Wichita police are investigating the death of 68-year-old Lorretta M. Moody as a homicide after her body was discovered inside a suitcase dropped off at a fire station, less than 17 hours after her family reported her missing.
Two unidentified individuals brought the suitcase containing Moody's remains to Wichita Fire Station 22, located south of Pawnee on Hydraulic, on Wednesday. Moody was pronounced dead shortly after 6 p.m. that evening. Her family had filed a missing person report with the Wichita Police Department just hours earlier, shortly after 1:30 a.m. the same day.
Police spokesperson Andrew Ford told the Daily Mail that the two people who delivered the suitcase are not suspects. They are not persons of interest, either.
"We're not calling them persons of interest; they're not suspects. They're just people we're talking to."
Ford offered no explanation for how the pair came to possess Moody's body or why they chose a fire station as the drop-off point. The Wichita Police Department said there is no apparent threat to the public but provided no further detail on the circumstances of Moody's death.
Moody's family described a woman who could not have gone far on her own. She stood 4 feet 11 inches tall, "or a little shorter," they said, and weighed "maybe 70 pounds or less." Family members stated on Facebook that she could barely walk without assistance, relied on a walker, required supplemental oxygen around the clock, and took daily medications.
When she disappeared, she had none of those things with her. That detail alone raises hard questions about whether Moody left voluntarily or was taken from the 2400 block of South Mosley in Wichita, where she was last seen.
The missing person report was processed that Wednesday morning under standard procedures the department uses for people not ordinarily reported missing, a category that includes elderly individuals, autistic persons, and children. By evening, the search was over in the worst possible way.
Cases involving missing women later found dead have drawn national attention in recent months, and Moody's case adds another grim chapter.
Public records reviewed by the Wichita Eagle show that Moody and a man named Robert Henderson co-owned a property at 2135 South Mosley. That home was sold at a tax sale to Rental Sales Remodeling LLC. In March, the company filed an eviction petition against Moody and Henderson.
Kansas Secretary of State filings list Victor Kammavongsa, Bounleng Kammavongsa, and Phoukhong Phetkhamchanh as owners of Rental Sales Remodeling LLC. Nothing in the available reporting connects the company or its owners to the homicide investigation. Henderson's status in the probe is also unknown.
What remains unclear is where Moody had been living after the eviction proceedings began, and whether the upheaval in her housing situation left her more exposed to whoever is responsible for her death. Her last known location, the 2400 block of South Mosley, sits close to the property she once owned.
The discovery of a woman's body inside a suitcase is not without precedent, but each case carries its own set of unanswered questions, and Moody's has plenty.
Wichita police have not released a cause of death. No arrests have been announced. The department issued a statement saying investigators "are continuing to interview individuals, review evidence, and work to establish a complete timeline of events."
That timeline has significant gaps. Police have not said when or where Moody died, how her body ended up in a suitcase, or what relationship, if any, the two unidentified individuals had to her.
Moody's granddaughter, Angelyna Moody-Fletcher, posted a tribute on Facebook that captured the family's grief and resolve:
"Trying to make sense of the senseless. I'll miss our conversations every single day. I'll miss how you'd call me at random times and we'd talk on the phone for hours."
In a second post, Moody-Fletcher wrote that she would not let her grandmother's death go unanswered:
"I only hope you truly know how cherished and loved you were by us all Nama. I will never stop talking about you. I will never stop fighting for you. I don't care what it takes."
Moody's sister, who was not identified by name, expressed the same determination. "Can't put into words how much I miss my sister over a very cruel death," she wrote on Facebook. "My heart is broken. Rest high, my beautiful angel. We will get justice for you."
Homicide investigations involving women found dead under suspicious circumstances often hinge on the earliest hours of evidence collection. Whether Wichita detectives moved fast enough on the missing person report, filed more than 16 hours before Moody's body surfaced, is a question the family will surely press.
The police department's insistence that the two people who carried a dead woman's body to a fire station in a suitcase are merely "people we are talking to" may reflect an abundance of legal caution. It does not reflect the urgency a 68-year-old woman's death demands.
Moody could barely walk. She weighed less than 70 pounds. She needed oxygen to breathe. Someone put her in a suitcase. The public deserves to know who, and how much longer that answer will take.
Cases like the discovery of unidentified remains in Tucson remind us that when investigations stall, families suffer the longest.
Lorretta Moody's family is not asking for much. They want justice. A woman who spent her final months facing eviction from her own home, who depended on a walker and an oxygen tank just to get through the day, deserved better than to end up discarded in a piece of luggage. The least her city can do now is find out who put her there.