HOMECOMING QUEEN-TURNED-ADDICT FOUND SLAIN

Lee Countian Was Featured In Drug Series

BEATTYVILLE - Michele Moore, the mother of two and a former homecoming
queen whose blond hair and pretty smile were once the talk of the town, was
found dead in her mobile home, stabbed repeatedly and left on a shabby sofa
bed.

Moore, 33, was one of 49 people arrested during December 2001 in a Lee
County drug roundup dubbed "Operation Grinch."

At the time, she was a sickly looking woman with sores on her arms from
injecting methamphetamine.

But riding down Main Street in 1984 as Lee County High School's homecoming
queen, she looked to have an ample future. Moore had good grades. She was
popular at school, and her parents were well-respected members of the
community.

She was featured this year in the Herald-Leader's "Prescription for Pain"
series, which detailed the devastating effects of prescription drug abuse
in Eastern Kentucky. One of the stories included Moore's transformation
from a local darling to a self-described junkie, hooked on the painkiller
OxyContin and other drugs.

Kentucky State Police Detective James Devasher said Moore died Tuesday from
multiple stab wounds.

Devasher said an autopsy was performed yesterday at the state medical
examiner's office, but he would not elaborate on the circumstances or
possible motives surrounding Moore's death.

A state police release put the time of death at 3 a.m. Tuesday, but the
call reporting Moore's corpse to the Lee County 911 center didn't come
until 5:52 p.m. Tuesday.

Lisa Colon, who lives two doors down, said after a neighbor screamed that
Moore had been killed, she went to look for herself Tuesday evening.

A friend was standing on the porch, Colon said, and "he told me that I
don't want to go in the house, and I said, 'Why?' and he said she was
laying in there dead."

Colon said she peeked into the house anyway and saw Moore's body on a
fold-out sofa.

It wasn't long before local and state police were at the mobile home park
putting up yellow crime-scene tape.

"One of the detectives said it had to have been a struggle, because of the
way she was cut," Colon said.

Amanda Hobbs, who lives across from Colon, said that Moore had partied late
into the night Monday, creating so much noise that a neighbor left to sleep
elsewhere.

"They kept her up all night, partying and being loud," Hobbs said.

Colon and Hobbs were part of a group who stood beneath an awning at the
mobile home park yesterday afternoon, smoking cigarettes, talking about
Moore's killing and watching rain fall.

Across town, Moore's family was gathered at the house of her mother, Patty
Moore, who said repeatedly that she thought it all might be a dream.

A videotape of Moore singing All of Me at her 1989 wedding played on a TV
in the kitchen. Moore's soft voice floated through the house, and her
7-year-old daughter, Cheyenne, pressed close to the screen, watching the
image of her mother, dressed all in white.

After Moore pleaded guilty and got probation for her Grinch case and a
couple others in July, her family had hoped she would stay clean for her
two children, Cheyenne and a 4-year-old son, Dylan.

But Moore continued to come undone.

There was a stay at a drug treatment facility in September, and then an
arrest for public intoxication on a controlled substance in October. When
she was arrested, Moore "was unable to do field sobriety," the police
report said. "She could barely stand on her own."

Beattyville Mayor Charles Beach III, a key organizer of the Grinch
operation, said he hadn't seen much change in the community as a whole, either.

"The problem is definitely still here," Beach said. "And little progress is
being made."

Sitting at the dining room table in her home yesterday, Patty Moore gripped
a pen so hard that her knuckles went white. She scratched back and forth
over Tuesday's entry on a wall calendar, and said she wanted to keep moving
the pen across Nov. 11 until it disappeared and her daughter came back.

Tears were streaking down her face, and she choked between words.

"This is not the way to end the story. This is not how the story ends," she
said, shaking. "There's got to be another chapter somewhere."