Lawyer Murdered Client in 2013 to Delay Start of Her Divorce Trial, Prosecutors Say

New York Times

4 days ago

A former Ohio divorce lawyer has been charged with murder and kidnapping in the fatal stabbing of a client in what prosecutors called a brutal scheme to obstruct the start of her divorce trial.
The former lawyer, Gregory J. Moore, lured his client, Aliza Sherman, a 53-year-old in vitro fertilization nurse and mother of four from Beachwood, Ohio, to his office in downtown Cleveland on March 24, 2013, a day before her divorce trial was set to begin, prosecutors said.
As Ms. Sherman waited outside Mr. Moore's office building, he or someone working with him stabbed her more than 10 times, prosecutors said. Ms. Sherman was pronounced dead at a hospital later that day.
Mr. Moore, 51, had intended to kidnap Ms. Sherman to prevent the judge in her divorce case from conducting the trial, prosecutors said. The goal was to have Ms. Sherman be 'unavailable to attend the proceedings due to serious physical harm and/or death,' according to a grand jury indictment issued this month. The indictment did not explain why the authorities believe that he wanted the trial delayed.
But prosecutors said that Mr. Moore had also sought to avoid court dates by feigning illnesses, getting into a car crash and calling in bomb threats to courthouses in 2012. In 2017, he was sentenced to six months in jail on charges related to those bomb threats and for having lied to the police during the investigation into Ms. Sherman's death.
In June 2021, agents from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation received a request to lead the cold-case investigation into Ms. Sherman's death and then spent 'thousands of hours applying advanced technology and implementing investigative techniques to help solve this homicide,' Ohio's attorney general, Dave Yost, said in a statement.
Federal marshals arrested Mr. Moore in Texas on May 2, 2025, after an Ohio grand jury indicted him on charges of murder, conspiracy and kidnapping in Ms. Sherman's death. Appearing via video link in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court on Wednesday, Mr. Moore pleaded not guilty.
A judge set bond at $2 million after Ms. Sherman's daughter, Jennifer Rivchun, told the court that the family had waited 12 excruciating years for justice.
'Greg Moore stands before this court charged with the kidnapping and murder of our mother, his own client, a woman who trusted him, a woman who he was duty bound to protect and advocate for,' Ms. Rivchun said. 'Instead, he allegedly betrayed that trust in the most horrifying way imaginable.'
A Cuyahoga County prosecutor, Kevin Filiatraut, said in court that the same evidence showing that Mr. Moore had planned and then tried to cover up the kidnapping and killing of Ms. Sherman also clears her estranged husband, who died last year and had been widely thought to have been involved.
Mr. Moore's lawyer, Jon Paul Rion, said that Mr. Moore intended to fight the charges and that he had 'much to say in his own defense.' Mr. Rion questioned whether investigators had turned up any new evidence implicating Mr. Moore in Ms. Sherman's murder.
'It appears to be the same evidence that they didn't have 12 years ago that they're just repeating again,' Mr. Rion told reporters.
According to the indictment, Mr. Moore texted Ms. Sherman on March 24, 2013, to meet him at his law office. But Mr. Moore never actually intended to meet with her, the indictment states. Instead, it says, he disconnected his phone from the Verizon cellular network to prevent it from leaving cell-tower location evidence and used a mobile hot spot to text Ms. Sherman and keep her waiting outside his office.
As she stood outside, a person who was 'either Moore or an unknown co-conspirator' approached Ms. Sherman, circled behind her, chased her and then stabbed her repeatedly before running away, the indictment states.
After the assailant was out of the view of surveillance cameras, Mr. Moore texted Ms. Sherman asking where she was, whether she was going to meet with him and for her to call him, the indictment states. The texts were intended to make it appear as if Mr. Moore were unaware that she had been attacked, the indictment states.
Mr. Moore then went inside his law office and reconnected his phone to the Verizon cellular network and called Ms. Sherman three times to continue to create the impression that he was unaware she had been assaulted, the indictment states.
The next day, an employee at Mr. Moore's law office tried to cancel the mobile hot spot and deleted a voice mail message that Ms. Sherman had left from a call box outside the building, the indictment states. Twenty-one minutes of video footage from inside the building also disappeared, Mr. Filiatraut said in court.
In urging the court not to release Mr. Moore while his trial is pending, Ms. Sherman's daughter, Ms. Rivchun, said his actions indicated that he was 'a threat to the moral fabric of our society.'
'Greg Moore is reckless, unpredictable and capable of taking extreme measures to fulfill his evil agenda,' she said. 'We cannot take that risk. My mother deserved better. This community deserves better. And justice demands better.'