Thirty-two years after a teenage girl was fatally shot on a fire escape in Malden, Massachusetts, a man has been convicted of her murder.
Seventeen-year-old Patricia Moreno was living with her foster family on Henry Street when she was found face down on a fire escape, fatally wounded after being shot in the head.
Rodney Daniels, now 50, who had been dating one of Moreno’s adoptive mother’s biological daughters, was arrested in Georgia in September 2021 in the July 20, 1991 murder, after an investigation uncovered new evidence in the case.
A neighbor who had been out of the US for a long time told investigators that he was awakened by the sound of a gun on the night of the murder, looked out the window and saw someone “consistent with the appearance of Rodney Daniels,” authorities said at the time of Daniels’ arrest.
Investigators also learned that a person who served as an alibi witness for Daniels later admitted to friends and family that Daniels had killed Moreno and concealed the murder weapon inside an armchair before finally disposing of the weapon.
On Wednesday, following a six-day trial, Daniels was convicted of first-degree murder, the Middlesex district attorney’s office said.
“When a family loses a loved one in a homicide, even the passage of time does not fully heal that wound. That is especially true when they have no answers about what happened and no one has been held accountable,” Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said in a statement. “Those who knew and loved Tricia have been waiting for answers for more than three decades… “The team working on this case was undaunted by the passage of time and used every tool at its disposal to extract new information critical to this successful prosecution.”
It was not immediately known when Daniels will be sentenced.
