An Emporia woman convicted in murder cases in Lyon and Geary counties is scheduled for a hearing in January before the Kansas Parole Board.
Lorna Anderson Eldridge Moore, now 53, was convicted of criminal solicitation to commit first-degree murder in 1985 in Lyon County District Court and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 1988 in Geary County District Court.
Moore has been in the Topeka Work Release Center, a minimum-security prison, since April 24. Public comments will be heard this month.
“Members of the Kansas Parole Board will travel to Wichita, Kansas City and Topeka, and they will hold public comment sessions at a public venue,” said Bill Miskill, spokesman for the Kansas Department of Corrections. “People can come in and comment on what they see as the suitability of a particular inmate for parole.”
Moore’s earliest possible release date is Feb. 1, 2007.
Moore’s name was Lorna Eldridge when she first was sentenced to prison for criminal solicitation in the death of Sandra Bird. She had married Randy Eldridge, a gospel singer from Hutchinson, in June of 1985, prior to her sentencing on Sept. 24, 1985. Their divorce was final on Jan. 17, 1990. She now is known as Lorna Gail Moore.
“... I don’t know where the Moore came from,” Miskill said. “If she did get married, that would be something we would not be in a position to talk about.”
Miskill said that Moore has been working in the private sector in the Topeka community since April of this year. On a typical workday, Moore leaves the work release center to go to her job, works the allotted hours and returns to the center. The name of her employer is not public information. Her paycheck from the private employer comes to the correctional facility, Miskill said, where funds are withheld for room and board and any court-ordered fees, fines and court costs, if those are applicable.
“And then there is a mandatory savings as well, which is accessible to the inmate only on release,” he said.
Moore’s original conviction was in connection with a plan to kill Sandra Bird, the wife of an Emporia minister, Thomas P. Bird. Bird was convicted in 1985 of first-degree murder in the death of his wife on July 17, 1983.
Moore had been part-time secretary at Bird’s church.
Sandra Bird was found near the wreckage of her Peugeot along the bank of the Cottonwood River at Rocky Ford Bridge southeast of Emporia. Her death initially was ruled accidental.
Moore pleaded guilty in 1988 to second-degree murder in the death of her husband, Martin Anderson, on Nov. 4, 1983. Anderson was shot in a field beside Kansas Highway 177 about five miles south of the intersection of Intertstate 70 and Highway177 in Geary County.
Anderson, as she was known then, told Geary County officers that she had become sick while driving her husband and four children back to Emporia from Manhattan. She said she pulled off the highway, went into the adjacent plowed field to vomit and subsequently lost the keys to the family van. When her husband went into the field to search for the keys, an unknown man shot and killed her husband. One of the Anderson children told sheriff’s officers then that she had seen the light from the gunshot but could not identify the shooter.
Anderson confessed to her role in the murder plot against her husband and named Tom Bird as the unknown man who killed Martin Anderson. Bird was acquitted of that first-degree murder charge in Geary County District Court.
Bird was paroled from the first-degree murder and criminal solicitation charges on June 14, 2004, after serving less than 19 years for the crimes, and went to live in Wyandotte County with his wife, Terri, a school teacher whom he married while he was in prison.
After his release, Bird told interviewers on “City Confidential,” an A&E network program, that he had been working as a marriage counselor since his release.
People who want to make comments about Moore’s potential parole may attend comment sessions scheduled at these dates and times: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Dec. 15, Historic Courthouse, third floor, 510 North Main St., Wichita; 10 a.m. to noon Dec. 18, City Hall, One McDowell Plaza, 701 North Seventh St., Kansas City, Kan.; and 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Dec. 22, Landon State Office Building, first floor, Room 106A, 900 SW Jackson St., Topeka.