LeRoya Moore: Mom Gassed Her Kids To Send Them ‘To Heaven,’ Police Say — Had Prior Abuse Conviction

LeRoya Moore did the unthinkable earlier this month, murdering her 5-year-old little girl and 7-year-old son, police say — apparently by leaving them inside her East Haven, Connecticut, home and turning on the gas. She then may have tried to kill herself, according to the police accounts, but officers responded the desperate 911 call from a friend of the 36-year-old mom in time to prevent her from going through with it.

No official cause of death has yet been determined for Aleisha and Daaren Moore, but police reported gas leaking into the home where the found the two little ones lying on a blanket on June 2. Officers also said they had the strong impression that someone had turned on the gas on purpose. But they also found prescription sedatives in the house.

When the officers arrived, they asked LeRoya Moore where her children were, and the mom told the cops, “I stabbed them. I released them.”

But medical examiners ruled out stabbing as a cause of the children’s deaths.

The deaths of the two Moore kids came about a week before a man in Mesa, Arizona, was arrested on suspicion of killing his 22-month-old stepdaughter by striking her in the face.

Three officers who arrived at the home at 541 Strong Street had to go to Yale-New Haven Hospital to be treated for symptoms of inhaling natural gas.

The officers found a note allegedly left by Moore at the feet of her murdered kids.

“I let them know they were loved very much and they were going to heaven,” the note read. “We said the Lord’s Prayer to protect their souls I know this was meant to end the way it did. I don’t know the reason why, but we were meant to die today.”

The note also said that the children “got to do all of the things they wanted to do before they died,” including eating ice-cream and getting their nails done.

But the heartbreaking tragedy should not have come as a surprise. In 2006, Moore — who, according to her first husband, worked for Yale University — was convicted of abusing her 4-year-old daughter from that first marriage.

According to reports from Connecticut Department of Children and Families, the daughter and her older brother — then aged 9 — told investigators that Moore beat the little girl and her 3-year-old brother with a “happy stick” on a regular basis.

The “happy stick” was said to be a long mop handle with a smiley face drawn by Moore taped to one side, and a “sad face” facing the other.

As a result of the investigation and conviction, Moore lost her parental rights to the three kids. The two younger children were placed in the custody of the state, and the older boy was sent to live with his father.

But a year later, the mom remarried and had two more children — the two whom she is now believed to have killed because “they were in pain and now they’re in heaven,” her note said.

The Connecticut DCF said it is now investigating where it went wrong, to allow the deaths of the two children, allegedly at the hands of their own mother, LeRoya Moore.

[Images: East Haven Police Department, Facebook]