Prosecution's star witness testifies at Schenectady contract-killing trial

Prosecution’s star witness testifies at Schenectady contract-killing trial

Dec 09, 2018 News

SCHENECTADY, NY (Times Union) – Brandi Moore recalled thinking of visiting Brooklyn and shopping in Manhattan when her then-boyfriend, Joevany “Moon” Luna, told her in 2016 that he was going to New York.
“Who wouldn’t want to go to New York?” Moore, a star prosecution witness from Delaware, declared Friday at the murder trial of Tarchand Lall.
Lall is accused of paying Luna $10,000 to kill 49-year-old Charles “Chuck” Dembrosky in November outside his Campbell Avenue home on the morning of Nov. 19, 2016. Lall wanted to collect on a $150,000 life insurance policy that he had taken out on Dembrosky who was fatally shot.
Prosecutors contend Lall, who is 54, and a contractor from Guyana, had money problems.
He is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy, weapons possession, life settlement fraud and criminal solicitation. If convicted of the top charge, he faces life in prison without parole.

Accused: Tarchand Lall

On Friday, Moore testified that she soon found out Luna was actually headed to upstate New York to carry out a hit on someone who had supposedly killed a young boy and his father.
“He told me he was going to New York to kill somebody,” Moore responded to a question from prosecutor Pete Willis. “It was kind of like our relationship wasn’t the same anymore.”
Moore said Luna, 43, called her to say that he arrived safely but was agitated that his buddies drank and smoked marijuana on the trip to the Electric City and weren’t taking the job seriously.
The next time she heard from him was around 5 a.m. the next day of Nov. 19 when he turned up at her home in Wilmington, Delaware.
“He said he ran up to the guy, killed him, and came home to me,” said Moore.
She said Luna then smashed the gun into pieces and soaked it in bleach.
Lall’s attorney, Cheryl Coleman, tried to raise inconsistencies in statements that Moore ostensibly gave at various times to police investigators and the grand jury and what she was now telling jurors.
On cross-examination, Coleman locked horns with the feisty Moore. She accused Moore of tampering with evidence when she gave Luna the bleach.
“No, I did not because he did not tell me what he was going to do with the bleach,” said Moore.
Coleman pressed Moore about her earlier testimony about $700 that she picked up for Luna at WalMart before he traveled to Schenectady and the rest of the cash that he received after returning to Wilmington from Schenectady.
“He got the $700 before and the rest of the money afterwards,” Moore responded in a raised voice.
Coleman challenged Moore on the reason she broke up with Luna, contending it was because of his infidelity.
In a firm voice, Moore, a mother of two, asserted that she ended her relationship with Luna on New Year’s Eve of 2016 because he kept dealing drugs even after promising her he would stop.
Earlier Friday, State Police Investigator Andrew Behrens testified about the extensive analysis of Luna, Lall and Kyshaan Moore’s phone records that tracked them and their interactions along the Thruway into and out of Schenectady.
The digital trail contained footage from surveillance cameras in Schenectady, including around Lall’s Mount Pleasant home and from a licence-plate reader that Coleman argued strenuously are only located in Orange and Ulster counties and not in Albany or Schenectady counties.
Lall and Moore, who is not related to Brandi Moore, are serving time in prison for their conviction earlier this year for felonies in their role in the murder-for-hire plot.
Testimony before Schenectady County Judge Matthew Sypnewski is expected to continue next week.

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