Local legend seeks justice in mother's cold case
HOMESTEAD — It's been more than 30 years since Robert Moehling found his mother dead in her home.
"I walk in. I walk in the other room. Everything was turned upside down," he said.
Detectives continue to work to move the case forward.
Meanwhile, the family's 60-year-old business, Robert Is Here food stand, remains a community staple. He started the business when he was 6 years old; and from the beginning, his mother Mary was there.
"My mom was my mom," said Robert. What she lacked in her stature, her family will say, she made up for with her feisty and tough personality. She worked her way out of poverty and was the first person in the U.S. to survive tuberculosis.
August 1992 changed everything. Less than a week after his mother's 71st birthday, Robert found Mary tied up, strangled and mutilated in her own home. A week later, Hurricane Andrew ripped through South Florida.
"We had no doors, no windows, no telephone, no electric. If I saw headlights, my stomach would just clench, my heart felt like it was going to stop, I was so scared," said Mary's daughter-in-law Tracey Moehling.
Through the pain, they had to rebuild their lives without their matriarch. Months turned into years. Decades later, Mary Moehling's murder remains a mystery.
But Miami-Dade police detectives are hoping stored DNA samples may provide some answers.
The Moehlings are holding on to hope that new technology paired with intrepid police work will bring them closer to the answers they seek.
