Warrants: Son texted photos of Durham man's dead body to co-worker

Chivalry Alexander Moore, 33, of Kinston, was charged over the weekend with murder in the death of his father, 60-year-old Willie Frank Moore, in the father's home, at 5706 Tomahawk Trail. He remains in the Durham County jail without bond.

According to applications to search the home and Chivalry Moore's cellphone, he had sent photos to a co-worker at a UPS facility on South Miami Boulevard on Jan. 8 showing a body with multiple stab wounds that had "already started the stages of decomposition." In the text accompanying the photo, Chivalry Moore said he had killed his father.

Chivalry Moore had sent other texts to his co-worker in which he talked about killing his father, a warrant application states.

Durham County deputies went to the Tomahawk Drive home, where a neighbor said she hadn't seen Willie Moore in about a month and that his son had been driving his car, according to a warrant application.

All of the doors and windows to the home were locked and the shades were drawn, but deputies were able to see a bit of the floor inside a sliding glass door in back, and it looked similar to the floor in a photo sent to the UPS worker, the application states. No one answered the doors or the home phone, but when deputies announced their presence outside, loud music started blaring from a room upstairs, and deputies saw a light in the room.

Deputies tried numerous times over five hours to contact anyone inside the house before an emergency response team entered the home and took Chivalry Moore into custody. Deputy David Bermel shot him in the process, and he was taken to Duke University Hospital for treatment.

He was arrested and charged in his father's death upon his release from the hospital Saturday night.

Deputies found a large knife with blood stains under Willie Moore's body, and they also seized a broken gold club head and shaft with blood stains near the body and a broken table leg with blood stains, according to a search warrant. Authorities cut a white karate robe with dried blood stains off of Chivalry Moore after he was in custody, the warrant states.

Bermel, who has been with the Durham County Sheriff's Office since 2013, has been placed on paid leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation. The State Bureau of Investigation also is reviewing the case, which is standard in officer-involved shootings.

During a brief court appearance Monday morning, authorities said Chivalry Moore had no previous criminal history.

He was acquitted in July 2016 of assault causing serious bodily injury and assault by pointing a gun following an incident in Kinston three months earlier in which a man was beaten and Moore barricaded himself inside a home and kept police at bay for about two hours.