A DNA hit led to a murder charge in a January 1999 woman’s stabbing death inside her second-floor Gary apartment, court records show.
Orvall M. McMoore, now 57, of Chicago, was charged July 30 in 27-year-old Lisa Anderson’s death. She was discovered on Jan. 12, 1999 after her mother hadn’t heard from her.
Anderson, who was unemployed, had been out the day before making job applications, Gary Police Detective Cpl. Louis Donald said then. Her mother had been unable to reach her Tuesday, so she went to the apartment where she made the discovery, according to Post-Tribune archives.
Donald also told the paper Anderson’s blue Ford Escort was stolen afterward. A TV, microwave and two lamps were also missing, according to the affidavit.
The case was unsealed Aug. 16 after McMoore was extradited from Cook County, Illinois.
Hobart Police Captain Nick Wardrip of the FBI’s Gang Response Investigative Team (GRIT) wrote the cold case picked up after DNA from one of Anderson’s fingernails was linked in August 2020 to McMoore.
Gary Police responded in 1999 to Anderson’s apartment at 501 Madison St., Her mother and brother Larry Mitchell found her body after they were let in by a janitor. They last saw her on Saturday, Jan. 9, 1999.
Her mother Johnnie Anderson told cops her daughter was lying on her back in bed and still had a knife sticking out of her neck. She also was stabbed in the face and her hands had stab marks as if she was defending herself.
The mother said she pulled the knife out and laid it on the bed. The Lake County Coroner’s Office later determined Lisa died from stab wounds to her neck and chest. Her death was ruled a homicide.
She was in a bra and nude from the waist down, the affidavit states. One sock was on her left foot, while jeans and her underwear were around her right ankle. She was still wearing a sock and shoe on her right foot.
The apartment was “ransacked.”
An officer wrote there were no signs of forced entry, but a violent scene. Cops found blood splattered all over the apartment, down the hall and stairwell.
Drawers were dumped out, a wall was “caved in,” and a chair was broken.
Gary Police told the Post-Tribune in 1999 that neighbors hadn’t had many clues.
By 2020, McMoore was on parole in Illinois.
In a Sept. 24, 2020 police interview in Chicago, McMoore told investigators he worked as a cook and lived in Gary around 1993 or 1994 and 2001. In the late 1990s, he smoked marijuana and used cocaine, he told police.
McMoore said he didn’t recognize Anderson’s photo, before admitting she dated his friend on-and-off at the time. The friend lived next door to his aunt back then, he said.
He only saw Anderson when he hung out or worked with his friend, McMoore said. Her apartment building, 501 Madison, was a “danger building” because people did drugs there, he said.
He was never in a relationship with her, he said. The friend’s brother told him Anderson had been murdered a day later, McMoore said.
McMoore denied killing her to police.
During the interview, investigators took a DNA swab. In the end, McMoore’s DNA was linked to a couple of Anderson’s fingernails.
The friend, her ex-boyfriend, told investigators in December 2020 they broke up about two years before her death.
He hadn’t talked to her for about six months, he said.
McMoore worked with him and his brother. Back then, McMoore cleaned up construction sites for him, the man said. McMoore didn’t have a car.
He thought McMoore might have been in prison around the time Anderson died.
A Gary Post-Tribune police blotter dated Jan. 12, 1999 notes a Lisa Anderson reported stolen items on the 500 block of Madison St. It is unclear if it was the same person.