Somorie Moses, who the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace, Japanese District of New York famous is also called “Sugar Bear” and “Daddy,” pleaded responsible final Friday to intercourse trafficking eight ladies and to the homicide of considered one of them, Leondra Foster, in 2017.

Moses beforehand denied killing Foster in a New York state prison case and was discovered responsible of negligent murder and concealing a corpse again in 2019. In 2022, nevertheless, he was charged in federal court docket on the identical case — turning into the primary particular person prosecutors have used the federal statute criminalizing homicide in the midst of intercourse trafficking.

Moses now faces a compulsory 15-year jail time period and a attainable life sentence.

Per a press launch from the Lawyer’s Workplace — citing court docket filings and court docket admissions — Moses “compelled ladies and ladies, together with minors, into prostitution for his profit utilizing violence, threats of violence, and psychological manipulation.” Prosecutors say he used “false guarantees of affection and marriage” to begin relationships with the ladies, earlier than “demanding that they work as prostitutes and switch over the cash they earned to him.” He additionally reportedly “pressured a lot of his victims into tattooing his first identify” on their our bodies.

One among his victims was Foster, who was murdered on January 13, 2017. Per prosecutors, Moses used a knife and noticed to dismember her physique earlier than disposing of her limbs and torso days later at a sanitation website.

When he was apprehended by legislation enforcement, Foster’s head, arms and toes — together with one with “Somorie” tattooed on it — had been present in his freezer.

“Moses used brutal beatings, rape, torture, and threats to coerce his victims to work in prostitution in Brooklyn and Queens. When one sufferer, recognized at in the present day’s responsible plea continuing as Jane Doe 1, refused to interact in prostitution, Moses used a taser in opposition to her till she complied,” learn the press launch. “One other sufferer, recognized as Jane Doe 2, was slashed on her arms and again with a razor by Moses who additionally beat her with a belt earlier than pouring lemon juice on her wounds, leaving her completely scarred.”

Per the discharge, Moses put a shotgun within the mouth of one other sufferer and threatened to killer her baby when she advised him she “didn’t need to work as a prostitute.”

“With in the present day’s responsible plea to each rely within the indictment, Moses is held absolutely chargeable for preying on ladies and ladies, forcing them to grow to be prostitutes, after which brutally murdering and dismembering considered one of his many victims,” United States Lawyer Breon Peace mentioned in a press release. “Whereas the defendant’s whole request for forgiveness can not undo the horrible hurt he has precipitated, we hope it would carry a measure of closure to his victims who suffered the defendant’s excessive cruelty and brutality, and to the household of Ms. Foster.”