A Tale of Two Tragedies

NO ONE WINS –

June 3, 2022 – “Kelly was a beautiful, beautiful girl,” her father, William Beitz, said in an interview. “There wasn’t a day that went by that I wasn’t terrified about something happening to her.”

Before Anthony Moaf, 25, was found dead last month in an Alexandria jail cell of what authorities said was “an apparent medical emergency,” he ran a veritable pill factory in his parents’ basement, making counterfeit oxycodone tablets using metonitazene, a synthetic opioid “shown to be 100-fold more potent than morphine,” according to a criminal complaint filed against him. “Kelly was a beautiful, beautiful girl,” her father, William Beitz, said in an interview. “There wasn’t a day that went by that I wasn’t terrified about something happening to her.” The criminal complaint against Moaf was unsealed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on May 16, the day he was arrested, and dismissed later that week after he died in the city jail. It includes a transcript of what authorities said were texts between Moaf and Beitz on Sept. 24, in the hours before he sold her the pills.

As authorities tell it, their exchange began this way:

“Are you feeling bad?” Moaf asked her.

“Yeah,” she replied.

“I have these if you want,” he wrote, attaching a photo of more than two dozen blue pills. “But don’t abuse them be safe.”