Man dies a week after Dutchtown fire

Seven days ago, Tim Moore Jr. spent the morning of his 21st birthday repeatedly -- but unsuccessfully -- trying to drag his fiancee and 4-month-old son from a burning shed in Dutchtown where they had spent the night.

On Monday, Moore died from smoke inhalation that family members said had charred his lungs beyond repair and burned his body until it was unrecognizable.

But Moore's death at 3 a.m. Monday at St. John's Mercy Medical Center in St. Louis also has the family on a mission to set the record straight -- that their son and his family did not live in the shed and had a house of their own.

"They've been saying all kinds of stuff on TV," said his sister, Heather Moore, 18. "They were saying that they lived there, but they didn't."

According to interviews with police, family members and friends, the family -- Moore, 16-year-old fiancee Rachel Lynne Skaggs and baby, Brett Moore -- until recently had been staying with Moore's parents, who lived in a house near the shed. Since then, they had rented an old farmhouse in Oak Ridge and were in the process of moving.

'More like a clubhouse'

While they were staying with his parents, Moore -- known by friends and family as Bub -- and Skaggs occasionally would go out to the shed, where they had set up a television, space heater and stereo.

"They would go out there to get away from things," said Tom Bradley, who is Moore's uncle and a deputy with the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Department. "It was more like a clubhouse, not a real house where they lived every day."

On the night before the fire, Moore, Skaggs and the baby traveled from their rented Oak Ridge house to spend the night with Moore's parents.

"They were going to have a birthday party," said Bradley, who responded to the 8:30 a.m. fire. "It was Bub's birthday, his mom's birthday and another grandchild's birthday. Then Bub was going to look for a job. They have made it out like he was a vagrant and a bum living in some shed, but that isn't true. Not close to being true."

Bradley said no one in the family knew why they went out to the shed that night. More confusing, Bradley said, was why they took the baby, considering that the baby's crib was near Moore's parents' bedroom.

'Didn't want to wake us'

His mother, Barbara Moore, described the shed as a "teen hangout."

"It was someplace they could go to play their kind of music and watch their kind of shows," she said. "Apparently, they just went out there to watch TV and fell asleep. When it got late, they didn't want to wake us up."

Heather Moore said her brother was a kind and giving person. "He would have run into a burning house for anybody," she said. "He was strong and very strong-willed. He was a really good person. He tried everything he could in the world to make his baby and his girlfriend happy, and he loved them very much."

The state fire marshal's office has ruled the fire accidental, caused by faulty and overloaded wiring. Authorities have been trying to call the property owner, Anthony Varnon, an associate professor of accounting at Southeast Missouri State University.

Initially, Varnon told the Southeast Missourian he had not known the Moores were living in his shed, but Lt. David James with the sheriff's department said they had reason to believe otherwise.

Varnon has not returned phone calls and could not be reached for this story.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete late Monday at Ford and Sons Funeral Home.

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137