An NYC Man Murdered a Woman He Coerced into Prostitution. Her Head, Hands and Feet Were Found in His Freezer.

A New York City man will spend the rest of his life behind bars for coercing multiple women into sex work, torturing them and fatally beating one of the victims before dismembering her body, federal authorities announced.

According to documents unsealed by a federal judge in Brooklyn on May 24, 2022, a grand jury indicted Somorie Moses, 48, with the January 2017 murder of Leondra Foster in the course of sex trafficking her and multiple other women.

Moses, also known as “Sugar Bear,” previously denied killing Foster, but he was convicted in 2019 of criminally negligent homicide and concealing a corpse and sentenced to eight years behind bars after he admitted to dismembering her. The jury acquitted him of the murder charge, which was filed at the state level.

In the new charges brought by federal authorities, Moses faced nine counts of sex trafficking — two of which involved one woman and two Foster — as well as the murder charge.

Prosecutors said that the trafficker “used extreme violence to force his victims to work in prostitution for his benefit” — including minors — in Brooklyn and Queens.

According to prosecutors, one victim refused to engage in sex work so Moses used a taser on her until she agreed, and he beat another woman and used a razor to slash her arms and back before permanently scarring her by dousing her wounds in lemon juice.

Moses also beat a victim with an extension cord and threatened to rub the wounds with salt as well as put a shotgun in a woman's mouth and threatened to kill her and her child, prosecutors said.

According to the indictment, on Jan. 13, 2017, Moses allegedly beat Foster to death.

“The following morning, using a knife and a saw, Moses dismembered Foster’s body inside their shared apartment in Brooklyn, New York,” the indictment states. “Four days later, on the morning of January 17, 2017, Moses brought Foster’s torso and limbs to the Bronx for disposal at a sanitation site.”

According to the indictment, “Foster’s head, hands and feet — including a foot with the name ‘Somorie’ tattooed on it — were subsequently recovered by law enforcement inside the deep freezer of Moses’s apartment.”

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In September 2023, Moses pleaded guilty to the crimes.

On April 5, 2024, a judge sentenced Moses to 10 terms of life in prison to run concurrently for sex trafficking eight women and for the murder of one of his victims, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York.

In a statement, United States Attorney Breon Peace said, "A lengthy prison sentence cannot undo the extreme and lasting harm Moses has inflicted on his victims, but incarceration will prevent this killer who clearly has no respect for human life from victimizing others."