True Crime with Rachel Shannon
Chained, Tortured, and Starved: The WORST Case of Abuse That Will Make you Cry: Malinda Hoagland
Tue, 20 May 2025
This is the tragic and infuriating story of Malinda Hoagland, a 12-year-old girl who was subjected to unimaginable abuse and torture at the hands of those she was supposed to trust the most. We'll delve into the details of the case, revealing the numerous red flags missed that allowed the horrific abuse to continue.Go watch my other episodes on Spotify: The Disturbing Case of Stephanie ParzeShe Tried to Warn Them About her Son, Then he was MURDERED. THE CASE OF GUNNAR SCHUMACHER7 Year old’s Strange Death Reveals Mom’s DISGUSTING Secret: Did She Starve her for Attention?!Thank you guys for watching, hope to see you next time!
Chapter 1: What happened to Malinda Hoagland?
Today's case involves the story of two low-life pathetic excuses for human beings who never should have had the chance to be around an innocent 12 year old little girl. Melinda Hoagland experienced things straight out of a nightmare and even though there were so many red flags, so many adults in her life who could have stepped in, no one did.
And as a result of this inaction, these adults turning their cheek away from the signs that were right in front of them, Melinda is no longer with us. Melinda Hoagland was born on July 4th, 2011, to Rondalyn Smith and Rendell Hoagland in Strudesburg, Pennsylvania. Melinda had three older half-siblings, Emily, who is 15 years older, Abby, 11 years older, and Jamie, who is 10 years older.
I believe they all had the same father, but different mothers. According to her sisters, Melinda lived her early years with her father in the Poconos in Pennsylvania, while her sisters lived with their mothers. Melinda was always known as a bright, bubbly child who absolutely loved springtime in the Poconos, always catching butterflies and lightning bugs.
She saw her sisters on a regular basis, especially on holidays and during the summer months. Melinda loved her sisters so very much, and they loved her just as much. However, it seemed that the close relationship Melinda had with her sisters all changed once Rendell got a new girlfriend, Cindy Warren, who he met through Facebook dating in 2019.
As soon as Cindy entered their lives, the sisters felt that something was off, so they looked into her past and what they found was concerning, to say the least. They found that about 10 years prior, in 2009, Cindy Warren and her then-husband pleaded guilty to charges of child abuse regarding their then-three-year-old son, Isaiah.
In this case, it was reported that they would lock Isaiah in his bedroom for hours on hours at a time as punishment. When he wasn't locked away, they would beat him with a belt or force him to walk up and down the stairs repeatedly with his hands over his head.
Cindy eventually told the courts that her husband, McKinley, was the one doing most of the abuse, but she watched it happen and never did anything about it. I'm not sure exactly what her punishment for this was, but it appears that Cindy did eventually regain custody of Isaiah. but that's not all these people were involved with.
It was reported that once investigators looked into Isaiah's case, they were able to gather more evidence regarding a prior case involving McKinley's then two-year-old daughter, Jessica, who he had from a previous relationship, but who was living with McKinley and Cindy when they were together. Back in 2000, McKinley had beat his
After charging him with child abuse from Isaiah's case, there was enough evidence to charge him with little Jessica's death as well. McKinley pleaded guilty to both charges and is currently serving 25 to 30 years for little Jessica's death. But from this, we can already see that this woman is bad news.
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Chapter 2: Who were Malinda's family members?
Cindy identified herself as Melinda's stepmother, who lived in the home with her, Rendell, and her nine-year-old son. She explained that they had been renting out some camping space at Yogi Bear's Jellystone Camp Resort for about three weeks, going back and forth between the camp and home on the weekends.
They had been at the campsite on Friday, May 3rd, but returned home on the 4th due to rain, leaving their camper and other buildings at the campground with plans to return on the 5th. Cindy said that on the drive home that day, Melinda was in the back passenger seat while Randall drove and she was in the front passenger seat
and her other son was in the back behind the driver's seat as they drove home melinda was quiet she didn't speak a word so they just assumed that she was probably sleeping until they got back home and realized that she was not responding to anything and she would not wake up the officer asked cindy if melinda had been injured and she explained that there were a few incidents at the camp
The prior day, May 3rd, Melinda had slid down a water slide, but she didn't move out of the way fast enough, so another, larger kid came down and slid right into her. But they didn't think that this was anything serious, saying that she only got a small injury to her chin as a result.
After the slide incident, Cindy explained that she and Rendell were sitting around a fire pit at around 12.30am, now going into May 4th. They were listening to some music, not totally paying attention to what was going on. All of a sudden they saw that Melinda had gotten on her mountain bike and started going down a slope.
They then heard a loud crash and saw that Melinda had fallen off her bike after hitting a tree. She wasn't used to using the brakes on the bike handles so she wasn't able to fully stop herself in time. So as a result of this fall, Cindy noticed that Melinda had sustained a small bump on the side of her head, as well as a small cut to her nose.
They gave Melinda a bag of ice, telling her to sit down at the picnic table and ice her head for at least five minutes. After icing her head, though, she seemed perfectly fine. She got back up and started playing some cornhole and then hung out with the dog. She was up until around 5am and slept until around 2pm. When she woke up on May 4th, she was alert and acting like her normal self.
She sat down and ate some pancakes for a midday breakfast. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. However, the concerning head injury on Melinda wasn't the only thing that concerned investigators about her presentation. As I stated, it was clear that she was severely underweight for her age.
When officers asked Cindy about this, she said that Melinda had been losing weight for about two and a half months, but she didn't know why. She started giving her pediatric shakes twice a day to help her gain weight, as well as a daily kids vitamin to keep her healthy.
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Chapter 3: What red flags were ignored in Malinda's case?
These messages had originally been deleted from both of their cell phones, but thankfully, again, officers were able to recover them when executing the search warrant on their phones. At this point, there is a very clear, disturbing picture emerging. Cindy and Rendell were torturing poor Melinda for months, if not longer.
We know that it started about at least a year ago, but that's just based on the video evidence they were able to uncover. No one truly knows how far back the abuse goes. She was humiliated, starved, and forced to do uncomfortable, painful, and exhausting physical demands. All the while, Cindy relished in her treatment, enjoying every second of watching this 12-year-old little girl suffer.
And I do want to note that I absolutely believe Rendell when he says that he pulled her out of school because he was so mad about her situation.
selling food but I don't think that's why he was actually mad I think it was because they were starving her they didn't want her to eat they didn't want her to have any food at school either they wanted to maximize her suffering so that's why they pulled her out of school and then once they knew that nobody was going to be watching her or seeing her outside the home I think the physical punishments got even worse and they started beating her by that point
Now after finding out all of this information, Rendell Hoagland and Cindy Warren were both arrested and charged with kidnapping and aggravated assault, among other charges. but shortly after Melinda succumbed to her injuries and more of this information came to light, their charges were upgraded to first-degree murder and conspiracy.
We still don't know with absolute certainty how Melinda died or who is officially at fault, but with what we do know about how both Melinda and Rendell treated her and the fact that Rendell had blood on his shirt, allegedly, There were bloody crocs found. I really don't think it matters. Given what we know about how they both treated her, I think they most likely beat her while at the campsite.
She probably went unconscious long before they headed home, but they just didn't do anything about it. Instead, they tried figuring out what to do and how they could get out of it before finally putting her in the car and returning home.
Once they had their story straight, or at least thought they did, and felt that they had deleted enough off their phones and security system, they called 911 to report her condition, saying that she just fell off her bike. And they were both stupid enough to think that police would just buy their stories despite the horrific condition she was clearly in.
And as of right now, that is where the case sits with regard to the charges against Cindy and Rendell. They both have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting their trials in jail as investigators continue their efforts in gathering enough evidence to get a conviction and send these two monsters to prison for good.
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