Miss Warren, what about Melinda? Prosecutors say you tortured and starved her to death. Is that true? Do you want to say anything at all in your defense? Are there I’m not here for that. I’m here for it. I’m glad you are. To part two of an exclusive CBS News Philadelphia investigations report.
The murder of 12-year-old Melinda Hovind. The Chester County child died last month after prosecutors say her father and his girlfriend tortured and stole Melinda for months. It was 7:30 p.m. on May 4th, 2024 when a call came through to emergency services in rural Pennsylvania. The voice on the line was frantic, barely holding it together.
A man claimed his 12-year-old daughter had collapsed after falling off her bike. It sounded like a common household accident until first responders stepped inside the home in West Cowan Township. What they found stopped them cold. There was no sign of a simple fall. Lying before them was a girl so severely abused, her appearance didn’t match her age.
What they saw would stay with them forever. Melinda Hogland, just 12 years old, weighed only 50 lb. Her skeletal frame was marked by over 75 visible injuries. Bruises, open sores, ulcers, and deep abrasions. Her body was failing. Her skin told a story of relentless suffering. Doctors at the ER were shaken. One surgeon would later say that he had never seen such extreme physical deterioration in a child outside of war zones or famine-stricken regions.
Melinda had no fat reserves left. Her bones were broken in multiple places. Her brain, heart, lungs, liver, and intestines were all compromised. Despite efforts to save her, Melinda was pronounced dead at 9:58 p.m. that same night. But the nightmare didn’t end there. As investigators combed through the house, they found something far worse. A digital archive of abuse.
Hours upon hours of recorded footage stored on phones and security cameras. The videos revealed the unthinkable. Melinda chained to furniture, starved, beaten, degraded. The abuse wasn’t hidden. It was recorded and cataloged by the very people who were supposed to protect her. This wasn’t just neglect.
It was prolonged systematic torture. And the most devastating part, Melinda had been failed not just by her caretakers, but by every level of the system meant to protect her. Every report ignored, every red flag dismissed. Every second chance given to the wrong people brought her closer to death.
Before we go further, please like, subscribe, and share this story. It deserves to be heard, not only for justice, but so that we remember Melinda and protect others like her from the same fate. August 10th, 2011. East Stradsburg, a quiet town nestled in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. That’s where Melinda Hogland was born. A healthy baby girl welcomed into the world by two devoted parents and a large, loving, extended family.
Her birth was even mentioned in the local paper. The community celebrated her arrival the way small towns often do. She had grandparents on both sides and three older halfsisters, Emily Lee, Jaime Hogland, and Abby Hogland, who adored her from the moment they met her. Melinda was the kind of child who lit up every room.
She was smart, lively, and endlessly curious. She loved chasing butterflies in the spring and watching fireflies flicker at dusk. Her laughter was contagious. In those early years, surrounded by her sisters and family, life seemed almost idyllic, like something out of a story book. Melinda quickly became the shining light of her family.
Exceptionally bright for her age, she was well-mannered, deeply empathetic, and grateful for even the smallest acts of kindness. In school, she didn’t just keep up, she soared. In early 2024, she was named student of the month, a recognition of both her academic excellence and her gentle spirit. Teachers fondly recall the little girl who handwrote thank you notes to cafeteria staff, a small gesture that said so much about who she was.
But behind this picture of innocence and joy, the foundation was already beginning to crack. Melinda’s mother, Ronda Smith, was locked in a losing battle with an unforgiving enemy. progressive multiple sclerosis. The disease crept in slowly but relentlessly, attacking her nervous system and stripping her of the ability to care for her daughter.
At first, Rondell fought with everything she had to remain active in Melinda’s life, preparing breakfast, helping with homework, giving hugs. But as the disease advanced, even these simple tasks became excruciating. Eventually, a court made the kind of decision that seems logical on paper, but in hindsight would prove fatal.
Custody of Melinda was officially handed over to her father, Randel Hogland, while Rondellyn was placed in a long-term care facility where she would live under constant medical supervision. The last time Rondell saw her daughter was nearly a year before Melinda’s death. In a way, that might have been the universe’s final act of mercy, sparing a mother from a truth too horrific to bear.
Rendel Hogland, 52, from Stradsburg, was a man skilled in deception. On social media, he portrayed himself as a devoted single father, frequently posting cheerful photos of Melinda, smiling at dinner, posing on fishing trips, enjoying everyday moments. His digital presence painted a picture of warmth and normaly.
In reality, it was all a carefully constructed lie. Behind closed doors, Rendel lived a double life. He could shift in seconds from doing parent to calculated abuser. His ability to manipulate those around him, to charm, to mislead, to hide in plain sight, revealed the traits of a seasoned predator. For years, he maintained civil relationships with his three older daughters, Emily Lee, Jaime Hogland, and Abby Hogland, children from previous relationships.
And around them, Melinda flourished. She was their pride and joy, the heart of their blended family. But everything began to change in 2019. That year, Randelle connected with a woman through Facebook dating, a meeting that would set Melinda’s tragic end into motion. Her name was Cindy Warren, a 45-year-old woman who appeared to be just another middle-aged divorce looking for love and a fresh start.
Her profile showed friendly smiles and warm captions. She presented herself as someone kind, nurturing, someone safe. But Cindy wasn’t safe. Behind the photos and polite conversation was a history marked by cruelty. A past written in the suffering of children. Emily Lee, Randall’s eldest daughter, sensed something was wrong from the very beginning.
There was something about Cindy that made her uneasy, a feeling she couldn’t shake, even during their first meeting. Sometimes it’s not logic, but instinct that sees the truth first. And Emily Lee, Melinda’s oldest sister, couldn’t shake the feeling that something was dangerously wrong with her father’s new partner.
From the very first encounter, Emily’s intuition screamed that Cindy Warren was not who she claimed to be. Determined to protect her little sister, Emily began digging into Cindy’s past. And what she uncovered was worse than anything she could have imagined. Cindy Warren didn’t just have a shady background. She had a documented history of deadly abuse.
Her name was tied to tragedies that read more like a horror film script than real life. But every detail was backed by court records and police reports. December 1st, 2000. A 2-year-old girl named Jessica Bach was rushed to the hospital with massive head trauma. She died shortly after arrival. Cindy and her then husband, McKinley Warren, claimed the child had fallen from a car, but doctors immediately knew they were lying.
The extent of the damage matched what you’d expect from a car accident at highway speeds. Jessica’s injuries weren’t consistent with a fall. They were consistent with blunt force. 7 years later, another horrifying case surfaced in Monroe County. An anonymous tip led authorities to a three-year-old boy, Isaiah Warren, Cindy’s son, who was found covered in bruises from head to toe, silent and frozen in fear.
The child was so severely traumatized that he barely spoke, barely moved, especially around adults. His injuries were in different stages of healing. proof of sustained repeated abuse. Under mounting evidence, Cindy eventually admitted that it was McKinley who killed Jessica, but only after police cornered her with threats of prison time.
Instead of calling for help when the toddler lay dying, the couple spent precious minutes concocting a false story, McKinley was sentenced to 25 to 50 years. Cindy, despite her role in two children’s suffering, served only 3 to seven years for endangering a child’s welfare. She was released in 2012, free to start over and free to harm again.
Monroe County was already queued in to the fact that she was living with Melinda and that she had this history. This history attorney Tom Bosworth is referring to Cindy Warren’s guilty plea all the way back in 2007 for felony child endangerment for the abuse of her three-year-old child in Monroe County.
Dressed in black, this is Warren leaving court in 2007. She was sentenced to 3 to seven years in jail for endangering the three-year-old. At the time in ’07, Warren was married to a man named McKinley Warren. He was charged in a completely separate cold case from the year 2000, where prosecutors say he beat his 2-year-old daughter, Jessica Bach, to death.
McKinley Lauren pleaded guilty and was given 50 years in prison. When Emily presented this horrifying truth to her father, clippings, court transcripts, arrest records, she thought he would come to his senses. Surely no father faced with that kind of evidence would choose a convicted abuser over his own child.
But Randelle’s reaction was swift and chilling. If you can’t accept my choice, then there’s no place for you in my life. With those words, he made it clear he had chosen Cindy, not just as a partner, but over his own daughters. And that choice marked the beginning of the end. One by one, the doors began to close. Emily, Jaime, and Abby were slowly pushed out of their father’s life.
The distance wasn’t just emotional. It became physical. Rendle and Cindy moved from the familiar safety of the Poconos to Fort Washington. then again to West Cowan Township. Each move pulling Melinda further away from the people who loved her. Eventually, Emily lost all contact with her father and her little sister.
Jaime, who managed to keep some communication, saw Melinda for the last time in December 2023. She looked okay. Jaime later said, “Nothing seemed off, but now I realize she was trained to hide the pain. Any sign of weakness would have made things worse.” In 2020, long after the damage had begun, the court system finally caught up with Cindy’s criminal history.
A judge issued a clear and urgent order. The minor child shall not be left in the care of Cindy Warren for any period exceeding 1 hour unless both biological parents give written consent. Rendle responded by doing exactly the opposite. Instead of following the law, he took Melinda and Cindy to a new home out of reach, away from scrutiny.
There they posed as a normal family. But behind the curtains, far from the eyes of law enforcement, Melinda’s final chapter began. That blatant defiance of a court order was the first nail in her coffin. From that moment on, she was left alone, completely vulnerable, in the hands of two people. one a controlling manipulator, the other a woman with a past soaked in the suffering of children.
By the spring of 2022, Melinda entered the Coatsville area school system, but by then the isolation was nearly complete. On the surface, everything still looked normal. Melinda remained a polite, high achieving student, the same girl who once wrote thank you notes to cafeteria workers and proudly earned student of the month in early 2024.
But behind her smile, cracks were beginning to show. Her absences from school, once rare, started to increase. By the end of 2023, Melinda had accumulated 25 unexcused absences along with 10 more backed by questionable excuses. Teachers noticed that she often appeared tired. She started hoarding food in her locker. Faint bruises came and went.
When asked, Melinda would explain the injuries away. I fell off my bike. And she said it with such calm, practiced ease that no one questioned her. The story seemed believable. No alarms were raised. Then came December 2023. Melinda didn’t show up at school for a single day. Worried, her teachers did what they were supposed to do.
They contacted Childline, Pennsylvania’s child abuse reporting hotline. The case was forwarded to Chester County Children, Youth, and Families, who flagged it as a potential risk. But instead of sending someone to the home, the agency made a single phone call. They asked Randelle Hogland how Melinda was doing. She had a cold.
He said she’ll be back soon. That was enough. The case was closed. No home visit, no interview with Melinda. No one saw her. By then, the bright, bubbly girl was already beginning to fade, both emotionally and physically. But the system missed it again. On January 3rd, 2024, Rendell made a final decisive move that cut Melinda off from the last threads connecting her to the outside world.
He formally withdrew her from public school and enrolled her in Commonwealth Charter Academy, an online homeschooling program. To outsiders, it looked like a responsible father making a flexible choice for his daughter’s education. In reality, it was the final act of isolation. From that moment on, Melinda lived in complete captivity.
Her only witnesses were the Blink security cameras that Randelle and Cindy had installed throughout the house, originally meant for surveillance and control. Ironically, those same cameras would become the most damning evidence of what was about to unfold. By this point, Melinda vanished from social media, too. Rendle stopped posting family photos.
The smiling child who once featured in fishing trips and birthday dinners disappeared both online and in real life. Why? Because Melinda’s physical condition no longer allowed them to keep up the illusion. From January to May 2024, the home on Reed Road became a personal torture chamber. Inside, a child was systematically stripped of her humanity.
More than 450 videos captured the daily unraveling of a life. During her virtual lessons, Melinda sat in front of the computer looking calm and attentive. What her teachers didn’t see was that her legs were shackled to the floor with heavy chains, just out of frame. On February 6th, the cameras recorded her chain to address her, marching in place for hours, trembling from exhaustion, too afraid to stop.
On February 11th, Cindy’s voice came through the intercom. Jump up. If you do that again, I’ll come in and kick your teeth in. On February 12th, at 1:23 a.m., Melinda was caught on camera sleeping on a bare concrete basement floor, still chained to the table. No mattress, no blanket, not even a pillow.
Starvation became the central weapon of control. The pantry was locked. Food became a conditional reward, not a right. She was denied meals for the smallest infractions. Forgetting homework, not smiling wide enough, wetting herself involuntarily. Driven by hunger, she began eating the skin off her own hands. Even exercise became a form of calculated abuse.
Endless squats until collapse, push-ups for hours, forced running with chains around her legs, holding heavy books overhead until her arms gave out. When she faltered, the beatings would resume. Fists, belts, whatever was nearby. Forensic reports would later reveal multiple stress fractures, the result of extreme exertion combined with critical malnutrition.
And when her bruises became too visible, they were carefully covered with makeup. Rendle and Cindy exchanged hundreds of messages discussing how to hide the signs of abuse from teachers or other adults. The torture was deliberate, sustained, and effective. By spring, the system they had built had completely broken her.
By the end, Melinda wasn’t just suffering. She had been reprogrammed. Violence wasn’t a horror to her anymore. It was simply life. In one of the last recordings, her voice, flat, robotic, echoed through the camera feed. Forgive me. I know I have no right to move. This wasn’t the voice of a child anymore. It was the voice of someone who had been trained to suppress every natural instinct, to obey, to submit, to survive.
In November 2021, Melinda weighed 77 lb, a perfectly healthy weight for a child her age. By May 2024, she weighed just 50 lb. She had lost over a third of her body weight in under 3 years. The autopsy told a story in cold clinical terms, 75 separate injuries, multiple fractures in varying stages of healing, and complete failure of her internal systems.
There wasn’t a single ounce of subcutaneous fat left on her body. She had been starved, overworked, beaten, and emotionally erased. May the 2nd, 2024. Surveillance footage captured the final living images of Melinda. Shackled to a desk, she tried to complete her schoolwork. Her hands trembled from malnutrition and fatigue.
The next day, May 3rd, her body began shutting down. Her cardiovascular system couldn’t circulate blood. Her kidneys stopped functioning. Her liver entered acute failure. Even then, no one called for help. Not until 12:30 a.m. on May 4th, when Melinda was already in her final hours did Rendel Hogland finally pick up the phone.
But instead of telling the truth, he launched into a rehearsed lie. My daughter fell off her bike. Paramedics saw through it immediately. This wasn’t an accident. It was the result of prolonged intentional abuse. At Pi Hospital, doctors fought to save her for nearly 9 hours, but her body was beyond saving. At 9:58 p.m.
May 4th, 2024, Melinda Hogland was pronounced dead. The next day, detectives began going through the evidence inside the house. What they found was overwhelming. over 450 videos and photos meticulously archived, a full visual record of her final months. Detective Bernard Martin later told reporters, “In 20 years of law enforcement, I’ve seen a lot of terrible things, but this this was the methodical destruction of a child elevated to the level of sadistic precision.
” On May 6th, Randel Hogland and Cindy Warren were arrested. Bail was set at $1 million each. At a press briefing, District Attorney Christopher Debarro spoke plainly. Melinda endured a level of evil and torment no child should ever face. This wasn’t a moment of rage. It was a process, deliberate, organized, and relentless.
On July 25th, 2024, the charges were formally upgraded to first-degree murder with aggravating circumstances, text messages, video footage, step-by-step documentation. All of it pointed to the same conclusion. Melinda had been terrorized, manipulated, and dehumanized, not by strangers, but by the very people who should have loved her.
This was not neglect, the prosecutor said. It was execution by design. The prosecution announced it would seek the death penalty for both defendants. Good afternoon. I’m Chris Deber, Chester County District Attorney. It’s my unfortunate duty today to come before you and to again discuss the death of 12-year-old Melinda Hogland.
This morning, we upgraded the charges against Reno Hoglin and Cindy Warren. We charged them with first-degree murder, seconddegree murder, thirdderee murder, kidnapping, and hundreds of related charges. The defendants are currently being held in Chester County Prison. Because of the nature of the charges, bail’s not available to them.
And although more conversations to have with Melinda’s family, um, and although we have more work to do on the investigation front, I can stand here before you today and say that we intend to pursue the death penalty in this case. Before I go further, I want to set some ground rules for today’s press conference.
First, I remind the public that like all defendants who are charged with crimes, these defendants are innocent until proven guilty. Second, I want to inform everyone what we said in our press announcement this morning. Melinda Hogland’s biological mother is mourning. She does not wish to be contacted.
We’ll talk a little bit more about her later, but she has a severe medical condition already. And so, I’m asking all of you not to contact her, sisters, or her caretakers. Third, I want to remind you that I have certain ethical responsibilities as I stand here before you today. And so, one of those things is I can’t really talk substantially about any defendants’s prior criminal history if they have any.
I can’t talk about statements that any defendants gave to police if they gave statements. So, please don’t ask about them. There may be information in the affidavit already. You’re free to use that information as part of your stories and part of your reporting. And so with that, 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. As I get into that explanation, I have to also first actually step back and say I’m joined by a very small part here of an incredible team. So to my left is first assistant Aaron O’Brien.
She’s the lead prosecutor in this case. She spent decades working child abuse cases and has an incredible amount of experience in this field. We would not have gotten nearly as far without her leadership and her teamwork as she worked with the Chester County detectives. Next to her is Chief Kurt Martinez from the Westcount Police Department.
His officers, as well as some surrounding officers in his township, responded to the 911 call and immediately did everything in their power to get Melinda the medical care that she needed. They were just called too late. Um, but I’m very grateful for Chief Martinez and his partnership. And to Chief Martinez’s left is Ben Martin, Chester County Detective, who’s the AIEN in this case.
So, the affidavits that you have have been put forth by him. To my right is the management team at the Chester County Detectives who helped oversee all the detectives who worked on this investigation. And when I tell you practically every detective in my agency worked on this, it’s not an exaggeration. We have computer forensics detectives and civilians who comb through image after image with the help of the child abuse unit detectives.
Ben did not work on this case by himself. And so to my right is Chief David Sassa, Lieutenant Monachowski, and Sergeant Joseph Walton. Joe in particular oversees our child abuse unit and our forensics unit. So, with those introductions, I want to talk about this case because the last time we gathered, I detailed how law enforcement found a severely im emaciated and broken body of 12-year-old Melinda Hogland.
She was taken to Paleley Hospital and pronounced dead on May 4th. When she got there, she weighed 50 pounds. She had apparent fractures and bruises all throughout her body and her injuries were simply inexplainable. And then as we investigated, a preliminary number of cell phone videos clearly showed that Melinda was terrorized by the defendants.
And since our last press conference, we’ve had a forensic pathologist make a number of findings during Melinda’s autopsy. Melinda died of starvation and blunt force trauma. She did not have any disease. She did not have something that caused her to lose weight. She was starved and she was forced to exercise to the point that she had, according to the pathologist, no sign of body fat on her.
In fact, Melinda had injury to practically every major organ system in her body, including her brain. 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 abuse as part of her life. She would not report abuse because she was afraid of being beaten even more fiercely than she had been before.
The physical punishments spanned a really wide and torturous gamut. On multiple occasions, Melinda was struck in the face so badly that she had to be held home from school because makeup would not cover up her injuries. and makeup was regularly employed in order to cover up lesser injuries. And when Melinda was 11 years old, she suffered from rug burn to her face so severe that could not be covered up by makeup that she had to be held home from school for weeks.
On top of that, she was subjected to other types of strange torture. She was chained to furniture. She was forced to run in place. She had been forced to do push-ups for hours on end. She was forced to hold her hands above her head and on some occasions hold books above her head. The level of exercise that they placed on Melinda must have caused her prolonged plain pain.
And in fact, we believe that in some instances they cause stress fractures to her body. In one video in particular, Cindy Warren was recording and sharing with Randelle Hogland. 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 Rendel was going to come back and beat her worse. And the psychological torture in this case was real. The inadvertent and side torture was palatable because they didn’t just chain her and watch her over responsibly. She was shackled to the basement floor, furniture in the basement floor, and forced to sleep there.
And when she woke up in the middle of the night leaning to use the bathroom and no one could unshackle her, she was forced to urinate on herself. And when the defendants found that out, they blamed her for it and they beat her even more. The psychological abuse was real. They belittled her almost daily, it seems. They told a child that they were going to kill her.
They forced her to do endless amounts of chores. They forced her to do endless amounts of exercise, all while berating her and calling her an idiot, saying that she was worthless. When in fact, this little resilient girl, while enduring all of this, was excelling at school. Just months before her death, she was placed in honors classes by her cyber school.
But in May, this incredibly resilient young girl, her body could not take it anymore. Uh she began to shut down early morning hours of May 4th and the defendants denied her medical care. They questioned whether she was faking being unconscious. They tried to find smelling salts when she wouldn’t wake up to try and wake her up.
They took almost three quarters of a day to call 911. And by the time that Westcount and other law enforcement officers could respond, it was simply too late. So, since we announced our initial set of charges, you know, we’ve we’ve all asked this question from the outset, right? Like, how could this happen in America? I’m not sure that I have satisfying answers today.
But what I want to do before I turn it over to you for questions is kind of talk through some of the immediate questions that we’ve seen that as a team we’ve been approached by and asked by members of the public or we’ve seen in comments online. And you know I want to start by the first question which is just quite simply like when did this all start? How could someone turn and lose so much weight so quickly? And so to my left and in the packets is a timeline of abuse.
We are able to determine through text messages that the first instance that we can say right now is that in November of 2021 that that was the first instance in which we have some sort of recording that the defendants caused a physical injury to Melinda. Coincidentally, that was also the same month that she was last seen by a pediatrician.
At that visit in November of 20121, she weighed 77 pounds. And we could not fit enough bullets to make this legible, but we’ve chosen some of the low lightss from the defendants’s abuse so that you can in one page. What is detailed across are dozens of pages of a of information in the affidavit of probable cause.
Melinda experienced torture that was progressively ratcheted up over time. She was removed from school in December of 2023. She was still excelling at cyber school in March of 2024. And in May and on May 4th, we have a detailed timeline of what these defendants knew and how they failed to provide her medical care as demonstrated by their own text messages and their own phones and phone searches.
I want to turn to the next question which is that we’ve seen which is where was Melinda’s B happening right and this is sort of my frustration as where we are with society because a lot of people like to post things and comment online and speculate and make accusations but in reality Melinda’s mom suffers from a severe medical condition.
She can not really care for herself and she’s in no position to care for a child. That is one of the primary reasons I assume that Randel Hogland had primary custody of Melinda. She has no blame in all of this and she was no position to do what her father should have done. Another question that we’ve seen and we want to talk about because we’ve been and I I hinted at earlier is will we charge the death penalty in this case? We are pursuing the death penalty here.
I’ll talk a little bit about what that process looks like. Every first-degree murder charge when it is supported by certain factors is eligible for the death penalty. One of those factors that we are to consider is torture. regardless of the age of the victim, whether they were tortured before or as part of their killing.
And that is the primary factor, although we are researching others that involve in this case. The next step legally is for us to file paperwork at the time of arraignment. So, that’s the next legal proceeding that occurs after a preliminary hearing and we intend to file that paperwork. But I want to tell everyone like in every DA’s office across this Commonwealth, that determination is not set in stone because we have been working on this aspect of the case, the investigation phase, I have not gotten a chance to personally sit down with the
with Melinda’s family. They will be consulted as part of the final determination of how we proceed and we will be looking at other factors that were required to pursuant to the death penalty statute. In the end, before trial, we will make our final determination as to how we are going to proceed with the death penalty.
But I can tell everyone right now, we will be filing that notice at the time of arraignment. Another question that I think we all are asking is what in the world could we have done to prevent this? It’s it’s really difficult for me to be able to say in this case because on one hand when you read what we’ve chronicled in the affidavit of probable cause, you have to feel like we do that there has to be something that we could have done that we could have done better for Melinda.
But I want to say that part of the reason I’m here and why this is such a critical press conference to me is we are dealing with the unimaginable. And I think it’s important for school districts, law enforcement, CIFFs across the state and across the country to see what happened here.
Because although it doesn’t get a ton of press, this does happen on exceedingly rare occasions in different parts of the country. And it’s time that we all go back and look at our processes and make sure that we are doing everything we can to help our children to make sure that they’re not being subjected to this. But on the other hand, I want to make something perfectly clear.
We are here because there is evil in this world. We all like to I think at times forget about that simple fact. And sometimes no matter what everyone does, no matter how much we try, evil harms innocent people, even innocent children. And so we are here today because of what these defendants did and for no other real reason because we’ve reviewed scores of school records.
So, we restored all kinds of records here in this case. And the evidence shows here that teachers, school districts, whether they were cyber school or in school, like inerson school, they cared about Melinda. They checked in with her. She was reprogrammed and they did that the best that they could with the evidence that they had. There is no investigation into any agency for failing to act in this case.
This is not a case where abuse was actually reported and no one did anything. And so the final question I I’ll ask before I turn it over to everyone here is, and I’m sure everyone is asking this as well, is what can we do to make sure this doesn’t happen again? Because this should never happen. And the first thing I will ask everyone to be reminded of, and it’s not a criticism, but it needs to be a part of our culture, is that if you say something, you need to say something.
You do not need to be a teacher, a doctor, a school, a a member of law enforcement. You don’t have to be a mandatory reporter to call Childline and report something strange. The law does not allow any government agency to take children out of their parents’ home without real meaningful evidence and without reports.
We as government agencies across the board have very limited abilities to be able to go in court and do what we need to do. So your reports, even if you don’t feel like something happened in the aftermath, can be a data point that adds to an ongoing story. It can be that first dot in a timeline and it can help a child. So, please make calls to Childline.
Make the reports that you need to make if you see something so that we can do our jobs because unfortunately in this case, none of the Childline reports that came in reached the county detectives or any law enforcement officer level that the law kind of describes. They they should not have appeared to have made it to us.
And the second thing I will say as part of that same question is that we need to strengthen our laws. And so in the aftermath of the first press conference, I’ve spoken to almost every legislative uh elected legislative member of the Pennsylvania House or Senate in this county. Um, we’ve talked about what things that we could possibly do to strengthen our laws.
And one of the things I’m proud to say today is that I’ve started the process of working with State Representative Melissa Schustman to propose a new child torture law that would strengthen our ability to protect children and heighten um heightened penalties for people that torture children. Pennsylvania is a state that does not have child torture laws where other states do.
In fact, Delaware, Michigan, and Connecticut all have objectively, I believe, very good laws that we can model legislation off of. And so, I’m proud to say I’m working with Representatives Schustman, and I hope to be working with every member of the House Judiciary Committee to put forth a child torture law soon. So with that, I want to close this part of the conference by saying that this has been uh an unfortunate privilege for me to work with this entire team that’s on stage, some of who are in the back and some who are upstairs working on
other cases. Um we’ve worked diligently to get justice from Melinda and the charges today are the first step in that process. Thank you. What questions do you folks have? Two questions for you, uh, sir, if you could. Uh, first off, I didn’t get a chance to read the full criminal complaint.
Do we know why? Do we know why this was taking place? Number one. Number two, the school district has put out statements suggesting that they followed their duties under the law and made reports to the county agency that is responsible for checking in on matters like this. Has your investigation shown then what happened there? A number of things are that part of that is detailed here in the um affidavit of probable cause.
Um to start with the second question first, which is yes, the school district did make as part of the we talked about this part of the first press conference too, but as a reminder, two childline reports to those childline reports went to Chester County CYF. Uh CYF made phone calls to uh Cindy Warren and Melinda Hogland or Melinda Hogan, I’m sorry, don’t quote me on which one.
um where they lied to them about the nature of why Melinda had been injured or what her behavior looked like. Should they have gone to that house? Uh look, I’m not a CF4. I’m a prosecutor, right? So I try to stay in my lane as much as possible. So what I will say is like I iron sharpens iron and I encourage you to ask those questions to CYF.
I believe that your questions to our agency, to CYF, to the schools, make sure that we have better processes and procedures in place. And so you should ask those questions. Do I personally wish that they had tried to talk to Melinda Hogland or gone to the House? Yes. But I will caution you that house was incredibly clean, right? I don’t believe that COF would have had the power to do anything because the power the House did not give the appearances that she was being abused.
And I wish they would have talked to Melinda Hogland because there’s a very very small chance that she might have disclosed. But as I’ve told you, she’s re she’s been reprogrammed and she was not inclined to tell anyone what was happening to her. She was on video with teachers every day, but she was being watched and she was at school for months with teachers that clearly clearly cared about her.
They would clearly check in with her and she did not disclose anything directly. Everything that that teachers were working off of and CYF workers were working off had been observed. So that’s that’s how I try to answer that question is fairly and the any guess why why why this happened. I I I never can answer why someone would ever torture a 12-year-old, right? I just there’s no whatever the explanation is, I don’t know that I would believe it.
And previous reports have said there was another child living in that home. So there still has been no indication of abuse on that second child. Correct. Our investigation has revealed that Cindy Warren’s um biological son, a younger son, was living in that house. And actually some of the evidence reviewed showed that when she would uh 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.
Um he there’s no indication that he was abused by all accounts. He was treated well in that house. And how old is he? Um I don’t know. I’m not in a position to want to describe his his age at this point because he is a juvenile. But I will say that he is younger than Melinda. And just one more question. Um, you had mentioned Melinda’s biological mother having a severe medical condition.
Is that a physical or mental? That’s all I’m going to say about her for her privacy, but she has a severe medical condition. Doesn’t allow her to care for children. And two questions for you. You had mentioned um Cindy’s son. Where is he now? Is he now placed with children and youth? That’s not something that I I mean, he’s not in their care.
So, that’s something that I don’t think is fair to a juvenile who uh is has doesn’t have his own board. just talks about a child torture law and kind of the sum of what you’re saying is it was really hard for you guys to even find out she was being tortured. How do child tortures laws how can they work if we don’t even know it’s happening? Well, the child torture law here where if we had found Melinda at an earlier stage, we wouldn’t be in a position to be charging crimes like murder, right? because we would have saved her, but we
would be left with like kidnapping charges and other charges that maybe don’t fully encompass the severe physical and psychological torture that she endured. and that those level of protections while I don’t know that people who are inclined to do this view laws as a deterrent for them it will give us a greater ability to prosecute and fully and punish and fully encompass all the criminality as to when people choose to do this would that then maybe allow things like child lines to get up to you guys faster
pace we have child lines go come up to us right that that has nothing to do with that we were we got a child line report yesterday and responded immediately because that’s what warranted it. We got it in a matter of minutes. It’s not a timing thing. It is the nature of the report, right? I have small children.
They get injured playing sports and doing things and I send them to school, right? And you know, we’re looking for other factors besides the fact of an injury. We need for those childline reports to reach our level. Um there needs to be some sort of reported abuse or very severe physical um abuse that is reported to us that looks criminal in nature.
Generally speaking, I didn’t cover this from the beginning. After they were arrested the first time, were they held in custody? They’ve been in custody ever since. They’ve been in custody since uh we arrested them on May 7th. What was the investigative catalyst that led to you and your office upgrading to these first degree murder charges? Obviously, the investigation there two years of alleged abuse.
It’s it was honestly really we’re always I believe working towards this. Um, but when we saw the abuse very clearly on a early review of some of the cell phone the videos we obtained from cell phones from the interior blink camera system, we felt like we have probable cause and enough to make an initial set of charges um because we did not want them having any freedom whatsoever um if we could have brought charges for what they had done.
And so we we brought the charges that we had as soon as possible while we waited for all the medical evidence to come through. Given the vast amount of recordings, text messages, and things that your team’s been able to uncover, how strong does that make your case? I mean, I wouldn’t be telling you that uh that we pursuing the death penalty if we did not strongly believe in our case and and we’re not in the habit of bringing cases that we don’t strongly believe in.
But from my perspective, we’re going to be doing a lot of pushing the play button at trial. And given that you are doing this, you also mentioned you’ll be working with Melinda’s family um and and acknowledging you know what they would like throughout this process. What does that look like? I think there’s just a number of conversations that we’re going to have um to get their viewpoint um you know this is going to be a difficult case for any family to hear.
And while we often like to be in lock step with our victims, there will be times where we might have different viewpoints. But they have rights under Pennsylvania law. They’re going to be consulted at every step of the process going forward. And we’re going to make sure that if there is some sort of disagreement, which sometimes in these really in death penalty related cases there is, that they have their day in court, right, to be able to come into court and say their viewpoint to a judge because we can’t um really proceed in c
in many instances without giving them an ability to talk to the judge. So, we’re going to follow the law. We we really respect the victims here in Chester County. Um, and we want to we in any investigation until we get to this charging point, like we we kind of sometimes have to have minimal contact with them.
Um, and so now’s the point where we’re really going to sit down with them and consult with them and and start to try to um forge a path forward. For better or for worse, this is going to be a long road. All right. Well, if there are no other questions, thank you all for coming. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. August 29th, 2024.
For the first time since her death, Emily Lee, Jaime, and Abby Hogland saw their father in person in a courtroom in handcuffs. I needed to see him in chains, Emily later said, the same way he kept my little sister. But for the sisters, this wasn’t just about seeking justice through the criminal courts.
They wanted accountability from everyone who failed Melinda. Soon after, the three women filed a massive civil lawsuit against Chester County children, youth, and families, as well as other government bodies they believe contributed to their sister’s death through negligence and inaction. These agencies had so many chances to protect her, said Abby Hogland.
Instead, they turned away. This lawsuit is to make sure no one else does the same. Together, the sisters founded a nonprofit, Justice for Melinda, Inc. Their goal to push for legislative change, including Melinda’s Law, which would create a national registry of convicted child abusers. If such a system had existed earlier, perhaps someone in a position of authority could have seen Cindy Warren’s violent past.
Perhaps Melinda would still be alive. Melinda Hogland’s halfsisters want change and reform. They want improved communication between child protective services in each and every one of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties. I think there was a lot of failure on a lot of different levels from outside of the home. Investigative journalists began peeling back the layers of this tragedy and what they found was not just heartbreaking but infuriating.
Chester County children, youth, and families had received multiple warnings over the years. In each case, they responded with the bare minimum, usually a phone call to Randelle. They never visited the home. They never spoke to Melinda in person. The school district also raised red flags, increased absences, visible bruises, food hoarding.
They reported these signs, but once Melinda was withdrawn for homeschooling, no one followed up. A court order issued in 2020, explicitly forbade Cindy Warren from being left alone with Melinda. No one enforced it. One institution after another, schools, child services, family court failed. And the cost of that failure was the life of a 12-year-old girl.
Melinda Hogland’s story isn’t just about child abuse. It’s an indictment of an entire system that allowed it to happen despite years of warnings. She was the same girl who wrote thank you notes to lunchladies who chased butterflies and fireflies in the spring who earned student of the month just months before her death.
And she was murdered slowly, methodically in the one place that should have been safe, her own home. Her death was not inevitable. It was preventable. There were so many moments, crucial moments, where someone could have stepped in. Someone could have acted, but no one did. If you’ve followed this story to this point, I thank you and I ask for your voice.
Please leave a comment below. Share your thoughts. Subscribe to this channel. Spread this story as far as you can because stories like Melinda’s must never be forgotten and must never be repeated. Today, Randel Hogland and Cindy Warren sit in jail, awaiting trial for first-degree murder with aggravating circumstances. The prosecution is seeking the death penalty.
But let’s be honest, no sentence, no verdict will bring Melinda back. Nothing can undo her suffering. What we can do, what we must do is ensure that her story becomes a catalyst for change. Because right now, somewhere, another child like Melinda is out there, suffering behind closed doors, silenced, ignored, forgotten by a system that claims to protect.
The question isn’t whether it will happen again. The question is, what are we willing to do to stop it? Melinda Hogan’s name must not just be a monument to tragedy. It must become a symbol of change. She paid the ultimate price for the failures of those around her. Now, it’s our responsibility to make sure her death was not in vain.
Let it be the spark for reform. Let it be the reason another child lives.
