Florida Mom, Rachiel Moore Gets Life Without Parole for Hiring Ex-Stepdad to Take Out Father In Custody Battle
A 27-year-old Florida mother will die in prison for orchestrating the murder of her 4-year-old daughter’s father—an ambush carried out in front of the child only hours after a judge granted the victim shared custody.
On Thursday, Santa Rosa Circuit Judge Clifton Drake sentenced Rachiel Moore to life without the possibility of parole for the March 2023 slaying of 24-year-old Colby Vinson. A jury had convicted Moore of first-degree murder and evidence tampering, finding she enlisted her former stepfather, 55-year-old Jason Curtis, to pull the trigger. Curtis was convicted of the same murder in May and also received life without parole.
Prosecutors said phone and social-media records showed Moore and Curtis traded messages “all week” plotting the hit. Moore wired gas money and provided Vinson’s home and work addresses, physical description, and daily routine so Curtis—nicknamed “Booger”—could identify and kill him.
Deputies were dispatched just after 10 p.m. on March 19 to an apartment complex on Navarre Parkway, about 170 miles west of Tallahassee. They found Vinson on his back outside his doorway, shot once in the face, as his preschool-aged daughter stood beside his body unharmed.
Moore’s godmother told detectives the shooting came the very night Vinson first exercised overnight visitation in nearly a year. Hours earlier, a family-court judge had awarded him split custody after a contentious legal fight with Moore.
When investigators questioned Moore, she admitted venting to Curtis about the ruling. She said Curtis responded by sending Facebook Messenger photos of guns and knives. Moore thanked him “for making her feel better” and then deleted the app, later claiming she had not believed Curtis would act on his threats.
According to the probable-cause affidavit, Curtis phoned Moore around 10 p.m. on the night of the murder and told her, “You don’t have to worry about it—everything is fine. I have to put my a– in the wind.” Moore described his tone as “excited” and promised to reimburse him $50 for gas.
License-plate readers and cellphone data placed Curtis’s vehicle on a northbound route to Alabama, where state troopers arrested him the next day. Inside the car, officers recovered a handgun believed to be the murder weapon and a handwritten note listing Vinson’s appearance and both residential and workplace addresses.
During trial, jurors heard that Moore deleted messages, removed apps from her phone, and asked acquaintances to lie about her whereabouts in an effort to hide her involvement. The tampering conviction stems from those attempts to erase digital evidence.
After Thursday’s sentencing, State Attorney Ginger Bowden Madden praised local, state, and federal agencies that “worked seamlessly to secure justice for Colby Vinson and his daughter, who witnessed an unimaginable crime.”
Moore showed little emotion as she was led from the courtroom in shackles. She offered no apology to Vinson’s family, who filled several rows wearing blue ribbons in the victim’s memory.
Curtis remains in a Florida state prison; Moore will soon join him, both without any chance of release.
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