Mom has stepdad kill her child’s father when he’s given joint custody, FL cops say (2025)

A mom is accused of having the father of her 4-year-old child killed after a judge ordered the dad would receive joint custody, Florida authorities said.

A jury has now convicted 27-year-old Rachiel Moore of first-degree murder and tampering with evidence, the State Attorney’s Office for the First Judicial Circuit of Florida announced April 25.

She was sentenced to life in prison.

McClatchy News reached out to Moore’s attorney for comment April 28 but did not immediately receive a response.

Moore and Colby Vinson, the father of their daughter, engaged in a year-long custody battle that came to a head in March 2023, when a judge ruled in the dad’s favor to grant 50/50 custody, according to the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office.

“Family members were not pleased with this ruling and reported being very uneasy with the scheduled exchange date,” deputies wrote in the affidavit.

Documents show Moore testified that she was concerned about Vinson using drugs around their daughter, but a judge said she cut off contact between him and their child for 10 months without obtaining a court order or reporting her concerns through official channels.

But on March 19, 2023, the day Vinson picked up his daughter to spend the night for the first time in nearly a year, he was shot dead while unloading groceries, authorities said.

Detectives said they learned Moore was “distraught” over the ruling to grant Vinson partial custody and had a conversation with her stepfather, Jason Curtis, about him “taking care of it,” investigators said.

“Curtis asked her what weapon she wanted used and she told him whatever is easiest to carry,” deputies said in the affidavit. “She further stated Curtis made a comment about going hunting and her replying she had an address.”

She told him she would pay him $50 for gas to drive down to Florida, but she said she didn’t think he was going to follow through with it, deputies said.

Moore told deputies Curtis called her the evening Vinson died and told her it was done and he needed to go on the run, according to the affidavit.

But deputies said when they questioned her, she acted as though she had no idea who may have killed Vinson, and she accused him of being a drug dealer.

Moore later said she deleted messages and records of her calls with her stepfather because she thought they made it seem like she had orchestrated Vinson’s death, deputies said.

Curtis, now 56, was convicted of first-degree murder in May 2024 and sentenced to life in prison, records show.

Santa Rosa County is in the Florida Panhandle.