A St. Louis-area man was convicted Thursday in the deaths of his two young children who were suffocated in a muddy bank of the Mississippi River.
Anthony Moore, 27, of Berkeley, Mo., was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder in the killings of his 2-year-old daughter, Tony Mickyla Camille Moore, and 9-month-old son, Kanya Derrick Anderson. Moore could face up to life in prison without parole.
The bodies of the children were found in August 2004 on the muddy river bank near the Chain of Rocks Bridge.
Circuit Judge Joan Burger heard the case after Moore agreed to waive a jury trial. Burger said she was not convinced by testimony from psychiatrists that Moore suffered from a psychotic disorder at the time of the killings. Moore’s public defender, Jeff Estes, had argued Moore was not guilty by reason of insanity.
Prosecutor Ed Postawko said in his opening statement that Moore acted deliberately as he pushed the children face-down into the mud.
Mothers of the two children testified that Moore picked them up on Sunday, Aug. 8, 2004, after he attended church.
Moore’s sister, Tara Harris, said he bathed and dressed the children in preparation for a family portrait on the day they died. The next time she saw her brother, she said, he was walking down the street, speaking incoherently, covered in mud and “foaming at the mouth.” The children were not with him.
Harris and an aunt went to the riverside park, where they found the children in the mud in front of Moore’s car at the end of a boat ramp.
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