Arrest made in 30-year-old slay
‘It is always with mixed emotions that we make these announcements as we know this will not fill the void caused by the loss of a daughter, a sister and a friend to many.’
MARIAN RYAN Middlesex District Attorney
For everyone who loved Patricia Moreno, the path to justice has been slow and long. But after more than 30 years, they may have reached their destination.
A Middlesex grand jury indicted Rodney Daniels, 48, on a charge of murder for allegedly shooting 17year-old Moreno in the head on July 20, 1991, on the fire escape of her foster family’s Henry Street apartment in Malden, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan and Malden Police Chief Kevin Molis said Wednesday.
Daniels was arrested on Monday at his home in South Fulton, Ga. He was arraigned in Georgia as a fugitive from justice and is being transported back to Massachusetts to be arraigned on Thursday.
“After three decades we have taken the first steps today to hold accountable the person who we allege took Tricia’s life,” Ryan said.
Just after 3 a.m. on the day of the murder, authorities said, police responded to the third-floor apartment at 21-23 Henry St., where the 17-year-old victim was found with a single gunshot wound to the head. There was no evidence of forced entry into the home and no weapon or cartridge casing was recovered from the scene.
The victim’s foster mother, her two teenage daughters and her daughter’s boyfriend, Daniels, were also in the apartment.
The surviving occupants of the apartment claimed that they had heard a pair of gunshots but didn’t know who shot Moreno. But police learned that Daniels had multiple handguns and exhibited “threatening behavior” toward Moreno in the weeks before her death, Ryan said.
In 2020, police returned to the murder scene and reconstructed the position of the victim on the third-floor fire escape. Based on the position of the entry wound and the downward trajectory of the bullet, the path of the bullet was consistent with having been fired by someone standing in the area of the doorway to the apartment.
Police interviewed one witness who had been out of the U.S. for an extended period. That witness, who lived in the second-floor apartment at the time of Moreno’s murder, revealed that on the night of the murder the witness had been awakened by a loud noise and immediately looked to the fire escape.
The witness was able to provide a physical description of a person consistent with Daniel’s appearance and described the person immediately retreating into the apartment and closing the door behind him, authorities said.
“It is always with mixed emotions that we make these announcements as we know this will not fill the void caused by the loss of a daughter, a sister and a friend to many,” Ryan added in announcing the cold-case arrest. “I do hope, however, that it brings hope to some of the families who are still awaiting answers.”