DURHAM -- A 5-year-old boy missing since October may have been fatally shot by his mother's boyfriend, a search warrant out of Teller County, Colo., indicates.
The boy's mother, Vania Sisk, may have shot and killed another woman, Antoinetta Yvonne McKoy, the warrant indicates, after McKoy argued with the boyfriend, Peter Moses.
An informant told Durham police that Moses wrapped the boy's body in plastic, put it in a suitcase and carried it to the attic at 2109 Pear Tree Lane in Durham, according to the search warrant.
The informant also said two women beat McKoy unconscious after she flagged down a passer-by outside the house, where Moses, Sisk, McKoy and others lived until recently. Moses then ordered Sisk to shoot McKoy, and he, Sisk and LaRonda Smith carried her body outside and buried her, according to the search warrant.
Durham police have revealed only that Jadon Higganbothan, 5, and McKoy, 28, are missing. The Durham police homicide unit is investigating, as it does all cases of slayings and missing persons.
Durham police say Vania Sisk told them she hadn't seen Jadon since Feb. 20, but an investigator in Colorado told the Colorado Springs Gazette that the boy has been missing since October. A press release from Durham police confirms his last "confirmed sighting" was in October.
Sisk reported leaving Jadon with an acquaintance in Durham on Feb. 20, according to Durham police. Sisk gave detectives multiple names for the person she says has Jadon: Charlene Keith on Danube Lane and Alicia Sanders or Sanderson on Roxboro Road.
"Sisk told investigators [Wednesday] evening that she left her son with Sanders/Sanderson on February 20 and last saw him wearing a yellow T-shirt, a blue coat and blue jeans," according to the news release. Sisk's family members and a Colorado detective say the individuals involved belong to a home-based religious group called the Black Hebrews. They apparently lived together at 2109 Pear Tree Lane, in the brand new Wyndmoor at the Park subdivision, until recently.
An aunt who helped raise Vania Sisk said Moses kept her niece from contacting her family after she left Colorado and came to North Carolina in 2009.
Denise Garing, of St. Paul, Minn., said her niece moved to Durham from Colorado 21/2 years ago with Moses and multiple women and children.
"They all had to work, because [Moses] didn't work," Garing said.
An incident report shows police began investigating "suspicious activity" in the Wyndmoor at the Park subdivision off South Alston Avenue on Feb. 18.
Police arrested 27-year-old Peter Lucas Moses Jr. at the Pear Tree Lane house that day. They found him hiding in a cabinet and arrested him on old charges of carrying a concealed weapon, firing a gun within city limits and writing a worthless check. He was released on $1,500 bond.
The Gazette reported last week that Sisk, 25, had recently moved back to Colorado along with five other adults and nine children.
Talk of a race war
A recent e-mail from Vania Sisk told family members to stop calling and said the group was going to move to the country and store up guns for a world-ending race war, she said. A black supremacist wing of the Hebrew Israelite movement believes Jesus Christ will soon return and kill whites, Jews, homosexuals and others, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"It didn't sound like her," Garing said. "It sounded like she was being dictated to write it."
Sisk's grandmother Naomi Sisk, of Waterloo, Iowa, said Vania had three children with Moses in the last couple of years.
"It was like they were making a baby farm or something," she said.
Jadon's father is Jamiel Higganbothan of Georgia, family members say. Vania Sisk divorced him about three years ago, they say.
"She fell right into Pete, and Pete found her weakest part, and he's brainwashing her," Naomi Sisk said. "Her actions are showing that she's in some kind of cult and she's brainwashed."
Naomi Sisk said Moses doesn't allow the women to eat foods such as pork or watch most TV programs.
"She's talking vaguely, but she's talking crazy," the grandmother said.
Children removed
Sisk was reported missing last Thursday after she failed to meet with the Teller County Department of Social Services on a custody dispute involving her son.
Several times last week, Teller County sheriff's deputies visited the home the group shared, trying to find Sisk, who also goes by Higganbothan, and Jadon. Neither was found, but the nine children were taken into custody at the request of authorities in North Carolina, sheriff's Sgt. Nick Olmsted told the Gazette.
Naomi Sisk said the three children Vania had with Moses have since been brought back to Durham and that Vania planned to return to try to regain custody. Olmsted told the Gazette that a U-Haul dealer in Colorado Springs told him the adults in the group left for Durham on Sunday.
Olmsted declined to explain why North Carolina social services wanted the children removed from the Colorado home.
At least five of the nine children taken into custody have the same father, he said, but they have different mothers among the women in the group. He declined to elaborate on the accusations against the group.
"Durham police contacted Colorado Springs police who contacted us after a female member who had left the group told them about things going on that they had witnessed - horrific things - being done to children," Olmstead said. "It is an active investigation in Durham, and I can't say what they are."
Investigators are asking for the public's assistance. Anyone with information on McKoy or Jadon Higganbothan is asked to call Durham police at 919-560-4440, ext. 29335 or Crime Stoppers at 919-683-1200. Crime Stoppers pays cash for information leading to arrest in felony cases, and callers never have to identify themselves.
