American newsfigure whose life careened out of control through marital problems and alcohol. She faced ten years in prison and a half million dollars in fines for providing a gun for her 14-year-old son, a gun he used to commit murder.
The daughter of a laborer and a housewife, Mary managed to accumulate a spiral of disaster. She married Earl Grove in Lompoc, CA in October 1963. After 14 years, they went through an angry, bitter divorce in which she lost custody of their two kids amid allegations of excessive drinking and abuse. Earl said she had not worked for the last three years, hit the kids and had men stay overnight for boozy parties.
In April 1981, Mary married a trucker, Robert Lee Moore, five years younger than she. Their son Bobby had been born in June 1979. They separated in 1982 and divorced 24 October 1985. Bobby Sr. was killed in a trucking accident 9 November 1985. Mary had a job in a nursing home but she filed for bankruptcy after going into debt to pay for Bobby Sr.’s funeral.
Son Earl had jail time for theft, forgery and burglary and daughter Tina was in jail in 1984 and 1985 for unlawful entry and grand theft. After getting out of jail in 1989, Earl got a job in the nursing home. He was convicted of raping a 77-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s who was a resident.
Mary and her second son, Bobby Moore, lived in a series of apartments in Boise, Idaho, where Bobby worked on his rap sheet, accumulating a juvenile record. With steady drinking, Mary was often out of work. As Bobby was 14, he could not legally own a gun, so his mom and her friend, Lee Roy Wiley, bought him a weapon “for his protection.”
Early on the morning of 20 January 1994, Bobby shot a police officer twice in the face as he was checking a car on the school parking lot, New Plymouth, killing him. Mary and Lee Roy faced charges that they obtained the gun for Bobby in a trial on 3 May 1994 and Bobby’s trial was scheduled for 8 August 1994.