The Emporia Gazette

May 27, 2012

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Lorna Anderson Moore has been released on parole.

Bill Miskell, spokesman for the Kansas Department of Corrections, said the release happened this morning at the Topeka Work Release Center, a minimum-security prison where Moore had been held since April 24, 2006.

“I believe that she was picked up by family or friends...,” Miskell said about 8:15 a.m. today. “It’s been within the last hour.”

Moore was serving a life sentence for second-degree murder from Geary County District Court in the shooting death of her husband, Martin Anderson, in 1983. She also was serving a sentence from Lyon County District Court for criminal solicitation to commit first-degree murder in the death in 1983 of Sandra Bird, wife of Moore’s pastor and boss, Thomas P. Bird.

Miskell said Moore will be under supervision of the Hutchinson parole office.

“She has the standard conditions of supervision,” Miskell said.

Other conditions that may have been written into Moore’s personal parole plan are not public record, according to state and federal law. Those conditions could include, for example, mental health or substance abuse counseling. Moore’s parole officer will have the option of amending her plan if it is determined to be beneficial, Miskell said.

“Because she has a life sentence, she could be under supervision for life,” he said. “... (T)he parole officer, depending upon whether or not she complies with all the terms and conditions of supervision, can recommend a release from supervision sometime within the next two to five years.”

Moore was known as Lorna Anderson 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. Terry Moore, a former employee of a child welfare organization, has been identified in news reports as her husband.

Lorna Anderson Moore's original conviction was in connection with a plan to kill Sandra Bird. Tom Bird also was convicted of conspiracy and criminal solicitation to commit first-degree murder and, in 1985, he was convicted of first-degree murder in his wife’s death.

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 served less than 19 years on the murder and solicitation charges involving his wife. He was paroled June 14, 2004 and went to live in Wyandotte county with his wife, Terri, a school teacher whom he married while in prison.

Bird told interviewers on "City Confidential," an A&E network program, that he had been working as a marriage counselor since his release.