Former Pocono couple faces murder, hundreds of charges in 12-year-old's death
A former Pocono couple faces hundreds of charges, including murder, related to the death of 12-year-old Malinda Hoagland in Chester County.
Rendell A. Hoagland, 52, and his girlfriend Cindy M. Warren, 46, both of West Caln Township, were initially charged in May with attempted criminal homicide and other charges in the death of Hoagland’s daughter.
The newly upgraded charges include first, second and third-degree murder, and conspiracy for each murder charge. Hoagland and Warren each face 282 charges now. They are in the Chester County Prison.
More: Former Pocono couple charged in 12-year-old girl's death in Chester County
In a news conference on Thursday, Chester County District Attorney Christopher de Barrena-Sarobe said his office intends to pursue the death penalty.
A forensic pathologist found that Malinda died of starvation and blunt force trauma, de Barrena-Sarobe said.
Investigators reviewed videos, images and text messages spanning two and a half years, de Barrena-Sarobe said. “The evidence shows that these defendants communicated regularly about how they were going to terrorize Malinda. She was subjected to physical and psychological torture.”
Malinda was kept home from school when makeup could not hide her injuries, de Barrena-Sarobe said.
In addition to being beaten, she was subjected to “strange torture,” de Barrena-Sarobe said, including being chained to furniture, running in place, hours of pushups, and holding her hands or books above her head. “The level of exercise that they placed on Malinda must have caused her prolonged pain, and in fact we believe that in some instances they caused stress fractures to her body,” he said.
“They told a child that they were going to kill her,” de Barrena-Sarobe said.
The first evidence of a physical injury caused by the defendants dates to November 2021, he said. She was last seen by a pediatrician that month. Malinda weighed 77 pounds then, and 50 when she died.
By May of this year, “her body could not take it anymore. She began to shut down, early morning hours of May 4, and the defendants denied her medical care” and delayed calling 911, de Barrena-Sarobe said.
“By the time that West Caln and other law enforcement officers could respond, it was simply too late,” he said.
He stressed that Malinda’s biological mother “has no blame in all of this.” She has a “severe medical condition. She cannot really care for herself, and she’s in no position to care for a child.”
In 2009, Warren, then of East Stroudsburg, was sentenced to three to seven years in prison for endangering the welfare of her son. The boy’s father, McKinley Warren Jr., was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison for abusing the boy and for causing a head injury that led to his 2-year-old daughter’s death. Warren was the girl’s stepmother.
Hoagland is formerly of Stroudsburg, according to Malinda Hoagland's 2011 birth announcement.
Kathryne Rubright is the managing editor of the Pocono Record and the Tri-County Independent. Reach her at krubright@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Pocono Record: Former Pocono couple faces murder charges in 12-year-old girl's death
