PANAMA CITY — Jurors heard three divergent accounts of what led to the strangling death and shallow-grave burial of a Vietnam veteran during Tuesday’s trial of accused killer David Lee Clanton.
Weeks passed after 69-year-old Arthur Moore was reported missing before Bay County Sheriff’s Office investigators got a tip from a friend of Clanton, 34, that he’d jokingly mentioned strangling Moore, his father-in-law, to death in his bed. Moore was known to go out of town unannounced and had been reported missing by his wife and daughter after the night of Sept. 8, 2013, though both knew he was actually buried in a shallow grave near the Steelfield Landfill.
Lottie Moore and Mary Clanton have been given sentences of seven years and three years, respectively, for assisting in Arthur Moore’s death. Attorneys of David Clanton have not denied he committed the act, but have so far attempted to portray him as a pawn in either of the women’s scheme.
Jurors in Clanton’s first-degree murder trial Tuesday heard different stories of how plans for Moore’s death developed.
Clanton led investigators in late-October of last year to where he and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Clanton, buried her father. All four lived together in a three-bedroom trailer on Stauber Road, off Campflowers Road. Clanton initially told them he feared for his life around Moore and strangled him out of self-preservation.
“The day everything went down, he asked me how long it would take me to bleed out,” Clanton said in a confession played for the jury. “I felt like he was going to hurt or kill me.”
Moments later, after being allowed to speak with his wife, Clanton’s story changed. In a second recorded confession he said he was manipulated by his mother-in-law, 64-year-old Lottie Jean Moore, and his wife played only a minor role.
On the witness stand Tuesday, Mary Clanton, 27, turned on both her mother and husband. She said her mother mentioned plans for David Clanton to strangle Arthur Moore during a card game days earlier, to which he agreed. Their plan culminated Sept. 8.
“She wasn’t asking that night,” Mary Clanton said. “They’d already decided.”
Mary Clanton said her mother drugged Arthur Moore and removed a gun from his room, in case he struggled against David Clanton. When he struck, Mary Clanton hid in the bathroom until she was summoned for assistance in the burial of her father. She also said she was warned if she stuck to the story, she would be safe — which was why she lied to authorities for more than a month after seeing her father strangled to death, she said.
Lottie Moore and Mary Clanton supplied BCSO with piles of bogus information during the search for Arthur Moore. Lottie Moore even went down to BCSO to complain they weren’t allocating enough manpower to the search.
But during her turn on the stand, Lottie Moore shifted the blame onto her daughter. She said her offer to kill Arthur Moore was “teasing” that Mary Clanton ran with. Mary Clanton then manipulated David Clanton into committing the crime. When authorities inquired for help with finding Arthur Moore, Lottie Moore lied out of fear, she said.
“I was afraid Mary was going to push the button, and I’d be the next one,” she told jurors.
David Clanton could face life in prison if convicted of first-degree murder. The trial continues Wednesday.