The mother of a Toronto rap artist accused of murdering four men appeared briefly in court Thursday morning on charges of helping him destroy evidence, and was remanded in custody.
Hyacinth Moore, 49, of Scarborough, was arrested a day earlier and faces four charges: Being an accessory after the fact to murder; obstructing police; conspiring to commit an indictable offence; and being an accessory after the fact, the latter charge stemming from a robbery investigation.
Clad in a yellow dress and white hooded cardigan, Ms. Moore appeared before Justice of the Peace Marilyn Churley, the former NDP cabinet member.
Her case was transferred to a court in Scarborough, with a further appearance scheduled for Friday.
A week earlier, her 27-year-old son Mark Moore was charged with four counts of first-degree murder together with 50 other offences, all of them firearms-related.
The four killings in which he is accused took place during a period of three months last year, spanning June to November, 2010. In three of them, the heavyset, aspiring rapper did not even know the victims, homicide detectives said last week.
The Moore family has long been known to Toronto police.
Hyacinth Moore was arrested Wednesday afternoon just as a trial jury was weighing the fate of a man accused of killing another of her sons, Andre Smith, shot dead in October, 2008.
She had been attending the proceedings regularly.
In 2001, at age 16, Mark Moore was shot in the face and left disfigured after opening the door of his family's Weston Road apartment building to two strangers.
A few months later, a Toronto police officer was shot and seriously wounded in the same neighbourhood. Mark's older brother, André, was the principal suspect but was never convicted.
Mr. Moore's youngest brother, Taimone, was shot in the stomach in a parking lot in 2008, when he too was 16.
And a fourth brother, Jerome, was charged last year with stealing a car from a dealership and crashing it into other vehicles.
Last week, a distraught Ms. Moore attended the downtown courtroom where Kenya Smith is on trial for André's murder.
She told The Globe and Mail she was going to court every day, but was having trouble remaining in her seat after learning about the multiple charges against Mark.
Ms. Moore said she was hurt by all of the negative attention Mark and the rest of her family have received.
"I do believe the public should wait and see before they judge my son," she said at the time.
She added she had spoken with him after the charges were laid and believes that he is innocent.
"Mark told me, 'Mommy, I don't even care because I know they have nothing on me,' " Ms. Moore recounted.