The former divorce attorney for an Ohio nurse has been indicted for her murder 12 years after the fact.
Aliza Sherman, 53, was found stabbed 11 times on the street outside Gregory Moore’s Cleveland law firm on March 24, 2013. While suspicions swirled around both Moore and her estranged husband, Dr. Sanford Sherman, no arrests were made. Moore did spend in jail after pleading guilty in 2017 to lying about where he was on the night Sherman was killed and what, at the time, were believed to be separate charges of calling in a fake bomb threat to the Cuyahoga County Old Courthouse, WKYC reported.
According to the 10-count indictment, released by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office, the scheme use telecommunications in a plot to kidnap Sherman began when Moore “and at least one other unnamed individual” found uot that the prosecutor’s office was investigating the fake bomb threats called into the court house “to delay court appearances he was scheduled to attend” in 2012 and early 2013.
“The purpose of Aliza Sherman’s kidnapping was to obstruct Judge Rosemary Grdina Gold from conducting the trial in the divorce case of Sanford Sherman v. Aliza Sherman,” which was set to begin on March 25, 2013, the indictment said. “This goal was designed to be achieved by causing Aliza Sherman (“Sherman”) to be unavailble to attend the proceedings due to serious physical harm and/or death.”
The divorce case was dismissed days after Sherman’s death.
The indictment details Moore’s setting up a meeting with Sherman at his law office and her subsequent attempts to reach him once she arrived. It lists multiple texts, and notes that Moore had disconnected his phone from the cellular network and connected it with a hotspot he had obtained from his law office.
Moore arrived at the office, but left again before Sherman arrived. He didn’t answer multiple texts after 5 p.m. that day, and then, after a final text saying she was going back to her car, “an individual who was either Moore or an unknown co-conspirator approached Sherman from E. 12 St., circled behind her, chased her from 55 Erieview to 75 Erieview, and then stabbed her over ten times before running eastbound on Hamilton Avenue through the E 12 St. intersection toward E. 17 St.”
Sherman was taken to a hospital, where she died.
Meanwhile, after the assault, Moore — his phone still connected to the hotspot and not the cellular network — resumed texting Sherman, asking where she was and for her to call him.
“At the time of these communications, Moore was not inside the Stafford Law Office yet Moore knew that Sherman was not there; Moore’s phone was still unable to receive calls yet Moore knew that Sherman was not calling him,” the indictment says. “Moore knew these things because he knew Sherman was incapacitated by the assault.”
Moore did return to the law office at about 7:30 p.m. and reconnected his phone back to the cell network, whre he made more calls to Sherman’s phone “designed to continue the creation of false evidence that Moore was unaware of Sherman’s assault,” the indictment says.
Moore was arrested by US Marshals in Round Rock, Texas, on Friday, WKYC said, and is now awaiting extradition to Ohio. He is charged with aggravated murder, two counts of kidnapping, conspiracy, and six additional counts of murder.
Sherman’s family members have not yet commented about the arrest, but Jan Lash, described as her best friend, told WOIO that she was “overwhelmed with relief that we are finally getting justice for Aliza in her unsolved murder.”
“She was my dearest friend and confidant,” Lash said. “I’ve always flet that Gregory Moore was involved with Aliza’s murder.”
Sherman’s husband, the doctor, died last year.
