Nicholas Bernard staff writer
Curtis Moon owned the Wizard’s Knight Club on Hollywood Boulevard in Houma, Louisiana. Family say he was a kind, loving family man and it was that compassion that led to his murder in 1998 at just 47.
“He was the most caring, loving and giving person anyone would ever meet,” says Tammy Leeper, Moon’s sister-in-law and lifelong friend.
Moon was leaving Wizard’s Knight Club, when he noticed a car broken down on the side of the road. He stopped to help.
The driver’s name was Melissa Porche. News accounts report that Gary Harrall, Travis Johnson, Kendall Barrillaud, Brandon Lee and Porche then robbed and brutally murdered Moon in his Houma apartment.
Moon was tied to a chair, bludgeoned and had his throat slashed before the killers left him to bleed out.
According to case files obtained from the Terrebonne Parish Clerk of Court Office, Harrall and Johnson both pled guilty to first degree murder to avoid the death penalty and were sentenced to life in prison, while Barrillaud and Lee pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received 35 years in prison. Porche, who Leeper says was the mastermind of the murder, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received 35 years of prison.
“Curtis was one of the most overly generous guys I’ve ever met in my life.”
Almost 28 years after this crime, Leeper wants people to know who Moon really was, not that he was just a bar owner who was killed.
Leeper says he was a massive New Orleans Saints fan, noting he would never miss a game. Moon was also an avid gambler, Leeper says.
“Curtis and I would always go gamble together,” she says. “Blackjack was his favorite.”
Something as small as gambling, reminds Leeper of Moon to this day. It is a part of Moon’s personality the murderers could not take away.
It is not just Leeper that remembers Moon for who he really was.
Leeper’s husband, Jimmy, worked for Moon as DJ at Moon’s bars.
“Curtis was one of the most overly generous guys I’ve ever met in my life,” he says.
Leeper has mixed feelings about the coverage of Moon after his death.
“I felt like they were all fixated that he was a bar owner,” she says. “They thought he was a bad person and that he potentially did something to deserve what happened to him.”
Leeper says she wants people to remember instead that, “He was a man who truly cared about everyone.”
