A Tale of Two Wes Moores

There are two Wes Moores from Baltimore.

One is a Johns Hopkins University graduate, a military officer, and a Rhodes Scholar. The other is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison for murder.

It`s hard to imagine a more unlikely pairing: one a celebrated student, college football hall of famer, White House fellow; the other, in a maximum security prison serving a life sentence for murder.

But how did they become aware of each other?

"There was this-- this terrible robbery of a jewelry store. And an off duty policeman was killed," Wes Moore's mother Joy Moore told CBS Sunday Morning.

Joy called her son, who was studying in South Africa. She said police were looking for a man in Baltimore with his name.

The posters read: "Wanted Wes Moore: Assumed to be armed and very dangerous."

"Part of me, when I first heard it, was, wow, I`m glad Wes is so many thousand miles away that they weren`t looking for my son," said Joy.

The studious Wes Moore couldn`t get the other Wes Moore out of his mind.

He began visiting him in prison and found a man who was troubling and complicated, but also, more reflective than he`d expected.

"I learned just how much we-- we had in common, and more than just our name," said Moore.

Both men grew up in nearly identical drug-ridden areas where both were making names for themselves on the streets and as behavior and academic problems at school. Also, both men were raised by single moms.

On the face of it, they were living parallel lives, but in reality, they were heading in very different directions. Here are their not so simple stories.

Wes Moore #1

Before Wes Moore was four-years-old, his world unraveled. His father, Big Wes, as his family called him, a thirty-four-year-old television journalist in Maryland, died suddenly as his young son watched.

"I started hearing him come down the stairs and I ran to the stairs. And then he collapsed. I remember my mother running in from-- from the kitchen and a pot falling and-- and just chaos all around me," Moore said. "And I just remember just staring."

In the years following her husband`s death, Joy struggled emotionally and financially. She was a widow and a single mother supporting three children.

She saw their neighborhood outside Baltimore turning more and more dangerous. So she moved her family to live with her parents in New York.
But their Bronx neighborhood would prove to be worse than the one they`d left.

There were a lot of opportunities to get into trouble.

"There were some times I really did feel like I was losing my son," said Joy.

Wes Moore #2

Back in Baltimore, the other Wes Moore barely knew his father.

His mother, Mary Moore, had goals for her children: To finish school and go to college and to get a good job.

It was a hope that Mary herself had grasped but couldn`t hold. She was the first person in her family to go to junior college and was accepted to nearby Johns Hopkins University.

But when her funding fell through, she had to work full time instead, often leaving Wes with his older brother.

"I had to be on the streets and-- and be in the life of crime. I thought that was my only real talent," said Moore, via phone from prison.

He was very close to his brother, Tony.

Over the years, Mary says she knew Tony was becoming a well-known drug dealer. But she thought he was taking a "do as I say not as I do" approach with Wes.

"Tony was streetwise and all that," said Mary. "And he knew what was out there and he didn`t want that same thing for his brother."

But by the time Wes was thirteen, he was already following in his big brother`s footsteps. Soon, he says, he started making thousands of dollars a day and never looked back.

"You know I-- I thought everything was supposed to come to me at-- at light speed," said Moore. "But when I was given opportunities to-- to take my time and be patient. I-- I brushed passed them."

Wes Moore #1 - A Second Chance

Around the same time, up in the Bronx, eleven-year-old Wes Moore, like the other Wes, was looking to the streets for a sense of belonging.

"It starts off with little stuff. Walking into a corner store and stealing a candy bar," he said. "It's just amazing how fast that graduates to much more serious stuff."

He even had a nickname in the neighborhood: Kid Kupid. He tagged up the walls around the Bronx with the initials "KK."

"There are quite a few Bronx walls that had a-- had the two Ks next to it," he said.

But one day, he got caught.

"A cop car turns the corner and you hear that distinctive, like whop-whop, you know the-- the cop sirens," he said. "They grabbed me put the cuffs on me. And next thing I know I was in the back of the police car. And I`m terrified. I couldn`t even imagine that phone call to my mom telling them, well, you need to come pick up your son."

That call never came. The cops undid their handcuffs and told them to get moving.

"All I was looking for was acceptance," he said. "And if that meant spray painting some walls, skipping some classes and getting into fights, that's what I was going to do."

Joy was worried her son was headed down the wrong path.

"I said, no, not again. I lost my husband. I`m mot going to lose my son," she said.

His grandparents took a loan against their house to give Joy the money she needed to send her only son to the Valley Forge Military Academy.

"Sending him to military school was probably one of the hardest decisions I`ve ever had to make," said Joy. "I agonized."

In those first four days, Moore said that he ran away five times from the military.

And after that fifth time even the school had had enough. They brought him to a phone and he dialed the only number he knew. The twelve-year-old started pleading as soon as his mother answered.

"She said, 'too many people have worked for you to be here. So you need to give it a shot,'" he said. "So it was really tough for me to hear that level of-- of-- of pain and sincerity in her voice. But I think it was also part of the trigger that really helped it all make sense to me."

It was his mother's persistence that was helped him make the breakthrough.

"My mother wasn't going to give up on me even though I was giving her a lot of reasons to do so," he said "And the idea that this was bigger than me that yearning, that acceptance I was looking for I had the whole time and I was with my family."

It was a push that led to many small successes.

Moore started improving academically and was soon able to participate on team sports.

"I started saying, you know, isn`t too bad, this doing well thing."

He graduated with honors at seventeen and returned to the city of his childhood, Baltimore. This time he was an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University.

Wes Moore #2 - A Life Gone Wrong

The other Wes Moore`s life could not have taken a more tragic and a violent turn. On February 7, 2000, twenty-four-year-old, along with his brother, Tony, and two others came to this jewelry store armed with guns.

Ryland Powers was working there.

"Suddenly two guys come around this side. Two come around this side," said Powers. "Everybody hit the floor."

Standing over him was a man he identified to police as Wes Moore.

"Some things you never forget," said Powers. " He-- he was more or less like you know, the-- the ringleader."

Powers says the four men were already fleeing when one of them shot police sergeant Bruce Prothero in the head and chest at pointblank range.

Twenty-nine-year-old Tony Moore later confessed to the shooting.

His younger brother, Wes, has always insisted he wasn`t even at the heist.
The brothers went into hiding, sparking a national manhunt.

They were captured in Philadelphia. Tony pled guilty to avoid the death penalty. He died in prison of kidney failure two years ago.

Wes was convicted and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole.

Eleven years later, Moore feels the weight of what he has done.

"I see how pain that-- that the family must feel for the pain that my family feels and I`m still living," said Moore. "I`m still here breathing and being able to talk to them and speak to them, you know, and hug them and kiss them and-- and that family don`t have the opportunity to do that."

The Two Wes Moores

The year of the murder the Moore brothers` high-profile case often made headlines.

But one day, the other Wes Moore made a headline of his own.

"It was one of the most remarkable moments because I thought to myself, you know, here I was a kid who, literally, less than a decade ago was sitting in the back of a police car with handcuffs on and being sent away to a military school for academic and disciplinary reasons," said Moore. "And now I'm standing here hearing a gentleman announce me as a Rhode scholar."

Today, the other Wes Moore, now thirty-four-years old, is focusing on his four children, from prison.

"You know I-- I think sometimes my children might be embarrassed that I`m their father and I`m trying to change that," he said.

His mother, Mary, is raising two of his children.

She admits that if she could turn back the clock, she would do certain things differently.

"Well, putting them up in a better environment. Getting, you know, better schooling, and better education, spending more time with them, participating in their activities," she said. "All the things I didn`t do. Like God gave me a second chance to do it right. So I`m doing it right."

She hopes her son`s children will have lives more like the other Wes Moore, who still ponders their common name but very different fates.

"I think a tremendous amount of life is luck. Who gave birth to you? Who are your family? Who are your friends? Which neighborhoods did you grow up in? My mother says kids need to think that you care before they care what you think. They want leadership. If I wasn`t lucky enough to have people help provide that to me the kids in the corner sure would have."

For more info:
theotherwesmoore.com
U.S. Dream Academy (Supports the children of the incarcerated)
City Year (Supports young people giving a year of service to others)
Valley Forge Military Academy