A years-long investigation into a 2021 murder case involving a man shot dead outside Parachute resulted in an arrest after part of the gun used in the shooting was found in his residence, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
John Worley, 30, of Battlement Mesa also told people he had killed Wayne Moore, according to the 57-page affidavit, written by a Garfield County Sheriff’s Office detective.
The affidavit says Worley’s girlfriend at the time believed Moore was stalking her family, but points to evidence suggesting that wasn’t the case. It says the girlfriend and Worley had attempted to confront Moore one month prior to his murder at the same location where he ended up being killed.
Moore, 60, was found dead in the early evening of May 11, 2021, while parked in his vehicle in a wide area on the shoulder of US Highway 6 west of Parachute. He has been shot multiple times.
Moore had lived in his vehicle in and around Parachute.
Worley was arrested without incident last Friday on suspicion of first-degree murder, stalking and tampering with physical evidence. He was taken to Garfield County Jail and his bond was initially set at $5 million.
According to the affidavit, at the end of April law enforcement personnel executed a search warrant involving Worley’s car and residence. In his bedroom they found the slide from a Glock .40 caliber, model 22 gun. The slide’s serial number matched that of a gun Worley purchased less than six weeks before Moore was murdered, the affidavit says. The sheriff investigator last year had contacted a local gun dealer whose records showed that Worley bought the gun, the affidavit says.
It says Colorado Bureau of Investigation test results obtained last week show that all three shell casings recovered at the scene of the murder were fired from the gun that was purchased by Worley.
The affidavit indicates that a big break in the case occurred in 2022 when someone contacted the sheriff’s office, saying her friend said the friend’s boyfriend killed Moore. It says a coworker of the girlfriend then told investigators that two hours before Moore’s body was even discovered, the girlfriend got off the phone with Worley and told the coworker that Worley “just shot that guy.” Phone records from the girlfriend’s phone confirm Worley called her at about that time, the affidavit says.
The girlfriend’s sister also told investigators that Worley said he killed Moore, driving up to him, never getting out of his car and shooting Moore through the window, which is consistent with evidence at the scene that had never been publicly released, the affidavit says.
The sister told authorities Worley told her he was so mad that day he saw red, and when he saw Moore parked in the vehicle, “he just pulled over there and ‘pop, pop, pop’ three times,” never talking to Moore or getting out of his car.
The sister said Worley told her that as he left the scene, a vehicle drove up and followed him until he turned off in his driveway. About two days later, he changed all four tires on his vehicle and removed a large decal/sticker from his back window, she said. Tire tracks are sometimes used forensically to link vehicles to a crime scene.
The affidavit says comments from witnesses indicate Worley may have disassembled the gun and buried parts of it in different locations. The gun’s frame and barrel haven’t been found.
It says the girlfriend had told investigators she had been concerned about weird things happening around her house, a little more than a mile from where Moore ended up being killed. She and her neighbors were also worried that a man was stalking their daughters as the girls swam in the Colorado River, and the girlfriend told investigators she thought Moore was taking pictures of them.
However, the girlfriend’s coworker, also her neighbor, said during the investigation that she thought the man stalking them and taking pictures of them and the kids swimming looked different from Moore. And the sheriff’s detective told the girlfriend while questioning her that Moore’s phone didn’t have any pictures of her, her family or her house on it, and he told the girlfriend “this meant that if John did this, he killed an innocent man who “was not doing what they thought he was doing.”
The affidavit indicates that Worley had moved to Denver, and then to Illinois, where he had previously lived, before he eventually returned to the area and investigators were able to learn where he lived and search for the murder weapon.
