"Broken & barely alive" | Uncovering the horrific child abuse, death of 12-year-old Malinda Hoagland

hi there I'm Joe Holden with CBS News Philadelphia joined by my colleague Liz Crawford we've been working an intensive investigation for more than a month now into a very horrific case of child abuse that prosecutors say ended in the death of a 12-year-old girl named Melinda hogland you may remember it was the beginning of May when this news broke at an afternoon news conference with prosecutors going line by line through an horrific really um eye opening and jarring set of details as parents hard to hear hard to process and also with lawyers we're now speaking with hard to understand the volume of red flags that they say were missed in the system in trying to prevent this and help Melinda hogland yeah so if you go back to that news conference that Joe was talking about this is the beginning of May and the district attorney said that when EMS arrived at the home responding to a 911 call that she was found broken and barely alive um so from there the EMS took her to the hospital and then of course detective work started to play out and we have in front of us and we have looked at this line by line the Affidavit of probable cause ultimately in early May news conference unfolds were told that Melinda's father and his girlfriend are charged on various different charges all in connection to to her death so a lot of this playing out in an area of Chester County it is rural it is agricultural it is uh about uh north and west of Coatsville in westc Township in an area that again is served by the uh Westown Township Police Department uh but the circumstances bringing police to the home began with that 911 call and from the start according to prosecutors and statements in these affidavit of probable cause there were stories going around from two central people in this investigation Melinda's father renle hogland and Father's fianceg girlfriend there isn't a a fine line on her relationship there but her name is Cindy Warren so the reason that detectives were even involved they said that uh Melinda had crashed her bike into a tree um but then as soon as the hosal Hospital staff saw her condition they said this is not consistent with a a bike crash into a tree and then again this is all of the details so then detectives get a warrant they get access to that home again like Joe said in the Coatsville area um and they find that the home was equipped with inhome cameras so many homes nowadays has these various inhome camera systems you can view it view it on your phone um so in this police criminal complaint in the Affidavit of probable cause we learned just by reading line by line that investigators found videos in connection with those inhome cameras um dating back almost a year videos showing according to this Affidavit of uh Melinda being abused at the hands of her father and her father's girlfriend um I am going to read some of that for you I just want to warn you that these details are really really alarming and you may find them disturbing um and we're going to go into more detail on this in our extensive investigative series that's coming up uh soon here but I just want you to have this information so line by line here this is a detective's work saying a video dated February 6th of 2024 shows MH that's Melinda hogland secured to a dresser with a leg shackle and marching in place so that's just a little bit there is so much detail this over and over again over the course of months like I said the video footage goes back nearly a year now the district attorney told us that overall they had countless videos showing that Melinda was kept Shackled to furniture and forced to do strenuous exercise um around the clock and again this was demanded of her by according to these documents more often than not her father's girlfriend a video on February 11th 20124 shows MH chained to an air hockey table kneeling while Cindy Warren tells her to jump up if she does it again she meaning Warren will come in and kick her in the teeth a video on that the day after at 1:23 in the morning shows MH chained to the table sleeping on the bare floor it goes on and the da told us at this news conference and we read it for ourselves ultimately Melinda was uh kept in her home again forced to do all of these strenuous exercises tortured um and also starved and prosecutors describe it Torture in progress with the element of these cameras and when Melinda is rushed to Pei Memorial Hospital what we are understanding there were calls already to investigators to show up at the ER to die document what Medics and surgeons were now dealing with Melinda was rushed into surgery in efforts to save her life when she arrived at the hospital she weighed 50 lbs prosecutors say in their filing not the weight of somebody who is living or thriving in this country and basically Melinda was presenting with sluggish pupils bruising and abrasions to her neck laceration to her forehead bruising and abrasions to her chest bruis and deformities to the right arm the right leg several several broken bones and organ failure so again we apologize for how disturbing all of this is but it became very apparent to prosecutors they say that Melinda had been abused for quite some time tortured and starved so Melinda dies and Melinda is uh now buried according to her family who have spoken with us bravely about this half sister they knew knew but they didn't know and something that sticks with me Liz we're both parents and we heard the words of the prosecutor say there were there was a concern a curiosity you know did anybody love this 12-year-old this 12-year-old now a victim of torture and abuse uh homicide charges have yet to be filed in this case there is an attempted homicide and torture and kidnapping and on and on but our questions those questions led us to people did love girl that's right so when the district attorney says we all question when was the last time Alinda hogland was ever loved um we found people who say that they loved her since she was born it's her half sisters so this um they share the same father rendle hogland who has been charged in connection to Melinda's death and we did speak with two of her three half sisters um and they they were very very open and courageous heartbroken um they're grieving they're processing but really the takeaway um we asked them Point Blank did your did your father you grew up with him um they said that they this is not like anything they can believe they are totally shocked they're not only grieving the loss of their little sister but they're trying to process that their father has been charged with these things um they have not they had not seen Melinda in quite some time um they were estranged from their father because um they said that they question questioned his girlfriend Cindy Warren they were concerned because she had a history of child abuse and for good reason they were concerned as Liz just mentioned Cindy Warren's name was everywhere it would seem in headlines back in the late 2000s 2007 in particular when she was implicated in child abuse specifically a guilty plea to child endangerment in Monroe County which is in the Poconos stoud Reg police arrested Cindy and at that time her then husband McKinley Warren McKinley Warren would eventually plead guilty to a 2,000 homicide of a 2-year-old girl named Jessica Bach things sort of unraveled for this couple in the Poconos when the report of abuse of a three-year-old child came into authorities they investigated and at one point part of our investigation we sync back up with the district attorney in Monroe County who at the time was an assistant DA Prosecuting Cindy Warren McKinley Warren and this entire orbit of troubling allegations of child abuse and what we've seen is this pattern this these allegations that the district attorney on camera last week told me over a zoom it's chilling it's chilling so Cindy Warren in 2007 pleaded guilty to child endangerment and that history is what led Melinda's half sisters to question their father about his new girlfriend and that's why they were estranged and they said they had not seen Melinda in quite some time so there was that history we've dug it up it is complex so we will break it down even further um but then back to today 2023 2024 we start seeing that possibly more red flags red flags started the night in early May in the hospital ER staff red flags detectives red flags now we have the benefit of documents hindsight is really 2020 According to some of the officials we've spoken with but reports from the school district of illegal absences over and over enough to raise concern and alarm with child protective uh C uh experts and services in Chester County one thing we did see was concern from the lawyers now representing the family did children youth and family in Chester County in their words did they appropriately investigate these red flags as they were coming up it is part of our larger investigation and sort of to give you uh a road map of where all of this then leads Liz is part one of this extensive investigation by CBS News Philadelphia where we take a look at what happened we speak to family and we get after their resolve to make Melinda's death to have not been in vain I pick up the investigation with what happened in the Poconos all those years ago what attorneys are now saying about these quote unquote missed red flags yeah and ultimately this comes down to one question that is driving this entire investigation and it's did the system fail this little girl and her family um I've spoken with her biological mom's family as well by the way her biological mom is in failing Health also has not seen her daughter in at least 6 months um and she has a power of attorney and is living with assisted care so that's where her biological mom is um so we again did the system fail this little girl and her family wants change to prevent this from ever happening to another child again and we still have questions and we're still uncovering more the details of this go back to the year 2000 and we are still tracking and tracing and connecting the dots on something that's nearly 25 years potentially in the making so what of it with rendle hogland Melinda's father and the girlfriend fiance Cindy Warren what are they saying well we caught up with Cindy Warren this week and we pressed her for information what about Melinda you want to see what she had to say to our cameras as we tried to learn more of whatever her side of the story may be so this investigation just getting off the ground stay close with CBS News Philadelphia as we break down the truly tragic story of Melinda hogland

Channel: CBS Philadelphia

Views: 42,003

Keywords: CBS Philly, News, Philadelphia, CBS News Philadelphia, Philadelphia News, Philly News, Philadelphia Weather, New Jersey weather, kyw news, cbs 3 news, channel 3 news, Malinda, Malinda Hoagland, Chester county child abuse, Cindy Warren, Cindy Warren child abuse, Rendell Hoagland, rendell hoagland, rendell hoagland and cindy warren

Id: T14MYp1whUU

Length: 12min 44sec (764 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 18 2024