A B.C.-born actor and dancer who police believe was killed by her rapper husband in an apparent murder-suicide spoke highly of her marriage in the days leading up to her death, according to relatives.
Stephanie Moseley, 30, was found dead in her Los Angeles home Monday morning after officers were called for reports of shots fired and a woman screaming.
Investigators believe she was shot to death by her husband of eight years, 34-year-old rapper Earl Hayes.
“She was a person that loved to dance and loved to express herself. She was a beautiful personality, always positive, always happy, always looking to perform,” Moseley’s cousin Christopher Lowe told CTV News on Tuesday. “She loved fashion and she loved being in the spotlight, and she had taken dance to such an extreme level, to dance with the biggest superstars in the world.”
Lowe said Moseley was in her prime as a dancer, having worked with stars like Beyonce, Britney Spears and Janet Jackson, and she was beginning to make a name as an actor with roles in “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn,” CTV’s “Once Upon A time” and VH1’s “Hit the Floor.”
“She had a dream, and she really didn’t let anything get in the way of that dream until she achieved it,” he said. “Never did we ever question her safety. We were a very close family.”
Moseley’s immediate and extended family had met her husband many times at family gatherings in Vancouver over the years, according to Lowe. In the week before her death, he said Moseley spoke glowingly of her husband.
“We never saw a violent side,” he said. “If there were any indications we would have picked up on it. This is not a woman who kept much inside. She wore everything on her sleeve.”
According to Moseley’s official website, she graduated from a number of B.C. dance schools, including Pacific Dance Arts, Kirkwood Academy and Danzmode Productions then moved to L.A. in 2004.
Erin McNeil, who danced with Moseley in the same ballet, called working with the star “inspiring” and said her death has shocked the tight-knit dance community.
“She worked that hard and she really got where she wanted to be, so it really motivates everybody,” McNeil said. “I think over the next little while, we’re all going to get together and remember her as the way we all knew her when I was little and she was her teaching, and the amazing person that she was.”
A Los Angeles Police Department investigation into the deaths of Moseley and Hayes is ongoing.
With a report from CTV Vancouver’s Mi-Jung Lee
