Missing Holly Springs mom now focus of homicide investigation
Holly Springs police on Wednesday confirmed to WRAL News that its investigators consider the death of a missing woman a homicide and consider her ex-boyfriend, who is the father of her two children, a person of interest in the case.
Monica Moynan, 23, was reported missing by her mother in July, but the woman told police that she hadn't seen her daughter in person since March. Moynan also hadn't shown up for work at a Fuquay-Varina restaurant for months by the time police started investigating.
Holly Springs spokesman Mark Andrews said previously that investigators believe she is dead and was the victim of foul play.
Brian Sluss, Moynan's ex-boyfriend, was the last to see her alive, according to the warrants released earlier in the case, and his actions after her disappearance made him a person of interest.
Sluss, according to the warrants, failed to report her missing, lied about her whereabouts and used her social media accounts and phone after she was missing.
Warrants released this week show that a former wife of Sluss is also considered a person of interest.
Sluss told police that Moynan had become addicted to heroin and had run off in late June after he tried "home rehab" to break her of the addiction. He said he didn't know how to tell her family about it, so he sent texts to them as if everything was fine with her.
But investigators noted in the warrant applications that he had told other people Moynan had been at a drug treatment facility for months.
"I thought they were a nice couple," Annanias Montgomery, a neighbor of Moynan's, said Wednesday.
A Holly Springs police car has been parked outside Moynan's apartment for months, and when Montgomery learned of investigators' suspicions about Sluss, she said, "That changes the story if he was doing that. They were not a good couple. He wasn't a good husband or boyfriend."
Moynan posted "An Open Letter to Evil" online more than two years ago, describing the pain of being in an abusive relationship.
Domestic violence advocates said people in such relationships need to devise an escape plan and keep the details secret until you're ready to carry it out.
"Someone should have been able to help her," Montgomery said.
