[1] The two men were sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder and other charges related to Moore, with an additional 22 years for their escape attempt in January 2006 during the trial.
Born in Guyana, Moore immigrated with her parents to New York City, where they settled in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn.
[6] Several days after Moore's disappearance, a 15-year-old girl in Brooklyn reported to police that she had been abducted by two men and taken to an empty house where she was raped by them.
[7] Around two months after Moore disappeared, her mother Ellie Carmichael received an anonymous phone call, telling her to go to an address on Kings Highway.
[4] Carmichael contacted the police and officers from the 67th Precinct and Emergency Service Units searched the premises of an abandoned, burned house.
[7] The details of Moore's kidnapping, captivity, and murder were recounted in the prosecutor's opening statement at the trial, which started on January 18, 2006: Prosecutor Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi said two thugs terrorized Romona Moore for days in a Brooklyn basement in April 2003, repeatedly raping her and attacking her with a knife, a saw, a hammer and a barbell.
Defendants Troy Hendrix, 22, and Kayson Pearson, 23, are also charged with kidnapping and raping a 15-year-old girl days after they allegedly killed Moore.
[14] On March 23, 2006, the district attorney announced the jury conviction of Hendrix and Pearson on charges of kidnapping, rape, torture and first-degree murder of Romona Moore, 21.
[19] As Moore's family awaited sentencing of the convicted defendants, their daughter's case was superseded by media attention related to the announcement of a grand jury indictment across the street in another courtroom in the abduction and murder of Imette St. Guillen, a graduate student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who had lived on the Upper West Side.
The Moore relatives initially had posted fliers in their neighborhood when the police declined to open an investigation, saying that sometimes young people took off for a few days.
[21] Following the conclusion of the trial of the murderers of her daughter, on April 3, 2008, Moore's mother Elle Carmichael filed a federal lawsuit against the NYPD,[5][22][23] alleging that they did not take sufficient action in cases of missing black women and girls.
[5] Carmichael is claiming that NYPD "used a double standard" by not mounting a vigorous search for Moore while "aggressively pursuing the disappearance of white women.
"[5] Carmichael contrasted the NYPD's actions in failing to investigate the disappearance of her daughter with their pursuit of evidence in the case of Svetlana Aronov, a white woman.
[5] In August 2014, Federal District Judge Nina Gershon dismissed Carmichael's bias case, ruling that there was no evidence to show there was "a widespread, racially-motivated practice within the NYPD of delays in listing minorities missing or investigating the circumstances."
[25][26] Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly in the Mayor Michael Bloomberg administration agreed to have the fabled department filmed.