“In August 2020 a woman came forward and reached out to me on Facebook and said everything I had known about my mother’s death was a lie and that she’d actually been murdered.”
Three years ago, that shocking statement turned Lauren Malloy's world upside down.
“I was naturally curious to find out if what she was telling me was true," Malloy said.
Lauren was just 18 months old on Sunday, March 7, 1993, when her mother, Lori Lee Malloy, was found dead in her East Providence apartment following a strange welfare call from her boyfriend.
She was naked, had bruises on her upper thighs and arm, and chunks of her hair had been ripped out and thrown across the apartment.
The case was initially investigated as a homicide, but not for long.
The medical examiner ruled the 30-year-old died of heart problems, despite the scene telling a very different story.
“The front door to our apartment was left open,” Lauren said. “There were two drinking glasses on the table and plates with leftover food. The bathroom faucet was left running.”
The suspicious scene added to Lauren’s curiosity after that mysterious Facebook message, sending her on a three-year chase for answers. “Something needs to be done, this whole case needs to be re-examined.”
Little did she know at the time, there’s no precedent to getting a decades old case reexamined in Rhode Island.
“I remember not knowing what to do. You feel really lost because you go to the police and say, 'Hey, this weird thing happened and can you help me? But the case is 30 years old,'" she said.
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Lauren began pulling records on her mom’s case and shortly afterwards, started to make some progress.
In August 2020, new information prompted East Providence police, the Medical Examiner’s Office, and the Attorney General’s Office to review the case.
Months later in March 2021, a new medical examiner determined Lori didn’t die of heart issues decades ago, in fact, she didn’t die of natural causes at all.
The body of Lori Lee Malloy was exhumed on Feb. 1, 2023.
Months later, Lauren is now waiting for pathologists to determine what truly happened to her mother that fateful night.
“It was over two years of fighting to get to the place where we’re at right now,” she said.
CREATING A COLD CASE UNIT
Lauren knew something was off with her mother’s case, but with no dedicated team looking into cold cases in Rhode Island, it was difficult to determine where to begin.
“I absolutely think a cold case unit would have helped," she said.
A unit dedicated to investigating and solving cold cases doesn’t exist in Rhode Island, but Attorney General Peter Neronha is hoping to change that.
After playing a critical role in Lauren's mother's case, Neronha is now proposing the state creates a cold case unit, which would be run out of his office.
“There are a lot of victims waiting for justice,” Neronha said.
In states like Massachusetts, resources have been dedicated to cold cases through district attorney offices, where prosecutors work directly with state police troopers assigned to each office.
While Gov. Dan McKee says members of the State Police Major Crimes Unit are all assigned cold cases, that’s in addition to their normal workload.
Meanwhile, the Rhode Island prosecutors involved are tied up with hundreds of active cases.
“One of the challenges is our prosecutors have such high caseloads that we really can’t devote the time that we need to focus on those cases.” Neronha said. “One of the advantages that Massachusetts DAs have is a state police unit assigned to that DA. That’s kind of what we are trying to replicate here where the investigators would be in my office.”
Just last year, the NBC 10 I-Team reported that months after the Bristol County District Attorney launched a new initiative to investigate missing persons cases, police managed to crack a case dating back to 2005, involving a John Doe found dead in a landfill.
Meanwhile in Rhode Island, most prosecutors in Neronha’s office are handling over 250 active cases at once, some of them, handling upwards of 300.
“It’s just impossible to handle that many cases and dive into a cold case,” he said.
Neronha is asking for $43 million for the next fiscal year to add 20 more employees to his office.
The cold case unit would include two attorneys, two prosecutors, and two investigators, accounting for about $350,000 of that.
But McKee’s budget proposes less than that for the AG's office, at $41.3 million, an increase of 3.4-percent. McKee also mentioned he budgeted $800,000 in FY 2022 to add eight new positions for the AG’s office, including five attorneys and three paralegals.
Neronha argues the additional funding is necessary.
“I know what the office needs to do its job," Neronha said. "I’m not a newcomer at this and so what I’m asking for is I think a reasonable investment.”
When we asked McKee if he'd support a cold case unit, his office sent us the following statement:
“The State Police has officers that work on 'cold cases' in collaboration with the Attorney General’s office. Members of the State Police Major Crimes unit are all assigned cold cases in addition to their normal case load. In fact, RISP just had a cold case that they ended up making an arrest on a few months ago. We’ll continue to discuss this topic with the AG’s office for the next budget cycle.”
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For the family members of victims like Lauren, leaving cold cases up to state police detectives who have a normal case load isn’t enough.
“That’s not a knock to any of the detectives with state or local agencies who work on these cases,” she said. “But it would be a resource and an assistance to them to have a dedicated statewide unit.
Lauren says families of other cold cases victims agree.
“One mother said to me, this would be my prayers answered. She’s been waiting for answers on her murdered daughter,” she said. “It seems like such an obvious thing. If you have so many cold cases across the state, why wouldn’t you have a unit dedicated to solving them?”
Unlike in many parts of Massachusetts, there’s no standard in place in Rhode Island for local and state agencies to report cold cases or unresolved cases in their jurisdiction, which means there’s no accurate account for the total number of cold cases in Rhode Island.
In Bristol County, Massachusetts, the district attorney’s office recognized that and took up the effort last year.
The Rhode Island state budget is now in the hands of the General Assembly, which will be passing its final version this month.
Lauren gathered 200 signatures in favor of a cold case unit a couple of months ago when she testified in front of lawmakers.
She also created a website to highlight cold cases in Rhode Island and bring the families of victims together.