A Montgomery Village mother who was acquitted of murder and involuntary manslaughter charges connected to the 2022 death of her 17-year-old child, was sentenced Thursday to 30 years in prison on neglect charges related to her surviving six children, according to the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office.
Cynthia Moore, 42, was convicted in October and sentenced Thursday in the Montgomery County Circuit Court in Rockville by Judge Jill Cummins, who suspended all but 21 years to serve in prison. Moore will also serve five years of supervised probation.
Cynthia Moore’s public defenders, Roberto Martinez and Clare Carlson, said Sunday in a statement emailed to Bethesda Today that Moore “never intended for the tragedy here.”
“She made misguided decisions based on her own tragic life experiences and without support from Mr. Moore, who was able-bodied and capable of working to help, or from the systems that should have provided oversight and assistance,” the statement said.
The attorneys said the states attorney’s office “wanted and obtained an exceptionally harsh sentence” for Moore despite her being acquitted of the murder charge.
Moore’s husband and the father of the children, Dominique Moore, was convicted in November after he pleaded guilty to six counts of child neglect. He is expected to be sentenced on March 27.
The parents separately went before the Montgomery County Circuit Court in Rockville in early October and November. Cynthia and Dominique Moore faced up to 30 years in prison, the state’s attorney’s office said in a November statement.
Police and first responders were called to the home in the 9400 block of Quill Place in Montgomery Village on May 10, 2022 for an “unresponsive” teen. They found the family and their six other children, the youngest of whom was 4 years old, had been “living in squalor” with toilets that did not appear functional and animal feces on the floor throughout the home, police said in a May 2023 press release. The Moores were arrested in May 2023.
On Oct. 16, 2024, Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Jill Cummins convicted Cynthia Moore, on six counts of child neglect of her six children following a seven-day bench trial – a trial in which there is no jury and charges are handled by a judge. On Monday, Cummins accepted the guilty plea of Dominique Moore, 46, on six counts of child neglect, according to the state’s attorney’s office.
In the case of the murder and manslaughter charges, Cummins ruled on Oct. 16 that the charges for each parent were not supported by Maryland law, according to The Washington Post. She noted that the cause of the 17-year-old’s death was an “essential element” to convict the parents, and cited testimony from physicians who could not definitively determine the cause of death, the Post reported.
“There was no evidence presented that had [the 17-year-old] received some medical care, whether it had been six months, three months, one month, one week or one day prior to his death, that he would have survived,” Cummins said in her verdict, according to the Post.
State’s Attorney John McCarthy said in a November statement emailed to Bethesda Today that his office planned to ask the judge to go “well above the sentencing guidelines” set for the case during the upcoming sentencing hearings. He added the guidelines “do not reflect the true magnitude of what was done by these parents.”
McCarthy described the Moores case as “one of the worst cases of child neglect that we have seen in the county.”
“Under the guise of homeschooling, the parents were able to operate without any outside supervision or intervention from the community. The children’s basic human needs and necessities went ignored,” he said.
‘Unsafe and unsanitary’ living conditions
On May 10, 2022, Montgomery County police officers and Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service personnel responded to the 9400 block of Quill Place near North Creek Community Center in Montgomery Village for a report of a “working code in progress.” According to police spokesperson Shiera Goff, the term is used to describe a person in cardiac arrest who has stopped breathing and who someone is attempting to resuscitate.
When officers arrived at the home, they discovered that the Moores’ 17-year-old child unresponsive. According to charging documents, Cynthia Moore told officers that the teen had multiple sclerosis and diabetes and had been dealing with the side effects of COVID-19. In addition, the mother said the teen had not seen a doctor since the age of 15.
Cynthia Moore said she had given the teen some apple juice and they sounded as if they were “trying to cough up … mucus but was having a difficult time doing so,” charging documents state. The teen’s eyes rolled back and they collapsed, the mother told police, according to charging documents.
Paramedics who responded performed CPR on the 17-year-old and pronounced the teen dead at the scene.
A responding officer noted in a report that the teen “appeared emaciated” and an autopsy later said that the body weighed 79 pounds clothed. According to charging documents, the pathologist wrote the teen was not provided with the necessary “adequate care” for their medical condition.
The charging documents also detailed the “unsafe and unsanitary” conditions found at the Moores’ home. An officer at the scene noted animal feces on the floor throughout the house, electricity not functioning in “most areas of the home,” a refrigerator with little food inside, non-functioning toilets, windows covered with blankets and not enough beds for all family members, according to charging documents.
More details about the neglect were uncovered during Cynthia Moore’s trial. The Washington Post reported the refrigerator was kept locked and the children were not taught how to bathe, according to testimony during the trial.
“This court finds that the children had all been socially isolated and kept inside the home 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and were intentionally precluded by their mother from having personal interactions with anyone other than their siblings and parents,” Cummins said in her verdict for Cynthia Moore, according to the Post. “These children have been traumatized by the actions and inactions of this defendant.”
According to charging documents, the six children were removed by Child Welfare Services and placed into foster care following the police investigation of the 17-year-old’s death.
Nearly a year after police were called to the Moores’ home, the Moores were arrested and later indicted on charges of second-degree depraved-heart murder, involuntary manslaughter and child neglect.
