Girl’s Grisly Death Remains a Mystery : Trial: She was found encased in concrete. Her aunt admits disposing of the body in a panic but denies killing the 8-year-old.

Eight-year-old LaToya Harris’ death was as cruel as her life was short.

Before her lifeless body was stuffed into a trash can and encased in concrete two years ago, LaToya had been beaten. Her body was covered with bruises and scars, the back of her head was punctured. Blood vessels had burst in her eyes, indicating asphyxia. Her left hand was broken.

Officially, the cause of LaToya’s death was an overdose of drugs and alcohol--her tiny body had a blood alcohol level of 0.14%, almost twice the legal level of drunkenness for adults. The girl’s mouth was bruised, indicating the possibility of force-feeding.

The girl’s 45-year-old aunt, Madie Lee Moore--credited with “rescuing” several troubled children by taking them in--is now on trial for the murder, one of the grisliest in memory.

Though two years have passed since LaToya’s death, questions remain: Did Moore, who cared for LaToya when her mother no longer could, poison the child, shoving the alcohol and an antidepressant drug into her mouth? Or was LaToya, the daughter of a crack addict, a trouble-prone youngster whose curiosity prompted her to wash down a vial of pills with some booze?

The tragedy was revealed a week after the child’s death two summers ago. Moore’s 21-year-old son, Maurice Nathaniel Moore, racked by guilt, confessed to police that he had put LaToya’s body in the concrete. He pleaded no contest, was convicted of being an accessory to the crime after the fact and has served a prison sentence.

Maurice Moore’s tip led police to the youngster’s 55-pound body, stuffed into a plastic 30-gallon trash bag and submerged in concrete. The can was placed under an avocado tree in the corner of Moore’s back yard in South-Central Los Angeles.

“I’ve never seen a child death case when the body was treated with such disrespect,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jane Blissert, the prosecutor in Moore’s trial, in which testimony began last week.

Within months after the police found LaToya’s body, the mystery deepened. In February, 1994, after an anonymous call, authorities made another grisly discovery: a tiny skeleton, thought to be that of LaToya’s half brother, Kenneth Gridiron, who had been missing for years. The skeleton, like LaToya’s body, was found encased in concrete inside another trash can. This one was placed in a storage unit rented to Moore’s son.

The second death is still under investigation. Scientific tests have confirmed that the body was not Kenneth’s. No one yet knows the identity of the child, who was between the ages of 2 and 4 and wore a shirt manufactured 10 years ago. No clues have led to the identity of his murderer, whose techniques so strikingly resemble those used after LaToya’s death.

From the trial, court records, and interviews, Madie Moore emerges as a sometimes erratic, domineering personality, a woman known both for throwing elaborate birthday parties for the children in her care and for sudden outbursts of violence.

To Los Angeles County social workers, she was first viewed as a godsend. Hadn’t she always been there when social workers needed a home for one of her nieces or nephews, whose neglectful mother--Moore’s sister--lived on the streets? Hadn’t Moore had her sister arrested for child abuse when one of the children ended up with a suspicious burn?

To prosecutor Blissert, Moore is a coldblooded killer who beat LaToya with a belt when she misbehaved, and then murdered her.

Moore denies murdering LaToya. In her preliminary hearing, police said she had admitted to them that she had beaten the girl and thrown her against a closet door. Officers testified that Moore told them LaToya had been misbehaving on the evening of her death, getting into a closet where several bottles of pills were kept.

Moore told officers that she first hit the girl with a belt, then picked LaToya up by the chest and heaved her against the closet door, leaving her dazed and with a blank stare. Her attorney, David Herriford, said Moore went to the bathroom, found LaToya lying on the floor when she returned, assumed she was asleep and covered her with a blanket. In the morning, the lawyer said, Moore found the girl dead.

In fact, the prosecution contends, after battering the child, Moore killed her by forcing a lethal mix of a prescription drug and alcohol on her, and had so little feeling for the child’s corpse that she disposed of it as one might throw out a mound of trash.

Herriford says Moore, whom he described as a victim of childhood abuse and neglect, was only guilty of panic, not murder.

When Moore discovered the dead child, Herriford said, she was fearful that authorities would take away the other three children living in her care in the sprawling, five-bedroom house. Once before LaToya had gotten into the medicine cabinet--only that time, she drank some laxative, he said. The child may have accidentally killed herself, he said.

“The worst thing my client might have done is not notify the authorities,” Herriford said.

Instead of calling the police, Moore phoned her son, asking him to help her dispose of the body, Herriford said. Moore came up with the idea of using concrete after seeing something similar on a television show, according to police testimony at her preliminary hearing.

Moore’s relatives, her lawyer and others close to her all describe her family as dysfunctional. One brother committed suicide, a sister said, and another ended up in a mental hospital. Herriford said Moore told him that she and her brothers and sisters were placed in foster homes as children after their mother was sent to prison for murder.

Even with her troubled family history, no extensive background check was done before five children were placed with Moore because none seemed warranted, said Iris Courtney, a Department of Children and Family Services agent who investigates deaths of children placed by the agency. Extensive interviews with family members and neighbors were not conducted, she said.

Child welfare experts say that placing children with a close relative who welcomed them was a normal course of action and one that is considered by many to be healthier than placing them with a stranger.

LaToya’s mother, Zhandra Soils--Madie Moore’s younger sister--was a crack cocaine user who said in an interview that she had lived off and on in the streets for years, giving birth to LaToya, the missing Kenneth and five other children, all by different fathers. All but one of them eventually ended up in Moore’s care.

As one after another of Soils’ children were placed with Moore, Moore repeatedly told Family Services that Soils sometimes abused or neglected the children--allegations that Soils vehemently denies. In 1992, after a report from Moore, Soils was convicted of burning LaToya on the hand. She was placed on probation.

In an interview with The Times, Soils accused Moore, whom she refers to as “the enemy,” of burning LaToya on the hand, then blaming her.

“That’s how evil she is,” Soils said.

Allegations of abuse by Madie Moore surfaced after LaToya’s death. Maurice Moore’s lawyer, Gary Turnbull, contended that Maurice was a lifelong victim of his mother’s abuse.

Rosie Johnson, a hospital worker who lives across the street from Moore’s former home, said she used to sit on her porch and watch the outdoor birthday parties Moore threw, which featured clowns and mobile merry-go-rounds, and marvel that they were being put on by someone whom she otherwise considered so disagreeable.

Johnson also recounted a night that she said she heard a commotion outside, looked out her window and saw three of the children who lived with Moore, including LaToya, running down the sidewalk. She heard a gunshot, she said, and saw the children stop and with hands raised, turn and walk back to the house.

She then saw Moore, Johnson said, standing on her porch shouting.

“I didn’t see a gun,” Johnson said, “but I sure saw how those children reacted.”

No one at the Department of Children and Family Services, however, had a clue that there were problems, officials said.

“Everyone is coming out of the woodwork now telling what they know,” Courtney complained, “but now it’s too late.”