DAY 1,000 - A Daughter’s Letter to Attorney General Neronha

DAY 1,000 - A Daughter’s Letter to Attorney General Neronha

Dear Peter,

You mind if I call you Peter? “Attorney General Neronha” just feels too formal for a guy who’s seen photos of my mother’s naked, bruised body. After all these years, I’d like to think we’re on a first-name basis.

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One thousand days ago — on February 1, 2023 — your office emailed to say my mother had been exhumed and that we could expect results in “several weeks.”

I responded politely, because that’s what you do when you’re at the mercy of others, but what I really wanted to say was:

How dare you.

How dare you inform a daughter by email that her mother was exhumed.

How dare you exclude her family from being there.

How dare you give no notice — after we asked for nothing more than that.

All you cared about was avoiding media coverage. My family’s wishes and needs didn’t matter. None of us had the opportunity to be there when she was brought back above ground for the first time in 30 years, because you didn’t want anyone to televise the fact that something was wrong.

So, like you posted on January 2, 2025 — “buckle up.” This one’s personal, and 1,000 days overdue.

When you became a crusader for a statewide Cold Case Unit in late 2022, I supported you. When the Governor tried to block its funding in 2023, I fought beside you.

You even used my mother’s name — Lori Lee Malloy — as an example of why Rhode Island needed such a unit. I was proud that her case might help others, that something good could come from her death.

That’s why it’s been so painful to watch your office allow the truth to languish. To be clear, this letter isn’t a criticism of the investigators who’ve worked tirelessly within that Cold Case Unit — I’ve seen their dedication firsthand. It’s about accountability. The buck stops with you.

When you testified in 2024 that your office had “effectively solved two cold case homicides,” I felt hope. But when you promised that families and the public would be notified “within four to six weeks,” I paused. That sounded familiar, and not in a good way. That was over a year ago. And it’s now been two years, eight months and 27 days since you first promised answers about my mother.

 

Where are the results?

From the beginning, you treated me like an inconvenience. The first prosecutor assigned to my mom’s case in early 2021 barely looked at it, and only ever called me back to say, in the most disinterested tone, that I might be “stuck with an unknown” reason for how my mother died.

I politely asked for updates for months after you set the expectation of “several weeks.”

When we finally met in early 2024, your first words weren’t “How are you?” or “I’m sorry for your loss.” Instead, you asked whether I was recording you — and reminded that you would have recorded me in return. You made me feel like a suspect, not a victim’s daughter or trauma survivor. You told me not to tweet about our meeting, or you’d stop sharing updates about my mom’s case with me until you were done with your review.

So I didn’t tweet. I made a podcast instead — two of them, actually. The first got people talking. The second ‘effectively solved’ my mom’s murder.

A person of interest changed her story constantly: where she was, who she was with, details surrounding that one fateful day in March 1993. She never had an alibi — not for the day my mother died, nor for the events leading up to it. Every version of her story contradicted the last, and yet she was never truly investigated.

After her death, I went through her home. You would have found everything I did had you ever sought a warrant: a 1993 planner with my mother’s name and a timestamp from the morning of her death, hours before [she] claimed she was ever near my mother’s house and well before any witnesses reported being at the crime scene; my mother’s original death certificate placed atop O.J. Simpson’s I Want to Tell You memoir and a leather glove; her 1994 address book listing only one attorney — O.J.’s lawyer, Robert Shapiro.

Her attic held more: her grandfather’s Bible with a map to my mother’s grave tucked inside, and records proving she profited from my mother’s death until 2009. She even took out a life-insurance policy on me in 2015. It was still active when she died.

I gave all of that to your office. You did nothing.

I’ve since heard your office considered labeling my mom’s death as “cocaine-induced agitated delirium.” Peter, that would be absurd. There were no drugs in her system, then or now. And if you Google it, you’ll see even the State of California, the National Library of Medicine and the American College of Medical Toxicology – among others – reject that as a legitimate cause of death. Please tell me that isn’t the story you intend to sell, because nobody’s buying it.

 

So, per my last email on October 7 — do the right thing.

Release the findings. Release the toxicology report showing elevated levels of arsenic in her system. Explain how a 30-year-old, otherwise healthy woman with no drugs in her body or home just “spontaneously” died.

Tell the public that others — not just me — identified the same suspect. Tell them how she kept trophies, how she documented the time of my mother’s death, and how your office ignored the red flags placed in your hands in favor of trying to prove me wrong.

You had every opportunity to act. Instead, you let a killer die free.

Before you ride off into the sunset in 2026, please deliver the results you promised. Give my family — and the people of Rhode Island — the truth we’ve waited 1,000 days to hear.

 

Regards,

Lauren Lee Malloy