A father is no-billed after killing his transgender daughter
DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com
A grand jury in Ellis County has no-billed Robert Wayne Mosher in connection with the murder last year of his daughter, Gwynevere River Song, 26.
Mosher shot his daughter to death at his house in Waxahachie on Aug. 12, 2017. She was the 17th transgender woman murdered last year.
Song’s mother, Marcy Sutton, said Ellis County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Dennis Clay sent her a short email explaining the grand jury’s decision: “Marcy, the Grand Jury No-Billed Robert,” Clay wrote. “That means the case does not move forward.”
Everyone agrees on several details in the case: An argument took place between Song and her father at the door of his house. She was holding a knife, and he shot her four times. But that’s where the agreement stops.
Mosher claimed he killed his daughter in self defense after she came to his door with a knife and began stabbing him. That’s when he got his gun and shot her four times.
But Sutton doesn’t believe his account of the shooting.
Sutton said none of the evidence she sent Clay’s office was introduced to the grand jury, and she still wants to know where the knife — a military knife with a sheath — came from.
“I have no idea where that knife came from,” Sutton said, suggesting that perhaps it belonged to Mosher, who is ex-military, instead of her daughter.
“We have pocket knives around the house,” Sutton said, “not military knives.”
Sutton also questions her ex-husband’s stab wounds. Police reports said he was stabbed 11 times, but since he was released from the hospital the next day, she suggested, the wounds couldn’t have been very severe.
Sutton said that from her perspective, her daughter’s death was a murder motivated by hate. She said she understands it isn’t against the law to simply hate someone for who they are. “But,” she added, “you would think it would be against the law to hate someone so much you can kill them.”
Song graduated from University of Texas in 2015 with a degree in radiation physics. She began hormone therapy while she was at school. Sutton said at that time, Song was still welcome in her father’s house, and she even visited him with a partner, who is also transgender.
Song moved to California in 2016 and continued her transition. She moved back to Texas early in 2017. Sutton said her daughter’s visit to her father that day in August was the first time she had seen him since she had returned to Waxahachie.
Sutton said Mosher told police Song knocked on his side door and there was a confrontation as soon as he opened it. She stabbed him repeatedly, he told police, so he went for his gun and shot her.
But for Sutton, the story doesn’t add up. She said she is upset the grand jury didn’t get to look at documents she had turned over to investigators, including documentation on gun violations by Mosher, CPS reports against, stalking violations and letters from his family saying that his violent behavior began before he and Sutton were ever married. Sutton said she also has tapes of phone calls he made to her, and of calls between Mosher and Song.
Sutton said Mosher was discharged from the military after just a year-and-a-half of service, and that he was “jailed in Belton [near Fort Hood] for child endangerment when he caught a kid stealing from a store and took it upon himself to spank the child.”
Now that the Ellis County grand jury has failed to indict Mosher, Sutton said she is considering filing a wrongful death lawsuit. And, she said, even a year after her daughter was killed, she still is harassed by people who sit in cars outside her house. When she goes outside to see who they are and to take pictures of their license plates, she said, they take off.
“Who would do that?” Sutton declared. “Gawkers. Goofballs who live around here. People who know [Mosher].”
As for the grand jury’s no-bill, Sutton was more frustrated than angry: “He has gotten away with murder,” she said.
