Tawny Rockwood was a 25-year-old woman of mixed race living in Andover, South Dakota, when the night of February 9, 2018 turned into a scene that didn't make sense at first glance: an apartment building burning in the dark, flames focused on the upstairs unit that neighbors and law enforcement understood to be hers. A newspaper delivery man spotted the fire around 1:30 a.m.
and called 911, and by the time deputies and firefighters arrived, one side of the building was already being swallowed by the blaze. Firefighters could not immediately find her outside, and the first frantic hours became a search for a missing tenant while the fire itself raised quiet questions about whether it had started by accident.
As investigators worked outward from the fire scene, attention narrowed to a vehicle that had seemed out of place in the days before the fire—a spray-painted Dodge pickup that a deputy had noticed near the quad-complex and logged for its license plate. That detail led quickly to Jose Anibal Quinones Rodriguez of Aberdeen, and when officers tried to reach him the morning of the fire, the call went to voicemail. Detectives found him later that morning at his daughter's home in Aberdeen, near a spray-painted Dodge pickup, and began asking where he had been. With a Spanish-speaking interpreter on speakerphone, Rodriguez told officers he and Rockwood had been in a relationship and described a timeline that placed him at her apartment on February 7 and 8 before returning to Aberdeen the evening of February 8, then running errands late into the night—including a trip to Walmart—while using a white Jeep he said he had borrowed.
The fire debris eventually yielded the truth investigators feared. After hours of digging through the wreckage, officers found Rockwood's remains inside what had been her living room area. Despite the severe burning, they observed a gunshot wound, and an autopsy later determined she had been shot twice in the skull, with one wound causing her death; the pattern of evidence and the absence of a weapon at the scene pushed officials away from any idea of suicide. Prosecutors alleged she was killed sometime between February 8 and February 9, and that the apartment was then set on fire.
The first publicly announced arrest came quickly, though it was not initially framed as a homicide charge. On February 12, 2018, South Dakota's Attorney General's Office announced that law enforcement had identified Rockwood as the victim in the Andover structure fire and that Rodriguez had been arrested on an aggravated assault–domestic violence charge tied to conduct before the fire and connected to the broader investigation. Not long after, on March 1, a Day County grand jury indictment followed, charging Rodriguez with first-degree murder, first-degree felony murder, second-degree murder, first-degree arson, first-degree burglary, commission of a felony while armed with a firearm, and aggravated assault–domestic violence; bond was set at $1 million.
Investigators built their case from a trail of items and timestamps that stretched beyond the burned-out apartment. According to court records, officers searching vehicles tied to Rodriguez recovered items that included a nylon gun holster, a gas can, and a propane torch, and they used surveillance footage to track his movements through the late-night hours—placing him at a gas station, then at Walmart, and later back at the gas station buying beer with another man identified as Gaver “Kid” Glover. Glover later admitted he had lied early in the investigation to cover for Rodriguez; under a plea agreement requiring truthful testimony, he testified against Rodriguez in exchange for dismissal of a more serious felony charge, ultimately pleading guilty to misprision of a felony.
The case did not end with an arrest announcement or an indictment headline. After a court trial, Rodriguez was found guilty of first-degree murder and additional offenses, including second-degree murder, first-degree arson, commission of a felony while armed with a firearm, and aggravated assault/domestic violence. On May 28, 2019, he was sentenced to life in prison on the murder conviction, along with concurrent terms of 25 years for arson, 25 years for the firearm-related felony, and 15 years for aggravated assault/domestic violence. His appeal reached the South Dakota Supreme Court, which affirmed the convictions in a decision filed December 9, 2020.
