Law&Crime Sidebar - 9 Horrific Details of Young Girl's Murder Revealed as Prosecutors Seek Death for 'Evil Parents'

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

A Pennsylvania district attorney shared graphic new details about the abuse suffered by 12-year-old Malinda Hoagland, allegedly at the hands of her father, Rendell Hoagland, and stepmother, Cindy Warren. Prosecutors say the couple filmed videos of the alleged abuse and texted those videos to each other. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber breaks down the upgraded murder charges and whether anyone else should be held accountable for Malinda’s death with Hoagland family attorney Thomas Bosworth.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Get 50% off of confidential background reports at https://www.truthfinder.com/lcsidebarHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger and Christina FalconeScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. View Shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller

that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. We charge them with first-degree murder, second-degree murder, third-degree murder, kidnapping, and hundreds of related charges. When 12-year-old Melinda Hoagland went to the hospital back in May, she weighed only 50 pounds and had more than 75 bruises on her body. Now, the DA has upgraded charges for her father and stepmother to murder. We're going to be speaking with the attorney that is representing Melinda's family. They want justice. Welcome to the sidebar. Presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber.

Now, we first told you about the Chester County Pennsylvania investigation into Melinda Hogan's death a couple months ago. It is a really, really horrifying story. And now we have new information, not only about the charges the defendants in this case face, murder, conspiracy, and so forth, but also what the punishment, the district attorney, Christopher de Berena Sarob, wants the defendants in this case. to receive. I can stand here before you today and say that we intend to pursue the death penalty in this case. So who are the suspects in this case? We're talking about 52-year-old Rendell Hoagland and 45-year-old Cindy Warren. And they could not be more different from each other, at least when it comes to their criminal histories. Why do I say that? Because according to Truthfinder, we found out that Rendell Hoagland has basically nothing on his record before

now, just seemingly a speeding ticket. But Cindy Warren's crime. criminal history seems to be a different story. Because back in 2009, she apparently pleaded guilty in connection with her then husband beating their three-year-old son. She was sentenced to three to seven years in prison. And the ex-husband, while he's serving a 25 to 50-year sentence for that and for killing his two-year-old daughter. It's just unbelievable to think about this. It's unthinkable that people can do this to their children. And we will talk about her criminal history and why it's important here in a minute. But just going back to that, TruthFinder that I mentioned that we used for the research in this story, it's a sponsor of

ours, and we actually use it a lot in the cases that we cover. It's one of the largest public record search services in the United States. And by the way, TruthFinder can also be used to pull up registered sex offenders in your area, which is just super helpful for peace of mind. And with a paid subscription service, you can get access to unlimited reports of almost anyone. And right now, you can get 50% off of your first month of confidential background reports. Just go to truthfinder.com slash LC sidebar. So back to the story, according to a newly filed criminal complaint, Rendell Hoagland calls 911 on May 4th,

report that his daughter had crashed into a tree on her bicycle. Okay. You know what the problem with that is? It doesn't match up with what the medical professionals found because EMS and emergency room doctors, they noted that Melinda was severely emaciated weighing only around 50 pounds, and that she had injuries all over her body. The DA said she sustained approximately 75 individually identified bruises,

contusions, ulcers, pressure sores throughout her body, 12 years old. She died during surgery, and a forensic pathologist found that Melinda died due to starvation and multiple blunt force injuries. So police, they end up arresting Melinda's father Rendell and her stepmother, Cindy Warren. They're being held without bail. And I want you to take a listen to what the DA had to say after a couple more months of investigation. I'm going to warn everyone that what I'm going to get through and what I'm going to describe is truly unimaginable. It's difficult to hear.

It's trying to process. And so now I'm going to set forth and try to discuss the indescribable. While medical experts chronicled her injuries, the team of fabulous detectives here went through and parsed through incredible amounts of data. This was data from cell phones, blink camera videos, and other sources. They found over 450 videos of evidentiary value, hundreds of still images of evidentiary value, and text messages of evidentiary value that, spanned two and a half years. The evidence shows that these defendants communicated regularly about how they were going to terrorize Melinda. She was subjected to physical and psychological torture.

And as someone who has reviewed just a small fraction of these photos and videos and text messages, I will tell you that it appears that Melinda was reprogrammed to accept. accept abuse as part of her life. In one video in particular, Cindy Warren was recording and sharing with Rendell Hoagland. Melinda crying, holding her hands above her head, holding a stack of books, asking to be forgiven for dropping the books, and then she was beaten with a metal spatula and told that Rendell Glenn was going to come back and beat her worse. Now, you might be wondering, where is Melinda's birth mother in all of this, right?

Well, according to the DA, she apparently has a severe illness that keeps her from being able to take care of her child. But here is something else. Melinda wasn't the only child living in that house with her father and stepmother. No, she had a younger brother, the biological son of Cindy Warren, who apparently wasn't abused at all. No, he was often featured in Facebook posts with Rendell and Cindy, while appearances of Melinda on their social media pages are more rare. Our investigation has revealed that Cindy Warren's biological son, a younger son, was living in that house. And actually, some of the evidence reviewed showed that when she would get up to go do something else in another room and was trying to record Melinda, that she would have her son do the recording for her. he there's no indication that he was abused by all counts he was treated well in that house okay so now i want to bring an attorney tom bosworth him and his team are representing melinda's family throughout all of this tom thanks so much for coming here on sidebar um can you tell us a little bit first about how you got involved in this case uh yeah my colleague ellie who's who's another lawyer um she's co-council on the case she got a phone call from the half sisters of melinda and they wanted to look into what we could do

to make sure this never happens again and get some change here because obviously this was a systemic failure on a lot of levels. Yeah, and we're going to talk about how this maybe could have been prevented and how this hopefully can be prevented in the future. But how is Melinda's family doing if you can share that information with us? They're struggling, not just with the death of Melinda, but also with the recent announcement that their father is going to face the death penalty. I think they're having a hard time reconciling the. these emotions and it's very complex and tragic situation not just to lose somebody you love your sibling but then to have your your father face these

sorts of criminal charges it's it's pretty overwhelmed I was gonna ask you about that I can imagine that's conflicted feelings do you know if the DA consulted with them before saying we're gonna pursue the death penalty can't get into the specifics on on all that but I know that I know that the family stands behind the prosecution and they are supporting the prosecution. They want as much justice as we can get. And let's talk about justice here because a lot of people have, of course, been asking, how could something like this happen? Is there anyone to blame besides the defendants here, the alleged abusers? You tell me who else we should be considering that might be at fault here?

There's certainly other people and other organizations to blame. This is. did not happen overnight. This was torture that occurred from 2021 through the time of her death, May 24. And within that time frame, you have contact between Melinda and a number of agencies, schools that failed miserably to pick up on red flags, indicating that she was being physically and psychologically abused. There was involvement from children, youth services, CYS in Pennsylvania, whose only job is to protect children. They knew about Cindy Warren. They knew about this order from the court

that said she couldn't be around Melinda for a certain amount of time. And they never went to the home where Melinda was with Cindy Warren, despite knowing she was there and despite receiving numerous complaints from school officials and other people concerned that she was being abused.

This is a child who was 50 pounds at the time of her death. Her organs were shut down. She had no body fat. and she was attending an online school where she was on camera, supposed to be. There are prolonged absences with no real involvement from the school, trying to figure out what's going on. So this could have easily and should have been prevented.

There were multiple opportunities in time for this to have been intervened upon, but she was allowed to remain in that horrible environment for years. And it's really unspeakable how in modern day society, society in this country that happened let's expand upon that a little bit and we'll start with miss warren you talked about this court order right this idea that she was not supposed to be near belinda we talked already about her um her prior criminal history but what was the order specifically and whose job was it to make sure that it was being enforced so what's the order and whose job was it to supposed to be enforced the order was from a judge in monroe county

Pennsylvania, which is where Cindy Warren and Rendell Hoagland, Melinda's father, originally met. And the order was from a judge who was overseeing a custody dispute between Melinda's mom and Melinda's father. So as a part of that custody dispute, the judge learned that there was this other person in Rendell's life, Cindy Warren, of course knew that she had this prior history. So that's why the judge put in the order that her contact was to be limited with Melinda. Now, fast forward to when they moved to Chester County, which is where Melinda ultimately died and where the subject of this investigation occurs, CYS, Children Youth Services, in Chester County,

became aware that Melinda lived now in Chester County with her father and Cindy Warren. So since it's not 1815 anymore, and we have the internet and we can look up things, Chester County had access to that court order from Monroe County where they could have seen and should have seen, maybe did see, in black and white, this thing about Cindy Warren. So any person trained, and I wouldn't even say if you're not even trained as a CYS worker, you see this court order, you can't be around the kid, and then you learn she's living with the kid, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out this is this is wrong it needs to be looked into and so it's not a situation where uh they you know pulled the sheep's wool over on them like

chester county knew that melinda was living with cindy warren and cindy warren's history was well documented is that why you believe that there didn't seem to be a ton of uh social media postings of melinda with cindy warren right i think they taught that was an interesting component of the story. There seemed to be a lot of photos of the obviously of the two of them and then with her son, but not a lot with Melinda. Was this a way to not tip off anybody that she was living with Melinda? Absolutely. I mean, obviously Rendell and Cindy were aware of the restrictions that were placed upon them and the fact that Cindy wasn't allowed to be around her. So I certainly think that that was what was going on. It's just a little bit baffling that the agencies that exist

to prevent this sort of thing are, you know, made aware of it. I mean, here's the reality. There are so many situations where children are abused, right? Where nobody learned about it. There was no tip off. There were no reports. There were no phone calls. That's not this case.

That's not this case. This is a case where they were informed. They were notified. They just didn't follow through. So, yeah, I think that, to answer your question, I think that's something that Rendell Hoagland and Cindy Ward we're conscious about. Let's talk about that knowledge in the tip off. So the district attorney said during a news conference that Melinda was pulled out of in-person school, I believe November 2023,

if I'm correct, and then was attending a cyber school that is up until she died. And you mention that. But and correct me if I'm wrong, apparently none of the teachers reportedly noticed anything unusual, said they often checked in with Melinda. What is going on with that communication there? if you can speak to us about that. I can't speak for the DA, but what I can say is that it's spelled out in the affidavit of probable cause that a school official did report to child blind,

which is the phone number that teachers are mandatorily required to call if they suspect child abuse. The teacher did report in late 2023 or early 2024 did report to childline suspicions that Melinda was abused. There were reports of bruising on her body that were made to the agencies. So Melinda was a resilient, intelligent, and strong child. So somehow, some way she managed to do well in school academically and prevail as much as anyone could prevail through what she was going through. But that doesn't change the fact that there were obvious.

signs of child abuse. And just because the kids doing well with their grades doesn't mean they're not being abused physically or psychologically. That's just not true. And nobody in a position of authority in modern society should think that. Nobody, no school official, no district attorney, no, nobody should actually believe that child's grades are dispositive of whether they're being abused, particularly where we have documented instances here that while the child was doing well in school. She has bruising on her body. There was a report. She had a rug burn on her face so bad that it couldn't be covered with makeup. These are things being reported to child line by the very school. So that doesn't really move me very much. Was it, was it only teachers

reporting? Or were there other people who were noticing these injuries on Melinda? We're still investigating. So I don't want to speak out of turn and say, because we actually don't know the full contours of it. All that we do know so far is that there were, I think, numerous educators that reported it and whether there were other folks outside the school system is yet to be determined. Just to be clear, no agency visited the home, like Chester County Children, Youth, and families, no agency visited the home. And do you know why? No, they didn't visit the home. They called Rendell Hoagland, and that's where they left it. Do I know why? No. there's no good explanation for why they didn't we'll find out the answer that

somebody will give in a deposition someday under oath but there's no doubt that it won't make any sense it certainly won't be justifiable i'm curious your reaction to this comment because the d a seemed to say that in regards to chester county children youth and families if they had visited the home he said i don't think a visit to the house would have shown anything because melinda had been reprogramed what's your take on that? With all due respect, I think it's preposterous. I think that also that statement needs to be viewed through the prism of the fact that the district attorney for Chester County gets his paycheck from the same county that Chester County CYS does. And I'm not saying that I have

any knowledge about any conspiracy or I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is that's an absurd statement because his office investigated the home and found a number of blink cameras, full-blown surveillance cameras, numerous of them inside the home. And you have a child who is bruised significantly underweight at that time. So the statement that a home visit wouldn't have revealed anything is kind of like saying that if there's a fire inside of a home, a firefighter couldn't do anything about it I mean with all due respect I don't know all of the DA's motivations and saying that I don't I don't know why he said that but but there's a reason we have home visits it's not made up by me

or him because you can learn a lot more and they would have learned a lot more if they had done that here talk to me about what your goal is what the family's goal is pursuing any type of potential litigation what can you tell us on that front first and foremost, we want to make sure this never happens to anybody ever again. Putting aside any money or any financial recovery, we want to make sure that the system itself is fixed, it changed, and strengthened so that you don't have another Melinda Hoagland, you don't have another story on this podcast about another child enduring this level of inhumane torture. That's the goal. The means to the

goal, as a civil trial lawyer, unfortunately, I confront the reality every day. that for a better or worse, sometimes money is the motivator for, especially when it comes to big companies and agencies, a lot of times they will not change because lawmakers ask them to or somebody who suggests that they do. Sometimes it takes a civil jury verdict an award of monetary damages for them to wake up and to change. So we hope to do that here. Who would you be filing a litigation against, filing a lawsuit? At the bare minimum right now, CYS and Chester County, the private school that she was transferred to in late 2023, and the school that she was transferred out of in late 2023 would be the targets right now. Gotcha. And my understanding is you're also pushing for the creation of a database, right, that would track child abuse offenders.

So what happened with Warren wouldn't happen again? Absolutely. There's no reason that this shouldn't be in law. It was passed. in 2014 but never signed into law to be fair I don't think this should have happened even without the database because it's so easy and so obvious here that the child was in a home they shouldn't have been if the if the CYS workers are doing their job but this database will ensure that there's no kid that slips through the cracks well I'll finish up with this I mean the DA has publicly encouraged that anybody who's observing any kind of abuse to call as you

mentioned child line, a 24-hour hotline, Pennsylvania, 1-800-932-03-03-03-3-13, and the reports can be anonymous as well. Tom, thank you so much for coming on. Really, we're sending our best to the family in what is a very, very difficult moment, and we're wishing you all the best because this really is a difficult situation, and hopefully the family gets the justice that they're seeking and hopefully gets the kind of change that they're seeking as well, Tom. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. You got it. everybody that's all we have for you right now here on sidebar thank you so much for joining us and as

always please subscribe on apple podcast spotify youtube wherever you get your podcasts i'm jesse weber speak to you next time you can binge all episodes of this long crime series ad free right now on wondery plus Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.