by Heidi Moore, Executive Director of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty & Member of AOUON St. Louis
Saifullah Vincent McFadden is currently facing two death sentences from St. Louis County, Missouri, stemming from a racially-charged prosecution under former St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch. McCulloch is notably aggressive in his use of the death penalty, a practice that, according to political science professor Frank Baumgartner of UNC-Chapel Hill and reported by STL-NPR, places him “very, very much outside the norm” and identifies him as “one of the most active users of the death penalty” nationwide. Missouri has one of the highest rates of execution in the country. All cases in the state are presently in the appeals process, and consequently, no execution dates have been scheduled.
Since 1991, Missouri has not maintained a traditional death row. Men sentenced to death are housed at Potosi Correctional Center (PCC), with their living assignments determined by their behavior, not a separate death row unit. Saifullah arrived at PCC in 2005, where there was an execution on his second day.
Heidi Moore, a member of the AOUON-STL, transitioned from working as Saifullah’s Institutional Parole Officer (IPO) at PCC to becoming one of his current advocates. Following her career with the Department of Corrections (DOC), she coordinated programs for a Catholic organization and provided 24/7 case management for housing and reentry services in scattered St. Louis City sites for returning citizens, some of whom had served nearly five decades. Witnessing the significant barriers faced by returning citizens firsthand motivated her to pursue a Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis at Saint Louis University to help bridge these voices, a goal she ultimately achieved.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Moore became an active member of AOUON-St Louis, initially participating in voter registration drives targeting people with prior probation or parole experiences who were newly eligible to vote in Missouri. Always open about her personal experiences, she has advocated for rational sex offender laws and worked with men convicted of sex crimes. Her family’s experiences with incarceration are extensive: a cousin served 21 years in MO-DOC for a sex crime before transferring to the federal system for non-violent offenses and lived with her after state release; she was the partner of an incarcerated man; and five other immediate family members have served time in MO-DOC. While she never hid these facts, All of Us or None provided a space where she could speak as an impacted family member and “doesn’t feel so defensive.”
In July 2025, Moore was appointed Executive Director of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty (MADP). One of her first tasks was to contact the men on “death row” at Potosi to let them know that she was the same Heidi Moore who had been their IPO. McFadden and Moore began communicating immediately, with him expressing a natural curiosity about her transition from parole officer to a leader of the abolition movement in Missouri. She was, as always, transparent. Her opposition to the death penalty dates back to a high school debate in the 90s. Later, during her graduate work coinciding with the early years of DNA exonerations, she focused on wrongful convictions and advocated for the early release of women imprisoned for killing abusive spouses. Her commitment is informed by international experience, having visited prisons in Ireland, Holland, and Hungary, as well as the death rows at Louisiana State Penitentiary “Angola” and San Quentin Prison. Though she initially took the job at Potosi with the intent to work within MO-DOC for change, she credits AOUON-STL with showing her a different and more effective path to influence policy and empower people. ✦
Pictured: Saifullah Vincent McFadden and Dr. Heidi Moore, Executive Director of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty and AOUON St. Louis Chapter member.
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