“I hope you see her face every day that you live out the rest of your life and think about what you’ve done,” Henry Superior Court Judge Pandora E. Palmer told Kelley during Monday’s sentencing hearing. “If you had just walked away, we would not be here.”
Moss is survived by her mother and two sisters, including her twin, Kimberly, all of whom knew Kelley well, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported.
“She was loved very much and she will be very much missed,” Kimberly told the AJC. “I talked to her every day, so I’m sort of trying to remember her every day.”
Kimberly said she and her sister met Kelley when they were 12 years old and he was 10. Laci’s childhood friendship with Kelley transformed at some point into a romantic relationship.
“As we got older, my sister just stayed in touch with him and they were together for like six-plus years,” Kimberly said.
In the wake of Laci’s death, Kimberly described the intensely traumatic shooting and its effects.
On a now-closed GoFundMe page created to help pay for Laci’s funeral, Kimberly wrote that Laci was gunned down “as she begged for her life.” The shooting left Laci and Kimberly’s mother living alone in the home where her daughter was murdered.
“She’s not coping, she’s losing it,” Kimberly said of her mother after Kelley was arrested in mid-July of 2021.
The Henry District Attorney’s Office noted that Kelley’s negotiated plea ensured the Moss family would not be forced to endure further trauma in the courtroom.
“We are grateful to bring justice to the family of Ms. Moss without having to put them through the difficulty of testifying at trial,” District Attorney Darius Pattillo said.