LEAGUE CITY, Texas — A jury needed just two hours Monday to find a woman guilty of strangling her mother and dumping her body in an oil field.
The jury of eight men and four women is expected today to sentence Erin Ashlyn Moffatt, 20, on her conviction of murder and tampering with physical evidence in the Sept. 2, 2008, slaying of Jana S. Moffatt.
"Don’t fall for the cons of a stripper and a drug addict, because that’s what she is," Prosecutor Bill Reed told the jury before it began deliberating. "The last thing Jana S. Moffatt saw was her only daughter, killing her."
Moffatt’s defense team of Lynette Briggs and G. Byron Fulk blamed Moffatt’s ex-boyfriend, Michael Corey Lewis, 23, and produced an inmate witness, Robert Wayne Jones, 47, who testified Lewis shook Jana Moffatt until she didn’t move anymore.
Reed reminded the jury of Jones’ criminal history.
"You’ve got a guy with manslaughter on his record from Harris County, he’s a sex offender and he was in the Galveston County Jail for aggravated robbery," Reed said, of Jones, who first tried to bargain his way to a lighter sentence for snitching.
"I guess the aggravated robber slash sex offender slash killer must not be that reliable," Reed told the jury.
The defense called Collier Cole, a clinical psychologist, who testified Erin Moffatt abused drugs and was bipolar, among other ailments.
Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Mueller, who prosecuted the case with Reed, told the jury Moffatt had selective memory, refusing to recall anything on the stand that didn’t favor her.
"After sitting in prison for 18 months, she miraculously remembered she didn’t kill her mother," Mueller said. "She got up there and lied to your face. Erin is a stripper and when she needs extra money, she prostitutes herself out."
Although Moffatt confessed to police she strangled her mother after trying to stab a syringe in her neck, Moffatt recanted her story, saying she was high on drugs, hadn’t slept or eaten and was off her medication during the interview.
Although the state claimed Moffatt strangled her mother with a cord, Fulk said evidence pointed to manual strangulation. Ligature strangulation usually produces soft tissue injuries, he said.
Reed reminded the jury that Jana Moffatt’s body was badly decomposed, having been dumped in a Brazoria County oil field.
The same jury that convicted Moffatt is expected to rule today on her punishment, which ranges from five to 99 years or life in prison on the murder conviction and from probation to 10 years on the tampering with physical evidence conviction.
Moffatt said she wants to make something of her life if she ever leaves prison.
"I want to go to school and be something my son can be proud to look up to, not trash like I was before," Moffatt testified.
