Confession Recanted In Prayer-Group Murder Case

The plot of an already bizarre Kansas City murder case took another turn yesterday, when an attorney said the confession of a man who said he killed his prayer-group leader's wife was a fabrication.

Two weeks ago Micah Moore told officers that he murdered 27-year-old Bethany Deaton – that her husband, the leader of their small, secretive religious group, had ordered him to do so. But at Moore's preliminary hearing yesterday, his attorney, Melanie Morgan, called the confession "bizarre, nonsensical and untrue," and  said the story was a fiction of a troubled mind confused by the teachings of that religious community.

“The doctrines taught in that community affected Micah's mental state and ultimately dominated his thinking,” Morgan said.

She asserted that the evidence will  support what police initially believed: that Bethany Deaton committed suicide.

Prosecutors don't agree. They say they will seek a grand jury indictment. Currently, Moore is the only person charged in Deaton's death.