multimillion-dollar california farm owned by the powerful moore family has been killed by a complicated homemade bomb. the prime suspect, pete moore, famously hot headed, angry, because he believed his father might give his inheritance to ayala. pete s uncle roger moore believed an audiotape from his answering machine could help investigators who still didn t have enough evidence to make an arrest. the voice on the tape, none other than roger s nephew, pete. this is pete. i worked for 29 years doing what i m doing so i could eventually one day have a chance to farm. pete wanted to talk about having been disinherited. i ve been taken out of my dad s will. reporter: the phone messages contain nothing incriminating but after the letters about assassins and a drug gang, the investigation was back where it started that peter moore was the
smoking gun. but the strong evidence did not stop the rumor mill. was it just small-town gossip or something else? here with more of our story is keith morrison. little colusa, california, was dumb struck. paul moore arrested for the killing of roberto ayala. few even knew he was a suspect. mary, paul s cousin and pete s sister, got a barrage of texts at work. it was bittersweet. there was a part of me that was relieved that it was over for pete or that he wasn t, you know, mixed in with it. and at the same time i was sad because it was my cousin that we grew up with, you know, and part of my family. my youngest sister mary called me on the phone and she said they just arrested paul for the murder of robert ayala. i was in the middle of the parking lot and i fell to my knees and just started screaming. reporter: but human nature is
expensive lawyering dealing with misdeeds that go way beyond tapping an ex-wife s telephone. in 1997, paul was arrested after an incident in san francisco one night. ugly accusation. rape, false imprisonment, assault with a deadly weapon, trying to run his alleged victim over with his pickup truck. charges that could put paul in prison for a decade or more. instead, paul spent nearly three years driving back and forth between his place here in colusa and san francisco engaged in a series of court maneuvers. the result? paul simply got probation after pleading no contest to assault with intent to commit rape but denying blame for the offense. the other charges were dropped. but the conviction put paul on california s sex offenders list, searchable by county. a fear that someone in colusa
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to pete moore or a drug cartel or crazy assassin. now they had another lead to work on. somebody made an anonymous call to the sheriff s department and says caller state you need to be looking at paul moore paul, not peter? paul, not peter. for all the produce that comes rolling out of colusa county, california, its population of humans is small just 22,000. everybody seems to know just about everybody here. so when a would-be anonymous tipster called the sheriff s office, turned out he wasn t anonymous at all. the detective who took the call recognized the voice and phoned him right back. says, hey, you need to come and talk to us. the caller, as it turned out, was this man dave moore, cousin of roger and gus. with a multimillion dollar spread of his own and a passion