where the body was discovered, officers also locate spent shell casings.

Based on the condition of the remains and the surrounding evidence, investigators determine that Tori had been living in that apartment with a dead body for at least a month. Possibly longer. He had been sleeping on his mattress, eating his meals, watching his television, while a woman lay in the next room. And he had been walking to the convenience store across the street, buying iced tea, getting into arguments, threatening to kill people, all while that body slowly remained in the cold, unheated apartment.

On December 11th, two detectives sit across from Tori Moore in an interrogation room. The interview starts in an unexpected way. Not with pressure, not with accusations, but with a compliment. “You’re in good physical condition,” one detective says. “I mean, you said well last time, right? And you’re sober. Obviously, you know, medication will still say medications. They haven’t, but I’m sure they probably will.”

Tori nods, accepting the assessment. The detective continues, his tone casual, almost friendly. “Yeah, man. This one right here might be one for the books. As in famous.” “Why?” Tori asks. “You said why? Yeah.”

Tori talks like this whole situation is material for a book. In his mind, it’s a story worth telling, a narrative that he can shape and control. He launches into a tangent about Tupac Shakur, about how the rapper’s death pushed him into reading, about how that curiosity turned him into someone who spends hours with books, studying ideas, building his own worldview.

“I saw Tupac one time in Baltimore,” Tori says. “You know, Tupac was born in a jail cell. He moved to Baltimore when he was 12 years old and he stayed in Baltimore until he was 16.” The detectives let him talk. They’re not interrupting. They’re building rapport, the way interrogators are trained to do. They want him to feel comfortable, to let his guard down, to forget that he is talking to the people who will help send him away for the rest of his life.

Eventually, the conversation turns to the shooting at the Dashin store. Tori frames it as self-defense. He insists he was protecting himself. “I didn’t kill that dude for no reason,” he says. “See, that’s the second time I walked into a store around my home and they assaulted me physically with some steel pipe. Is that right?”

He suggests the staff had an issue with him long before that day, that he was being targeted, that the cashier was the aggressor. “This is on camera. Even the first scenario, I can’t even look back. I stopped there. The only reason why I stopped is because I was trying to think, do I want to get me a tea or not?”

“These Ethiopian dudes, I don’t know what it is. They have a problem with me. I don’t know why. You know what I’m saying? They even at every store, it doesn’t matter. The only store I really don’t have a problem at is the one downtown. The one right beside the fire station. He cool. You know what I’m saying? That’s where a little key. He cool, man. I don’t really have a problem. Everybody else.”

The detectives don’t challenge him right away. They validate parts of what he’s saying. They keep him steady and engaged. “But you see how there’s way more to this story?” one detective says. “I didn’t just go in there,” Tori replies.

“But at the end of the day,” the detective continues, “a homicide is basically killing another person. Like if I’m a police officer and I shoot somebody, it’s a homicide. It’s ruled a homicide. But every homicide may have an excuse behind it. Like an officer said, ‘Oh, dude pulled out a gun on me. Dude pulled out a knife on me.’ Stuff like that.”

“So you can’t just be like, ‘All right, well, they killed them, so I guess it is what it is.’ Behind every one of those cases is way more of a story.” But this case isn’t just about the gas station incident. There’s also the woman found inside his apartment.

Her name, detectives have since learned, is Denise Middleton. She was 26 years old. And she had been shot seven times. At least four of those in the back. Investigators don’t yet know the motive or how everything connects. But they know that Tori had already told them he was in a relationship with Denise, that she was his girlfriend, that she had been staying with him.

They also know that the shell casings recovered from the room where Denise was found carry Tori’s DNA. The same match appears on the shell casings from the convenience store shooting. “We tested the gun,” a detective explains. “We found some shell casings where she was. Some of them were missing, but we found two shell casings in the room where she was.”

“So we compare those shell casings to the ones from the store. We have DNA. It’s the same DNA. We don’t have your DNA yet. That’s why we’re swabbing you. We’re going to take it, and then I’m sure we’re going to say, ‘Okay, the same DNA deposit.’ Because when you load shell casings, you put your skin cells on them. It’s called touch DNA. Our technology in the last three years has just been amazing.”

Tori listens, his face unreadable. He doesn’t deny that the DNA will match. He can’t. Instead, he shifts the conversation to Denise’s life, to her struggles, to the circumstances that brought her to his apartment. Denise had lived in a homeless shelter. In fact, Tori had struggled with homelessness himself and had relied on social assistance programs.

“She was staying at 619 University Boulevard East,” Tori says. “It’s a house where females stay, and they each have a room, and they have a medication thing. You know what I’m saying? I’ve been invited over. I’ve been to her house, but of course she snuck me in and stuff like that.”

“So it was one of those things. I saw how they was treating her, and being that I’ve been through homelessness with her—she the one that led me the first place. You feel me?” Tori believed Denise was being taken advantage of within the program she was enrolled in. “They taking all your money,” he says.

“You can have your own place and be right for you and still get your money, but instead these people are taking your money for a room and giving you medicine that you probably don’t need. You see what I’m saying? On top of that, they was trying to illegally evict her. They told her she had to leave in ten days.”

“She don’t have a way to go. But at the same time, she didn’t have to leave that place, but she didn’t know that. I’m just letting her know that they can’t do that. That’s illegal. They got to go through the courts to do that. But in the meantime, you can stay at my house. You good at my house.”

So he invited her to stay with him while she tried to stabilize her life. Their relationship had always been unstable. They would separate, then reconnect, then separate again. They argued often and sometimes lived apart. But this time was different. Denise was pregnant with his child.

“So then how did she end up from North Virginia to New York?” a detective asks. Tori sighs. “After she get into the program, I’m very sick, dude. Like I’m really sick about this. You hear me? Like barely eating. You know what I’m saying? I listen to certain music.”

She was pregnant and alone, living in a homeless shelter in Virginia. He was missing her, and she wanted to be with him. “She kept calling me every day and was telling me about this and that and the third. And pretty much, when somebody keep calling you in the middle, they want to be with you.”

“So it was just kind of shaking my soul a little bit. You know, personally, I feel like you want to come home. But I’m the only one that you got. Ain’t nobody else trying to get her home. Her pops, her sister, nobody else.” So he sent her a bus ticket. She came from Virginia to Maryland, and for a short while, things seemed to settle.

The arguments didn’t disappear, but they slowed down. In October, Tori decided to take her to New York to visit her mother. “Let’s go to New York this time,” he says. “Her mom is from Brooklyn. We got to New York. I got a nice hotel again over in Queens. It was at the Marriott.”

But even on that trip, they kept arguing. “She was like, ‘Don’t talk to me.’ So when she told me, ‘Don’t talk to me,’ I said, ‘All right then. Don’t talk to me then.’ You know what I’m saying? So I guess she got mad because I didn’t want to hear it. And she stepped off.”

“So when she stepped off, I went down the one way behind her, but then I seen her go like to the left. I don’t know what she going down there for. We in Queens. I’m like, I don’t know what she going at me for. So I go the opposite way. It just so happened that I get to a gas station. I go outside.”

“I think I get some drink. By the time I come back out, she’s right there.” But Denise was not alone. “I walk to the 7-Eleven and she’s staring at me with some other dude. You know what I’m saying? I’m like, what the—I don’t know.” This happened around October 5th. They stayed in New York a few more days before returning to Maryland on October 8th.

And that’s when everything fell apart. “We was coming from somewhere,” Tori says, “and she had to use the bathroom right up the street from the house. You know what I’m saying? The bathroom in your house. So I’m like, why? She wanted to argue, but I stopped anyway. But then once I stopped, she didn’t go to the bathroom.”

“So what was the point of stopping? You know what I’m saying? If you’re not going to go to the bathroom, now you’re just wasting my time in the cold. It’s cold. I’m trying to get home. So at this point, it’s like she’s trying to cause a scene. You know, let everybody see.”

“So for me, it’s like, she already stopped messing with me. I push her and stuff like that. I’m not boxing. I push her. And she fell all the way to the ground. She’s like—I didn’t push her hard. You see how much bigger she is than me? I didn’t push you that hard. That’s what you say.”

“So now I’m trying to help you up, but you’re not going to get up. So it’s like you’re just trying to make me look bad.” Tori minimizes what happened, frames it as a minor incident, a misunderstanding. But what he does admit is that he pushed her to the ground during an argument. She was eight and a half months pregnant at the time.

The autopsy would later reveal that Denise had been dead for roughly two months when she was found. That places her death around October 8th or 9th. The same window as that physical altercation. “And we still like fighting and wrestling or whatever,” Tori continues. “You know what I’m saying? And I end up throwing up again.”

“You know, that was on the side where she was at, but she was still living. You know what I’m saying? We was still like going through it then. When I left her, she was still living.” The last confirmed sighting of Denise alive comes from elevator surveillance footage on October 9th.

The footage shows the couple entering the elevator together. Tori blocks other residents from stepping inside. Denise stands quietly in the corner. Once the doors close and they’re alone, she moves away from him. She looks withdrawn, staring ahead without expression. Her body language reflects the tension Tori later admitted to.

When the elevator reaches their floor, she follows him out slowly. That’s the last time she’s seen alive. Tori tells investigators that after the fight, he left the apartment. When he returned, he claims he found her dead. But the evidence tells a different story.

The shell casings. The DNA. The seven wounds, four of them in the back. The fact that he lived in that apartment for over a month with her body. The search history on his phone: “How long it takes for a dead body to smell.” “How to move a body without being seen.” “How to plead insanity.”

The detectives lean into empathy during the interrogation. They position themselves as willing to understand, hoping he will fill in the missing pieces. “Because just like with this thing at the store, there was an explanation,” one detective says. “They were whacking you with a pole, right?”

“Like you said, there’s only so much you can take. You’re not an animal. You come in there trying to get an iced tea, they’re whacking you with a pole. What the heck’s going on? Right? So you see how you could go from, ‘Oh, they just robbed so fast. He shot the clerk,’ to, ‘Oh, man, there’s a lot more to this story.’”

“Just like that with her. I think there’s so much more to this story.” The detective reminds Tori that he’s already been charged. “I mean, you’re already being charged. So it’s just a question of whether he’s remorseful and whether there’s more to the story. Because she’s not there to say anything.”

“It sounds like each time, even with this one, the whole North thing, I heard she tried to get the charges off because she loved you. And I bet you, if things were otherwise, she’d probably say, ‘Hey, you know, yeah, let’s say she survived. Let’s say you shot her and she survived.’ She would have been like, ‘It’s okay. I attacked him, whatever.’”

“But she’s not here to tell us her side of the story. You’re only here. And we’re just trying to appeal to you as a good person.” Tori shakes his head. “I mean, to be honest with you, I wouldn’t have wanted her to die or nothing like that.”

This is where the earlier rapport starts to matter. The groundwork has been laid. The detective presses further. “What happened upstairs in the apartment is a tragedy. And it takes a big person to be able to accept responsibility. Because when you threw up at my office and you told me why you threw up at Oakleaf, we were tired.”

“But after reviewing everything and listening to the interview, I know why you threw up. I know why you got sick. You’re not a monster. Because you got monsters and you got people that made mistakes. And you’re a person that made a mistake. Okay? And the bottom line, I’m going to say it flat out: you shot her. And when you shot her, that made you sick to your stomach.”

Tori’s voice cracks. “I already threw up. I promise. I promise. Feel me? I had—I didn’t shoot her. We was fighting.” The detective brings up the evidence again. His DNA on the shell casings found near Denise’s body. The ballistics match. The timeline.

“If we step back and just let the evidence speak,” the detective says, “they’re going to say the shell casings are the same. The DNA—we just got it, so we’re going to get it done in two or three hours. They’re going to say the DNA is the same on both shell casings. So for us, do we need some kind of explanation? No, we really don’t.”

“But for you, I think it is so important. Just like you explained yourself in the store. If we didn’t have the video, let’s say we didn’t have the video. You think the store people would have told us they were whacking you with that pole? No. But luckily for us, we have a video that will corroborate what you’re saying.”

“That will confirm what you’re saying. We don’t have a video in your apartment. We don’t. But at the end of the day, for that case, we would have known you did it. Do we need your explanation? No. Is it good that we have a video in your case with Denise? Again, do we have enough? Yes. Do we have enough to convict you?”

Then the detective walks Tori through his own version of events, step by step, laying it out the way others would hear it. Tori begins to realize he won’t be able to reason his way around the physical evidence. So he shifts tactics. He continues denying that he killed Denise.

The detectives counter with more evidence, more witnesses, more pieces of the puzzle that all point in one direction. After sustained pressure, the detective offers him something different. A version of events where Tori isn’t the villain. A scenario where he reacts instead of initiates.

“I believe you,” the detective says. “She’s much, much bigger than you are. And just because you’re a guy and she’s a female, she’s probably much stronger. You know, with somebody who’s heavier that can throw a punch, the force of that punch, just basic physics, is much heavier.”

“And that’s what I mean. You did not go there to be like, ‘I’m going to kill her.’ No. Because you just explained, you didn’t walk around with that gun and you weren’t shooting up the neighborhood. You’re walking around that gun. You’re not shooting up the neighborhood. But when she attacked you, I don’t think you had a choice. You had no choice but to defend yourself.”

This time, Tori suggests it wasn’t just another argument. Weapons were involved. “She picked it up,” he says. “She had already had that stick or whatever that big boy thing is in her hand. You see what I’m saying? That’s the part that I didn’t tell you. You understand?”

Tori admits he hasn’t told them everything. He begins implying that he fired in self-defense, that Denise came at him with a weapon, that he was afraid for his life. But the detectives want him to say it clearly. “So, did you shoot her?” one detective asks. “You shot her. There’s no cameras in here. You need to just tell us, man.”

“You shot her. If you’re going to tell us, just tell us the rest of the story, man. Don’t make up garbage.” Tori hesitates. “I don’t—I’m not—you know what I’m saying? I don’t really like—” “Do you think that’s going to make any difference?” the detective interrupts. “No one’s going to be celebrating.”

“I’m not—no. Nobody’s celebrating nothing. Like the way I’m looking at it is—” “Well, you’re going to tell us what we already know.” “Huh?” “You’re going to tell us what we know. That weapons thing. We already knew that. There’s nothing here that you told us that’s shocking us. So you didn’t tell us anything.”

“Right. That’s what I’m saying. I’m pretty positive there’s nothing here that I’m telling that’s shocking. You know, but for me to just admit to talk to her, it’s not necessarily no evidence that I did.” The detective changes tactics. “Did she make contact with you in any way?”

“I wouldn’t say that she made contact, but I was trying to relieve her of the other weapon. She was on top of the bed at one point. You understand what I’m saying? So when I had the—I was trying to not stab her, but get relieve her of the other weapon.” “That was a stick?” “Yeah, some type of stick.”

“But she probably wanted to hit me, and I just really want to relieve her of these weapons. You know what I’m saying?” The detective asks him point blank: “How many times did you shoot her?” Tori freezes. “Did I say I—” “Yeah.” “I didn’t.” “Oh, did I just say—you feel me?” “What? How many times did you—” “So I didn’t say I shot her.”

Again, Tori circles back to self-defense. It was either him or her. “She said one of us going to die in here,” he says. “Like, you know what I’m saying, that’s what she said. One of us going to die tonight. And I think at that point, it’s like, you know, you scared my whole life. You know what I’m saying? You just let me know that you don’t mind killing me. In my home.”

That’s as far as he’s willing to go. No full confession. Just implication. Just enough, he seems to think, to argue his way through court later. The interview ends there, but the case is far from over.

Forensic results come back. The gun recovered from Tori Moore’s apartment is the same weapon used in the Dashin shooting and in the incident inside that apartment. The same tool. Three people. One trigger. Detectives piece together the timeline.

On October 9th, 2022, around 7:00 p.m., Tori and Denise Middleton enter the apartment complex together. That’s the last confirmed sighting of Denise alive. Investigators believe she was hurt within minutes of walking inside. About an hour later, surveillance captures Tori alone in the elevator, leaving the scene by himself.

For nearly 26 days, Tori travels across the country. He goes to New York. He goes to other places that the phone data will later reveal. He moves through the world as if nothing has happened. Eventually, he returns to the same apartment. He lives there, in that unit, with Denise’s body until his arrest on December 9th, 2022.

The phone data tells its own story. His search history is a roadmap. “How long it takes for a dead body to smell.” “How to move a body without being seen.” “How to plead insanity.” He was planning. He was preparing. He was building a defense long before he ever sat down in that interrogation room.

On May 16th, 2024, a jury finds Tori Damian Moore guilty of first-degree murder in the death of 61-year-old Aaloo Wandu. Guilty of using a handgun in the commission of a felony. Guilty of illegal possession of a firearm. Six months later, on November 22nd, 2024, a second jury convicts him again.

Two counts of first-degree murder for the death of Denise Middleton and her unborn child. Additional convictions follow. The courtroom is packed. Denise’s family sits on one side, Aaloo’s family on another. They do not look at Tori. They cannot bear to.

The judge, an older woman with gray hair and tired eyes, reads the sentence. Three consecutive life terms. Plus an additional 80 years. Tori will never leave. He will die there, an old man, if he lives that long, surrounded by walls and fences and the memory of what he did.

Three people are gone. A 61-year-old man who came to this country to work and build something steady, who was lost over a bottle of iced tea because someone couldn’t control their temper. A 26-year-old woman who was weeks away from giving birth, who had survived homelessness and instability, who thought she had found someone who cared about her.

A child who never got the chance to take a breath, who never got to see the sun, who never got to be held by its mother. Three people. One afternoon that started with a bottle of iced tea and ended with a discovery in a back room, a truth hidden for months while her killer slept a few feet away.

Tori thought he could control the story. Thought he could shape it, reframe it, call it self-defense. Thought that if he just talked enough, if he just referenced Tupac and talked about being the king, if he just offered enough half-explanations and partial admissions, he could convince someone that he was the victim.

But the evidence doesn’t lie. The surveillance footage doesn’t lie. The DNA doesn’t lie. And the smell in that apartment, the smell that made seasoned officers step back, the smell of something ended that had soaked into the walls and the carpet and the very air itself, that smell will never lie.

It will haunt everyone who walked through that door. It will linger in their memories long after this case is closed. And it will follow Tori Moore to his grave, a reminder of what he did, of who he was, of the lives he extinguished over nothing. Over a bottle of iced tea. Over a woman who wanted to leave. Over a pride that could not bend.