Brooklyn pimp faces justice, admits to killing and dismembering victim

September 19, 2023 Rob Abruzzese

U.S. Attorney Breon Peace, who announced the guilty verdicts in a violent extortion scheme over a gambling debt involving two men in Brooklyn.
Photo: U.S. Dept. of Justice

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In a chilling turn of events, a Brooklyn man with a history of violence and manipulation was brought to justice on Friday, making history with the prosecution.

Somorie Moses, a 47-year-old from Brooklyn who went by a myriad of aliases including “Sugar Bear” and “Daddy,” stood before U.S. District Court Judge Carol Bagley Amon last week as he admitted to forcing eight women into the cruel world of sex trafficking and gruesomely ending the life of Leondra Foster in 2017.

This trial marked the first application of the federal law that criminalizes committing murder during sex trafficking. Moses, facing a mandatory 15-year imprisonment, could also receive a life sentence for his heinous crimes.

Breon Peace, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, teamed up with the NYPD and FBI to deliver the shocking details surrounding Moses’s reign of terror. As described, his tactic was sinisterly simple: lure vulnerable women with false promises of love and marriage, only to plunge them into a world of prostitution, violence and fear.

“With today’s guilty plea to every count in the indictment, Moses is held fully responsible for preying on women and girls, forcing them to become prostitutes, and then brutally murdering and dismembering one of his many victims,” U.S. Attorney Peace said.

“While the defendant’s total admission of guilt cannot undo the terrible harm he has caused, we hope it will bring a measure of closure to his victims who suffered the defendant’s extreme cruelty and brutality and to the family of Ms. Foster.”

Many of Moses’s victims bore his name, “Somorie,” permanently inked on their bodies, a lasting testament to their tormentor’s control. His brutality knew no bounds: using tasers on those who resisted, slashing others with razors, and even going as far as putting a shotgun in the mouth of a woman who dared defy him.

The chilling climax of his reign came in 2017 when Moses murdered Leondra Foster, a woman he trafficked. In a gruesome act of cruelty, he dismembered her body, discarding her torso and limbs in The Bronx. But what pointed investigators to Moses was the discovery of Foster’s head, hands, and a foot – marked with a tattoo of the name “Somorie” – stashed in a freezer in his Brooklyn apartment.

As the city grapples with the dark depths of Moses’s actions, Peace hopes that this conviction brings some closure to the tormented victims and Foster’s grieving family.

Moses faces a mandatory term of imprisonment of 15 years, and up to life in prison at sentencing.