WESTERVILLE, OHIO: The small town of Westerville was left shaken when a woman named Emily Noble went mysteriously missing and was found dead a few months later. What made her death even more complicated was that the investigation was quite divided over whether she had committed suicide or if there was someone behind her death.
Noble's husband Matheau Moore had to bear the brunt of that uncertainty as he was arrested when the investigators suspected him of killing his wife.
NBC 'Dateline' will take a deep dive into this investigation in their new episode 'The Clearing'. It will air on the channel on Friday, October 6, at 9 p.m. ET.
Why was Matheau Moore suspected of murder by the police?
After going missing in May 2020, Emily Noble's body was discovered in what appeared to be a suicide scene in a wooded area close to her and Moore's residence in Westerville.
Initially, it was declared that she might have committed suicide, as she was found hanging from a USB cord from the tree.
This initial conjecture was based on her family history of losing a previous partner and Moore's teenage son from a previous marriage to suicide as well.
However, when autopsy reports discovered that her highly decomposed body had more injuries — in addition to the cord marks — suspicions about her cause of death arose.
Detectives believed she had been strangled manually before her 'suicide scene' was staged.
It didn't take long for the police investigators to point their fingers at Moore as the one behind her death. He was then arrested in June 2021 on counts of murder of his own wife.
The basis of their suspicion was that Noble could not have been caused to kill herself over her traumatic past, especially given that she was seeking therapy and had not shown signs of suicidal tendencies.
On the other hand, Moore was unemployed and used to allegedly be an alcoholic, as reported by Law & Crime, which led the prosecutors to believe that he might be responsible for her death.
However, the jury was not satisfied with the evidence. They found it lacking in proving Moore guilty and found most of the evidence insubstantial.
He was declared not guilty and was acquitted by the Delaware County jury on all counts in August 2022, as per NBC 4.
Matheau Moore wrote a book on wife's death and trial
Moore went on to write a book on Noble's death and his own brutal trial in a book called 'Emily: A Staged Suicide in Ohio'.
In an interview, Moore said that if anyone was on the fence about his innocence, the book "will help because there is a lot of stuff that they didn't know that the book will help them with."
He called the case of his wife's suicide a "complicated one" and a "very difficult situation to be in" especially after losing his son to the same tragedy.
