Vancouver detectives have used Kirkland C. Warren’s cellphone to piece together his movements in the days after his former girlfriend and her 7-year-old daughter disappeared on March 12, court documents show.
The bodies of 27-year-old Meshay Melendez and Melendez’s daughter Layla Stewart were discovered 10 days after they vanished along a private, dead-end residential road in Washougal. Both had been shot in the head.
Warren, 28, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in their deaths.
Investigators tracked Warren’s cellphone location on March 13, the day after the victims disappeared, to an area along Southeast Wooding Road, east of Sunset View Road, where Melendez and Stewart’s bodies were later discovered by a passerby, according to a probable cause affidavit made public Monday.
Warren first used Google Maps between 6:30 and 6:32 p.m. March 13 to view and scroll around the area near Southeast 356th Avenue in Washougal, according to the affidavit. That spot within a mile of the site where the bodies were found.
About 8:30 p.m. that night, the phone showed a search in Apple Maps for “SE Woodings Road.” Twenty minutes later, the phone saved a parking location at the exact coordinates where Melendez and Stewart were found, the affidavit said. Apple Maps prompts through CarPlay, which connects vehicles to a driver’s phone.
Less than 10 minutes later, an Apple Maps trip launched from that location to Warren’s address in the 3700 block of Northeast 109th Avenue in Vancouver, the affidavit said.
That’s where police ended up arresting Warren on March 19 at the home where he lived with his wife. Detective Dustin Goudschaal, who wrote the affidavit, noted that while Warren is married to someone else, investigators believe he was in an intimate relationship, ongoing relationship with Melendez.
On March 22, someone reported spotting what looked like “two mannequins” in brush down a steep embankment off a rural road. Authorities later identified them as Melendez and Stewart.
On Monday, Superior Court Judge Suzan Clark ordered Warren to stay in custody with no option for bail.
Meshay Melendez, 27, and her daughter Layla Stewart, 7.
Clark County prosecutors said during the hearing that they plan to charge Warren with aggravated first-degree murder, which carries a sentence of life without the possibility of parole upon conviction.
Warren is scheduled for arraignment April 17 when he may enter pleas.
Melendez had a protective order against Warren.
He had been jailed early last month on domestic violence charges for alleging shooting at Melendez’s apartment in December.
Court records show he called Melendez from jail and told her that she had to “figure out” how to get the charges dropped. Warren also faced a 2017 murder charge in Arkansas at the time and indicated he was worried that the domestic violence charges would cause him to be sent back to Arkansas.
Nonetheless, Warren was released from jail on March 8 without electronic monitoring.
He was the last person seen with Melendez and her daughter on March 12, according to police and prosecutors.
On March 23, investigators interviewing Warren at the Clark County Jail asked him if he thought authorities had found Melendez and Stewart, according to court records.
Warren responded, “I don’t know,” Det. Goudschaal wrote in the affidavit.
He then added: “I hope not.”
When detectives showed Warren an aerial photograph of the location, he ended the interview and asked for an attorney.
Police used a search warrant to seize two cars they said were associated with Warren and multiple cellphones.
Inside a Dodge Charger that Warren was seen driving with Melendez and her daughter on the day they went missing, police found blood in the front and back seats, .22-caliber shell casings, Stewart’s clothes and Melendez’s purse with her ID inside, according to the affidavit.
In the second car, a Hyundai Palisade, police found a 22-caliber pistol in the center console. Police tested the gun by firing it and determined the casings were the same brand and size as the evidence found in the Dodge Charger, the affidavit said.
The gunshot wound Melendez sustained had evidence of “stippling” or unburned powder and debris, meaning she would have been shot at close range, which is consistent with the blood police found in the passenger seat of Warren’s Dodge Charger, Goudschaal wrote in the affidavit.
Warren also faces a first-degree murder charge in Arkansas in the homicide of 57-year-old Curtis Urquhart, who was shot in the head and found in a ditch on Dec. 11, 2017. An Arkansas judge has revoked Warren’s bond, issuing a fugitive warrant for his arrest.
— Savannah Eadens; seadens@oregonian.com; 503-221-6651; @savannaheadens
