In late 2010, two people went missing from Durham, North Carolina. Both were connected to one man, a 27-year-old who exerted a powerful influence over his friends and the women he brought into his life. While it didn’t take investigators long to figure out what had happened to the missing woman and young boy, they were shocked to learn exactly what the women in this man’s circle were willing to do for him.
In February 2011, family members of a 28-year-old woman named Antoinetta McKoy reported her missing. They had last seen her in December. Relatives of 5-year-old Jadon Higganbothan had not seen him since October of 2010. Both of the missing people were connected to the same person—27-year-old Peter Lucas Moses, Jr.
A Common Connection
In the summer of 2010, Antoinetta had reconnected with Peter. They’d first met when they were both teenagers living in Washington, D.C. and dated briefly. According to Antoinetta’s friends and family, she was working hard at a job she liked in D.C. and had a strong, Christian faith, but she was hoping to meet someone special. When Peter reached out to her, she agreed to travel to Durham for a visit. When she got there, she discovered Peter living in a house with several other women and nine children, whom he said were all his sisters and nieces and nephews. He explained the children’s fathers had abandoned them and he refused to.
What Antoinetta didn’t know was that these women were not Peter’s sisters, they were his common-law wives and all the children, except for one, Jadon Higganbothan, were his. He believed in polygamy, told the women to call him “Lord,” and wanted each woman to bear as many children as possible.
Black Hebrews
Police later described Peter as a cult leader to the women, saying he considered himself to be a part of the Black Hebrews, a religious sect that subscribes to the idealogy that Black people are descendants of the ancient Israelites. The Black Hebrews have also been known to believe a race war is coming in the future and black people will end up reigning dominant and supreme.
Antoinetta’s aunt told the media Antoinetta believed if she got together with Peter, she’d have access to better career opportunities and a nice house to live in. Antoinetta made a trip back to Durham in early December 2010 because she believed someone had stolen her identity and she wanted to talk to the local police about her case. But when Christmas came and went without any word from her, her those closest to her knew something was wrong. Members of Antoinetta’s family tried to call her at Peter’s home, and he told them she was fine, but refused to put her on the phone, which was suspicious.
Meanwhile, Jadon’s biological father and family, who were still living in Colorado, became concerned when they hadn’t been able to talk to Jadon by phone. Vania was evading their calls, so they reached out to the Durham police, who questioned Vania about the whereabouts of her son. Vania, who was one of Peter’s wives, told them she’d left her son with a friend in Durham on February 20. But when pressed further, she gave two different conflicting names of the person who was supposedly watching the young boy.
I wasn’t able to get a clear answer from the conflicting news reports, but police either talked to a woman from the group named Zayna Thomas while they visited the home or she escaped the group and came to the police station on her own. Zayna told them that Jadon and Antoinetta were both dead. She gave them details of the murders and described Peter’s following of the Black Hebrews. Zayna also had an infant who Peter had fathered.
In early March, investigators went to the home where they believed Peter Lucas Moses, Jr. was staying on Pear Tree Lane in Durham with his girlfriends and their children and found him hiding in a cabinet.
When police searched the home, they found spots that resembled blood, a fired bullet and shell casing, and it appeared the home had been recently cleaned and disinfected. While they didn’t have enough evidence to arrest him for the two suspected murders, they did arrest him on old warrants charging him with carrying a concealed weapon, discharging a firearm within city limits, and writing a worthless check. He was then released on a $1,500 bond.
The Local Media Turns on the Pressure
A News and Observer article published on April 24, 2011, co-written by Mandy Locke and Jesse James DeConto, hinted that Peter Lucas Moses Jr. and his group were under suspicion for murder. Here are the opening paragraphs:
Peter Lucas Moses, Jr. collected a cast of women over the past six years, rekindling a high school flame and romancing others he met in Durham and as far away as Colorado.
With them, he patched together what some would call a sordid family. He fathered children with the women who could have them and kept his growing brood under lock and key. The women pulled farther and farther away from their own families and into Moses’ grasp, relatives of the women said.
The article went on to share more background information about Peter Lucas Moses, Jr. In 2004, when he was living with his mother and younger siblings in Raleigh, court documents showed he was arrested for sexually-abusing a 12-year-old girl. He pleaded guilty to assault and received two years of probation for that crime. In 2005, he was arrested for assaulting his mother and younger brother and sister. The charges were eventually dismissed.
Based on reporting by the News and Observer, Peter met a woman named Lavada Harris in 2006 while living in Durham. Lavada’s family members told the paper Peter turned on the charm and made Lavada feel special and beautiful, but they were concerned when they learned he had other girlfriends he was seeing at the same time. Peter worked on isolating Lavada from her family, and on her rare visits, a group of women and children waited for her in the parking lot of her dad’s apartment complex. She spoke of wanting to have a child with Peter, and began visiting area fertility clinics when she couldn’t conceive a child quickly.
In January of 2007, Peter took his group and moved to Colorado, allegedly to be closer to his brother. Once there, he reconnected with Vania Sisk, who he’d met years before when she lived in Raleigh. She had separated from Jadon’s father, Jamiel Higgonbothan, and his family kept in touch with the mother and son. But members of Higganbothan’s family told the News and Observer that they could tell Jadon wasn’t comfortable around Peter and seemed scared of him.
When the group once again planned to move back to North Carolina, Vania e-mailed her sister and said they were going to move out to the country and store up guns for an impending world-ending race war. She told her family to read the book of Revelation in the bible, which is filled with end-times prophecy.
A Shocking Discovery
On June 8, 2011, a plumber arrived at a house on Ashe Street in Durham to investigate a case of clogged pipes. He borrowed a shovel from a next-door neighbor and the two men began digging in the yard when they discovered a plastic garbage bag with human remains. They immediately called the police. Though the house stood vacant at the time, Peter’s mother Sheilda Harris had been living in the home with her husband, Anthony Leon Harris, two of her children, Sheila Moses and P. Leonard Moses, and a step-daughter, Diamond Harris. They’d moved out in February, not long after the police first visited Peter at his other Durham residence. The landlord of the Ashe Street house said they’d been good tenants for the year they’d lived there, and always paid their rent on time.
Police immediately believed the human remains belonged to the two missing people, Antoinetta McKoy and Jadon Higganbothan. They had not searched the property prior to the discovery because they hadn’t believed Sheilda Harris to be a suspect in the disappearances.
Based on their interview with Zayna Thomas and what they learned from many of the women’s family members, investigators pieced together what had happened to Antoinetta and Jadon.
By 2010, Vania Sisk, who he’d reconnected with while living in Colorado, had three children with Peter. Jadon was the only child living in the home that Peter hadn’t fathered and he didn’t like it. One of his other girlfriends living in the home, LaRhonda Smith, told Peter Jadon had hit one of her son’s on the buttocks. Peter had already been making statements that he thought Jadon’s biological father was a homosexual, and when he learned of this slap between Jadon and one of his other sons, he became convinced Jadon was queer, too. He grew irate and said to Vania, “Didn’t I tell you to get rid of him?”
Cold-Blooded Murder
In October of 2010, he instructed Lavada Harris to take a computer and speaker out to the garage. Peter took a gun belonging to Vania, a .22, and with The Lord’s Prayer playing in Hebrew as background noise, shot little Jadon in the garage. According to the other women in the house, Vania did nothing to try and help her son. Vania and LaRhonda then cleaned up the blood in the garage and put Jadon’s body in a suitcase, keeping it in the master bedroom until it began to smell due to his decaying body.
Police discovered around December 21, 2010, Antoinetta ran screaming out of the Durham home on Pear Tree Lane and asked a neighbor to call her mother. Vania and LaRhonda quickly apprehended her and forcefully took her back to the home. The neighbor did not call the police because they believed the Moses family was operating a group home and Antoinetta was a mentally-troubled resident staying there.
Once they got her back in the house, the Vania, LaRhonda, and Peter beat her for hours, and at one point, he even tried to choke her with an electrical cord. Then, he ordered Vania to shoot her while she lay on the floor, while he said, “Let go and go on to the kingdom.” Then, they wrapped Antoinetta’s body in trash bags and put in a garbage can in the garage. At a party a few days later, he showed her body to his mother, Sheilda Harris, his brother, P. Leonard Moses, and his sister, Sheila Moses.
Investigators later found Antoinetta’s diary when searching the belongings in the Moses home. Antoinetta had discovered she would not be able to have children, and had grown fearful Peter would kill her once he found out. They also determined two of Peter’s fingerprints were found on the plastic bags used to wrap up Antoinetta and Jadon’s bodies.
In July of 2011, police arrested seven people in connection to the murders of Jadon Higganbothan and Antoinetta McKoy—Peter Lucas Moses, Jr., Vania Sisk, LaRhonda Rae Smith, Lavada Harris, P. Leonard Moses, Sheilda Harris, and Sheila Moses. It didn’t take long before Peter and his wives began pointing fingers at one another in order to receive plea deals from the prosecuting attorneys.
In July of 2013, four of the people charged in the case received their sentences for their role in Antoinette and Jadon’s deaths. Vania Sisk, age 27, pleaded guilty to second degree murder, conspiracy to commit first degree murder, first degree kidnapping and accessory after the fact of first degree murder. She was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences that range between 15 and 19 years in prison.
LaRhonda Renee Smith, age 28, pleaded guilty to second degree murder, conspiracy to commit first degree murder and accessory after the fact of murder. She was sentenced to two consecutive sentences ranging between 11 and 15 years in prison. LaRhonda is the woman responsible for pulling the trigger on the gun that killed Antoinette.
Lavada Harris, age 42, pleaded guilty to two counts of accessory after the fact of murder and was sentenced to two consecutive prison terms of between six and eight years in prison.
P. Leonard Moses, age 24, was sentenced to five to six years in prison after pleading guilty to accessory after the fact of first degree murder.
While police initially charged Peter Moses’s mother Sheilda Evelyn Harris and his sister, Sheila Falisha Moses, were dropped for their knowledge of the murders, those charges were eventually dropped.
Peter Moses Jr. avoided the death penalty by taking a plea deal. He received two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole for his role in the murders.
The Mental Illness Defense
At Peter’s sentencing hearing, his defense attorney and family members said the murders occurred because he was a victim of Durham’s mental health and court court systems. They described him as having bipolar disorder and said he’d stopped taking his medication after, “a brush with the law led to an outstanding arrest and the halt of his disability checks.”
His attorney, Lisa Miles, told the court, “These crimes occurred at a time that Mr. Moses lost his Medicaid benefits. His illness made him do something monstrous. His character will make him atone for that.” She said he had been in the mental health system since the age of 10, when he attempted suicide. He spent time in psychiatric facilities, where he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression.
I’m going to add here that when police were investigating Peter’s home life, they learned that he mostly stayed at home while his girlfriends worked to support him and the children. He demanded all money they made be turned over to him.
Antoinetta’s mother Yvonne McKoy was also at the sentencing hearing. When it was her turn to speak, she said, “He took something very dear and precious from me. She was a good girl, a church girl, a God-fearing girl. There is not a day I don’t think about her. She is resting in God’s arms now. That is the only thing that gives me closure.”
Peter looked at Antoinette’s mother and said, “I am sorry for what happened to your daughter.”
The Cult Dynamic
One of the things that piqued my interest when I first learned of this case was the mention of Peter Lucas Moses Jr. being a cult leader. There are a number of different reasons a person can be defined as one. An article published on the website for the Human Rights Research Center defines cults as “a relatively small group of people having beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister, as exercising excessive control over members,” and cults are typically religious, political, or sexual in nature. The article goes on to explain that from early childhood, humans seek meaning and a sense of belonging through their relationships, jobs, or personal beliefs. Cults offer to fulfill these innate desires by providing members with a close community dedicated to what they view to be an important cause.
When it comes to the role of a cult leader, the person is often described as a charismatic and persuasive individual who possesses special knowledge that promises to elevate their followers to new levels of awareness of success. Cult leaders often display signs of pathological narcissism and in some cases, embody traits of psychopathy, which is a condition featuring lack of empathy, pathological lying, and impulsivity.
I’m not a psychologist, or even an expert on the topic of cults, but I’ve read a lot about them. I think one of the things that surprised me the most about Peter Lucas Moses, Jr. was how young he was when the murders occurred. Keith Raniere exerted a tight control over the women in NXIVM in a similar way but manipulating them by promising to have children with them—and many of those women waited years for him to fulfill that promise. Peter was only 27. He’d been romancing and controlling women, plus fathering children, for a number of years at that point. Not only that, from a very young age, he seemed to control his own family members, even when he was allegedly abusing them. They dropped charges against him, and he even showed family members the deceased body of Antoinetta McKoy at a party, and they did nothing. Did they consider this normal behavior? Did they consider the murders justified? When the News and Observer asked Peter’s father about his involvement in an alleged cult, he replied, “He ain’t in no cult. Them girls just crazy like that.” In essence, he deflected any blame to Peter’s common-law wives and denied his son had any influence over them.
Based on the interview with Lavada Harris’s father, Peter knew how to turn on the charm with women. He convinced them to live in a communal setting and essentially, share one man amongst them. I wonder how much of his belief in the end-times prophecy he instilled in the women and did he use that to convince them to quickly have as many children as they did? Did he tell them they were building an army that would rise up against white people when the time came? Did he instill fear in each woman, such as the fear Antoinetta expressed in her diary? Did he threaten them with threats of physical violence, or perhaps harming the children? Also, the children were homeschooled, so they were kept away from anyone in the public school system or social services who might have noticed something was amiss. This is a common tactic of a cult leader.
We will never know all of those answers. All I’ll say is that I’m skeptical that mental illness was the root cause of Peter’s lifelong propensity for control, physical, and sexual abuse of those in his orbit. I don’t believe he thought Jadon Higganbothan needed to die because he was gay. I think he didn’t like that Jadon was the only child in the house not fathered by Peter. Jadon’s mother seemingly didn’t question his order for her to murder her own child or seem remorseful about it. And it’s clear the reason Antoinetta died is because she dared to leave the group, and she probably found out about Jadon’s death and Peter knew she would go to the police.
Show Sources:
The Herald Sun
March 10, 2011
Warrant issued for arrest of mother of missing boy
https://www.newspapers.com/image/795888992
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https://abcnews.go.com/US/charged-bodies-found-north-carolina-cult-murder-case/story?id=13811420
The News and Observer
April 24, 2011
Arrests offer a glimpse of sect
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https://www.newspapers.com/image/649409002
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https://www.newspapers.com/image/649408951
https://www.oxygen.com/dying-to-belong/crime-time/polygamist-cult-leader-murders-wife-boy
The News and Observer
June 10, 2011
Site of woman’s body yields remains of child
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https://www.newspapers.com/image/649433913
The News and Observer
June 14, 2011
Clues to two fates buried in yard
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The News and Observer
August 7, 2011
Judge sets bail in cult killings
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The News and Observer
June 26, 2022
Pete Lucas Moses, Jr.: The Durham Cult Leader
https://www.newspapers.com/image/851756993
The News and Observer
July 7, 2013
Cult members are sentenced for murders
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The News and Observer
August 14, 2011
Court records tell murder tale
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News and Record
October 5, 2011
Autopsy finds Durham woman shot, buried
https://www.newspapers.com/image/960833414
https://murderpedia.org/male.M/m/moses-peter-lucas.htm
https://www.humanrightsresearch.org/post/cults-the-exploitation-and-abuse-of-vulnerable-individuals
