Suspect charged in New Jersey teen's murder

  Eyewitness News' Sarah Wallace

(New Jersey-WABC, July 27, 2006) (WABC) -- Police say they have charged a man in the death of an 18-year-old girl who was found inside a dumpster.

Jennifer Moore was last seen Tuesday in the early morning hours leaving a nightclub on the West Side. Her body was later found in a dumpster.

The suspect, 35-year-old Draymond Coleman, is in the 10th Precinct because he was picked up in Manhttan. But Coleman is being charged with murder by the Hudson County prosecutor's office since the crime of murder was committed, police believe, in Weekawken.

His girlfriend is being charged with hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence.

Law enforcement sources are telling us that the break in this case came when Coleman used the victim's cell phone to call his mother.

And the Medical Examiner's office says Moore died as a result of blunt trauma to the head and strangulation.

The scene of the murder, law enforcement sources tell us, was a third floor room of a hotel in Weehawken, New Jersey. This morning, we watched as investigators carefully placed evidence in a large bag while detectives canvassed the neighborhood.

A few hours before, a few blocks away in West New York, there was the gruesome discovery: 18-year-old Jennifer Moore's body pulled from a dumpster behind an apartment house.

Alberto Ortega's mother saw the whole thing.

"The guys that went to pick it up, put it inside the bag and zipped it up and put a blanket over her," Alberto said.

Police say Moore and a friend spent a part of Monday night at the "Guest House" on West 27th Street in Chelsea. When the left the bar at about 2 a.m., their illegally parked car had been towed to the Pier 76 impound yard on 38th Street and West Side Highway.

Authorities there would not release the car because the teenagers were so drunk.

EMS was then called to take the girls to a hospital. The friend went but Jennifer strayed away, walking north along the West Side Highway. About 5:08, she called her boyfriend on her cell phone to tell him that a strange man was following her.

Law enforcement sources believe Moore was brought back to the Weekawken hotel into a room where the stranger's live-in girlfriend was waiting and that the teen was murdered early Tuesday morning and her body disposed of that evening.

Today in Harrington Park, where the family lives in a tan ranch house, neighbors brought over food and gift baskets.

Jennifer Moore's father, Hugh Moore: "This is the worst possible news about our daughter this morning. But I want to thank Harrington Park Police and New York City for really doing everything possible."

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