From Hope Spring Drive to Pear Tree Lane

by Holly Hughes

Google the name Jadon Higganbothan and you might get ten hits or so.  Google Pear Tree Lane in Durham, North Carolina and you’ll probably get even less.  On the other hand, Google Caylee Anthony or Hope Spring Drive and you’ll never be able to read all that has been written concerning those two subjects.  Now, don’t get me wrong, it was a horrible tragedy what happened to Caylee and we were all right to be indignant over her death.  But the sad truth is there are hundreds of thousands of children who are murdered everyday by the very people who are supposed to love and protect them.  This brings me to the case of Jadon Higganbothan.  Jadon was a brown skinned little cutie with big brown eyes and an infectious smile.  He was living with his mother at Pear Tree Lane when he met his untimely death.  But, they weren’t the only ones living there.  And Jadon wasn’t the only one to “disappear” while living there.

Peter Lucas Moses, 27, was living there and was the leader of a group called The Black Hebrews.  Some have called it a cult, others a religious sect.  The label doesn’t matter to me.  What matters to me are the horrendous acts that allegedly took place there.  And the fact that no one in main stream media seems to have picked up on this tragedy.  

Jadon was four years old when one of the other women... oh, did I mention this was a polygamist sect?  When one of the other women reported to “Lord", yes, that’s what they called Peter Lucas Moses, that Jadon had swatted another child on the bottom.  In response to this childish, playful act, Peter Lucas Moses took little Jadon into the garage, turned on the music of the Lord’s prayer, took a gun, held it to the four year old’s head and pulled the trigger.  

Why? You might ask.  Why, because Jadon was gay, of course. Yes, folks, that is the crazy, illogical conclusion that Moses jumped to after hearing about Jadon’s playing.  If that isn’t horrific enough, not only does he jump to a conclusion that may or may not be true, but then, he murders a four year old in reaction to that conclusion.  The murder isn’t the only obscenity here.  Several women living in the house, including Jadon’s own mother, then cleaned up the bloody body and put it in a suitcase and stored it in the attic.  That is, until Moses began to complain about the stench.  Then his poor little body was stuffed into a garbage bag, just like Caylee, and buried in the back yard of another home the "cult" owned.  

Meanwhile, his mother, Vania Sisk, doesn’t run off and report this to the police.  No, she continuously lies about Jadon’s whereabouts and then goes on to follow in her “Lord’s” footsteps.  Yes, that’s right, she took the gun (which was hers by the way) and shot another member of the “cult” when she tried to escape.  

Antoinetta Yvonne McKoy was 28 when she moved from Washington, D.C. to Durham, North Carolina.  Relatives began to worry about her when she never phoned her mother on her birthday.  An investigation was launched that led straight to the door of Peter Lucas Moses. Antoinetta committed the unforgivable sin of trying to leave.  That is what got her her death sentence.  After the violence and abuse got to be too much, she ran out of the house, banged on a neighbor’s door and begged to use her cell phone.  The neighbor told police later she thought Antoinetta was just a mental patient and never called anyone.  This, despite the fact that two other women ran after Antoinetta and dragged her back into the house, kicking and screaming.  Once inside, the two women began to beat her mercilessly and even tried to strangle her with an extension cord.  When that didn’t work, Moses got out Vania’s gun, handed it to her and pronounced the sentence.  She too, must die.  So Vania Sisk, instead of turning the gun that she now had in her own hands on the man who murdered her child, simply followed his commands and shot the 28 year old young woman in front of her.  Antoinetta was then unceremoniously dumped into garbage bags, and eventually her and Jadon were buried together behind a house on Ashe street.  

In June 2011, seven months after anyone had seen Jadon alive and six months after Antoinetta, a plumber working in the backyard uncovered the remains and called police. Moses and six others are now facing charges.  Moses is facing the same sentence he imposed on little Jadon and ordered carried out on Antoinetta.

This case has it all.  Religion, cults, polygamy, child murder, a second murder, the death penalty, bodies wrapped in plastic bags.  And dare I say it?  Bodies discovered by some poor working man who will be called into court several years from now and questioned about his find.  Let’s just hope that no one accuses him of wanting fifteen minutes of fame and a big fat reward.

A lot of us are still smarting over what went on in the Casey Anthony trial.  Not just the verdict, but the multiple lives that were destroyed in the defense’s attempts to get the jury to blame anyone but Casey. Their blatant disregard for the truth and the lies they told the jury in opening statements.

As we watch the Jadon Higganbothan and Antoinetta McKay case proceed, I hope and pray that we don’t see the same shenanigans pulled in Durham that we did in Orlando.