By: Patti Weaver
(Stillwater, Okla.) — A felony charge accusing 63-year-old William Don Moore of Stillwater of lewd acts with a 10-year-old girl was dropped by prosecutor Debra Vincent on Monday, the day of his jury trial.
In a plea agreement with the District Attorney’s Office, Moore instead pleaded guilty to a charge filed Monday of assault with intent to commit a felony and received a five-year probationary sentence with an order to pay $960 in prosecution fees, as well as court costs.
Moore was ordered Monday by District Judge Phillip Corley to register as a sex offender, court records show.
Moore had originally been charged on March 12, 2018, with having taken a 10-year-old girl to a secluded location on his rural property and enticing her to show him her bare breasts, on or between May 1 and Sept. 1 of 2017, court records show.
The girl’s mother had contacted the Payne County Sheriff’s Office on Jan. 29, 2018, according to an affidavit by Sheriff’s Investigator Rockford Brown.
The girl’s mother said that while her 10-year-old stayed at Moore’s rural residence in the summer of 2017 for a few weekends to visit, Moore made a lewd proposition to the girl, the affidavit alleged.
When the girl was interviewed on Jan. 31, 2018, at the Saville Center in Stillwater, she said “Bill told her not to tell her ‘parents or anyone,"” the affidavit alleged.
She said that while she was at Moore’s house, he would often take her riding to his wooded property on his Polaris Ranger ATV and on one occasion he took her into a “tent that he used to look at deer,” the affidavit alleged.
The girl said that “Once inside the ‘tent,’ Bill asked to see (the girl’s) ‘privates’ — saying ‘if I showed him mine, he would show me his, and I said ‘no.’
“Later in the interview, (the girl) disclosed that when Bill Moore propositioned (the girl) to show her privates, that she did lift her shirt and training bra up, and then Bill Moore in turn lifted his shirt up to his neck line,” the affidavit alleged.
When Moore was interviewed with his attorney present in the Sheriff’s Office on Feb. 9, 2018, “Bill adamantly denied ever making lewd comments, committing lewd acts or making lewd propositions,” to the girl, the affidavit said.
The sheriff’s investigator asked ‘if there were any ground blinds used to observe deer on his property, and he said that there would not have been any blinds erected on his property during the time that (the girl) alleged the lewd acts occurred,” according to the affidavit.
When Moore’s wife was interviewed that same day at the Moore residence by the sheriff’s investigator, she said that her husband told her the girl “decided to show him and pulled her shirt up,” the affidavit alleged.
Moore’s wife said that Moore told her “he did not ask to see, and he told her that she needed to put her shirt down and not to talk about it,” the affidavit alleged.
When Moore’s wife took the sheriff’s investigator to the far west end of their property, to the northeast “The ground blind was located right near the tree line with an open field to the west, nearly identical to (the girl’s) description,” the affidavit alleged.
Moore’s wife said “she was unaware of the blind that I located,” the sheriff’s investigator wrote in his affidavit.
Her “account was in stark contrast to Bill’s flat denial that anything inappropriate ever occurred,” with the girl, the affidavit alleged.
If Moore had been convicted by a jury of the original charge of lewd acts with a child, he could have been given a minimum prison term of 25 years, court records show.
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