Chester County couple charged in abuse death of 12-year-old girl
WEST CHESTER — A Chester County couple — including a woman whose criminal past involves the beating of her son and the murder of her stepson at the hands of her then-husband — have been arrested and charged in the death of the man’s 12-year-old daughter, with episodes of abuse, including being chained to an air hockey table, captured on video in their home.
District Attorney Chris deBarrena-Sarobe announced the arrests of Rendell A. Hoagland and Cindy Marie Warren at a press conference at the Chester County Justice Center on Tuesday, a day after they were taken into custody and three days after police were called to their home in West Caln Township and the investigation into young Malinda Hoagland’s horrific condition began.
“Malinda was subjected to evil and torment that no child should ever have to endure,” said de Barrena-Sarone. “I am grateful to every first responder and law enforcement officer who has worked tirelessly on this case. Together we will get justice for Malinda.”
The pair were arraigned Tuesday by Magisterial District Judge J. Timothy Arndt III of Honeybrook and both held on $1 million bail. They are charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault of a child, unlawful restraint, recklessly endangering another person, endangering the welfare of a child, and conspiracy. Further charges could be filed.
Warren, 45, was sentenced to three to seven years in state prison in 2009 in the Monroe County case of the assault on her son, who was 3 years old at the time of the incident. She was charged with endangering the welfare of a child in that 2007 case, after having escaped being charged with homicide in the earlier death of her 2½-year-old stepdaughter because she cooperated with investigators against her then-husband, McKinley Warren Jr., who was later sentenced to 25-to-50 years in jail.
According to an arrest affidavit filed by Chester County Detective Bernard Martin in Malinda’s death, township police and EMTs from the Westwood Fire Company were called to a home in the 200 block of Reid Road, not far from Hibernia Park, for the report of an unresponsive girl around 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 4.
The girl’s father, Hoagland, told a 911 call taker that Malinda had struck a tree while riding her bicycle earlier in the day. But staff at Paoli Hospital, where the child was taken, reported that she had numerous injuries and medical conditions that were highly specific to physical abuse. She died at the hospital, with trauma surgeons there unable to save her life.
According to Martin, the staff told him and Chester County Detective Jonathan Shave that the girl’s emaciated physical condition “alarmed them and that (her) physical appearance should ‘not occur in this country.’” The girl, whose name is not included in the document, weighed just 50 pounds when she was brought to the hospital. Her body was battered, he said.
Investigators were able to recover videos from Blink cameras that had been installed to monitor Malinda’s behavior. Martin wrote in his summary that the videos showed Hoagland and Warren abusing the girl.
In their statements to police about the matter, the couple, who moved to West Caln from the Poconos in 2022, suggested that the girl’s injuries were the result of two accidents at the Yogi Bear Jellystone Camp Resort in Lancaster County, where the couple had brought Malinda and Warren’s 9-year-old son for a weekend trip. The first occurred when she collided with another child on a water slide, and the second when she crashed into a tree while on her mountain bike, they claimed
The injuries they described were a scrape on her chin, a bump on her head, and a cut on her nose. Those are light years away from what doctors told investigators they found when they examined Malinda at the hospital, however. Those injuries included fractures to both wrists and ankles, broken vertebrae, an injured liver, cuts and significant bruising on her face and chest, deformities to her legs, and chest contusions. She suffered multi-system trauma, circulatory and respiratory failure, and cardiac arrest.
When police searched the Reid Road home, they found security cameras in every room of the house, but none that contained internal memory cards. However, investigators were able to pull copies of videos from the cameras from Warren’s cellphone, which she had given them.
In his affidavit, Martin described some of the more than 100 videos found on the phone, dating as far back as July 2023. They include episodes where Hoagland and Warren are heard yelling at Malinda and telling her to perform physical tasks as punishment for misbehavior; several where Malinda is seen chained to a hockey table; one where she is seen sleeping on a bare floor while chained; one where she is shackled to a dresser; one where she picks at her hand and eats the skin; and the last one, taken on May 2, where Malinda is chained to a desk doing school work. (The couple had pulled her from East Brandywine Middle School school in 2023.)
In one video, dated Jan. 27, Warren is overheard telling her stepdaughter, “Keep moving and don’t look for breakfast or lunch tomorrow ‘cause you’re not getting it. And you won’t get dinner either ‘cause I’m not getting up.”
Another recorded Malinda responding to Warren’s insults by saying, “Please, I’m sorry. I know I can’t move, and I’m sorry.” She is also heard crying.
“Warren and Hoagland secluded (the girl) from mandatory reporters and others who may have offered her assistance in order to physically abuse and torment the child and used her seclusion to facilitate their crimes on an ongoing basis over a period of several months,” Martin wrote in the conclusion of his affidavit. “They acted in concert with the intention of terrorizing and abusing the child and continued their actions until the child’s death.”
In the 2007 case in Monroe County, police arrested McKinley Warren Jr. on charges he beat his 3-year-old son and locked him in a bedroom for days. A concerned neighbor’s phone call led police to discover the boy, who a prosecutor said looked like “a prizefighter who had been through a title bout” when police saw him at the couple’s East Stroudsburg home in January 2007.
McKinley Warren eventually pleaded guilty to both abusing the boy and causing a head injury that led to the December 2000 death of his daughter, who was the boy’s half-sister. Warren was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in state prison for both crimes.
In a statement she gave to police in the death of her stepdaughter, Cindy Warren said she had called her husband at a local bar on Dec. 1, 2000, and told him to come change her diaper because she had just painted her nails and did not want to mar them. It was then that McKinley Warren returned home to change Jessica’s diaper and gave her the head injury that later caused her death. Angry, he struck her in the head.
The Warrens took the girl to Pocono Medical Center and told hospital personnel she had fallen out of their parked car and hit her head on a curb. The girl was then flown to Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, where she died.
The location of Malinda Hoagland’s death in rural West Caln, and the alleged brutality of the girl’s abuse, immediately brought to mind the case of the last child to have been murdered in that township, 3-year-old Scott “Scotty” McMillan, who was beaten to death by his mother and her boyfriend. The torture that “Scotty” and his older brother, who survived, endured at the hands of Gary Lee Fellenbaum III made headlines around the world.
“Scotty” McMillan died on Nov. 4, 2014, of multiple blunt force trauma brought on by weeks of beating and torture he suffered at the hands of Fellenbaum and the boy’s mother, Jillian Tait. The murder shocked members of the Chester County community for its savage nature and drew heartbreaking headlines around the world with its accompanying photograph of the red-headed “Scotty” sitting on the lap of an Easter Bunny model. At the time, then-Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan called the case “an American horror story.”
Beginning in October 2014, according to the allegations set forth in the case, Fellenbaum began physically abusing both of Tait’s sons. The abuse included punches and beatings, but also whipping with a crudely fashioned “cat o’nine tails,” and taping the boys to chairs or hanging them upside down by their feet.
Fellenbaum’s beating of Scott McMillan escalated to the point where the boy could not hold down his food. Angered, Fellenbaum allegedly punched him in the face so hard he fell out of his chair, and later punched him in the stomach. The boy began vomiting and later passed out. He never awoke.
To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.
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