Man suspected of killing homeless woman to stand trial next week

Jen Lawson

Friday, April 8, 2005 | 8:48 a.m.

Mary Louise Moore was known among the homeless in downtown Las Vegas as the white-haired woman with the little white dog.

The 69-year-old former legal secretary from California got by on monthly Social Security checks of $860, which she used to buy coffee and cigarettes, sometimes a room or a doggie treat for Pooh Bear. She gambled away the rest of her money, according to some who knew her.

Ronald Lennon, 51, became acquainted with Moore while working at the City Mission shelter doing odd jobs in exchange for an apartment and weekly stipend, authorities say.

He was later fired, and on Aug. 1, 2003, Moore lent him a hand by renting a double room for a week for them at the Town Lodge Motel on North Seventh Street at Ogden Avenue, Metro Police said.

Eight days later a motel maid found Moore's body. She had been strangled with her own white shoelace and a motel curtain cord, police said, the contents of her handbag were dumped and her Social Security money was missing.

Lennon was a suspect from the start, but he didn't surface until February, when he was featured on America' Most Wanted.

He surrendered to authorities in Alabama and was brought back to Nevada on March 25, where he was booked into the Clark County Detention Center.

Lennon faces a preliminary hearing next week.

"I can't imagine what prompted him to take her life," said Linda Lera Randle-El, an advocate for the homeless who knew Moore and Lennon.

"What makes a person do something like that to someone who appeared to be helping him?"

After Moore's second husband died her only companion was Pooh Bear. Lera Randle-El spotted them sitting on a blanket in Circle Park on Maryland Parkway in 2002 and at first she didn't realize the woman was homeless. She said Moore was a proud woman and always tried to look clean, usually wearing her hair in a French twist.

Lera Randle-El said she got Moore into the South Cove apartments on Fremont Street, where she stayed a few months.

"I'm not sure what happened, but she said she had to get out of there," Lera Randle-El said. She helped Moore move her things out, and Moore went to live in Jaycee Park, then Freedom Park. "She asked me if I would check on her."

As an elderly woman, Moore was particularly vulnerable and Lera Randle-El did try to keep tabs on her, she said, asking around to see if anyone had spotted the little woman with the white dog and trying to find a place for her to stay.

It was difficult, though, she said, because of Pooh Bear -- Moore would rather sleep in the park than give up her dog.

After a few months Lera Randle-El said she found a bed for her in a group home for single women that accepted pets behind the Boulevard Mall. A group home worker came to the park to pick up Moore.

"I can still visualize her riding away from Freedom Park in a convertible, waving at me," Lera Randle-El said. "She was so excited."

Moore only stayed there a week.

"She probably got her check and said she was going to try one more time to make lady luck her friend," she said.

Around the same time, Lennon was fired from his job at the shelter after some pornographic fliers and gambling receipts were found in his desk, according to America's Most Wanted.

Moore and Lennon, who met at the shelter at some point, apparently ran into each other again.

With Pooh Bear now dead, Moore was alone, and on Aug. 1, 2003, she paid for the room at the Town Lodge Motel, police said.

Moore told the manager that Lennon was a friend she was helping and he was going to stay with her for some of that week, the police report says. The manager told police he saw them walk into the room but never saw either of them after that.

In the room where her body was found, detectives found an empty envelope from a Social Security check and a Jack in the Box receipt, they noted in their report, which turned out to be strong clues.

Police obtained the restaurant's security video and spotted Moore with a man that a friend identified as Lennon.

Detectives learned that Lennon bought a Greyhound bus ticket bound for Salt Lake City on Aug. 2, 2003 and that while unloading his belongings from a storage space he appeared impatient and anxious, the police report says. He took all he could carry and abandoned the rest.

In October of that year police said they discovered he began using his food stamp credit card in Reno, and he was tracked down at a homeless shelter there.

During an interview with detectives, he said he spent the day with Moore on Aug. 1 but didn't have any information on her death, the report says.

With no physical evidence linking him to Moore's murder, police said they let him go and later were told he had moved out of the shelter that night.

The case remained unsolved. A year later, in October of last year, detectives re-examined the evidence and noticed that although DNA testing had been performed on several pieces of evidence, police said Moore's fingernail clippings had not been tested.

Detectives correctly suspected the clippings may contain the skin cells of the suspect, assuming Moore fought her attacker, police said.

Two months later, in December, they received the results and found that some of Lennon's DNA was found under Moore's nails. Police issued a warrant for Lennon's arrest on charges of murder and robbery.

After the case was profiled on America's Most Wanted in February, Lennon surrendered to police in Troy, Alabama.

"This case is so sad," Lera Randle-El said. "It's kind of ironic that in death, the amount of attention and money spent on cases like this is more than she (Moore) had when she was alive."

Two other cases have been in the public eye recently in which homeless people were allegedly victimized.

Robert Neal Davis is facing the death penalty for fatally shooting Henry Bennett in July 1998 as the homeless man slept near the railroad tracks in North Las Vegas.

And Sunrise Hospital is being sued by the family of Rodolfo Anguiano, a homeless man who was refused treatment and taken outside, where he died in the grass. That trial began this week.