Remembering Georgia Lee Moses: The Search For Answers In The Little Girl’s 1997 Killing Continues

Georgia Lee Moses, a 12-year-old California girl described by those who knew her as a loving old soul, vanished one summer night over two decades ago. Her body was found nine days later, and her killer has never been caught.

“Every day, I grieve and I heal and I fight,” Angel Turner, who was 7 when her older sibling went missing, told Dateline. “I’m not giving up.”

“For seven years, she protected me,” Turner said. “Now it’s like we switched roles and I'm the big sister. I’m the protector. I have to do this for her ... justice has no expiration date. My sister will get her justice.”

In 1997, Moses had been staying with family friends but still often headed to her Santa Rosa home to take care of her mother, who had disabilities, and check on her sister. “She would come over and braid my hair,” Turner recalled. “She always did my hair.”

On August 13 that year, Moses spent some time at her family’s house but then had to leave. “I begged her to take me with her. She said she couldn’t, but that she would come back for me,” Turner said. “She never did. That was the last time I saw her.”

Turner said she later learned that Moses went to hang out with a friend and at one point received a page and returned a call. Later that evening, the friend walked her to a Santa Rosa gas station, and Moses left with an unidentified man.

Nine days later, August 22, 1997, a maintenance crew fixing a broken guardrail off Highway 101 in Petaluma, a small town about 15 miles south of Santa Rosa, discovered a body in a grove of trees off the side of the road.

Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sergeant Juan Valencia told Dateline the little girl had been strangled and investigators had to use dental records to identify her badly decomposed body.

“It's considered a cold case. But as new leads come in, we follow up on each and every one of them,” Sgt. Valencia said. “This was the murder of a 12-year-old girl. We want to solve this for the family — and for Georgia.”

In 1997, law enforcement officials released a sketch of the unidentified man they believe Moses left the gas station with on the last evening anyone saw her alive.

“We are still looking for the person or persons responsible for the murder of Georgia,” Sgt. Valencia noted, adding, “Someone knows something. We just hope that person will have the courage to come forward.”

Anyone with information about Georgia Lee Moses (case number 978822-032) is requested to call the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office at 707-565-2185 or 707-565-2650. Tips also can be submitted anonymously to Silent Witness.