Unsolved Carolinas: The Death of Kaden Moses

EDITOR’S NOTE: With the exception of Kaden Moses, the names of minors referenced in this story have been changed to protect their identity.

At fourteen years old, Kaden Moses was the heartbeat of his large family. His mom, Erika Moses, recalls how his contagious laugh would fill an entire room and how he loved cooking for his family. Kaden was especially proud of the secret scrambled egg recipe he often made for his mom and four siblings.

“He’d get so tickled making those scrambled eggs,” she recalled.

Erika’s eyes – which light up when she remembers all the things that made her son so special – fill with tears when her thoughts turn to what happened to him last year.

“He deserved to live,” she told me, fighting through sobs.

But Kaden didn’t live… instead, his life was cut tragically short on December 30, 2023 by a gunshot wound to the head at his home in Clinton, South Carolina.

While Erika’s strength in confronting this tragedy is remarkable, her sorrow is palpable as she describes the night her son died. For almost a year, she has navigated this unimaginable loss – searching for answers to questions she never thought she would have to ask. Erika has become accustomed to suppressing her feelings as she seeks the truth – and justice for her beloved son.

Erika has had to step into this role out of necessity. She’s had to step into this role because – despite there being only one other person in the room with Kaden when he died (and despite the fact a medical examiner determined his manner of death to have been a homicide) – no charges have been filed in connection with Kaden’s death.

Faced with a death investigation that seems to be open and shut, to Erika nothing makes sense.

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THE NIGHT KADEN DIED

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Nothing out of the ordinary interrupted the convivial cadence of the Moses’ home on the evening Kaden died. There were no arguments – and all five of Erika’s children seemed happy and healthy. Kaden’s friend was visiting that night along with Kaden’s older sister’s boyfriend – normal occurrences in their familial routine. Exhausted from a long day at work, the tired mom had decided to cook an easy dinner for the brood assembled at her home: hamburgers, hotdogs and french fries.

Erika and her husband, Jordan, were separated and working through the process of co-parenting their five children — of which Kaden was the second oldest. While she cooked, she had Kaden’s dad on speaker phone to discuss a party Kaden wanted to go to the next night. Kaden – who was supposed to be spending time at his father’s house – wanted to go to a New Year’s Eve party at a friend’s house the next night. Since he was supposed to be at his dad’s house, they wanted to discuss it as a family.

It was decided Kaden could attend the party.

The large group ate dinner together and Kaden agreed to clean the kitchen for his tired mom. Erika had to go to bed early that night and wrapped up her evening around 8:30 p.m. EST.

Before she went to bed, she told her son she loved him. On a recent appearance of the Impact of Influence podcast, she said those were the last words she spoke to him. Kaden gave his mom a big hug.

“Mama, I love you, too,” he replied.

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Less than three hours later, at 11:01 p.m., Erika was shaken awake by her older daughter.

“Mama, Mama, Kaden shot himself,” she screamed.

Erika jumped out of bed, running into a wall as she sprinted past their Christmas tree to her son’s room. Erika said as she ran, she could hear her younger children in the hallway screaming and crying. When she got to Kaden’s room, the heavy smell of gunpowder permeated the room – hitting her immediately. As horrible as the smell was, what she saw as she entered the room was far more devastating. Her 14-year old son was sitting upright in his gaming chair with a visible gunshot wound to his left temple – blood still pouring onto his golden blonde hair.

According to Erika, Kaden’s phone was in his lap – appearing as though he had been actively playing a game before the gunshot. She picked his phone up and dialed 9-1-1… then she tried frantically to save her oldest son’s life.

Erika immediately began chest compressions on her son.

“I could feel a heartbeat,” she said. “His eyes were swollen, but they were partially open. I could see movement.”

She vividly remembers knowing she had to protect her other children from what was happening, but not wanting to give up on Kaden.

“It didn’t feel real,” she said. “It just didn’t, it didn’t feel real at all.”

At the same time Erika was on the phone with 9-1-1, dispatchers were receiving multiple calls about the horror unfolding in the home – including one from his young girlfriend who had been on FaceTime with Kaden when she heard a gunshot.

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While Erika was frantically trying to save Kaden’s life, her daughter ran to the neighbor’s home for help. When neighbor Chris Rodgers arrived, he knew the desperate mother’s attempts were futile… Kaden was dead.

“He kept trying to feel for a pulse,” Erika said. “He kept trying to tell me there was no pulse, but I could feel a heartbeat. I could feel my son’s heart beating, and it was strong.”

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When police and paramedics arrived at 11:15 p.m., it was clear nothing could be done. Shortly thereafter, Kaden Moses was pronounced dead.

Kaden’s condition was obvious to everyone who saw him, but like any mother confronted by such a jarring reality – Erika refused to believe it. To her, shock notwithstanding, it made no sense. How could the beautiful boy whose contagious and goofy laugh had filled their home only hours earlier have done this to himself? How could a child who was right-handed shoot himself through the left side of his head while sitting in a gaming chair?

Nothing about what happened that night added up – but as the fog of grief lifted, a death investigation report came back from the Laurens County coroner that seemed to make at least one facet of the narrative unambiguously clear.

At the bottom of the first page, the coroner had reported the manner of Kaden’s death… as a homicide.

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BEFORE THE GUNSHOT

The night Kaden died, he had a close friend (whom we will refer to as James) sleeping over. The two were the only ones in his room when the gunshot went off. James was the kind of friend who was at the Moses’ home often. Erika recalled him always being a polite young man – responding with “yes, ma’am” and “no ma’am.” He wasn’t the kind of friend that caused a parent to worry. She remembers James helping in the kitchen – and teaching Kaden to make her chicken recipe so he could impress his mom.

“I saw no red flags,” she said.

James ate dinner with them that evening – and when Erika went to bed, the two were playing video games in his room. Doing normal teenage boy stuff.

According to a statement (.pdf) written by Kaden’s girlfriend, in the days leading up to the shooting he and James had a “falling out” over typical teenage drama that resulted in temporary Snapchat blocks. The drama subsided quickly, though, and things soon returned to normal. At the same time Kaden and James were having a sleepover, their two girlfriends were doing the same. Kaden and his girlfriend spent most of the night on FaceTime chatting. His girlfriend noted in her statement that she could see James on camera laying on the floor to the left side of Kaden. She could also see the gun in the corner of the room – within arms reach of James.

The kids were all playing Roblox together and talking when James said he no longer wanted to play – but the group continued talking via FaceTime. After awhile, Kaden and his girlfriend decided to turn the cameras off on their phones, but kept talking via audio. Kaden’s girlfriend said after a few minutes, her boyfriend exclaimed, “What are…” before hearing a gunshot.

Seconds later, she says she heard James say, “Kaden shot himself.”

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AFTER THE GUNSHOT

In the room next to Kaden’s, his sister and her boyfriend were exchanging Christmas gifts. According to his sister’s statement (.pdf), the sound of the gun going off didn’t reverberate through the house like one would expect. Instead, it sounded like a pop, “not loud but kind of like a big piece of furniture hitting the wall.”

She recalls laughing because they didn’t think it was anything bad, but it had startled them.

When the two left her room, they saw James exiting Kaden’s room with his phone in his hand.

“Kaden shot himself,” he said.

Stunned by the words, his sister said she told James, “(that’s) not something to joke about.”

But to their horror as they looked into Kaden’s room, they realized it was not a joke.

In his statement (.pdf), the boyfriend recalled what he saw…

“All I see is Kaden, arms wrapped around his gaming chair, his body very tense like he just finished working out, the smell of gunpowder, and the sound of blood pouring out of his head and hitting the floor,” he said.

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They asked James again what happened, and though the response was the same, Kaden’s sister noted the tone of his response before she sprinted to her mother’s room, “he didn’t seem like he was in shock.”

After Erika took over in Kaden’s room, his sister and her boyfriend focused on getting the kids out of the home to the protect them from the horror unfolding inside. The two pounded frantically on the door of ran to the home of Chris and Taffey Rodgers who quickly opened the door and ran to the Moses home to help. In her statement (.pdf), Taffy recalls finding the three youngest Moses children in Erika’s room curled up in “fetal positions in the corner by the bathroom.”

She took them to her home and asked her daughter to watch before running back to the Moses home.

The Rodgers’ stayed with Erika in Kaden’s room until law enforcement arrived and then took Kaden’s devastated mother to the living room while they worked. A short time later, first responders came out and told everyone they needed to leave the residence. After leaving the home, Taffey recalled going around the corner to throw up before finding James and the boyfriend of Kaden’s sister in the carport. According to Taffey, James was pacing and said, “Oh my god. Oh my god. My fingerprints are on the bullet.”

She sat James down and when she asked him to explain what happened, he said, “I unloaded the gun earlier and I guess he put the bullet back in when I wasn’t looking.”

Confused, she asked him to clarify, but before he could respond, a car pulled up and James jumped inside.

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THE INVESTIGATION

After EMS officials pronounced Kaden Moses dead, law enforcement began its their investigation. The Laurens County Coroner along with the Laurens County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) and the child fatalities division of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) took over the scene.

FITSNews has sent a Freedom of Information request to SLED for their investigative files and plans to submit additional requests in the coming days.

Investigators took photographs of the scene and of Erika as well as her daughter’s boyfriend. In her statement (.pdf), Erika recalls when she took her clothes off to be photographed, the investigator pointed out the blood covering her body – from her fingers to her toes.

“I was covered in my dead son’s blood from trying to save him,” she said. “That hit me like a ton of bricks.”

Erika assumed the gunshot that killed her son was self-inflicted, but after completing the autopsy (.pdf) and coroner’s death investigation (.pdf), the coroner indicated they had listed the manner of death a homicide.

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Forensic interviews of Kaden’s girlfriend and siblings were conducted, but according to Erika, she was told when James was interviewed, he invoked his right against self-incrimination.

Despite determining Kaden’s death was a homicide, on May 3, 2024, the solicitor, SLED, and LCSO met with Erika to tell her no charges were being filed – offering very little in to explain why that determination was made.

Confused and frustrated, Erika wrote a letter (.pdf) to SLED weeks later asking for a “more thorough detailed presentation and justification as to why the case is in the process of being closed, what has been accomplished to date and what if anything is to be done regarding this incident.”

To the heartbroken mother, the investigation felt incomplete – and too many questions remained unanswered regarding the night her son died.

In an interview on the podcast Impact of Influence, Erika noted that while Kaden was tested for gunshot residue (GSR), to her knowledge, no one else at the home that night was tested – nor was any DNA evidence collected.

According to Erika, while the gun was in her son’s room, the bullets were locked in the truck in the driveway. For months after Kaden’s death, the keys to the truck were missing until her youngest son finally found them under the washing machine in the laundry room. When Erika looked at them, she noticed they appeared to either have dried blood on them or a red tint.

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At one point, the SLED agent in charge of the investigation had asked Erika if she had noticed a damaged jacket behind Kaden’s body – she hadn’t. While she didn’t understand the context of the question at the time, Erika now wonders if perhaps that might explain why the sound of the gun going off in her home didn’t startle her out of sleep. If maybe that is why it sounded so innocuous to Kaden’s sister and her boyfriend. Was the shot muffled by a jacket? But when she brought that up during the meeting on May 3, 2024, no one seemed to know what she was talking about.

Still seeking answers, Erika began submitting FOIA requests for files related to the investigation into her son’s death. She specifically hoped to obtain the audio and video from the investigators from their response that night. Laurens County said she could have it, but said she would need to pay more than $1,000 in order for them to release the files. The single mother on a tight budget couldn’t afford to get the files.

On October 4, 2024, she received a response from SLED major Thomas Robertson. Though somewhat compassionate, Robertson offered few answers to the questions she had posed and noted state law prevents the release of any files relating to child fatality investigations – even if it is the death of your child being investigated.

In his letter to Erika, Robertson said eighth circuit deputy solicitor Josh Thomas issued a letter on June 14, 2024 declining prosecution in this case.

“Simply put, there is just not sufficient evidence to charge anyone with a crime based on the information that we now have,” Thomas wrote.

To Erika, the roadblocks she has encountered at every turn following her son’s death on December 30, 2023 have only deepened her sorrow. The math feels simple: her son’s death was determined to be a homicide and there was only one other person in the room the night he died of a single gunshot wound to the left side of his head. Yet no charges have been filed.

“He deserved to live,” she says. “His only dream, his biggest dream, was to be a dad, to be a family man. And that just goes to show his character, what kind of person he was in his heart.”

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ABOUT THIS SERIES…

Unsolved Carolinas – sponsored by our friends at Bamberg Legal – is devoted to highlighting cases which have fallen off the front page. In every unsolved case, someone out there could know something that provides a missing link – a critical clue that could bring peace to a family in pain and help them write the next chapter of their stories. If you know someone who is missing – or has been a victim of an unsolved homicide – email their story to research@fitsnews.com.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

Jenn Wood is FITSNews’ incomparable research director. She’s also the producer of the FITSFiles and Cheer Incorporated podcasts and leading expert on all things Murdaugh/ South Carolina justice. A former private investigator with a criminal justice degree, evildoers beware, Jenn Wood is far from your average journalist! A deep dive researcher with a passion for truth and a heart for victims, this mom of two is pretty much a superhero in FITSNews country. Did we mention she’s married to a rocket scientist? (Lucky guy!) Got a story idea or a tip for Jenn? Email her at jenn@fitsnews.com.

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