Marchella Modica was a 22-year-old Black woman from El Dorado, Arkansas, who was nine months pregnant when her body was found in a roadside ditch near Wesson, about fifteen miles outside El Dorado. Schoolchildren riding a bus spotted something in the ditch on the morning of January 28, 2020; official notices and family tributes record her death around January 29, 2020. Both Marchella and her unborn son, whom she had named Jayceon Isiah, were gone when authorities arrived. Family remembered her as a devoted mother who worked jobs such as Burger King and formerly Home Depot, sang in church choir, and was active in youth ministry. Investigators treated the death as a homicide; public reports said she had been killed by gunfire.

Investigative tips led authorities to focus on Jay Reginald Moody, then 29 and from El Dorado. In mid-February 2020 he was arrested and held on two counts of capital murder alleging the deaths of Marchella and her unborn child. In July 2021 he entered a plea to two counts of first-degree murder with a firearm enhancement, replacing the capital charges. Her family held vigils and memorials, marking the abrupt loss of a mother and a child. Did anyone in the area know Marchella’s routines or remember seeing her in late January 2020?