48 Hours - Post Mortem | The Firefighter's Secret

CBS Correspondent Nikki Battiste and 48 Hours Producer Ruth Chenetz discuss the case of Melissa Lamesch who was found dead in her burning home the day before Thanksgiving in 2020. Melissa was also nine months pregnant and had been involved with a firefighter. The team discusses the relationship between the two, the defense’s attempt to cast doubt on the investigation, and the touching story of how Melissa's family discovered the name she had chosen for her soon-to-be-born baby boy.

Duration: 22m
Broadcast on: 03 Dec 2024
Audio Format: other

[MUSIC] Welcome back to Postmortem. I'm your host, Anne Marie Green. Today, we're discussing the case of Melissa Lamish. Now, the day before Thanksgiving in 2020, firefighters responded to smoke at an Illinois home. But once they were inside, they found Melissa. She was nine months pregnant dead on her kitchen floor. She was scheduled to give birth actually two days later. She was going to be induced. So, of course, there's a lot to discuss when it comes to this case. We are joined today by CBS correspondent Nikki Batiste and 48 hours producer, Ruth Chenitz. Thanks for being here. It's good to see you. Hello, thanks. Okay, so just a reminder to everyone, I say this every week. If you haven't listened to the 48 hours episode yet, you can find the full audio just below this episode in your podcast feed. So, go take a listen and then come back for this conversation. Okay, let's get into it. So, Matthew Plodie, he suspected of killing Melissa and the baby that they were expecting and then setting the fire in her home to conceal the death. But what's surprising about this is that he's an actual firefighter. And so, one would think, if anyone would be able to set a fire that would be difficult to investigate, it would be him. That was actually one of my very first thoughts when we were researching the story is, wait a second, he seems like the one person who might be able to set a fire that would destroy evidence. But he's a firefighter. He's not an arson investigator. He doesn't necessarily know how to start the perfect fire. And remember, if he did, in fact, do this, he would have wanted to destroy all the evidence, but he would have no way of knowing exactly how to commit the perfect crime in that way. And even, as you know, from other stories we do, people have plans and they make mistakes. Who knows what happened? If he panicked, if he didn't complete his plan, but yeah, somebody who usually puts out fires starting a fire. Yeah, putting out a fire is definitely much different. The oven wasn't on, the burners were turned off. But when you see pictures of the crime scene and anyone who watched the show sees, I mean, the kitchen is destroyed, which she was found, but a lot of the rest of the house, including the room that had stuff for the baby, which is gut-wrenching to see, was intact. So we know from the hour that the relationship between Melissa and Plody, it wasn't great. But it had never been a real sort of solid relationship anyways. Do we know anything about Melissa's family and Plody, whether they had our relationship? Our older sister had heard about him, but didn't meet him. So it was one of these friends on again, off again. They never really dated. They were never boyfriend and girlfriend. The people that we spoke to had not met him before and the older sister recalled hearing about him from when they were friends, like how you talk about your group of friends to your siblings.

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