Police charge ex-boyfriend with killing missing Holly Springs woman, last seen a year ago

The ex-boyfriend of a Holly Springs woman has been charged with her murder more than a year after she was last seen, Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said Tuesday.

Monica Moynan was last seen in April 2019, police say. In July 2019, her mother reported her missing to Holly Springs police, and detectives have been treating Moynan’s disappearance as a death investigation since October.

Brian Sluss, Moynan’s ex-boyfriend and the father of their two children, was arrested Tuesday in Bluefield, Va., where his parents live, after a Wake County grand jury indicted him, Freeman said.

Sluss, 44, was being held in Tazewell County Jail, Andrews said. After appearing in court in Virginia Wednesday morning, where he waived his right to extradition, he was brought to Wake County Wednesday afternoon.

Sluss has been considered a person of interest in the case and was later identified as a suspect, Holly Springs spokesman Mark Andrews said in an email earlier this year.

The indictment alleges the crime was committed “on or about April 7.”

“These charges follow a long and in-depth investigation by the Holly Springs police department,” Freeman said in a phone interview with The News & Observer Tuesday night. “We came to a point where we could present the evidence before a grand jury.”

Moynan’s body has not been found, Andrews told the N&O Tuesday night.

On Wednesday afternoon, he arrived at the Wake County Detention Center, cuffed with his hands in front of him. As he was escorted inside with law enforcement officers, reporters asked him whether he was guilty and if he had anything to say to Moynan’s family. He walked away silently.

Wake County’s Criminal Analysis Apprehension Team (CAAT) played a role in Sluss’s arrest at his parents’ home.

A GoFundMe has been set up to help Moynan’s two children.

Timeline of events

In July 2019, Melanie Tucker, Monica Moynan’s mother, reported her daughter was missing after Moynan’s apartment manager in Holly Springs called her out of concern. The apartment manger saw Sluss at the apartment and had not seen or heard from Moynan since late March, according to warrants.

Moynan, known as “Moni,” 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.

Over the course of several interviews, Sluss gave police conflicting statements, warrants show. When police first questioned him in July 2019, he told them he had not seen Moynan since June, according to applications for search warrants. He said Moynan 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 Moynan’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.

But later, on Aug. 12, Sluss told police Moynan was not addicted to heroin and was depressed, the search warrant applications said.

This was one of four conflicting statements Sluss gave about Moynan’s disappearance, the documents state. Sluss also admitted using Moynan’s social media accounts. He got his ex-wife to call Moynan’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.

Sluss’s ex-wife has not been charged with a crime, Andrews said Tuesday.

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 Moynan’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’ parents’ house in Tazewell County, the warrants state.

Sluss and Moynan dated until she filed a domestic violence protective order against him in 2017, saying he had attacked her.

This story was originally published May 5, 2020 at 7:34 PM.