BROOKLYN, NY – Somorie Moses, a notorious pimp infamous for his brutal violence, has confessed to the killing of his girlfriend, who was also a prostitute, and to the sex trafficking of eight other women. This information was disclosed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of New York. Moses, 47, brutally ended the life of Leondra Foster, 32, in their shared apartment on January 13, 2017. He then dismembered her body using a saw and knife and disposed of her remains at a Bronx sanitation site four days later.
Moses’ Brooklyn home yielded a gruesome discovery for the police – Foster’s severed head, hands, and feet, including a foot bearing a tattoo of the name “Somorie.” On September 15, Moses pleaded guilty. He had previously faced charges of concealing a corpse and criminally negligent homicide in a Brooklyn state court in 2019, but was acquitted of murder charges.
Moses was rearrested on federal charges and pleaded guilty to murder in the course of sex trafficking, a first conviction under this new federal law. If not for this rearrest, he would have been eligible for parole in May 2022.
In his previous trial, Moses admitted to dismembering Foster’s remains but denied being responsible for her death. He confessed to earning money as a pimp for two decades and to physically abusing Foster. After his state trial, federal investigators found two individuals willing to testify that Moses had confessed to them about murdering Foster.
Breon Peace, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, stated that Moses is now fully accountable for exploiting women and girls, forcing them into prostitution, and then brutally murdering and dismembering one of his victims. Moses, also known by several aliases, now faces a sentence of 15 years to life in prison.
Since 2003, Moses had coerced many women into prostitution for his benefit through brutal beatings, rape, torture, and threats. He manipulated his victims with false promises of love and marriage before forcing them into prostitution. When one of his victims tried to leave prostitution, Moses tortured her with a Taser until she gave in. He also inflicted permanent scarring on another woman by slashing her arms and back, beating her with a belt, and then pouring lemon juice on her wounds.
Moses was previously convicted on felony charges for attempted promotion of prostitution and profiting from prostitution of a person under 16. He served time at New York’s Wyoming Correctional Facility in Attica between May 2007 and December 2009 for these charges, and again at the Gouverneur Correctional Facility between September 2012 and January 2016 for criminal possession of a weapon.