Tamron Hall and Her Nephew Discuss Sister Renate's Murder

Tamron Hall is remembering her late sister, Renate, 15 years after her tragic death.

On Wednesday, Hall welcomed her nephew and Renate’s son, Leroy Moore, as the guest on her NBC talk show, marking the first time Moore has publicly discussed his mother’s 2004 murder.

During the show’s open, Hall, 49, shared her personal story of coping with the loss of her sister — a crime that still has not been solved to this day.

“I carried much guilt for many years believing I had abandoned my sister and that I was more worried about career than family,” she said.

In 2004, Renate (the daughter of Hall’s stepdad) was found beaten and bludgeoned to death, floating face down in the small backyard pool of her home in Houston, Texas. The crime came after years of relationships with abusive men, which Moore admitted on the talk show he was not aware of.

“When I look back she would call me and ask, ‘Hey can you make it down for the weekend?’ and every time I drove down there would always be tension in the household and that’s kinda when I look back I realize she was calling me down there to avert that tension that was in the household,” he recalled.

As the aunt and nephew began to get emotional, Moore said that he felt like he lost “everything” after his mother died when he was only a young boy.

“Most of all it was just somebody to communicate with,” he explained. “Especially as a young man, your mom kind of leads you the way on how to treat women. How to handle things and how to be a good presence, and I kind of lost that with my mom. Me and mom were close.”

Moore, now a father, recalled to Hall that his way of dealing with his mother’s death was to “own” what happened, and look onward.

“I had to realize that there was things I didn’t do and there were times I didn’t say something when I should have,” he said. “So I owned that, and once I owned that I realized the best way to give back is to make sure no one else went through what I went through.”

As Hall began to choke up, she explained that 15 years later, the topic of her sister’s murder has not gotten any easier for her or her family.

“This is the hardest thing to discuss publicly because we did not talk about it,” she said. “We never discussed it. Because I didn’t know what to say.”

Added Moore, “I didn’t talk about my mom’s death for a long time. I kind of just shoved it away for 10 years. I really woke up one morning and decided I had to own it.”

In 2016, Hall spoke to PEOPLE about her sister’s death, saying that “no one deserves what happened to her.”

“For a long time I was hesitant about sharing our story,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to be another well-known person saying, ‘Look what happened to me and my family.’ But then I said, screw that. I can save a life.”

Hall recalled that she was once present for a brutal altercation between her sister and a male companion, whom Hall would not name out of fear of retaliation. After kicking the man out, “I said to her, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ ‘You’re too beautiful. Too smart. You can do better.’ All the things I’ve learned now are wrong [from domestic abuse advocates], I did them all.”

According to Hall, Renate continued a relationship with the man who was later named as the only person of interest in the investigation of her murder. But due to a lack of evidence, no arrests were made and the case remains an unsolved homicide.

“Do we know who did this to her as defined by a court of law? No,” said Hall. “But I can tell you I witnessed an act of violence and there were only two other people in that room.”

Tamron Hall airs weekdays on NBC. Check local listings.

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