By Lincoln Anderson
Friends and acquaintances were shocked at the killing of Timothy Moore, 51, a generous and well-liked restaurant manager, last Saturday morning during an apparent robbery at Pop, on Fourth Ave. between 12th and 13th Sts.
According to police, restaurant employees found the lifeless body of Moore, who lived nearby in the East Village, at 11:20 a.m. in a lower level area of Pop and called the police. Moore had suffered severe trauma wounds to the head and body. The restaurant’s safe was reportedly found open with about $1,000 missing.
Police questioned employees, and the following afternoon, Lerome Hilson, 28, a porter at the restaurant, was arrested after his story did not hold up during an interrogation at the Ninth Police Precinct.
Hilson, of Bartow Ave., the Bronx, is charged with murder in the first and second degrees and robbery in the first degree. The New York Times quoted police and several Pop employees as saying Moore went out of his way to employ former convicts and that Hilson was a parolee.
Moore also managed Pop Burger on W. 14th St. in the Meat Market, which like Pop was owned by Roy Liebenthal. Moore also managed the former Cafe Tabac in the East Village.
His restaurants were known to attract a celebrity crowd. The main clientele of Pop, which serves fusion cuisine, are East Village models, according to an acquaintance, Bob Boles, 41, who came by the restaurant — which was cordoned off with police tape — last Sunday afternoon.
Boles said he’d met Moore at Cafe Tabac with Bret Easton Ellis when he was doing makeup on the movie of Ellis’s novel, “American Psycho.”
“He was an extraordinary man. He went out of his way to be gracious,” said Boles. “He was a workaholic, yet he still kept his great personality. He was the magic behind all of Roy’s restaurants.”
Bolles said a lot of people asked Moore to partner with them to open restaurants, but he stuck to managing.
Moore was married, but kept his personal life private.
“For years, I thought he was single. I had no idea he was even married,” said Bolles.
“It was not full every night — just people who really liked him. He’s very special, very selective,” said Bogdan Skupinski, a printmaker who passed by the restaurant every night, of the crowd at Pop. “He was a really good man.”
Christopher Lanning, 25, a photographer who shoots for The Villager who lives down the block, said Moore let him spend an afternoon making a student film in Pop. After that, Lanning kept coming back and Moore always went out of his way to be welcoming.
“I like the environment. The people are really chill,” Lanning said. “I’d be in here with a friend or a date, and he’d always come up and say hi.”
Pushing her shopping cart filled with colored yarn, Bonnie Ingram, a designer, stopped to place a card at the memorial of flowers and votive candles in front of Pop last Sunday afternoon. Ingram said she and Moore had a special relationship, even though they never really formally met or spoke to each other. Every day, she said, she’d pass by after making her purchases at Downtown Yarns on Avenue A, and Moore would call out a greeting.
“Every day he’d wave at me,” she said. “If I would ignore him, he’d say, ‘Well, hello anyway.’ It went on for a year and a half. For some crazy reason, whenever I’d come by, he’d be here. I never knew his name, never went inside.”
She had just come from Kitty Kind, the pet-adoption service at Petco on Union Sq., where she volunteers. Heading her cart back in that direction, she said she thought she’d get some flowers and add them to her card on the memorial for Moore.
