By Larry Judkins
Glenn County Observer
Yesterday, March 12, The Observer reported that one of the three Northern California teenagers, Angelo Hawk Sanchez of Corning, had been sentenced to 50 years in state prison for his role in a double homicide in Montana.
On November 23, 2024, an anonymous person contacted The Glenn County Observer, claiming that “Melody [Rose Bernard] was behind it all.”
The unidentified person asked, “Why isn’t she being charged with conspiracy to commit murder [for] her role in both killings? She was on the phone before, during and after the shootings with the man that ordered the hit, she let the murderers use her vehicle, she hid them out, she tried to pay people to dispose of the suspect vehicle, and the first thing she tells the cops when they arrive is that he fell off the wagon and she was ordered to go find him.”
The person continued, “That sounds like she was trying to cover her part in the plot by insinuating he got himself killed and she never said who ‘ordered’ her to go find him.”
The person then alleged, “We all know the guy in the pen told her to find him and to show her what’s going to happen to her if she didn’t come up with all the money she owed them. Instead of owning up to her greed and blowing all that money, she blamed it on [murder victim Darrin Wade Caplette] and said he fell off the wagon and got him and that ex-con rapist [presumably, this refers to the other murder victim, Thomas Roderick ‘T.R.’ Yallup], killed.”
The anonymous person concluded, “She needs to be charged in connection with those killings and in the deaths of those that overdosed on her drugs while she was having half the rez sell for her.”
One of the anonymous individual’s wishes came true. Bernard hasn’t been charged in connection with the murders, but on Monday, January 6, she pled guilty in federal District Court in Great Falls to possession with intent to distribute controlled substances and to use of a firearm in the commission of a drug trafficking crime.
On the drug charge, Bernard is facing a mandatory minimum of 10 years to life in prison, a $10 million fine and at least five years of supervised release. On the firearm charge, Bernard is facing a mandatory minimum of five years to life in prison, consecutive to any other sentence, a $250,000 fine and five years of supervised release
Sentencing is set for May 1, and Bernard was kept in custody pending that date.
One of Sanchez’s co-defendants, Angelo Castillo-Haffley of Corning, is scheduled for trial Monday, March 24.
Another co-defendant, Miguel Ibanez of the Orland area, who was 16 at the time of the shooting, was scheduled to undergo a status hearing on Monday, February 10.
The Glenn County Observer 