Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Sliced, Beaten and Strangled - The Death of Melody Hoffman

Episode Date: December 15, 2024

The body of Melody Hoffman is discovered on a cold February morning. The person who finds her body calls 911 and describes her beautiful skin, she has all kinds of marks on her back, "like slashes" and her hands are curled in a way they shouldn't have been. She has been left in the freezing cold with nothing on but her underwear. Joseph Scott Morgan will explain how it is possible that the 20-year-p; has slashes across her back and has lost a lot of blood, but that isn't what killed her. Dave Mack digs into the different relationships that led to the murder of a 20-year-old woman who just wanted a boyfriend to care about her.           Transcript Highlights 00:01.16  Introduction 04:29.89 Melody Hoffman is missing 09:45.20 Melody might have been pregnant 14:30.41 Buy killing supplies 19:19.24 Picture on phone of Melody beaten, crying, tape over mouth 25:49.51 Murder happened February 18th, very cold 30:46.08 Does weather impact dead body 35:26.44 How much abuse had boyfriend put her through 39:39.14 Melody was strangled to death 47:58.86 Why was body left where it would be found ConclusionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Moore. The first office that I ever had was actually adjacent to a levee that overlooked the Mississippi River. Now, if you've never seen the Mississippi River, it's certainly something to behold. It's massive and it doesn't look like it's moving until of course you get immediately adjacent to it. Then you can see the flow. Some days it's very powerful and you know what's really weird? In in South Louisiana when the springtime melt would occur way back upriver,

back in Minnesota and Iowa, you would see huge blocks of ice that would flow all the way down to the city of New Orleans. Now, that's not something you would expect to see, but I have actually seen it. They say that many rivers, many creeks, flow into the Mississippi River. And today, on this episode, we're going to talk about a location named after one such creek.

That creek, of course, and of course it's no relation, is Morgan Creek. And Morgan Creek flows into the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And of course, Cedar River flows into the Mississippi River. But back to Morgan Creek, that tiny little tributary, there is actually a park in Cedar Rapids named after that little creek. And within the boundaries of that park are found the remains of a young woman who, according to reports, had the mind, though she was 20, of about that most of us can imagine or care to comprehend.

I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Dave, I have memories of the first time I ever saw the Mississippi River. And it was not in New Orleans, actually. I was with my mother, and my mother had a 1967 Candy Apple Red 3-speed Mustang Fastback. I loved that car, and she had it for a number of years. And I remember, you know, back then when we were little, you know, you rode in the front seat and of course you had no seat belt and there was a lot of sit down that you would hear coming. And it was just me and my mom. And I, you know, and I rode around in that car with her and I remember crossing the Mississippi river bridge, um, probably when I was about three or four, I guess, um,

in Vicksburg, uh, Vicksburg, Mississippi, where you're going from the Louisiana side to the Mississippi side. And I remember looking down, you could look over the edge of that old bridge, and it was steel back then. And you could see how vast that river is. And that bridge is so high, you look down on it, and particularly when you're little, things look so massive anyway. But even by today's standards, it would look huge.

And you think about now at this age, I think about the flow of that river and the stories that are told all along the banks of it, going all the way up to the headwaters in Minnesota. And it tells a story in and of itself, and it has for years and years, and people have been entranced by it. And it seems to me, and of course, I'm kind of partial, the stories all seem to come to rest down in the Delta. But for for our case today, this this starts all the way back up up river, you know, over a thousand miles away up in Iowa, Dave. And what a tragic case. You know, McKinley Luisma and Melody Hoffman were involved in an intimate relationship. Most of our stories, not most, a lot of our stories start like that. And I wonder sometimes how can people that have spent enough time together

to enjoy one another's company, to be involved in a relationship for an extended period of time, how it can end so badly that you and I end up talking about one of the people involved in it, because that's what we're doing again. McKinley Luisma, while he was in a special relationship with Melody Hoffman, was also in a relationship with another woman. So there you go. The triangle once again, complete.

Yeah. Relationship. Don't sound nothing special to me. Yeah. It's kind of a sad reality of what we end up with, but Melody Hoffman goes missing. Yeah. That's the first part of the story.

You know, that's what gets out in the news. We have a missing woman. Everybody part of the story. That's what gets out in the news. We have a missing woman. Everybody be on the lookout. And then you find out, well, her boyfriend has another girlfriend. And one thing leads to another. And we discover that McKinley Luisma has told investigators that he and Dakota Van Patten put Melody Hoffman in the trunk of a car at Morgan Creek Park in northwest Cedar Rapids

and then dumped her body at Amana Lily Lake about 16 miles away. Before picking up Melody Hoffman, her significant other McKinley Luisma and Dakota Van Patten, they went to Walmart, picked up, you know, what do you do when you're going to a creek area, a place with water and, you know, beachy areas, you pick up things to sit on the grass and maybe cook out, right?

Yeah. No, not these guys mckinley luisma and dakota van patten go to walmart and pick up two machetes and gloves two machetes and gloves because that's what you take on a romantic picnic by the pond right yeah yeah uh what yeah what what a horror show too. And just to back up just a little bit here, I gotta, I gotta speak to, to Melody Hoffman for one second. Melody Hoffman was 20 years old and Dave,

you know, um, she, she, she has been described as being slow. Yes. Mentally and emotionally underdeveloped. She's been described as having kind of the emotional development of a 14-year-old. And I think the really sad thing about this is that she was lonely and had always wanted a boyfriend and never had had had one. And if you think that it's a longing, you know, that sets in with somebody, you want to be loved. You want to be you want to be made to you want to feel special, you know? Um, and, uh, if you, if you're absent that in your

life, that's a dangerous thing, particularly in the world that we live in today, because it's so, it's so easy to be taken advantage of. You mentioned she's 14 mentally, emotionally, a young teen. And if you remember that time period, it's this really cross between a little girl and a young woman. And it's a period of time where both those types of attributes coexist, but not for her. She was 20, but she was at a younger age emotionally and mentally. So she's a 14-year-old where she can still see, you know, unicorns and pink clouds and stuff like that and wasn't past that. She was being taken advantage of by her boyfriend slash ex-boyfriend, however you want to look at McKinley Luisma. He was taking advantage of her because she was a little bit

underdeveloped that way. That's how they could lure her into the situation of getting her separated and out by herself without fear. There's another part of all this show that came up that I was going to ask you about. Was she pregnant? There's been some indication that she had either, according to the forensic pathologist, she had either been recently pregnant or was currently pregnant. But, you know, the examination The examination of her system, of her body at the time, did not reveal a fetus at this point in time. Now, that doesn't mean that she wasn't pregnant, but there was a hormone that was present in her system, HCG. When a blood test is done for pregnancy, you're looking for ACG, HCG. And so it's there. But given circumstances, the pathologist could not necessarily totally rule it out or that maybe she had been pregnant and lost a child that, that can still, and so you're, uh, a woman's system, even, uh, in a, uh, a

postnatal state, uh, if, if she's, uh, say for instance, uh, had a miscarriage at some point, Tom, um, you're that hormone would still be present there. Uh, and the body has not purged itself completely. Wow. There's so much to unwrap in this story, but ultimately it's a relationship that went bad. And rather than breaking up and moving on, I guess that's something that seems to be happening in so many different stories. Like, really, this was your best decision? Look, nobody likes to be in a situation where they have to break up with somebody that they no longer have the feelings for and i get that okay but i'm i'm just thinking how many movies have we watched and it never turns out good

isn't there a little indicator here that just maybe we ought to think of something other than murder somebody you care about somebody that you've had an intimate relationship with Isn't there a little indicator here that just maybe we ought to think of something other than murder? Somebody you care about, somebody that you've had an intimate relationship with that you're done with. Granted, it might be cold and all that, but look, you really think your best decision is to kill this individual? Yeah, that's a very, I don't know, it's a very horrific but yet simplistic way of looking at life. What's so amazing to me is the fact that you can involve yourself at such an intimate level with someone. I mean, let's face it, where, you know, you're involved in a physical sexual relationship with someone and you go back to them time and time again to engage in this behavior. Maybe you're telling them that you do, in fact, care for them, but yet you can dispose of

them as if they're garbage. And those two things don't seem to correlate with one another, at least in my mind. And, you know, you talk about how, is this the best decision that you could have come up with at this moment in time? Well, of course, for this individual, it would seem that this individual felt as though that it was best for him to do this. And not just him, but he's also involved an acquaintance of his in this circumstance. What you have here is that somebody that has quit somebody because they have another girlfriend that that individual they've created a life with. And they've grown tired of Melody. And so you go and you confide in your friend. Look, you know, I'm over this. I'm tired of her.

I want to get rid of her. And you drag them into the circumstances as well. And to dispose of a life, to end a life, and then try to dispose of her mortal remains in such a horrific way is something that I don't know that we could really plumb the depths of effectively here. But it really leaves you scratching your head. Why would you want to destroy this poor girl like this and completely demolish her family in the wake of what you've done? It's almost as if you could care less about her as a person. And of course, what it all comes down to is you care more about your immediate satisfaction

than you ever could about a life that you and I have talked a lot about that you probably have learned more about and didn't really want to know that much about. But I've subjected you to it. God bless you, my friend. But that's the Piketon Massacre. And the Piketon Massacre actually has one little bit in common with the case of Melody Hoffman, and that involves a trip to Walmart. You remember in the Piketon Massacre case where the mama goes to Walmart in order to purchase unused shoes so that her husband and her two boys can commit these crimes with, quote unquote, virgin souls.

Soul, S-O-L-E on their feet. And, you know, isn't it interesting? You know, I think in a recent episode, I mentioned to you about seeing bags alongside of the road. And, you know, you see things alongside the road and you think, hmm, I wonder what's in that bag. Have you ever gone to Walmart, Dave, and walked past people in store and you think, I wonder what they're buying in here? What is this person about? What exactly are they doing? Because you see all shapes and sizes, as you well know. I had a buddy of mine at one time said the most entertaining place in the world would be Walmart if you had a lawn chair and a case of beer late on a Friday night and you just sat there and watched. It would be better than cable television.

You never know what's going to happen, you know, with people coming and going. And I just think you looked at yourself in the mirror before you left the house and thought that was OK. Really? Yeah. Yeah, I know. in the mirror before you left the house and thought that was okay really yeah yeah i know based on that decision i know whatever's in the bag is not something i want to see yeah i know uh but you know what what can i say uh i'm not a big uh i'm not a big fan of where when you brought that up public about pykton you know and about this that was really shocking to me was the the trip to walmart to buy the shoes it was something i never would have thought of and you guys go check out the episode

joe's done a lot of uh a lot of shows about that piketon massacre we did one here and that was something i never would have thought of i'm the shoes yeah yeah yeah and uh you know we just did an episode involving uh well i think yeah i know what I know what it was. It was because Billy Wagner is about to go to trial. Right. Yeah. So we had to revisit that again. But the one thing and what got Mama Wagner caught in that case, Dave, was CCTV. Right.

Which we know that Walmart is fully equipped with. And let me give you some advice. Next time you go to Walmart, look at the ceiling. Look at the ceiling. You'll see the little pods that are up there. Ah, the little pit boss look, huh? Yeah. And this thing is covered from front to back.

And let me tell you something else. Walmart does not play when it comes to shoplifting either. If they catch you shoplifting, they will charge you or they will have you charged and they don't drop the charges either. Wow. They do not negotiate over that. So at least they did in the past. I can't speak, you know, in recent history and we won't go down that road, however. Interesting though, you know, at least in the Pike and Case show, when they went to Walmart to get supplies, they were buying something to actually draw attention away from them as possible suspects. But here, we have these two guys going there buying machetes.

Yeah, and I think that they also bought paracord as well. If you don't know what paracord is, it's a braided synthetic rope that you can use it for any number of things in the military. You use it to lash things together. You can use it depending upon the type. You can use it for repelling all these sorts of things, and securing things. And so the paracord plays into this case, but also machetes certainly play into this case as well, Dave. Yeah, there's, you know, the 911 call to report the body of Melody Hoffman is shocking. And when you couple that call with the autopsy report, Joe, which we're going to get into both of these, because she's described the description of Melody Hoffman. She has such beautiful, pure white skin.

That was part of the 911 call. When a woman calls it, there's a dead body here. I see a dead body. And the operator, you know, well, do you think the person is breathing? No, this is a dead body. But she has the most beautiful skin. And then conversely, I thought of a picture that was found on McKinley Luisma's phone. On his cell phone is a picture of 20-year-old Melody Hoffman.

Shows her face with duct tape over her mouth, a bloody nose. She'd apparently been crying. And he took a photo of her like that and kept it on his phone so he could revisit the look joe yeah um i'm i'm thinking about this now uh you know in light of the appearance of the photograph and to me dave uh this is indicative of someone that's not just trying to kill somebody and get them out

of their life. This is a whole nother level of horror when you think about this. Why is it that you would want to document this, that look of fear? There's been, um, a number of these cases, uh, over the years that involve, uh, um, what I refer to as, as, uh, uh, as sexual sadism. Um, and you, you have individuals out there that love to photograph individuals in these horrible sets of circumstances. One guy comes to mind in particular for me out of Kansas City from many years ago named Robert Berdella, who would photograph his victims that he had kidnapped. And I've seen these photographs over the years, certainly before the evolution of the Internet. I saw them at conferences, people that were talking about these cases. And he operated essentially from 84 until about 87, I think.

And he would abduct and torture individuals. And there's, there's kind of a, what's it, Bethany Marshall calls a fetishization. I think, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but they go back and they revisit, you know, things like this. It's one thing if you're going, if you're going with, with your friend to, you know, that you've entered into an agreement with them to kill somebody and dispose of their mortal remains, but why under heaven would you do this to this poor girl? And remember, she has the mind of a 14-year-old child, and all she ever wanted was a boyfriend. Um, and to have your buddy stand by, you know, as this is going on as well, why, why, why is it that you would want to revisit this on any level? Uh, this really goes to a deep, very dark, dark place, Dave.

When I saw the picture, you know, it was on his phone, I thought, I wonder if it was taken that day or if it was from an earlier beating. You know, anything is possible. But I know that when police were called about the dead body. The deputy who showed up and wrote the initial report gives a cursory view of what he finds. And she appears to have suffered extensive injuries. He notes that. Now, I guess you need to. I mean, when you see a body, I guess sometimes the person could look like they're dead,

but maybe they've only got a bullet hole somewhere that you can't really see. Or maybe they've had a heart attack and fallen over. I mean, there are options to this that don't have to say the person looks like they have extensive injuries. So she was lying face down on the ground. Would that tell somebody something if you're investigating? Yeah, it could. And she's found essentially on the ground with – and one of the interesting things that they talked about that kind of stands out is that her hands were curled in a way that they shouldn't have been.

And that came in from the reporter, the lady that – well, I say reporter. What I meant is the finder. And we've talked about the role of the finder. And we've talked about the role of the finder. And, you know, she talked about the hands being curled in a way that they shouldn't have been. And I'm really wondering if this wasn't a reaction to perhaps the fact that she was strangled and that she's going through a seizure-like event and her hands remained in this position you know in in the wake of this but but here's something else you know when the finder observed um observed her you know she did talk about you know this this beautiful uh pale perfect uh skin and she the find her actually bears witness to this

on the stand. And she talked about her glorious curls. And when you see Melody, uh, she's got this long Brown hair and it's very, very curly, you know, it's kind of like ringlets that, that kind of pour down her back. And the only thing she's wearing are her underwear. Again, when you find women in particular that are clothed only in a pair of underwear, this goes to a level of, I think at least, a level of humiliation when you do this. And you've absented them of all other coverings that they might have on their person. And Dave, let's reflect back to where this was. This was in Iowa. And I don't know if you've ever been to Iowa in the wintertime. And this happened February 18th. Right after Valentine's Day.

Iowa is cold. I mean, it is bone- cold, beautiful, but cold. And, you know, so again, you've got this this young woman who is naked, save her her underwear. She's been brutalized and she's without any source of comfort. You know, I use Maslow's hierarchy a lot. You know, when I'm thinking about the way people are treated at scenes in particular, you know, that our basic needs that we have of clothing and comfort and, you know, shelter and those sorts of things. And when you can deprive people of things that like

a real base level like this, I think that it goes to the mentality of the individual that's doing a great harm. It begs the question, doesn't it? You know, what became of the rest of her clothing? Where were they? And for how long did, because the term torture keeps coming up in this case, Dave. And if you're going to torture someone, that means that you have to have an isolated location and you have to have time, Dave. And very quickly, her hands in an unnatural way, You mentioned a seizure. What kind of injuries would you suffer that could bring about a seizure that would cause that to happen? Well, I think that there's two things. Famously, where just a couple of weeks ago, you know, we're coming on the heels of an injury that Trevor Lawrence sustained where he sustained his head injury. And you can see his arms go stiff in this event. And it's like a seizure response that individuals have where, you know, you'll see their hands will

kind of contract. They'll grasp their thumbs. I've seen this actually in people that have videotaped themselves when they hang themselves. And you can have this event that will occur with oxygen deprivation as well as head injuries as well. I don't know that that's necessarily what happened here, but I just find it interesting in passing that, that the observer, the finder in this case made, made a lot of this on the stand in this case, where she talked about that her hands, Melody's hands, at least were, were in an unnatural position. And so that gives you the idea that they're probably curled in a backwards manner. Now, that can also come about, I think, perhaps maybe she had been restrained and the restraints were cut at some point in time. Maybe that cord was taken away. I don't really know.

But and, you know, Riger has set in at that point in time. But, you know, Melody was found within a very short period of time of when she was last seen alive. So she's not, you know, she might still, and I would think there would still be some remnant of post-mortem changes going on in her body that would be appreciable at that moment in time. Would cold weather prevent the onset of the changes that take place in death? You mentioned rigoramortis. I mean, is it delayed because of how cold it is? It can be.

Yeah, it can be. But I think that in a case like this where you're outdoors like this and she is, I think that at best it's going to be negligible probably in this case. And also keep in mind that somebody that's engaged in this kind of vigorous physical activity, because I don't know if there's anything more vigorous in the world than someone being tortured. You've got the metabolic activity that is increased. And of course, this would have still, to a certain degree, have remained if she died in the wake of this torture. I don't think that it would have slowed it to theasis in bed, perhaps, like an elderly person, and the room had been cooler, perhaps, that, you know, the temperature would probably retard it compared to, say, summertime, where things are warmer, you know.

But no, I don't think to any great degree. But I do know this. I know that when the observers in this case, the finder and certainly that police officer that first arrived at the scene, not only did they see that, as she described the finder, the most, quote, beautiful, pale, perfect skin and glorious curls. She also saw something else. She saw what appeared to be all kinds of marks on her back, like slashes. So what happened to Melody Hoffman? What is it that she had done to someone that would have driven them to the point where they would want to get a sharp instrument, multiple sharp instruments, and torture her? Because this is what this is, by slashing her across her body and then using a piece of what's referred to as paracord to strangle her with. I don't know that we would necessarily have the answer to that, but I have my suspicions, Dave, when you think about maybe the individual that wanted just merely to be shed of this woman's life. You know, looking at pictures of her and thinking about 20-year-old life in front of them, the whole nine.

And then looking at what this person who she had been in a relationship with, and I'm having trouble matching it up, you know, just people being so young and going to this degree, not that age should have a lot to do with doing something so destructive to another human being. I don't know why it just strikes me as this one just seems like there's something missing. Like we're not getting the whole story. We've got the basics. We know that Melody Hoffman was murdered. We know that she was a simple girl with a little bit of mental or emotional maturity at about the age of 14. But when you look at the investigation, Joe, you know, I mentioned the picture earlier of where it looked like she had where Melody had duct tape over her mouth. And she had been crying, noses bloody, some things like that. And it was a photo that was on McKinley Luisma's phone.

Well, when they did some research, they found out that they believe she died around midnight on February 17th at 4.05 a.m., February 18th, he accessed that photo on his phone. So if she died around midnight, four hours later, he's looking at that photo of her. Now, I know that there's plenty of evidence in the data. Data has evidence in it. You know, the pictures have data that tells them when the picture was taken and everything else. Because I think I'd mentioned, did he do this to her before? Had he tortured her like this before, Joe? And then, I don't know.

I'm just totally bum-fuzzled that the guy took a picture of her while she's alive and crying and keeps it on his phone. And then based on this timetable, he's looking at it four hours after he's killed her. Yeah, he feels real comfortable with this because he's involving friends in it, Dave. Yeah. That's, you know. Dakota Van Pound. Yeah, this is the other thing. There's also a third individual that he had turned, I think, Logan Kempton, that he had turned over all of these items.

This is Luisma had turned these items over that had been purchased to get rid of them. So this individual is an accessory in this homicide as well. And so and the reason I'm saying this is it's it's ghastly that they would be involved in it. But it's the idea that this perpetrator felt so comfortable doing this. And I think this goes to a greater point. How was this the ultimate escalation and ongoing abuse, I think? And was there any evidence found on her remains that she had been subject to abuse? You know, she lived with her mother. Melody did. She lived with her mother. Her mother had been

trying to get in contact with her, had texted her to try to, you know, to get back home because she had cameras at the house that she witnessed her leaving the house. And she had pinged her to tell her to come back home, come back home. And of course she didn't, she never comes back home. And, you know, the, the fact that, that this individual that did this to her, I, I wonder how much awareness the mother has had, you know, over what perhaps Melody had been subjected to at the hands of this perpetrator, McKinley Luisma. How much other abuse had he subjected Melody to over a period of time?

Was there a lot of verbal abuse? Had he been smacking her around at all? Was there evidence of healed injuries, for instance, you know, that you could put a timeframe on moving forward. And I don't know that that was necessarily discovered. But one of the things that's quite interesting that they were able to, you know, kind of track, I think, with digital evidence here is his movements or their movements relative to what happened to her. Because, you know, you talked about they were at the park, I think, at the Morgan Creek Park from about 1209 to about roughly 1225 on the 18th,

which is when they believe she was killed. And they believe she was killed there at Morgan Creek Park. Now, she's then placed into a vehicle, his vehicle, they believe, and driven out to this Lily Pond Park. What's fascinating to me is that when her body was deposited at Lily Pond Park, she was not deposited in the pond itself. She was deposited adjacent to the pond. Now, I don't know what status the pond was. I don't know exactly how far away she was, but we do know that she was essentially approximating the shore. Was there ice on the pond? Because we're talking about February, you know, so is it possible that they just could not have gotten her sufficiently out in the water?

Maybe they're afraid of water. I don't know. Maybe they can't swim. I have no idea. Could be. And that this was the most expeditious thing that they could do. But Dave, that chilling part that you mentioned where he's obviously reflecting back on this imagery, you know, that he has, uh, is he fantasizing at this point in time? Because

dude, this is in the wake, this is just in the wake of, of what has happened to, to this young woman. That's why I was overly curious yeah i mean normally something like that just i kind of get it and just file it right but this one caught me different because i'm going wait a minute either he tortured her before and kept this photo to remind him of what he had done previously or this is a picture of her right before he killed her. And you mentioned the digital evidence, Joe. And I thought, OK, when you access your phone and you access stuff online with social media, you have to get online to do that. And so they can track our phones, you know, from the different pings that they hit. But interestingly enough, they actually were able to, in this particular case, McKinley Luisma gets on his phone and uses Wi-Fi, but he uses a Wi-Fi

hotspot that was created by Dakota Van Patten on his phone that put them both at the location at the time of the death. Now, one of the things we mentioned about Melody Hoffman laying face down when she was discovered, she had marks on her back, Joe. And at this point, we haven't even got into how she actually was killed. Was she killed with the machete knives? No. No, that's why these marks are, some have described them as slashes. I've heard slashes. I've heard one individual refer to them as stab wounds. And listen, it would not surprise me if both existed.

Now, a machete is not a stabbing tool, okay? It is a slicing or cutting tool. You know, people traditionally have used them to cut brush. Our, you know, members of our military have carried them on their rucksacks for years and years, particularly those that are in densely wooded areas or in jungle canopy. You know, our guys in Vietnam, guys in Vietnam carried them all everywhere. Everybody had machetes back then because you'd have to cut through elephant grass and all that sort of stuff.

And they're primarily used to swing in order to slice through things. Now, what actually brought about her death, Dave, was this paracord that had been wrapped around her neck. Now, here's the thing, again, that goes to why I believe that this is potentially this paracord or these marks on her neck might be indicative of a uh, of, of, uh, a, a torture event, because I think that there's multiple marks on her neck. So what that would mean is that, uh, is that perhaps this, this, uh, this paracord had generated marks around the front of her, her neck. And they're described as marks plural. What that means is that if you're in the,

uh, primarily the, the rope or the ligature is around the front of the neck, it's being adjusted, released, and then readjusted. Okay. So what you have is kind of in the rear, you're holding the ligature in the rear and you're tightening it down almost like a garrotte. Now they haven't used the term garrotte, but that's the way a garrotte would be used. If you

have like, you know, the wooden stick that goes in between the two. You can use a wire or rope and you tighten it down and then you release it and then you readjust it and you tighten it down again. So you could bring her to the point and she's enduring incredible pain because she's already got these insults to her back. Now, you know, to finish her off and maybe you're controlling her with this rope around her neck as well. Keep that in mind. You can put this rope around her neck as well. Keep that in mind. You can put this rope around her neck and walk behind her. Now she's in her underwear, Dave. What if they strip her of her clothes?

Okay. Just let this sink in just for a second. They've stripped her of her clothes. Okay. And they're marching her out there in the cold on this cold February night. And she's walking out there nude. She's at this park. They're loosening and tightening this ligature around her neck.

They're humiliating her, Dave. They slash her with this machete. And then finally, the coup de grace, they take that ligature as she's laying there and they tighten it and tighten it and tighten it until not another sound emanates from her body. It's just this final gasp of air when she's struggling to breathe, but she can't because her airway is externally constricted down to the point where, you know, I've seen these cases where tongues bulge, eyes bulge, you're going to have petechiae, and there's a resistance there that you're not going to be able to fight against, particularly if you've already been greatly traumatized. I would imagine that in many cases, the individual just wants it to end because

they're in such a state there's such a state of trauma at this point in time there's nothing else that they can do when this case was in court and you get to you get to read the testimony it It's been thought of, it's organized. Oftentimes, if you've ever listened to somebody relate a story right after, certain things impact them differently than others. And it's only the cumulative effect of time, research, and looking at the entire, in this particular case, the entire scene, where they realize that Melody was not killed where she was found she was killed and then brought to the location 16 miles away my question to you joe they said

that she wasn't killed where she was found a little lily pond or what was lily yeah yeah because there was absence of uh blood pooled and everything else. There was an absence of blood. Based on her death, they would have expected to see more blood. You're saying that she was strangled. We know she's got marks on her back, but she obviously lost a lot of blood, too, from the cuts on her back and on her body. But she didn't die there. Was she alive when they put her in the trunk of the car to transport her?

Wow. I think that that very well could have been the case. They know that what we do know is that she was found in Lily Pond, which is up in Amana, which is, you know, what, 16 miles away from Cedar Falls. Was she placed in that trunk and she was already or was she still alive? They keep using the term terrorized and tortured, Dave, over and over again as it applies to her. You know, I guess, you know, at the end of the day, we can only hope that that she, her death was quick. I think that they believe that she was killed there in the Morgan Creek Park and then placed into the trunk and transported up there. And she was left adjacent to that, that pond.

And, you know, I don't know why they would have gone to that trouble to drive that distance to, to deposit her remains because there's, you know, there's a whole lot of, of, of vacant area in Iowa, a lot of rural area. If you're, if you're looking to, you know, take a body and deposit somebody where they might not be found, but you go to a landmark like a pond and, you know, you're going to find, uh, uh, you know, someone lying adjacent to the shoreline of this little pond. It's not like you take, you would take her out into a densely wooded

area and take her body out there. The movements of these individuals, I think, were rather orchestrated. They had a plan in mind, but it was ultimately the execution and the lack of care that they took. And certainly when it comes to digital evidence, Dave, because you really spoke something, I think, at least into my mind investigatively just a moment ago when you had mentioned that Luisma's phone actually hopped on to a hotspot created by his compatriot here, who was along with him, and that they were traveling in concert together, Dave. And that's a dead giveaway. Now, I've covered cases in the past where you have two phones that are moving through a location together. They famously say, all we can say is that the phones are moving. We can't say that the people that own the phones are moving together.

But in this case, you've got two phones that are digitally married to one another by virtue of the fact that you're hopping onto a hotspot that the other one has created. I don't know that I've ever heard this before. I saw it, and my first thought was, he is not going to get out of this. You know, you've got him, Dakota, now.'ve got him using his hotspot for Luis to get online. You've got them both inside the Walmart buying the machetes. So they're tied. They're tied together. A 20-year-old girl, the mental, emotional, psychological maturity of a 14-year-old was kidnapped, terrorized, and murdered. And her body left in the middle of, you know, near a pond, I guess is the best way to put it.

Just left out naked to die. Now, we've had a trial and McKinley Luisma, 23 years old, convicted. But his sentencing has been pushed back, Joe. Why would a sentencing, after having all this evidence, why would they move the sentencing? I think that more than likely, in my opinion, my opinion alone, that perhaps, just perhaps, the defense has wanted more time so that they could do a pre-sentencing hearing and that they could go before the judge and ask for some level of mercy here. Because I got to tell you, it's

the horror that's involved in this case. The defense understands what Luisma is facing here. And not only is he facing it, he's got other people that are involved in this that can offer up testimony to this. This is not like a lone person out there that just did this, you know, kind of in a vacuum. That's not what you've got. You've got so many witnesses pointing back at him, including the evidence that's contained in the digital evidence. They're going to need more time, I think, for the pre-sentencing investigation that always takes place. So they probably ask for more time in this case because they know that whatever the sentence is going to be, it ain't going to be pretty. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.