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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Guilty plea entered in woman”s 1987 killing

It took a lifetime to achieve justice for Tina Phillips: her lifetime.

The second of two men who killed Phillips in 1987 at a Spokane park pleaded guilty Monday in Spokane County Superior Court, nearly 18 years after Phillips died at age 18.

Lloyd Ray Moore Jr., 36, pleaded no contest — which the law considers a guilty plea — to first-degree manslaughter in Phillips’ death while she was being robbed of drugs and money.

Moore had been charged with first-degree murder, but Deputy Prosecutor Mark Cipolla said the reduction was “appropriate” because of the difficulty of prosecuting such an old case.

The deal called for Moore to get 31 months in prison, the low end of his standard range, but Judge Neal Rielly gave him a maximum-standard 41 months, or about 3 1/2 years. Moore sighed and rubbed his forehead.

Before the sentence was handed down, Rielly heard an impassioned letter from county victim-witness advocate Mary Strand. In the letter, read by victim-witness advocate volunteer Deborah Werr, Strand noted that Phillips was a prostitute from a troubled home.

“She took to the streets in search of something, a sense of belonging perhaps,” Strand wrote. “But what she found was a cold, insensitive society that recognized little or no value in her. What she found was betrayal and death at the hands of people she thought to be her friends.

“What she found was that not even the brutality of her death could lift her in society’s eyes to a position deserving an adequate murder investigation at the time of her death.”

None of Phillips’ relatives was in court, but her friend from Deer Park High School, Spokane resident Brent Hutchins, was there. Hutchins said he and his sister, Ronda, befriended Phillips despite her lifestyle.

“She just wanted to know what normal life was, and I filled that for her,” Hutchins said. “I notice her family isn’t here today to represent her, but I am. I do care about her, and she was a good person.”

Strand’s letter praised Deputy Prosecutor Cipolla and Spokane police Detective Kip Hollenbeck, who stumbled onto the case and reopened it. Hollenbeck has said previously that he found the case “very solvable,” and thought “someone dropped the ball” in 1987.

Moore and co-defendant Fidel August Hudson, 40, were suspects from the get-go. Hudson was charged with first-degree murder in 1987, but the charge was dropped about three months later.

The first-degree murder charge was filed again this year, and Hudson pleaded guilty last month to second-degree murder. Superior Court Judge Sam Cozza sentenced him to 14 1/2 years in prison.

According to court documents, based on new interviews with the defendants and witnesses who implicated them, Hudson and Moore killed Phillips while robbing her of drugs and money. They left her body where she died, near the playground toys in Grant Park at Ninth Avenue and Ivory Street.

Moore and Hudson gave Hollenbeck and Detective Marty Hill differing accounts of the crime, in which Phillips was stabbed in the chest with Moore’s knife and was strangled with a foot on her throat.

Assistant Public Defender Richard Sanger bridled at Strand’s letter, which he called “an emotional screed” written by someone who knew nothing about the case.

Sanger said Moore has given different accounts of the crime, but has consistently claimed not to have been involved in killing Phillips even though his knife was used. He said Moore has had a rough life since Phillips’ death, hounded by police warning women not to date him and attacked by other people who blamed him for Phillips’ death.

Moore was even shot in the arm because of suspicions about his guilt, Sanger said without elaboration.

Sanger said Moore has worked as a house painter, and has a wife and two step-children.