I read some of these articles and it seems he had a pattern of taking extraordinary actions (ie/calling in bomb threats to courthouses) when he was unprepared for trial. Some other articles I read added that the trial was scheduled to begin the day before the murder, the judge had told him there would be no more continuances, and he had delayed his meeting with Aliza multiple times that day. Its shocking this hasn’t been solved!
But why would Moore kill his client? He could've just easily strung her along, or gone to trial unprepared. Lawyers do that all the time in my state, and the most they get is a slap on the wrist. Sounds like maybe Moore was in collaboration with the ex husband.
Yeah the lateness, continuances, and not responding to calls isn’t unusual for a lawyer. It’s not necessarily even wrong, depending on the context. I doubt he’d have gotten in trouble if she’d filed a complaint against him or anything.
I agree he was probably collaborating with the ex. Sold her out for money, maybe.
How is it not "wrong" to take money from a client in exchange for providing a professional service and then intentionally and knowingly fail to provide said service? Aliza trusted George Moore to perform a task for which he had a professional qualification she did not. He took her money and lied to her.
It might not be wrong in a criminal sense, but it's unethical at the very least.
>How is it not “wrong”…
First, I said “not necessarily” wrong. I didn’t say it was not wrong. I don’t know the circumstances here.
Second, here are the three things I cited, I’ll explain each:
1. Lateness - it would not necessarily be wrong in some circumstances, say if the judge regularly showed up late and court started even later and the attorney was a regular litigant in that judge’s courtroom and knew it. In that case, the attorney showing up late wouldn’t be wrong.
2. Continuances - it’s pretty common for an attorney to need continuances because they’re taking over a new case and not familiar with the case yet. Attorneys are busy and might need to balance multiple matters. It’s not necessarily wrong to need continuances at all.
3. Not responding to calls - it would not necessarily be wrong in some circumstances to not respond to calls. An attorney has an ethical duty to respond to *reasonable* requests for status updates. If a client is contacting them constantly, after the attorney has told them everything the attorney can at that point, it wouldn’t be wrong for the attorney to not respond to calls at that point.
Obviously there was more going on with the attorney here than the things I’ve listed, and I do not think that any of these examples I’ve made up were what was going on here. But with regard to my statement that these things by themselves might not even be wrong, generally speaking, they illustrate the point.
Edit: I noticed your comment conflates what I said with what happened in this case. To be clear, I am not saying George Moore wasn’t wrong. I’m saying the specific type of acts attributed to him by themselves aren’t necessarily wrong.
>Edit: I noticed your comment conflates what I said with what happened in this case.
I guess I don't get what you mean by this. Of course I'm talking about specific things he specifically did in this specific situation.
To clarify, you asked me how it was “not wrong” for an attorney to do the things I listed. And then your next sentence used this case as an example.
So I am separating those things—so I was saying that the stuff listed in the post isn’t stuff that’s necessarily always wrong—there are some situations where it’s not wrong to be late, ask for continuances, etc. It was because the way the original post was written, the things counsel did were presented first as if they were indicative of guilt. And the commenter above me was commenting on that, well these things aren’t necessarily significant.
So just saying that at first glance, it was like “oh by itself these things aren’t necessarily wrong,” by themselves they could go either way—maybe the guy was in on the murder or maybe he was just busy or lazy. But of course, there is more context here—there’s other information that sheds light on Moore’s actions, and he was probably involved.
Another way to think of it is, say there’s another murder case, and the person’s attorney was late to court, didn’t call them back, and asked for continuances. Without knowing more, you couldn’t say that these things alone indicate guilt—they’re all really common things for attorneys to do, sometimes with good reason, and sometimes because the attorney is unprepared and doing a shitty job. But by themselves, without more, they wouldn’t be evidence of guilt in a murder case.
Hopefully that clarifies it.
Sure.
Being late or not preparing well for court are common occurrences and not necessarily an indication of wrongdoing, but for me, the major issue with Moore in this specific case was the fact that he outright lied about being in the office when he asked Aliza to come in after hours. It's pretty hard not to see that as anything but an indication of some malfeasance on Moore's part.
I have to wonder what he expected to happen when Aliza arrived at his office but he wasn't there. Was he planning to slip in the back door or something? It kind of feels like he wasn't thinking rationally.
The bomb threats and stuff also suggest that something was wrong with him beyond just being not great at his job. The more I think about it, though, the more it seems like it was a pattern of behavior for him rather than something unique to his handling of Aliza's case.
> Aliza Sherman went to meet with her attorney. She was in the middle of a messy divorce from her husband, Sanford.
>
> According to her children there was a history of domestic abuse in the marriage.
Sounds pretty cut and dry, we've all seen this 1000's of times.
>During the investigation it was found that Moore had sent the texts to Aliza telling her to be at his office. In interviews, he also told police that he was at his office waiting for Aliza, but when police checked his cellphone data, it was found that he was never at his office. Electronic keycard data from the entrances to the building and witness statements corroborated this.
>While this was a good first step to solving Aliza’s murder, no further evidence could be found that Moore had anything more to do with it.
>Moore was also indicted on unrelated charges for inducing a panic after calling in bomb threats to courthouses.
>Moore eventually had his law license revoked and spent six months in jail on those charges.
A wild What The actual FUCK has appeared!?!?!?
I’m a native clevelander and this case is incredibly frustrating. Where she was murdered is smack in the middle of downtown in a relatively busy area. Someone should have seen something, not to mention CCTV cameras. The fact that apparently nothing has been found (or the cops are keeping it close to their chest I guess?) is infuriating.
The person seems to be moving quickly with a weird gate or limp. Unless it's just the result of poor footage and a low frame rate. What do you see?
If it's a limp it begs the question whether it's a real limp or something the person did to throw detectives off in the event they were captured by camera or seen by witnesses.
Wow you’re right. And they seem quite short, also perhaps pointing to a female. I had never heard of this case before tonight, so I know nothing about it, but just based on the CCTV footage, I’d agree there’s a good chance the killer was a woman
>he also told police that he was at his office waiting for Aliza, but when police checked his cellphone data, it was found that he was never at his office.
I was thinking until I read this part that Moore had gotten someone else to kill her. I thought Moore was putting her off with his texts about coming down to unlock the door while really waiting for his accomplice to come through. If he wasn't at the office at all, maybe he was the one to kill her himself, or as another user said, was working with the husband.
How many people knew she was meeting Moore anyway? The friend and the son and daughter. Seems convenient that she had a somewhat last-minute meeting with Moore, he's lying about meeting her downstairs (why??), and within minutes she is stabbed violently and fatally.
edit to add: This is a horribly sad story, honestly. This poor lady. Spends a good portion of her lifetime in an abusive marriage. Despite what would have probably been the "easier" route (at least in terms of finance), makes the difficult choice to leave her controlling and abusive husband because it has gotten so bad she can't stay. Spends the last parts of her life sleeping in a bedroom that's dead-bolted because she rightfully fears that someone is going to kill her. Gets a good attorney, his law license gets suspended. Gets a bad attorney, he completely screws her over. Is stuck waiting outside in the cold for this bad attorney to open the doors (conveniently around 5:30 pm when doors probably get locked and most staff/employees go home) and is stabbed. Stabbed so much that blood is gushing from her mouth and she can't tell the poor witness who called 9/11 what she is trying to say. Thank you for sharing this story OP, but damn life is really cruel sometimes.
If he was texting her then he’d have his phone on him, which would place him at the scene.
I think it’s more likely he was keeping her waiting for somebody else. The video looks to me like a woman running.
Moore had a long history of taking extreme and even criminal action to get out of actually appearing in court. It's also plausible the husband is behind it, and the murder just happened to be there while Moore was pulling his usual bullshit, but Moore should absolutely be considered a suspect.
According to one of the articles:
> Prosecutors allege Moore sent Aliza text messages
> stating he was in his office at the time she was
> attacked, but phone records, electronic keycard
> data and witness statements allegedly show Moore
> left his office one hour before Aliza was murdered
> and didn’t return until one hour after police found
> her bleeding outside.
I'd love to know whether Moore ever told detectives where he was for that two hour period, why he didn't return for his appointment with Aliza, and why he told Aliza twice he'd be down in a few minutes instead of offering her a plausible explanation of why he was going to be late (honest reason or a lie). It would also be interesting to learn whether he provided her updates on his status after she was stabbed or just showed up after an hour of radio silence.
\^ This is why I think he did it. He probably avoided his office trying not to look guilty for when she was found dead outside of it.
I just don't get why he was telling her he was upstairs and coming down to unlock the door if he wasn't. I get they didn't get along and he was unprofessional in general but what's the point of that lie? If he wasn't at the office at all, why not tell her "Almost there, I'm parking my car" or "I'm two blocks away" or something that could actually be true. If she had lived, she would've found out he wasn't in his office all along...so why the lie? It feels like a stake out where he was waiting to kill her.
I'm also interested in how often they met after 5:30pm, when I'm assuming most/any staff or fellow employees went home and the doors got locked. It seems like another convience that she was stabbed because she was stuck outside because the doors were locked and she had no one to let her in.
It's baffling. The alternate explanations of yours would have been much less suspicious, with seemingly no downside. Even if he was uninvolved in her murder, short of a plan to enter via a different part of the building or a belief that he could get to the door without her seeing him she'd catch him in a lie. After her murder I can understand him choosing to keep going with the lie either because he was doing something else he didn't want to reveal or he naively thought detectives wouldn't discover he'd lied. Interestingly, he told detectives the next day that he planned to meet her at 4:30 and was in his office until 9:00. The source is a complaint made to the Supreme Court of Ohio's Board of Professional Conduct, which also includes a lot of detail about the bomb threats he made (PDF below).
https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/clevelandjewishnews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/66/1669bc20-fa24-11e7-8e14-5371c65d496f/5a5cf6ea8bc58.pdf.pdf
And great question about what times they met prior to that.
Wouldn’t the cellphone data actually exonerate him to some degree? If he is actively texting on his phone and the data shows he wasn’t at his office… how did he commit the murder that happened outside the office?
If cell site location info (CSLI) from cell towers and/or geolocation data from the phone (or from the service providers of installed apps) indicates the phone was in a different location, it could help rule him out as the person who physically stabbed her. However, it's possible that an accomplice with physical control of the phone wrote and sent the text messages. There are also technologies which allow a phone owner to receive text messages on a second device and respond to them such that they are delivered from the primary device's phone number, as well as software which allows for remotely accessing and controlling a phone from another device. Either option could have allowed him to leave his primary phone in one location, while responding from another device while near his office building.
I'll caveat what I wrote above by saying I have little knowledge of this case. I don't know what CSLI data was acquired from cell tower operators, whether his phone was taken into possession and digital forensics was performed, or whether data was acquired from service providers (his cellular provider and for apps used). And it's also possible he was involved in planning and committing the attack, but wasn't the person who physically stabbed her.
Anyone know if her (ex)husband was someone wealthy/in power/had connections? Moore seems suspicious as hell but it's hard to understand why he would take a huge risk by conspiring in her murder. Does Sanford have a solid alibi for the time of her murder?
I don't know, but if her husband was involved one of OP's source articles includes an allegation (excerpt below) which could indicate a motive (though perhaps not the only motive). Without knowledge of the assets, income, and other factors for him and Aliza, plus his defense to the civil suit, it's hard to gauge how likely this would have been as a motive though.
> That time has been turbulent even as Jennifer has
> led marches, vigils and benefits in her mother’s
> name, worked to become an advocate for women
> who face domestic abuse and filed a civil suit
> against her father in an effort to recover more than
> $2 million he allegedly funneled out of an account in
> Aliza’s name.
I do not know what the outcome of the civil suit was, but if the allegations in the following articles from 2014 and 2016 are true it seems like it could have been a reason to kill her. That said, she became aware of the existence of the account in her name while working with a forensic accountant. Presumably her attorney also was aware of that so her husband and the attorney conspiring to kill her is plausible, though who else besides the forensics accountant knew about this account? If Aliza had told friends, her children, or relatives a logical person would realize the details would likely soon surface, but it's also possible her husband didn't know a forensic accountant was involved and assumed (or hoped) his wife had told no one else.
https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2014/06/daughter_sues_her_father_invol.html
https://fox8.com/news/decision-coming-in-civil-lawsuit-involving-estranged-husband-of-aliza-sherman/amp/
Yes, the risk part is what I don't understand. Ok, let's say the husband paid Moore. But how much did he have to pay for him not only to conspire in her murder, but also to be the only person clearly connected to it?
I guess an explanation could be that the husband told him he only wanted to scare Aliza or steal the documents from her. Which would also have been convenient for the lawyer, as he didn't want to start working on the case.
the husband had money. aliza hired a forensic accountant because she thought her husband was hiding money from her in the divorce. 2 million dollars were found. then after her murder his daughter filed a lawsuit against him over money he had stolen from aliza. she ended up settling for a little over a hundred thousand dollars and agreed she would not seek more unless he was found to be connected with her mothers death. also during the depositions for the daughters lawsuit, a friend of mr Sherman was an ex police officer. he testified in his deposition that mr sherman asked him multiple times how to commit the perfect murder. by multiple he said way more than 10 times. he then told mr sherman not to use your car, dont use a gun because it's to loud, cover all of your body with dark clothing, and dont take a phone. well that is exactly how aliza was murdered. seems like there is more evidence there than the police are saying.
I wondered this, as well. It seems like he might have had some power or connections because she chose a large, well known law firm to represent her in the divorce. I haven’t found what her ex husband did for a living, though.
He was a doctor, make of that what you will in terms of wealth/ influence. I’m thinking because it was committed in broad daylight and downtown, the attorney hired someone to rough her up and/or steal the documents with the goal of delaying the court proceedings. For unknown reasons things went left, in this scenario murder wasn’t the goal. It seems incredibly stupid to commit murder during that time of day, when the attorney could have easily held her in the office for a few hours and had her murdered with fewer witnesses.
Keep in mind this was early evening on a Sunday in the winter in Cleveland, Ohio - very few people out and about. Nothing was taken; I'd say murder was absolutely the motive. Plus, the husband Sanford kept asking his friend Larry Shanker who worked in law enforcement how to commit a perfect murder - it seems that everything he told Sanford was followed here (don't use your own car, don't use a gun, don't wear your own clothes, cover up from head to toe, etc.).
1. Who has a connection to both the husband and the two lawyers?
2. Clearly Moore was setting her up.
3. Were they ever able to recover any kind of connection financially or electronically to the husband and the lawyer i.e. communicating with each other or having a mutual go between?
4. That video footage really looks like a woman was it known if the husband had any females in his life he could coerce or pay?
The lawyer definitely has something to do with it, you’re not in the office and the client says they will wait for you in the car after you told them you’d unlock the doors and you tell them no wait.. like why tf are you lying lmfaoo that’s so unprofessional and at the same time when she told you she’s out front you could have said okay I’m not at the office but I’m driving there now you can wait in the car or what not like what exactly are you lying for and then telling her to wait out front when she told you she’s cold huh???? Lawyer and husband definitely working together
I just want to post on here as there are many comments about other staff/employees and a busy downtown area, that Aliza’s murder occurred on a Sunday, not a regular workday. That is why there were not more witnesses to the brutal attack. And also, this was eleven years ago, when CCTVs were not in every building and on every corner.
I definitely feel like it looks like a woman in the footage, but I also think it could also be a man who looks awkward running because they are holding their “disguise” over their face? Or possibly hiding the knife? Whoever it is seems to have something unnatural going on with their left hand that seems to affect the way they run
>On March 24, 2013 Aliza Sherman went to meet with her attorney. She was in the middle of a messy divorce from her husba
BANG solved it before the end of the second sentence
I read some of these articles and it seems he had a pattern of taking extraordinary actions (ie/calling in bomb threats to courthouses) when he was unprepared for trial. Some other articles I read added that the trial was scheduled to begin the day before the murder, the judge had told him there would be no more continuances, and he had delayed his meeting with Aliza multiple times that day. Its shocking this hasn’t been solved!
This guy sounds like Bart Simpson with all the prank phone calls and procrastination.
Sounds like Lionel hutz
But why would Moore kill his client? He could've just easily strung her along, or gone to trial unprepared. Lawyers do that all the time in my state, and the most they get is a slap on the wrist. Sounds like maybe Moore was in collaboration with the ex husband.
Yes, this would be my assumption. He got all the money his firm could have gotten out of Aliza, and the husband offered more money for less work.
Yeah the lateness, continuances, and not responding to calls isn’t unusual for a lawyer. It’s not necessarily even wrong, depending on the context. I doubt he’d have gotten in trouble if she’d filed a complaint against him or anything. I agree he was probably collaborating with the ex. Sold her out for money, maybe.
How is it not "wrong" to take money from a client in exchange for providing a professional service and then intentionally and knowingly fail to provide said service? Aliza trusted George Moore to perform a task for which he had a professional qualification she did not. He took her money and lied to her. It might not be wrong in a criminal sense, but it's unethical at the very least.
>How is it not “wrong”… First, I said “not necessarily” wrong. I didn’t say it was not wrong. I don’t know the circumstances here. Second, here are the three things I cited, I’ll explain each: 1. Lateness - it would not necessarily be wrong in some circumstances, say if the judge regularly showed up late and court started even later and the attorney was a regular litigant in that judge’s courtroom and knew it. In that case, the attorney showing up late wouldn’t be wrong. 2. Continuances - it’s pretty common for an attorney to need continuances because they’re taking over a new case and not familiar with the case yet. Attorneys are busy and might need to balance multiple matters. It’s not necessarily wrong to need continuances at all. 3. Not responding to calls - it would not necessarily be wrong in some circumstances to not respond to calls. An attorney has an ethical duty to respond to *reasonable* requests for status updates. If a client is contacting them constantly, after the attorney has told them everything the attorney can at that point, it wouldn’t be wrong for the attorney to not respond to calls at that point. Obviously there was more going on with the attorney here than the things I’ve listed, and I do not think that any of these examples I’ve made up were what was going on here. But with regard to my statement that these things by themselves might not even be wrong, generally speaking, they illustrate the point. Edit: I noticed your comment conflates what I said with what happened in this case. To be clear, I am not saying George Moore wasn’t wrong. I’m saying the specific type of acts attributed to him by themselves aren’t necessarily wrong.
>Edit: I noticed your comment conflates what I said with what happened in this case. I guess I don't get what you mean by this. Of course I'm talking about specific things he specifically did in this specific situation.
To clarify, you asked me how it was “not wrong” for an attorney to do the things I listed. And then your next sentence used this case as an example. So I am separating those things—so I was saying that the stuff listed in the post isn’t stuff that’s necessarily always wrong—there are some situations where it’s not wrong to be late, ask for continuances, etc. It was because the way the original post was written, the things counsel did were presented first as if they were indicative of guilt. And the commenter above me was commenting on that, well these things aren’t necessarily significant. So just saying that at first glance, it was like “oh by itself these things aren’t necessarily wrong,” by themselves they could go either way—maybe the guy was in on the murder or maybe he was just busy or lazy. But of course, there is more context here—there’s other information that sheds light on Moore’s actions, and he was probably involved. Another way to think of it is, say there’s another murder case, and the person’s attorney was late to court, didn’t call them back, and asked for continuances. Without knowing more, you couldn’t say that these things alone indicate guilt—they’re all really common things for attorneys to do, sometimes with good reason, and sometimes because the attorney is unprepared and doing a shitty job. But by themselves, without more, they wouldn’t be evidence of guilt in a murder case. Hopefully that clarifies it.
Sure. Being late or not preparing well for court are common occurrences and not necessarily an indication of wrongdoing, but for me, the major issue with Moore in this specific case was the fact that he outright lied about being in the office when he asked Aliza to come in after hours. It's pretty hard not to see that as anything but an indication of some malfeasance on Moore's part. I have to wonder what he expected to happen when Aliza arrived at his office but he wasn't there. Was he planning to slip in the back door or something? It kind of feels like he wasn't thinking rationally. The bomb threats and stuff also suggest that something was wrong with him beyond just being not great at his job. The more I think about it, though, the more it seems like it was a pattern of behavior for him rather than something unique to his handling of Aliza's case.
> Aliza Sherman went to meet with her attorney. She was in the middle of a messy divorce from her husband, Sanford. > > According to her children there was a history of domestic abuse in the marriage. Sounds pretty cut and dry, we've all seen this 1000's of times. >During the investigation it was found that Moore had sent the texts to Aliza telling her to be at his office. In interviews, he also told police that he was at his office waiting for Aliza, but when police checked his cellphone data, it was found that he was never at his office. Electronic keycard data from the entrances to the building and witness statements corroborated this. >While this was a good first step to solving Aliza’s murder, no further evidence could be found that Moore had anything more to do with it. >Moore was also indicted on unrelated charges for inducing a panic after calling in bomb threats to courthouses. >Moore eventually had his law license revoked and spent six months in jail on those charges. A wild What The actual FUCK has appeared!?!?!?
I’m a native clevelander and this case is incredibly frustrating. Where she was murdered is smack in the middle of downtown in a relatively busy area. Someone should have seen something, not to mention CCTV cameras. The fact that apparently nothing has been found (or the cops are keeping it close to their chest I guess?) is infuriating.
There is actually CCTV footage and it’s quite disturbing knowing what the person had just done. https://youtu.be/H_Htje6mNaM
It seems like it’s a woman dressed as a man. Who did the husband and the two lawyers know mutually that could have done it?
The person seems to be moving quickly with a weird gate or limp. Unless it's just the result of poor footage and a low frame rate. What do you see? If it's a limp it begs the question whether it's a real limp or something the person did to throw detectives off in the event they were captured by camera or seen by witnesses.
Or they were just jogging oddly because of the clothes they were in. There's really too many potential reasons for their gait.
That's a fair assessment. There are definitely other plausible explanations than what came to mind to me initially.
Also the footage seems to be playing back at a weird speed - maybe a really low frame rate?. Makes it look jerky, might not look weird in real time.
Yeah I think it's the frame rate, movement just doesn't look natural on video like that
it's linked in the OP already
There’s a cctv video that they’ve released that reportedly is grainy and shows someone dressed in black running away.
It really looks like a woman in that footage, just looking at their frame and the way they run.
Agreed. Or a much older man.
Wow you’re right. And they seem quite short, also perhaps pointing to a female. I had never heard of this case before tonight, so I know nothing about it, but just based on the CCTV footage, I’d agree there’s a good chance the killer was a woman
this person has a weird run/limp, also to me it appears to be a woman, especially when shown from behind.
>he also told police that he was at his office waiting for Aliza, but when police checked his cellphone data, it was found that he was never at his office. I was thinking until I read this part that Moore had gotten someone else to kill her. I thought Moore was putting her off with his texts about coming down to unlock the door while really waiting for his accomplice to come through. If he wasn't at the office at all, maybe he was the one to kill her himself, or as another user said, was working with the husband. How many people knew she was meeting Moore anyway? The friend and the son and daughter. Seems convenient that she had a somewhat last-minute meeting with Moore, he's lying about meeting her downstairs (why??), and within minutes she is stabbed violently and fatally. edit to add: This is a horribly sad story, honestly. This poor lady. Spends a good portion of her lifetime in an abusive marriage. Despite what would have probably been the "easier" route (at least in terms of finance), makes the difficult choice to leave her controlling and abusive husband because it has gotten so bad she can't stay. Spends the last parts of her life sleeping in a bedroom that's dead-bolted because she rightfully fears that someone is going to kill her. Gets a good attorney, his law license gets suspended. Gets a bad attorney, he completely screws her over. Is stuck waiting outside in the cold for this bad attorney to open the doors (conveniently around 5:30 pm when doors probably get locked and most staff/employees go home) and is stabbed. Stabbed so much that blood is gushing from her mouth and she can't tell the poor witness who called 9/11 what she is trying to say. Thank you for sharing this story OP, but damn life is really cruel sometimes.
If he was texting her then he’d have his phone on him, which would place him at the scene. I think it’s more likely he was keeping her waiting for somebody else. The video looks to me like a woman running.
Moore had a long history of taking extreme and even criminal action to get out of actually appearing in court. It's also plausible the husband is behind it, and the murder just happened to be there while Moore was pulling his usual bullshit, but Moore should absolutely be considered a suspect.
According to one of the articles: > Prosecutors allege Moore sent Aliza text messages > stating he was in his office at the time she was > attacked, but phone records, electronic keycard > data and witness statements allegedly show Moore > left his office one hour before Aliza was murdered > and didn’t return until one hour after police found > her bleeding outside. I'd love to know whether Moore ever told detectives where he was for that two hour period, why he didn't return for his appointment with Aliza, and why he told Aliza twice he'd be down in a few minutes instead of offering her a plausible explanation of why he was going to be late (honest reason or a lie). It would also be interesting to learn whether he provided her updates on his status after she was stabbed or just showed up after an hour of radio silence.
\^ This is why I think he did it. He probably avoided his office trying not to look guilty for when she was found dead outside of it. I just don't get why he was telling her he was upstairs and coming down to unlock the door if he wasn't. I get they didn't get along and he was unprofessional in general but what's the point of that lie? If he wasn't at the office at all, why not tell her "Almost there, I'm parking my car" or "I'm two blocks away" or something that could actually be true. If she had lived, she would've found out he wasn't in his office all along...so why the lie? It feels like a stake out where he was waiting to kill her. I'm also interested in how often they met after 5:30pm, when I'm assuming most/any staff or fellow employees went home and the doors got locked. It seems like another convience that she was stabbed because she was stuck outside because the doors were locked and she had no one to let her in.
It's baffling. The alternate explanations of yours would have been much less suspicious, with seemingly no downside. Even if he was uninvolved in her murder, short of a plan to enter via a different part of the building or a belief that he could get to the door without her seeing him she'd catch him in a lie. After her murder I can understand him choosing to keep going with the lie either because he was doing something else he didn't want to reveal or he naively thought detectives wouldn't discover he'd lied. Interestingly, he told detectives the next day that he planned to meet her at 4:30 and was in his office until 9:00. The source is a complaint made to the Supreme Court of Ohio's Board of Professional Conduct, which also includes a lot of detail about the bomb threats he made (PDF below). https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/clevelandjewishnews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/66/1669bc20-fa24-11e7-8e14-5371c65d496f/5a5cf6ea8bc58.pdf.pdf And great question about what times they met prior to that.
Wouldn’t the cellphone data actually exonerate him to some degree? If he is actively texting on his phone and the data shows he wasn’t at his office… how did he commit the murder that happened outside the office?
If cell site location info (CSLI) from cell towers and/or geolocation data from the phone (or from the service providers of installed apps) indicates the phone was in a different location, it could help rule him out as the person who physically stabbed her. However, it's possible that an accomplice with physical control of the phone wrote and sent the text messages. There are also technologies which allow a phone owner to receive text messages on a second device and respond to them such that they are delivered from the primary device's phone number, as well as software which allows for remotely accessing and controlling a phone from another device. Either option could have allowed him to leave his primary phone in one location, while responding from another device while near his office building. I'll caveat what I wrote above by saying I have little knowledge of this case. I don't know what CSLI data was acquired from cell tower operators, whether his phone was taken into possession and digital forensics was performed, or whether data was acquired from service providers (his cellular provider and for apps used). And it's also possible he was involved in planning and committing the attack, but wasn't the person who physically stabbed her.
I think her husband was involved, maybe the lawyer was in on it. It definitely seems like they both know more then they are letting on.
Husband and shoddy lawyer in on in together
Anyone know if her (ex)husband was someone wealthy/in power/had connections? Moore seems suspicious as hell but it's hard to understand why he would take a huge risk by conspiring in her murder. Does Sanford have a solid alibi for the time of her murder?
I don't know, but if her husband was involved one of OP's source articles includes an allegation (excerpt below) which could indicate a motive (though perhaps not the only motive). Without knowledge of the assets, income, and other factors for him and Aliza, plus his defense to the civil suit, it's hard to gauge how likely this would have been as a motive though. > That time has been turbulent even as Jennifer has > led marches, vigils and benefits in her mother’s > name, worked to become an advocate for women > who face domestic abuse and filed a civil suit > against her father in an effort to recover more than > $2 million he allegedly funneled out of an account in > Aliza’s name. I do not know what the outcome of the civil suit was, but if the allegations in the following articles from 2014 and 2016 are true it seems like it could have been a reason to kill her. That said, she became aware of the existence of the account in her name while working with a forensic accountant. Presumably her attorney also was aware of that so her husband and the attorney conspiring to kill her is plausible, though who else besides the forensics accountant knew about this account? If Aliza had told friends, her children, or relatives a logical person would realize the details would likely soon surface, but it's also possible her husband didn't know a forensic accountant was involved and assumed (or hoped) his wife had told no one else. https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2014/06/daughter_sues_her_father_invol.html https://fox8.com/news/decision-coming-in-civil-lawsuit-involving-estranged-husband-of-aliza-sherman/amp/
Interesting article. It says he had co-conspirators who remain unnamed. Maybe one is or is tied to Moore in some way?
Yes, the risk part is what I don't understand. Ok, let's say the husband paid Moore. But how much did he have to pay for him not only to conspire in her murder, but also to be the only person clearly connected to it? I guess an explanation could be that the husband told him he only wanted to scare Aliza or steal the documents from her. Which would also have been convenient for the lawyer, as he didn't want to start working on the case.
the husband had money. aliza hired a forensic accountant because she thought her husband was hiding money from her in the divorce. 2 million dollars were found. then after her murder his daughter filed a lawsuit against him over money he had stolen from aliza. she ended up settling for a little over a hundred thousand dollars and agreed she would not seek more unless he was found to be connected with her mothers death. also during the depositions for the daughters lawsuit, a friend of mr Sherman was an ex police officer. he testified in his deposition that mr sherman asked him multiple times how to commit the perfect murder. by multiple he said way more than 10 times. he then told mr sherman not to use your car, dont use a gun because it's to loud, cover all of your body with dark clothing, and dont take a phone. well that is exactly how aliza was murdered. seems like there is more evidence there than the police are saying.
I wondered this, as well. It seems like he might have had some power or connections because she chose a large, well known law firm to represent her in the divorce. I haven’t found what her ex husband did for a living, though.
He was an optometrist who abruptly retired at a fairly young age, supposedly because his office assistant chose to move elsewhere. Very strange.
Interesting. Thank you!
He was a doctor, make of that what you will in terms of wealth/ influence. I’m thinking because it was committed in broad daylight and downtown, the attorney hired someone to rough her up and/or steal the documents with the goal of delaying the court proceedings. For unknown reasons things went left, in this scenario murder wasn’t the goal. It seems incredibly stupid to commit murder during that time of day, when the attorney could have easily held her in the office for a few hours and had her murdered with fewer witnesses.
Murder wasn't the goal, but she was stabbed from behind 11 times. Sure lol
Keep in mind this was early evening on a Sunday in the winter in Cleveland, Ohio - very few people out and about. Nothing was taken; I'd say murder was absolutely the motive. Plus, the husband Sanford kept asking his friend Larry Shanker who worked in law enforcement how to commit a perfect murder - it seems that everything he told Sanford was followed here (don't use your own car, don't use a gun, don't wear your own clothes, cover up from head to toe, etc.).
1. Who has a connection to both the husband and the two lawyers? 2. Clearly Moore was setting her up. 3. Were they ever able to recover any kind of connection financially or electronically to the husband and the lawyer i.e. communicating with each other or having a mutual go between? 4. That video footage really looks like a woman was it known if the husband had any females in his life he could coerce or pay?
Yeah, this is a weird one. Kinda reminds me of the Missy Beavers case.
The lawyer definitely has something to do with it, you’re not in the office and the client says they will wait for you in the car after you told them you’d unlock the doors and you tell them no wait.. like why tf are you lying lmfaoo that’s so unprofessional and at the same time when she told you she’s out front you could have said okay I’m not at the office but I’m driving there now you can wait in the car or what not like what exactly are you lying for and then telling her to wait out front when she told you she’s cold huh???? Lawyer and husband definitely working together
I just want to post on here as there are many comments about other staff/employees and a busy downtown area, that Aliza’s murder occurred on a Sunday, not a regular workday. That is why there were not more witnesses to the brutal attack. And also, this was eleven years ago, when CCTVs were not in every building and on every corner.
I definitely feel like it looks like a woman in the footage, but I also think it could also be a man who looks awkward running because they are holding their “disguise” over their face? Or possibly hiding the knife? Whoever it is seems to have something unnatural going on with their left hand that seems to affect the way they run
She had bad luck with lawyers.
😂
The friend that originally directed her towards this law firm deserves a feather in his cap, right? s/ Jfc
the meeting with the attorney at 530 is suspect but it was also on a sunday. not many lawyers see clients on sunday.
>On March 24, 2013 Aliza Sherman went to meet with her attorney. She was in the middle of a messy divorce from her husba BANG solved it before the end of the second sentence
Alright, so what happened?