Person scrounging for metal finds WA woman's body in freezer, feds say. Man sentenced

Yahoo

13-03-2025

The family of Rosenda Strong 'held out some sense of hope that Strong would come home alive' in the nine months they went without knowing where she was, court documents say.
'However, they ultimately knew that she was gone forever,' federal prosecutors wrote in court documents filed in the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Washington.
The confirmation that Strong was dead came July 4, 2019, when a man set out in search of metal for his homemade residence in Yakima County, about a 160-mile drive southeast from Seattle, according to prosecutors.
While scrounging for a piece of metal, he found an abandoned freezer and discovered 'what was left of Strong's body' inside, prosecutors said.
An extensive investigation revealed Strong was killed at a home called the 'House of Souls' in Wapato, nine months earlier on or around Oct. 5, 2018, according to prosecutors.
At the residence, she had gotten into an argument with Jedidah Iesha Moreno, who prosecutors said then shot her to death.
Several people were there when Moreno fatally shot Strong and then asked for help in getting rid of her body, according to prosecutors.
Two men laid a tarp over Strong's body, then put her remains inside an old freezer, prosecutors said.
Afterward, her body was hoisted onto the back of the truck and taken to a site near a towing company in Toppenish, where the freezer was dumped, according to prosecutors. Toppenish is about a 10-mile drive southeast from Wapato.
Seven people were charged in Strong's death, except for Moreno, prosecutors said. One of these defendants fatally shot Moreno two days after Strong died, according to prosecutors.
Now, a different defendant, Michael Lee Moody, is the first to be sentenced to prison 'for his role in the October 2018 murder,' according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Moody, 44, was sentenced to seven years and three months in prison on March 12 on one count of accessory after the fact, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a news release.
His defense attorney, Robin Collett Emmans, didn't immediately return McClatchy News' request for comment March 13.
Acting U.S. Attorney Richard R. Barker said in a statement that Strong's sister and her family have persisted in pursuing justice for more than five years.
'I love you sister, I said it from the beginning I would not give up and I would get the truth to surface,' Cissy L. Reyes, Strong's sister, wrote in a March 12 Facebook post in response to Moody's sentencing.
'I hope you're dancing and smiling.'
The FBI and the Yakama Nation Tribal Police spent many years investigating Strong's disappearance and killing, according to prosecutors.
Strong was a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and a 'descendant' of the Yakama Nation, the Seattle Times reported in September 2021.
Before her body was found, prosecutors wrote in Moody's sentencing memorandum that FBI 'agents and police followed up on every lead and every rumor, searched every location, and literally dug up the ground in various locations looking for Strong.'
Moody and the six other men charged as defendants didn't try to get Strong help after she was shot and never reported her killing, according to the sentencing memorandum.
Instead, they took part in trying to cover up what happened at the 'House of Souls,' which is described as a dilapidated home where accused drug dealers and individuals addicted to drugs would frequent, prosecutors said.
Moody helped load the freezer containing Strong's body onto the truck used to transport her remains, according to prosecutors.
The government suspects Moody participated in helping dispose of Strong's body because of his drug addiction.
In a sentencing memorandum on Moody's behalf, Emmans wrote Strong was killed 'in a context of fear and a haze of drug use on the part of all those involved.'
The people at the home were seemingly surprised by Moreno fatally shooting Strong, despite knowing of prior conflicts between the two women, according to Emmans.
Moody was friends with Strong, Emmans said.
'They were not especially close, but he respected her,' Emmans wrote in the sentencing memorandum. 'Her death and the effort to conceal her remains, depriving her and her family of proper funeral rites has haunted him since it occurred.'
Moody has cleaned 'up his life' and 'has been consistent in his wish to acknowledge his role in covering up the murder of Rosenda Strong,' Emmans said.
According to prosecutors, it's unclear exactly why Moreno killed Strong.
'However, the motivation for the murder really does not matter,' the government's sentencing memorandum says. 'The bottom line is that Strong, an unarmed young woman, was violently murdered.'
'No one involved in this case had the courage or compassion to let the Strong family know what had happened to Strong,' prosecutors wrote. 'Rather, they let the Strong family suffer for years.'
All of Moody's co-defendants, except for Wilson Louis Hunt, have pleaded guilty in connection with Strong's death, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office and court records.
The five who pleaded guilty, according to prosecutors, include:
Andrew Norris Zack
Jamaal Antwan Pimms
Kevin Todd Brehm
Joshawa Max Estrada
Uriel Balentin Badillo
Attorneys representing the six remaining co-defendants didn't immediately respond to McClatchy News' requests for comment.
Hunt's jury trial is scheduled for Aug. 4, court records show.
'(Moody) and the others just moved on with their own lives and could have cared less about the Strong family,' prosecutors wrote in the sentencing memorandum. 'The Strong family had to suffer the extreme pain of not knowing who had murdered their loved one.'
'All the Strong family knew was that someone tossed their loved one 'out like garbage in a freezer.''
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