~i remember him ripping a 100 dollar bill in half and giving one half to my older brother and the other half to me..~
Appeals court upholds Tyrone Delgado's murder conviction
The state’s appellate court on Tuesday upheld Tyrone Delgado’s murder conviction in the 1999 strangling death of an FBI administrative officer.

Delgado, 41, is serving life in prison in Raleigh after a jury convicted him on July 11, 2008, of killing 28-year-old Melissa Mooney and leaving her naked body sprawled on the floor of her bedroom in her newly purchased Castle Hayne home.

Two FBI employees discovered Mooney’s body on Aug. 5, 1999, after she failed to show up to work at the FBI office in Wilmington. When they arrived at her house, they found a muddy footprint on the front door, which had been forced open. Boot prints also were found inside the home and her telephone had been ripped from the wall in the kitchen.

The mother of one was in the process of moving from an apartment in Canterbury Woods to a house she’d bought in the Apple Valley subdivision near where Delgado lived with his wife and children.

Delgado’s conviction came after two months in what turned out to be the longest jury trial in Wilmington.

The key to his conviction was the testimony of five women who were attacked in a similar manner to Mooney.

During trial, the women had testified about horrific encounters with Delgado, a martial arts enthusiast, that in all but one case involved choking while he tried to rape them. At times, he was able to carry out his brutal sexual attacks and other times he was not.

DNA found in Mooney’s house also pointed to Delgado, but it was the testimony from his victims that sealed his fate.