‘She was Satan’s puppet’: Lacy Lakeview woman who murdered neighbor sentenced to 50 years in prison

WACO, Texas (KWTX) - A Lacy Lakeview woman charged with breaking into her neighbor’s home in 2022, shooting her in the head and claiming she “drank her blood” was sentenced to 50 years in prison Monday.

Cynthia Ellen Ming, 54, who pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the capital murder charge last week, changed her plea Monday morning to guilty to the lesser charge of murder and accepted a 50-year plea offer from the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office.

Prosecutors Duncan Widmann and Luke McCowan told Visiting Judge Roy Sparkman last week that the 55-year prison term Ming rejected would be their lowest and last offer.

Ming, who has a long history of mental disorders, pleaded guilty to killing her neighbor, 45-year-old Angie Melissa Moore Sept. 7, 2022, at Moore’s home in the 400 block of Whispering Avenue.

“An offender’s mental health is certainly a factor we consider, but our first priority must always be the safety and protection of the community,” Widmann and McCowan said in a joint statement.

Ming will be eligible for parole after she is given credit for serving 25 years in prison. However, the prosecutors said it is unlikely she will be granted parole because of the heinous nature of the crime.

“Since Ming will almost certainly never leave prison, this plea agreement achieves the same outcome a conviction for capital murder would have, while eliminating the risks associated with the trial and appeals processes. Those risks often increase in cases involving claims of insanity,” the prosecutors said.

Ming’s attorney, Clay Thomas, said he was ready to proceed to trial with a “double-barrel defense.”

“I think it would have been an interesting trial,” Thomas said. “But as always, it’s what the client wants. They are the ones who have to assume the risk and do the time.”

Ming has been in jail since the murder and has been examined by mental health experts at least three times, first to assess her competency to stand trial and later to determine if her mental health disorders precluded her from knowing right from wrong when she killed her estranged neighbor.

In emotional victim impact statements Monday, Moore’s parents, Martha and Marvin Moore, told Ming how her actions adversely have affected their family, including Moore’s 16-year-old son, Conner.

Martha Moore read aloud a song Conner wrote about her mother’s death that he calls “Satan’s Puppet.”

“She was Satan’s puppet, and she is going to hell if she doesn’t ask God for forgiveness for her sins,” Conner wrote. “… She shed my mother’s innocent blood… One day it will be worse for her when she stands before my almighty God.”

Martha Moore called Ming “a force of pure evil that lived across the street,” adding her daughter endured Ming’s “aggressive, demonic harassing” for at least three years before Ming killed her.

Marvin Moore stood in the witness chair, pointed at Ming and told her angrily that he was going to look her “right in the eye and tell you what you did to my family.”

He called her a “cold-blooded murderer” and said he hopes she dies in prison.

Ming told health care workers attending to her injuries after her arrest that she “murdered” Moore because Moore reportedly killed her dog, according to records filed in the case.

Moore called police shortly before midnight to report Ming was trying to break into her home. Moore told the 911 operator she had a gun and would be forced to use it in self-defense, an arrest affidavit alleged.

Officers arrived a few minutes later and found Ming, naked and covered in blood, fleeing from the residence, the officers reported.

In an evaluation of Ming late last month, Dr. Lee Carter determined that Ming was sane at the time of the offense despite diagnoses of borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder and schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type.

Ming told Carter that she and Moore had a “hostile” relationship and frequently called police on each other.

On the night of the murder, Ming told Carter she was “electrocuted” by a live wire in her home, adding that after that she “just walked around all bugged out.”

“That’s the last thing I remember, is the light fixture,” Ming told Carter in a report filed with the court. “But then I was talking to the law-dogs (police) about what I did… and I don’t even remember it.”

Carter wrote in the report that police car cameras captured Ming showing no remorse and speaking voluntarily about breaking into Moore’s home, taking the gun away from her and shooting her in the head.

Hospital records show Ming admitted during treatment that she broke in through a window, killed Moore and “then drank her blood,” according to Carter’s report.

Carter concluded that while mental illness played a role in her “misconduct,” she does not have a mental defect or disorder that “adversely affects her capacity to differentiate right from wrong.”

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