On a chilly January afternoon in Frisco, Texas, Anna Moses pulled into her garage after a routine stop for a quesadilla on her way home from work. She had her mail in one hand, her purse nearby, and $300 in cash. She never made it inside the house. Someone was waiting for her.
The shooter fired first into her back, sending her crashing against her car. Then came three more shots over her heart. The final shot was fired into her neck at close range. When police found her, she was lying twisted on the garage floor, still wearing her coat and scarf on that cold day.
Eleven bullet casings were scattered around her body. This was not a burglary gone wrong. It was an execution, and the level of violence suggested the killer knew her personally. Anna was 42, a university administrator and former engineer and economist from Russia.
She had moved to Texas with her young son Eager after marrying Robert Moses, who adopted the boy and raised him as his own. The marriage eventually soured and ended in divorce, but the split seemed amicable. Robert still came by to help with household repairs. Anna was thriving, building a career, dating, and raising her son.
She seemed happy. But on January 14, when she failed to show up for work or a date with her boyfriend Henry Braxton, Henry called police for a welfare check. Eager let officers into the house. Everything looked normal until they opened the garage door and found his mother’s body.
Detective Brian Shudy and prosecutor Cynthia Walker took over the case. The crime scene told a clear story. Anna had stopped at her mailbox, then walked toward the house, her purse and food still in hand, when the killer ambushed her in the garage. The house alarm had been armed the morning of January 13 and never disarmed, meaning Anna never made it past the garage.
Her car was missing. Police recovered surveillance footage showing her leaving work at 5:07 p. m. , stopping at the drive-thru at 5:37, and passing a nearby school at 5:46.
Neighbor cameras caught a car approaching her house at 5:49. Investigators believed she was killed almost immediately after pulling into the garage around 5:50. The killer had likely been lying in wait. The first suspect was Henry, the boyfriend.
He had reported her missing and seemed cooperative during questioning, but when investigators left the interview room, surveillance showed him mumbling to himself, asking what he had done wrong. He hesitated when asked for a DNA sample. But his alibi held: security cameras at his daughter’s school placed his Jeep there from 6:00 to 7:00 p. m.
, the exact time of the murder. He could not have been at the school and the garage at the same time. Henry was ruled out. Then Anna’s car was found parked two blocks from her house.
Inside, detectives found a Red Bull can and a weathered cigarette butt. Anna did not smoke and kept her car spotless. There was also blood on the back seat and a fresh drop on the center console. Forensic testing revealed three DNA profiles: Anna’s, an unidentified male’s, and a mixture of Anna’s DNA with another unknown male’s.
None matched anyone in the database. The trail seemed to go cold. Investigators turned to Anna’s personal life. She had many admirers, and one stood out: Jerry, a poet who had published a book of poems dedicated to Anna, describing her as his muse.
He called and emailed her multiple times a day. When questioned, Jerry broke down, sobbing, and said it would be difficult for him to write poetry anymore because his muse was dead. He admitted he was married and said his wife knew about Anna. But his alibi checked out.
Toll tag records confirmed he left work at 5:00 p. m. and drove straight home, arriving around 6:00. He could not have reached Anna’s house during the murder window.
Another suspect was cleared. Anna’s mentor at the university, Dr. Wowski, a mathematics professor nearly 30 years her senior, also drew attention. He called her his little butterfly in Russian and admitted they had once kissed, though he said he ended it because of the age difference.
He had given Anna about $40,000 over time, plus a recent $6,000 gift, and had helped pay for Eager’s college. He was a smoker, matching the cigarette found in Anna’s car. But his toll records also matched his story: he arrived home at 5:45, and his DNA did not match any evidence from the crime scene. He was exonerated.
Back at square one, investigators executed a search warrant on Anna’s house and found a life insurance policy for $650,000, payable to Eager. The money would put Eager in a much better financial position than if Anna were alive. Eager was brought in for questioning. He was oddly flat, showing little emotion.
He asked if his mother was all in one piece, a strange question that caught investigators off guard. And on the day she was killed, he told detectives he had been in class, gone to the campus bistro, and returned to class. Surveillance and classmate accounts confirmed every step. Eager was eliminated.
But Eager mentioned that his father, Robert, was managing Anna’s assets. Investigators learned that the day after Anna died, Robert moved back into the house she had received in the divorce. Her body was barely cold. Robert had been struggling financially, renting a room in a house with several other men, drowning in debt.
Meanwhile, Anna had flourished. Friends said Robert used to tell her she would never make it on her own. There was a history of violence: Anna had once shown up at a friend’s house crying, with a broken wrist, after Robert pushed her down the stairs. Medical records confirmed the injury.
Robert Moses became the prime suspect. When detectives brought him in, they noticed a fresh scratch on his right hand above the knuckle. His explanation was long, rambling, and rehearsed, the kind of over-answered response that suggested he was making it up. He agreed to give a DNA sample.
He claimed he had been at work the day of the murder, then at home, then at a restaurant. But his workplace said he had barely been coming in and was about to be fired. His roommates could not confirm he was home at the time of the murder. Restaurant surveillance showed him arriving at 7:00 p.
m. , nearly an hour after Anna was killed. For that missing hour, there was no alibi. The DNA results came back.
The blood found in Anna’s car was a match for Robert Moses. The stain on the center console contained a mixture of his DNA and Anna’s. That tied him directly to the crime scene. The pieces fell into place.
On January 13, Robert entered Anna’s garage and waited. When she pulled in at 5:50, she got her mail, closed the garage door, and was shot. He then moved her car two blocks away, likely disposed of the gun in pieces or in a sewer, and went to a restaurant to build an alibi. The waitress recalled him saying it was the greatest grilled cheese sandwich he had ever eaten, a comment that struck investigators as the adrenaline-fueled confidence of a man who believed he had gotten away with murder.
The Red Bull can and cigarette butt in Anna’s car, along with the second set of unidentified male DNA, looked like an attempt to throw investigators off by planting random evidence. On February 26, 2015, Robert Moses was arrested for the first-degree murder of his ex-wife. He was emotional at the arrest, but the jury was not swayed. They convicted him and sentenced him to life in prison.
The timeline had been the key. Evidence ruled out suspect after suspect, leaving only one person with a gaping hole in his story. In the end, justice caught up with Robert Moses, and Anna, the woman who had come to America, built a new life, and was beloved by so many, finally got the justice she deserved.