HARRISONVILLE, Mo. — Testimony is underway in the case of a former Grandview, Mo., police officer charged with first-degree murder in the death of a Cass County woman. DNA evidence led investigators to identify Jeffrey Dean Moreland as a suspect in the murder of 30-year-old Cara Jo Roberts.
Friends and family of Roberts have waited for five years for justice in her case. Roberts was found murdered in her home back in November of 2008. Detectives quickly developed a DNA profile of a suspect from evidence at the scene. But it wasn’t until two and a half years later that investigators matched it to the 54-year-old Moreland, a retired Grandview police officer.
In an opening statement, a prosecutor told a jury selected from Boone County that Roberts last talked with family and friends at 2:30 in the afternoon. Prosecutors argue that Moreland entered Roberts’ home with a 9-millimeter handgun, zip ties and duct tape. Moreland allegedly bound Roberts with zip ties and sexually assaulted her. Afterward, prosecutors say Moreland forced a naked Roberts to get into a bathtub full of water. As she lay in a fetal position in the bathtub, a prosecutor told the jury, Moreland put a gun to the back of her head and fired one shot. That shot passed through her head, exited through her left cheek and then went into her left thigh.
Moreland was identified as a suspect in a Jackson County murder case in May of 2011.
Detectives already suspected the cases were related, because both involved sexual assaults, no signs of forced entry and bathtubs filled with water at both crime scenes.
Roberts’ husband testified Tuesday that when he arrived home from work and found his wife’s body in the tub, he initially thought she had slipped and fallen.
Prosecutors also told the jury that when detectives sought a DNA sample from Moreland, he convinced his future son-in-law to provide the DNA samples. The prosecutor says Moreland then tried to pass the samples off as his own when police collected them.
