BROOKLYN, NY – A notorious pimp, Somorie Moses, known for his extreme violence, has confessed to the murder of his girlfriend, who was also a prostitute, and to sex trafficking eight other women, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of New York. On January 13, 2017, Moses brutally killed Leondra Foster, 32, in their shared apartment. He then dismembered her body using a saw and knife. Four days later, he disposed of her torso and limbs at a sanitation site in the Bronx, New York.
The police later discovered Foster’s severed head, hands, and feet, including a foot with the name “Somorie” tattooed on it, in a deep freezer at Moses’ Brooklyn residence. Moses, now 47, pleaded guilty on September 15. He had previously been convicted of hiding a corpse and criminally negligent homicide but was acquitted of murder charges in a Brooklyn state court in 2019.
Despite being found guilty only of criminally negligent homicide and concealment of a corpse in his previous trial, Moses was rearrested on federal charges. He pleaded guilty to murder in the course of sex trafficking, marking the first conviction under this new federal statute. If not for this rearrest, he would have been eligible for parole in May 2022.
During his previous trial, Moses confessed to dismembering Foster’s remains but denied killing her. He admitted to earning money as a pimp for two decades and to physically abusing Foster. After Moses’ state trial, federal investigators found two individuals who were willing to testify that Moses had confessed Foster’s murder to them.
U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Breon Peace, stated that Moses is now fully accountable for exploiting women and girls, forcing them into prostitution, and then brutally murdering and dismembering one of his victims. Moses, also known by several aliases, now faces a sentence of 15 years to life in prison.
Since 2003, Moses had coerced many women into prostitution for his benefit through brutal beatings, rape, torture, and threats. He manipulated his victims with false promises of love and marriage before forcing them into prostitution. When one of his victims tried to leave prostitution, Moses tortured her with a Taser until she gave in. He also inflicted permanent scarring on another woman by slashing her arms and back, beating her with a belt, and then pouring lemon juice on her wounds.
Moses was previously convicted on felony charges for attempted promotion of prostitution and profiting from prostitution of a person under 16. He served time at New York’s Wyoming Correctional Facility in Attica between May 2007 and December 2009 for these charges and again at the Gouverneur Correctional Facility between September 2012 and January 2016 for criminal possession of a weapon.