A firefighter in Illinois has been convicted of murdering his pregnant girlfriend before setting her home on fire in November 2020.
A jury last week found Matthew Plote guilty of first-degree murder, intentional homicide of an unborn child, residential arson, aggravated domestic battery, and concealment of a homicidal death, according to court records. Plote is said to have strangled his girlfriend, Melissa Lamesch, just days before she was to give birth to their child.
During the trial, forensic pathologist Dr. Amanda Youmans testified that Lamesch had sustained “the most hemorrhages that I have ever seen in a strangulation case.”
While officials at first believed the fire was accidental and that Lamesch had perished from smoke inhalation, a closer look revealed that it had been set intentionally.
“That there was a lack of any evidence of a fire on the stovetop, the facts that the kitchen cabinets above the stove had been destroyed by the fire, either by burning or by falling down and the fire patterns appear to move upwards and outwards from within that area,” said Mike Poel of the State Fire Marshal’s Office.
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Dr. Youmans and another forensic pathologist, Dr. Mark Peters, also both testified that they did not see significant smoke damage in Lamesch’s lungs, which would have been present had she died as a result of the fire.
Though Plote never confessed to the murder, the jury reached a guilty verdict after just two hours of listening to testimony in the case.
Sadly, domestic violence situations like these are not uncommon. Homicide is the leading cause of death among pregnant women in the United States, and many of these homicides are linked to domestic violence situations. Recently there have been a number of instances in which men have killed their pregnant partners. Some of these situations happen because the woman refuses to abort her child; in other cases, like Plote and Lamesch, the motive is unclear.
Plote is scheduled to be sentenced in April.
