She twice failed to bring the body to the surface before a motel guest, drawn by the commotion, jumped in to help. No one else was around, so Moore plunged in fully clothed. A woman was lying facedown at the bottom of the deep end, about twelve feet underwater. The maid led Moore to the pool, where she too was seized with alarm. She waited tables at the cafe, cleaned rooms, and worked the registration desk.Ībout three hours after she first saw the Battuons, Moore was in the motel office when a distraught maid rushed in and struggled to make herself understood in broken English. Moore, a dirty-blond fifteen-year-old from Clovis, New Mexico, was spending the summer at the motel, which her grandparents managed. The single-story motor court on Highway 80, just outside the hardscrabble West Texas town of Pecos, had a Spanish tile roof, a flashy neon sign, and a steady clientele of oil-field workers and long-haul truckers. They had checked in earlier that afternoon-July 5, 1966-scrawling their names on a registration card as Mr. The slim man sported a blond crew cut and seemed about ten years older than his companion.
Her full lips and olive skin, set off by a red one-piece bathing suit, gave her a slightly Mediterranean look. The husband was drinking beer, the wife sipping soda. Sandy Moore spotted them lounging in plastic chairs by the Ropers Motel pool.
