Man indicted in 2003 slaying of Savannah girl

A convicted child molester has been charged with the 2003 murder of his girlfriend's 12-year-old daughter, who had been missing for nearly a month before her body was found behind a riverside hotel.

A Chatham County grand jury Wednesday indicted 31-year-old Bobby Lavon Buckner on charges that he abducted, molested and strangled Ashleigh Moore more than four years ago.

When Ashleigh vanished on April 18, 2003, Buckner was dating her mother and living in their Savannah home. Volunteers searched for the girl for weeks in coastal Georgia and South Carolina before her body was found May 14, 2003, by a man fishing along the Savannah River.

The indictment said Ashleigh had been strangled. It also charged Buckner with molesting her at some point between August 2002 and her death months later.

Buckner was jailed for violating his probation from a 1996 child molestation conviction the day after Ashleigh went missing. A judge revoked his probation and sent Buckner back to prison.

Savannah-Chatham County police Sgt. Armando Tamargo said investigators considered Buckner a suspect from the beginning. As to why it took years to charge him with Ashleigh's murder, Tamargo said only that the case was "very complex and one which was going to take time to resolve."

"Right now, we're confident to go forward with the case," Tamargo said.

According to court records from 2003, Buckner called Ashleigh's mother, Michelle Moore, at the hospital where she worked and told her Ashleigh was missing early on the morning of April 18, 2003. Buckner later told police he had been drinking at a strip club the night before.

Police searched Buckner's car after a cadaver dog smelled blood on its door handle. Investigators seized a box of condoms and some towels from the car as possible evidence.

Buckner's attorney, Michael Schiavone, questioned whether police have enough evidence to convict Buckner more than four years later.

"We've always maintained, and still maintain, that Bobby did not do this," Schiavone said.

After her daughter went missing, Michelle Moore said she never knew Buckner was a convicted child molester. They met years earlier when Ashleigh's mother worked at the Chatham County Jail.