Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
march 12, 2023
police in vancover ,washington received a call from a worried grandmother
her daugther and granddaughter 27 and 6 years old had gone missing,meshay was a single mother and her daughter layla was her hwhole world.
there was no obvious reason for them to abscond without telling their family members.
something darker was at play….
one of the last people to see meshay melendez, was this man kirkland warren ,he was meshay’s ex- boyfriend and they’d had a tumultuous relationship.
but kirkland said they were working things out …. or they had been when meshay and her daughter disappeared.
a young mother and a vulnarable child.
it was imperative that the police find these two missing person as soon as possible.
but soon enough their investigations would reveal a twisted history .
and a murder that would leave vancouver scarred for generations to come ….
Lets’s uncover those answers here where we’ll dive into the terrible story of what happened to meshay melendez
vancouver ,washington is one of the state’s most populous cities on the border with oregon and close to the west coast
it has a violent crime rate of 6.32 per 1,000 residents,this is higher than the state average
and made it even more concerning when meshay melendez and her daughter went missing in march 2o23.
27 year old meshay was last seen with her daughter layla by a friend in a burgundy dodge charger on the morning of march 12th.
the driver of this car was kirkland warren, her ex- boyfriend ,it seemed likely that he had been the last person to see meshay alive.
march 22, 2023
what seemed like an ordinary day n a prison, vancouver
but for this detective waiting at the chess table to conduct an interview ,it was the most important day in this case, he’d been tasked with finding missing meshay and layla.
kirkland said that he, meshay and layla stayed the night together in a friend’s apartment.
he said they were meeting to reconcile,after some drama in their relationship,according to him everything went well that night and they left joe’s house in the morning as planned .
kirkland told the investigator that meshay had left her car further down the street
and that he drove her and her daughter over to it,he let them out and they drove away.
this- according to him, was the last time he ever saw the pair alive .
meshay and layla were reported missing on march 18 th 6 days later, meshay was an independent women with her own life.
but she wouldn’t do something reckless like disappear without telling her family , she took good car of her daughter who ofgten appeared in her TikTok videos, doing dances with her mom.
layla though only six was doing well in school and had a promising life ahead of her
meshay once said ” don’t know how i got blessed with such an amazing daughter”
she was beloved by her mom and her mom’s entire family ,including meshay’s mother layla’s grandmother .
when her mom didn’t hear from her all week, she called the police
the vancouver police department conducted a welfare on meshay apartment and found no sign of meshay and layla.
but the next meshay’s mom desperately searching for her daughter and grand daughter,discovered meshay’s car
it was abandoned in the van mall neighborhood the same neighborhood where she and layla had stayed with kirkland on the night of the 11th
kirkland said he tried to contact her that same day
kirkland and meshay had an on again an off again relationship, it didn’t seem unusal that she wouldn’t contact him for a while.
he said he went to a bagel shop after dropping her off and then to another friend’s house, her absence didn’t concern him until she was reported missing nearly a week later.
kirkland grew up in pine bluff arkansas, he was the son of a municipal judge who resigned in 2009, following aligations of misconduct ,including second -degree forgery, abuse of office and attempted theft of property
in the last few years kirkland had moved to vancouver washington where he married a women named monet tyler -warren.
she and kirkland had two daughters, age 26 in the spring of 2023, she worked at a bank in portland, but she recently been accused of stealing money from customer accounts and transferring it to others
the theft amounted to nearly $ 25, 000 this wasn’t a random unconnected incident.
on november 21 st 2022 monet’s credentials was used to alter account information at the
credit union in order to steal and $ 220,000 was transferred into an account under meshay melendez’s name
meshay was also seen on surveillance footage opening an account at the credit union that same month and exiting monet’s car.
the two women knew each other and may have been tangled up in a criminal scheme together.
thise made sense with meshay ‘s social media ,she was an active Tik Tok user until her last post on december 2022 -12-20 right around the time of the thefts from the credit union
she began to go dark online,perhaps trying to minimize her exposure in case of an investigation
in both of her last posts she could be seen with kirkland
but what was meshay and monet’s connection? how had they developed the scheme? if they were indeed both involved?
the only thing the two women had in common was one man ….kirkland warren an monet blamed kirkland when she was questioned by police.
she said she’d been changing the account information on behalf of her husband, who’d asked her to help him steal money.
he said he was divorcing monet ,but his relationship with her wasn’t just turbulent it was criminal, this went for his relationship with meshay too.
they’d been staying at their friend’s apartment instead of one of their own for a specific reason
-a restraining order
the previous december meshay had called 911 to report that kirkland had assaulted her including firing shots at her balcony window as she was looking outside.
in february investicators had corroborated her story with a friend who wa also present during the altercation
but a mere two weeks later, on february 17 th meshay recanted the accusation, she said she’d lied about the shooting and that she and her friend both had mental health and substance abuse problems
she discredited herself and wanted the police to assure her that kirkland wouldn’t be arrested
but the police found this suspicious.
on march 2nd they arrested kirkland on charges of second deegree domestic violence assault drive by shooting making a fals statement,harassment and pssession of a stolen firearm .
prosecutor said he posed an extreme risk to meshay’s safety
with a score of 31 on a scale of 1 to 18
the judge held him on bail of $ 100,00 and ordered a domestic violence no contact order
kirkland violated this order ….kirkland violated this order within only hours of its issue.
he callled meshay twice from the clark county jail , saying she was the reason he’d been arrested and that he needed her to get the charges dropped.
she said was trying her best , he was released on bail later that day but was cited in court for violating the no contact order
a higher bail and GPS monitoring was ordered on march 6th but the next the case was dismissed
and he was not fitted with a GPS monitor
with this troubled history he was the first suspect the police looked to.
in their investigation of the mother and daughter ‘s disappearance.
they served a search warrant for his house and car
and on march 19th they took him into custody based on the violation of the order ,this gave the police the opportunity to intervuew him about meshay and layla
kirkland suggested that maybe meshay’s ex-husband had something to do with it but the police had already visited him and determined that meshay and layla weren’t with him .
unlike kirkland he didn’t have an outstanding no contact order against him.
kirkland presented himself if not as an upstanding citizen then at least one who is trying to do better and was complying with the terms of his past run-ins with the law
but this wasn’t true, because there were something else the investigators knew about him …. something that made him even more of a suspicious figure.
Kirkland hadn’t left arkansas just because he longed for the western seaboard ,he’d fled another criminal case. this time a murder .
in november 2017 a 57 year old called curtis urquhart went missing in pine bluff arkansas
earlier that year he’dbeen charged with second degree forgery and theft of property
his body was discovered lying in a ditch by three men on december 11th ,he’d been shot in the head and his body had been mutilated by wildlife
he’d last been seen leaving a law office with kirkland then 22
on november 27th this threw kirkland under suspicion of his murder and the police brought him in for an interview
kirkland admitted he’d killed curtis, that same december,his google history showed searches for
” how to get blood out of a car seat , “how to beat murder ,” killing the only witness” and other ways to get away with murder”
he’d said he hand curtis had left the notary’s office together and driven around when curtis had started to demand money from him.
kirkland refused but curtis kept insisting and he saidhe was scared for his life ,he reached under the driver’s seat and pulled out a handgun which he used to shoot curtis in the head .
he then dumped curtis’s body in a ditch and drove away
kirkland was charged with first’ degree murder and abuse of a corpse
he was released on $ 250, 000 bond and some point between 2018 and 2020 moved across the country to washington state .
there far from obeying the terms of his bail , he continued to violated
in 2020 vancouver police investigated him for possession of a stolem semi-automatic handgun.
he surrendered it to them but the following march he lied on an application to buy another semi-automatic handgun , saying he wasn’t under indictment for a felony
the application was denied .
but he got hold of a gun somehow anyway ,because in december 2022 he used it to shoot at meshay’s balcony window
kirkland’s murder charge in arkansas was still pending
and now the disappearance of a mother and child was connected to his name
on march 17th 2023, the day before meshay and layla were reported missing
an arkansas judge revoked his bail in the murder case, on the 22nd he appeared in court and admitted he was wanted in arkansas but refused to wave extradition to be turned over to the authorities there
the judge ordered that he be held without bail, and that same day two bodies were found….
on wednesday morning the clark county sheriff’s office got a call from someone who was walking on this rural road in washougal
the caller described what they believed to be two life sized mannequins down an embankment near a creek.
but when deputies arrived on scene, they discovered two bodies.
investigators contacted vancouver police, who determined
this was likely meshay melendez and layala stewart
they both been killed by gunshot wounds to the head meshay had been shot once and layla twice and layla had been assaulted
the investigators took this discovery to their interrogation of kirkland.
kirkland tried to bring the conversation back to his past charges including the murder in arkansas
but he ‘d already confessed to that ,this was something new
and it displayed eerily similar hallmarks to the killing of curtis .
they’d been shot in the head like curtis and left in a ditch also like curtis.
investigator urged him to confess,but he refused
from there he asked for his attorney, but even without a confession, the evidence was mounting that he’d had something to do with meshay and layla murders.
on march 13th and 15th he texted a friend asking if she knew a secluded local areas , like woods , or a place where he could bury a gun
on the 15th he also transferred $ 4,200 from meshay’s bank account to his own using her phone
he texted another friend on march 18th saying i need to get rid of this stolo.
which is slang for a stolen car
it was possible he was referring to the charger that meshay and layla had last been seen in
the police discovered shell casings, a large blue tarp, and both meshay and layla’s blood.
it seemed certain that they’d been killed in his car
they talked to the friend that meshay and kirkland had been staying with on the night of the 11th, this friend joe said that they both left the house at about 5:00 am march 12th.
saying they were going out to make some money
kirkland came back in his car at about 8: 00 am , blasting loud music meshay in the passenger seat, she was naked from the waist down and seemed to be passed out
joe reached into the car to turn the music down and kirkland shouted at her to close the car door but she didn’t suspect something was a miss.
faitfully she handed layla and layla’s kitten rocky over to kirkland and kirkland drove off .
kirkland often took layla to school, and she trusted him, like a father, when she got into his car that morning she would have no idea what was coming and no idea that her mom was already dead in the front seat.
with all the evidence mounting , kirkland had to change his story.
he then claimed that he’d given meshay a pistol to use to protect herself in her line of work about which he was vague, he said that on that fateful morning they’d been arguing in the car about his second cell phone and she’d fumbled with her gun during the conversation
she accidentally shot her daughter twice and then herself, this is what he claimed.
but why try to hide the bodies?
and it would be some coincidence with the facts of the case so closely resembing the 2017 murder of curtis
ultimately kirkland warren had no choice but to plead guilty
he admitted to the murders of layla and meshay and he entered an Alfred plea to a charge of assaulting layla ,this plea allowed him to maintain his innocence but functioned as a guilty plea in sentencing
for these crimes he was sentenced to life in prison
meshay’s family questions why he was allowed out on bail for the domestic violence charge when he had a murder case standing against him.
“the trouble is, when we have a legal system with district attorneys and judges they are horribly undertrained in domestic violence.
they know laws , but they don’t know a perpetrator,they don”t know the characteristics of a perpetrator, and they don’t know what they do to a victim.”
-Dr . kathie mathis
he also pleaded guilty to curtis’s murder , his sentence for this seven year old crime will run concurrently with the life sentence handed down for the killing of layla and meshay.
and though arkansas is a death penalty state, that punishment has been taken off the table
it was abolished in washington state in 2023
the motive for the murders remains unknown, though his interference in meshay’s accounts and his theft scheme involving his wife monet suggested it was potentially financial .
monet pleaded guilty to two counts of first- degree theft and two counts of attempted identity theft, she was sentenced to two years probation
kirkland warren now begins his life sentences
but the clark county community is angry
and meshay and layla’s family won’t ever move on
from the family to the larger community this tragic case has brought many tears, at a vigil at vancouver’s esther short park the weekend after meshay and l laylas bodies were found
hundreds came out to remember and honor them