INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — A 23-year-old Grandview man was charged in Jackson County Court with the murder of a woman who police at first believed had committed suicide.
Instead, police now believe Micah Wayne Moore of Kansas City, killed her in an effort to try to cover up that he and other men had sexually assaulted her several times in the past months.
In the probable cause statement, police say they found the body of Bethany Deaton, with a bag wrapped around her head inside a minivan at Longview Lake Shelter on Tuesday, Oct. 30th.
Police say there was a small notepad inside the van that appeared to be a suicide note. Part of it read, “I chose this evil thing.”
According to the probable cause statement, there was an empty bottle of Acetaminophen PM also found inside the van. Deaton was in the back seat, passenger side.
On Friday, police say Micah Moore went to the Grandview Police Department and admitted that he was involved in Bethany’s death.
Police say Moore told them he killed Bethany because, while Bethany and her husband lived with Moore and other men, they sexually assaulted Deaton over the last few months.
Police say Moore was afraid Bethany was going to tell her therapist about the assaults, so he held a bag over her head until her body shook.
Police say Moore also told them he drugged Bethany before the sexual assaults and before the murder.
Moore also allegedly told police that he recorded the sexual assaults on his ipad and that he and the others wrote poems about the assaults which they also kept in the ipad.
Police interviewed others, who they say confessed to being a part of a “sexual community” in which sexual activity was a part of a “religious experience.”
Police had not filed any other charges in Bethany’s death as of Saturday.
