The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates

In December 2000, the Baltimore Sun

ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship. The same paper also ran a series of articles about four young men who had allegedly killed a police officer in a spectacularly botched armed robbe......more

In December 2000, the Baltimore Sun

ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship. The same paper also ran a series of articles about four young men who had allegedly killed a police officer in a spectacularly botched armed robbery. The police were still hunting for two of the suspects who had gone on the lam, a pair of brothers. One was named Wes Moore. 

Wes just couldn’t shake off the unsettling coincidence, or the inkling that the two shared much more than space in the same newspaper. After following the story of the robbery, the manhunt, and the trial to its conclusion, he wrote a letter to the other Wes, now a convicted murderer serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. His letter tentatively asked the questions that had been haunting him: Who are you? How did this happen?

That letter led to a correspondence and relationship that have lasted for several years. Over dozens of letters and prison visits, Wes discovered that the other Wes had had a life not unlike his own: Both had grown up in similar neighborhoods and had had difficult childhoods, both were fatherless; they’d hung out on similar corners with similar crews, and both had run into trouble with the police. At each stage of their young lives they had come across similar moments of decision, yet their choices would lead them to astonishingly different destinies.

Told in alternating dramatic narratives that take readers from heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption,

tells the story of a generation of boys trying to find their way in a hostile world.(less)

Wes Moore is a youth advo­cate, Army com­bat vet­eran, promis­ing busi­ness leader and author.

Wes grad­u­ated Phi Theta Kappa as a com­mis­sioned offi­cer from Val­ley Forge Mil­i­tary Col­lege in 1998 and Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree i......more

Wes Moore is a youth advo­cate, Army com­bat vet­eran, promis­ing busi­ness leader and author.

Wes grad­u­ated Phi Theta Kappa as a com­mis­sioned offi­cer from Val­ley Forge Mil­i­tary Col­lege in 1998 and Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in Inter­na­tional Rela­tions. At Johns Hop­kins he was hon­ored by the Mary­land Col­lege Foot­ball Hall of Fame. He com­pleted an MLitt in Inter­na­tional Rela­tions from Oxford Uni­ver­sity as a Rhodes Scholar in 2004. Wes was a para­trooper and Cap­tain in the United States Army, serv­ing a com­bat tour of duty in Afghanistan with the elite 1st Brigade of the 82nd Air­borne Divi­sion in 2005–2006. Wes spear­headed the Amer­i­can strate­gic sup­port plan f

Wes Moore is a youth advo­cate, Army com­bat vet­eran, promis­ing busi­ness leader and author.

Wes grad­u­ated Phi Theta Kappa as a com­mis­sioned offi­cer from Val­ley Forge Mil­i­tary Col­lege in 1998 and Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in Inter­na­tional Rela­tions. At Johns Hop­kins he was hon­ored by the Mary­land Col­lege Foot­ball Hall of Fame. He com­pleted an MLitt in Inter­na­tional Rela­tions from Oxford Uni­ver­sity as a Rhodes Scholar in 2004. Wes was a para­trooper and Cap­tain in the United States Army, serv­ing a com­bat tour of duty in Afghanistan with the elite 1st Brigade of the 82nd Air­borne Divi­sion in 2005–2006. Wes spear­headed the Amer­i­can strate­gic sup­port plan for the Afghan Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Pro­gram that unites for­mer insur­gents with the new Afghan Gov­ern­ment. He is rec­og­nized as an author­ity on the rise and ram­i­fi­ca­tions of rad­i­cal Islamism in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. A White House Fel­low from 2006–2007, Wes served as a Spe­cial Assis­tant to Sec­re­tary of State Con­doleezza Rice. Fol­low­ing his time at the White House, Wes became an invest­ment pro­fes­sional in New York at Cit­i­group, focus­ing on global tech­nol­ogy and alter­na­tive invest­ments. In 2009 he was selected as an Asia Soci­ety Fel­low. Moore was named one of Ebony magazine’s “Top 30 Lead­ers Under 30” for 2007 and Crain’s New York Busi­ness’ “40 Under 40 Ris­ing Stars” in 2009.

Wes is pas­sion­ate about sup­port­ing U.S. vet­er­ans and exam­in­ing the roles edu­ca­tion, men­tor­ing and pub­lic ser­vice play in the lives of Amer­i­can youth. He serves on the board of the Iraq Afghanistan Vet­er­ans of Amer­ica (IAVA) and founded an orga­ni­za­tion called STAND! through Johns Hop­kins that works with Bal­ti­more youth involved in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Wes was a fea­tured speaker at the 2008 Demo­c­ra­tic National Con­ven­tion in Den­ver and addressed the crowd from Invesco Field. He has also spo­ken at the National Foun­da­tion for Teach­ing Entre­pre­neur­ship (NFTE) Busi­ness Plan Com­pe­ti­tion, South­ern Regional Con­fer­ence of the National Soci­ety of Edu­ca­tors, the edu­ca­tion reform ses­sion of the third annual Race & Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion in Amer­ica con­fer­ence, and the first 9/11 National Day of Ser­vice and Remembrance.

He has been fea­tured by such media out­lets as Peo­ple Mag­a­zine, The New York Times, The Wash­ing­ton Post, CSPAN, and MSNBC, amongst oth­ers. Wes’ first book, The Other Wes Moore, will be pub­lished by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Ran­dom House, in late April 2010.

Wes Moore was born in 1978 and was three years old when his father, a respected radio and tele­vi­sion host, died in front of him. His mother, hop­ing for a bet­ter future for her fam­ily, made great sac­ri­fices to send Wes and his sis­ters to pri­vate school. Caught between two worlds—the afflu­ence of his class­mates and the strug­gles of his neighbors—Wes began to act out, suc­cumb­ing to bad grades, sus­pen­sions, and delin­quen­cies. Des­per­ate to reverse his behav­ior, his mother sent him to mil­i­tary school in Penn­syl­va­nia. After try­ing to escape five times, Wes finally decided to stop rail­ing against the sys­tem and become account­able for his actions. By grad­u­a­tion six years later, Moore was com­pany com­man­der over­see­ing 125 cadets.

On Decem­ber 11, 2000, The Bal­ti­more Sun ran an arti­cle about how Wes, despite his trou­bled child­hood, had just received The Rhodes Schol­ar­ship. At the same time, The Sun was run­ning sto­ries —even­tu­ally more than 100 in all—about four African-American men who were arrested for the mur­der of an off-duty Bal­ti­more police offi­cer d (less)