Elizalde writes: "Residents of Senate candidate Roy Moore's Alabama hometown often heard rumors that he would linger at the Gadsden Mall and was banned for flirting with young girls."
Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty)
14 November 17
esidents of Senate candidate Roy Moore’s Alabama hometown often heard rumors that he would linger at the Gadsden Mall and was banned for flirting with young girls.
And at least one resident says he saw Moore in action at the teen hangout.
The former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice reportedly cruised the mall for dates, both AL.com and New Yorker reported Monday.
Blake Usry said Friday and Saturday nights was prime time for Moore to visit the shopping hub.
“Like the kids did,” Usry told the Alabama paper.
He caught sight of the lawyer flirting with girls at he knew on more than one occasion and is surprised the rumors didn’t make headlines sooner.
“It’s not a big secret in this town about Roy Moore,” he said.
Greg Legat, a mall employee from 1981 to 1985, told the New Yorker magazine the mall was “the place to be."
"There were no empty stores. And lots of kids came around. Lots of teenagers. You went there to see and be seen.”
A police officer named J.D. Thomas told mall employees to be on the lookout for Moore because he was “banned from the mall,” Legat said.
“If you see Moore here, tell me. I’ll take care of him,” the cop reportedly told Legat.
Police officers who spoke with the New Yorker said Moore’s presence at the mall was a problem.
“The general knowledge at the time when I moved here was that this guy is a lawyer cruising the mall for high-school dates,” one of the officers said.
“I was told by a girl who worked at the mall that he’d been run off from there, from a number of stores,” another cop recalled. “Maybe not legally banned, but run off.”
That cop also said he “heard from one girl who had to tell the manager of a store at the mall to get Moore to leave her alone.”
The report comes hours after a fifth accuser came forward accusing the attorney of sexually assaulting her in the 1970s.
Beverly Young Nelson, then 16, said Moore attacked her behind the Olde Hickory House restaurant in Gradsden, Ala., where she worked as a waitress.
Moore signed her high school yearbook with “Love, Roy Moore D.A.” a week before the attack,” Nelson said at a press conference in Manhattan on Monday.
Another waitress at another restaurant said Moore often stared at her and others as he did paperwork in the 1990s.
“He watched us girls quite openly,” said Victoria Beverstock, who was 20 at the time of her encounters.
“His eyes crawled over our shirts and our backsides. He was so open about it that I would try and handle his order as quickly as possible.”
She told AL.com Moore became “rude and demanding” when the waitresses failed to smile at him and flirt back.
Beverstock worked at The Poor House restaurant.
Four women told the Washington Post that Moore targeted them for dates when they were mere teens and he was in his 30s. Moore has denied those allegations.
Several women who worked at Gadsden Mall also told the Post that Moore, who was “well-dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt,” would often be spotted around the mall alone.
Democrats and Republicans have called for Moore to step down from the Senate race. It’s unclear if Moore remains on the mall’s ban list.
