On a hot summer night in Malden, Massachusetts, 17-year-old Patricia A. Moreno, a female of mixed race, sought refuge on the third-floor fire escape of her foster family's apartment on Henry Street. In the early morning hours of July 20, 1991, this place of solace became a crime scene. Patricia, known as Tricia to her loved ones, was discovered with a single gunshot wound to the head.
She was rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital but succumbed to an irreversible brain injury later that day.
At the time of the shooting, several people were inside the apartment, including her foster mother, her two foster sisters, and Rodney Daniels, the boyfriend of one of the sisters. When questioned by police, the occupants claimed they heard a pair of gunshots but had no information about who was responsible. Daniels told investigators he was asleep in a living room armchair and was awakened by the gunshots, after which he found Patricia on the fire escape. An autopsy revealed the projectile that killed her was from a. 38-caliber weapon, but no gun or shell casings were found at the scene. The investigation eventually went cold due to a lack of sufficient evidence.
Decades later, in 2020, the Middlesex District Attorney's Cold Case Unit re-examined the case. Investigators returned to the apartment building and reconstructed the shooting, determining that the fatal shot was likely fired from the doorway of the apartment. This new look at the evidence, combined with re-interviewing witnesses, brought forth new information. A former neighbor who had lived on the second floor came forward, stating that on the night of the murder, they were awakened by a loud noise and saw a young woman on the fire escape struggling to breathe with a man fitting Daniels' description standing over her.
The most significant breakthrough came when investigators learned that an alibi witness, who had since passed away, had lied to protect Daniels in 1991. She had later admitted to friends and family that Daniels had killed Patricia, hidden the murder weapon in an armchair, and then disposed of it. She had been too afraid to come forward for fear of prosecution for her role in the cover-up. Based on this new evidence, an arrest warrant was issued for Rodney Daniels. On September 27, 2021, he was arrested at his home in Georgia. In August 2023, after a six-day trial, a jury found Rodney Daniels guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Patricia Moreno, more than three decades after he took her life. He was sentenced to a mandatory term of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
