LEAGUE CITY, Texas A woman accused of strangling her mother and disposing her body in a vacant, overgrown, Brazoria County oil field cried openly Tuesday in court, the first day of testimony in her murder trial.
At first Erin Ashlyn Moffatt, 20, in her videotaped interview with authorities, struggled to find the words to describe her mother s death until an investigator suggested it was too heavy a burden to harbor.
I strangled my mom, Moffatt said, as she sat in the Lafayette Parrish Sheriff s Office interview room with League City police detectives.
With what? detectives Cory Beyer and Gina Gonzales asked her.
An extension cord I saw on the floor, Moffatt said through sobs and tears. I pulled the cord ... It suffocated her.
Prosecutor Bill Reed played the video for a jury in Judge Wayne J. Mallia s 405th District Court in Galveston.
Moffatt is accused of the Sept. 2, 2008, strangling of her mother, Jana Shannon Moffatt, 47, in her manufactured home in League City. Authorities discovered her decomposing body 13 days later. Moffatt also was charged with tampering with physical evidence.
Moffatt s defense team of Lynette Briggs and G. Byron Fulk said their client is innocent and accused Moffatt s boyfriend, Michael Corey Lewis, of the slaying.
Lewis was not charged in Jana Moffatt s death. He pleaded guilty in October to a charge of tampering with physical evidence, stemming from the dumping of Jana Moffatt s body, Reed said.
Moffatt told police she was living on and off with her mother in their Calder Road trailer home, when her mother asked her to buy some methamphetamines.
Moffatt set the scene for police, saying she had a spat with her mother and went to her room with Lewis.
We knew what we were going to do, me and Corey, Moffatt told police. I got angry at her. I said something stupid.
What was his initial reaction to you saying you wanted to kill her? investigators asked Moffatt.
He wasn t stunned by it, Moffatt told police. He fed into it, making my ego go crazy. If you do it, I ll do it, too.
Moffatt told police Lewis gave her a syringe, telling her stick it into her mother s neck.
Corey grabbed my mom, Moffatt told police. I put it in her neck but it just fell.
Moffatt told police she then noticed an extension cord on the floor.
He just held my mom, and I did that to my mom, Moffatt said. I freaked the hell out and started crying. I didn t know what to do. I realized I can t leave my mom laying there. We put her in the car and took her somewhere.
Moffatt told police she placed a trash bag over her mother s head, and that Lewis and she carried her in a rug out the front door and put her in the trunk of her car. Lewis told her where to drive to dump the body, Moffatt told police.
Jana Moffatt s sister testified she filed a missing person report after being unable to reach her by phone or gain information from the defendant.
