Melanie Tucker had not heard her daughter Monica Moynan’s voice in months. This was not normal.
They would usually talk every two weeks and would text several times a week. But from April to July of last year, when Melanie would ask Monica to call, it seemed there was always an excuse.
“I’m in the car.”
“I can’t focus or now I’m running into work right now.”
“I’ve got an extra shift. Let me call you tomorrow.”
Other texts were long and detailed, Melanie said, pointing out one text still on her phone about a trip to Charlotte for doula training that Monica was especially excited about.
“It was very elaborate,” Melanie’s husband, Brandon Tucker, said. “You read it, and it felt like her.”
But the person sending these texts was not Monica. It was Brian Sluss, her ex-boyfriend and father of her children, according to search warrant applications written by Holly Springs Police Department detectives.
Melanie reported her daughter missing in July 2019, when Monica’s apartment manager in Holly Springs called her out of concern, after seeing Sluss at the apartment and not having seen or heard Monica since late March, according to warrants.
Monica was declared missing by the police after a welfare check at her apartment. The last time anyone had seen her apart from Sluss was in April 2019, according to the warrants.
The detectives are now investigating her disappearance — her body has not been found — as a murder.
Sluss, 44, is a suspect in the case, Police Department spokesman Mark Andrews said in an email. But no one has been arrested or charged.
Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said “the case remains under investigation” in a text message to The News & Observer.
The sibling connection
The Tuckers have been forced to turn from being just grandparents to parents of Monica’s two small children. They, along with Monica’s sister, Samantha Moynan, said Monica was the family’s glue.
Monica, or “Moni,” was 22 when she went missing. She was the middle sibling, between Samantha, 27, and their brother, Trey Tucker, 15.
“Moni is such an integral part of like the three of us and our sibling connection,” Samantha said.
Samantha took care of Monica when she was younger, but later it was Monica who would call and make doctor’s appointments for Samantha, Samantha said. It was just her sister’s nature, she said.
Monica was protective of her younger brother, defending him when others would tease him, coaxing him to hang out with his sisters when he wanted to stay in his room.
The last time the three of them were together was March 2019. They had one of their “sibling talks,” where they would talk about any problems they were having.
“I swear we covered everything, which is so crazy to look back on,” Samantha said. “We talked about childhood and all kinds of different things.”
Monica Moynan, 23, has been missing since April, Holly Springs police say. Holly Springs Police Department
Melanie had Samantha and Monica before she met Brandon. Monica was 5, at the time they met. Trey was born after Brandon and Melanie got married.
“He just accepted Sam and Moni as his own from the beginning,” Melanie said. “He literally loved them and fell in love with them more every day.”
“She loved to laugh and she loved to make people laugh,” Brandon said of Monica. “She had an infectious laugh.”
The Tuckers loved the cards Monica wrote for them every Mother’s Day, every Father’s Day and every Christmas.
“I’m so grateful that we still have so many of those cards,” Melanie said.
Melanie used to organize a “fit camp” for women at 5 a.m. on weekdays, before her daughters went to school. She and Monica bonded over running and would train for runs together.
Monica told her parents when she started dating Sluss. They were wary, because he lied about his age, first saying he was in his late 20s, then saying he was in his early 30s and finally admitting he was in his late 30s, Melanie said.
The N&O left multiple messages at a phone number obtained for Sluss from court records and a number listed in an online phone directory for his mother, but could not reach him for comment. Search warrant applications say Sluss’s phone and his mother’s phone were confiscated by law enforcement.
***
When police first questioned Brian Sluss in July, he told them he had not seen Monica since June, according to applications for search warrants.
He said Monica had become addicted to heroin and that after he had placed her under what he called home rehab, she had run away in June.
He said he texted Monica’s mother pretending to be her because “he didn’t know what to do or how to tell her that her daughter was missing and addicted to heroin,” Detective A. Ham wrote in a search warrant application.
***
Monica told her parents when she became pregnant while still in her teens.
“She was like, all right, guys, here’s the deal. I’m pregnant and we’re freaking doing this, so we need to look forward now,” Samantha said.
Brandon, Melanie and Samantha supported her. They threw a baby shower for Monica’s first daughter when Monica was pregnant. Melanie and Samantha were in the birthing center with her when she had her second, two and a half years later, when she was in her early 20s.
“To me, that’s really gigantic,” Melanie said, “watching your baby give birth to her second baby.”
Monica had both of her daughters with Sluss. Her first is now 4 years old; the second, 1½.
A nurturing, involved mother, she wrote letters to her daughters telling them how much she loved them, Melanie said.
Monica and her older daughter were very close, Samantha said. “She would call her her little sidekick or partner in crime, her best friend.”
Monica’s younger daughter was always around her. In the months before she went missing, when Monica left for four- to five-hour waitressing shifts, she would pump milk for her.
When Monica did have to leave the girls, she would drive them up to her parents, Melanie and Brandon. Or she would call Sluss.
Monica Moynan Holly Springs Police Department
Domestic violence protective order
Sluss and Monica dated until Monica filed a domestic violence protective order against him in 2017, saying he had attacked her.
“I was punched in the head & choked against a wall,” Monica wrote in the protective order.
Still, Monica preferred her children be watched by their biological father rather than a stranger. She wanted them to grow up with a father, Samantha said.
“She had no interest in having a relationship with him and understood fiercely that that was not a good idea,” Brandon said. “But she did want to allow him to be involved in their (daughters’) lives.”
Monica did what she felt was best for her children, her family says.
She searched for natural treatments when the girls were sick. When she identified elderberry syrup as helpful but could not pronounce some of the chemicals on the bottle she had bought at a store, she decided to make her own, starting Moni’s Magic Elderberry syrup.
Melanie, Brandon, and Samantha, have watched a video of Monica explaining why she wanted to start the company more times than they can count.
In the video, Monica holds up her phone with the selfie camera pointing toward her with one hand and gesturing with her other. Her voice is energetic as she talks about the syrup she had begun making after seeing how it helped her younger daughter with the sniffles.
“I want to know exactly what I’m putting into my kid’s body,” she said.
Watching it now, Melanie holds back tears as Brandon puts his arm around her. Samantha dabs at her eyes with a tissue.
***
Sluss told police Monica was not addicted to heroin and was depressed Aug. 12, the search warrant applications said.
This was one of four conflicting statements Sluss gave about Monica’s disappearance, the documents state. Sluss also admitted using Monica’s social media accounts. He got his ex-wife to call Monica’s apartment manager pretending to be her, the documents state.
His ex-wife’s “actions show that she may have assisted Sluss after Monica’s murder,” Detective D. Green of the Holly Springs Police Department wrote in a search warrant application.
***
Making elderberry syrup now is painful, Samantha said, because it brings back memories.
In early January 2019, she went to stay at Monica’s apartment. Monica had already started selling her syrup to her friends, but now, she wanted to get it out to the community.
Samantha helped Monica set up stalls, and within a week, Monica was ready to start selling her syrup at the Holly Springs Farmers Market. In the January cold last year, Monica was bundled in a green checkered coat at her stall, with signs and her syrup ready to go.
“She was at that stage in her life, where she was about to skyrocket,” Samantha said.
Monica was also set to start doula training in Charlotte. “She wanted to be a doula to help people to do something she was passionate about and to be able to provide for her kids on her own,” Samantha said.
Monica took her tax refund money and paid for her doula training, but she would never get to go. She was set to start April 27 or 28 in 2019, weeks after anyone but her ex-boyfriend had last seen her.
***
Search warrants released in November say police found blood between cracks in kitchen tiles with “signs of cleanup” Aug. 13, but did not specify whose house. The blood was tested and found to be Monica’s. The warrants don’t say whose kitchen the blood was found in. Law enforcement officers were also taking soil samples and searching the woods around Sluss’s parents’ house in Tazewell County, VirginIa, the warrants state.
***
Melanie, 47, and Brandon, 42, filed an emergency custody claim for Monica’s daughters, after Monica was declared missing. Before that, the kids were staying with Sluss in Virginia.
The Tuckers moved from a bigger house in Garner to a two-bedroom house in Mebane in October, with Trey. And just like that, with Monica’s daughters joining them, they became a five-person household. There was little opposition from Sluss, who Brandon said did not go to court.
Brandon has worked as a locksmith at Duke University and Melanie used to work as a personal trainer. He was hoping to lighten his workload and go on a few more vacations, but now, they face many more years of raising children.
“It does feel daunting,” Brandon said, “but we would have it no other way.”
A pink tent modeled after a castle stands just outside their front door on their porch. Light colors and toys brighten up the living room.
“You wouldn’t really know the depth of pain that they’re facing when they’re interacting with the kids,” Samantha said. “Brandon will still every once in a while, you know, break out into a song and do silly things with the kids.”
Melanie would take the girls on mile-long walks, and Monica’s older daughter, from the stroller would complain about getting tired.
“It cracks me up because I’m, I’m pushing and I can really barely talk, let alone breathe,” Melanie said.
There is a GoFundMe page to raise money for the children’s clothes, school supplies and the additional food the family needs. Friends have helped out with groceries. Melanie says the Garner community and the Mebane community have been extremely helpful to them.
Melanie and Brandon have told Monica’s older daughter what they believe is the truth.
“She actually understands that her mother has been killed and her mother is dead now and she cannot come back,” Melanie said.
They plan to tell Monica’s younger daughter when she is older.
“But it’s so sad to think that (her younger daughter) probably won’t even remember Moni, and that’s not fair,” Samantha said.” And we’re always going to tell her about her and show her videos and make sure she knows who she was (because) to not know Moni is like, so wrong.”
