DARK details have emerged in Mengqi Ji’s murder case after a tree led cops to solve her husband Joseph Elledge’s sick crime.
The body of the 28-year-old was discovered on March 25, 2021, in a shallow grave in Rock Bridge Memorial State Park near Columbia, Missouri.
Mengqi Ji’s body was discovered on March 25, 2021Credit: DEFENSE ATTORNEY MATEI STROESCU & DISTRICT ATTORNEY DAN KNIGHT/BOONE COUNTY DA’S OFFICE
A tree led cops to solve Mengqi’s husband Joe Elledge’s sick crimeCredit: CBS
Her burial site was found by a hiker in Rock Bridge Memorial State ParkCredit: ABC 17
But above the burial spot was a juniper tree that would eventually lead cops to discover who dumped her body there.
According to Elledge, Mengqi had taken her purse and disappeared sometime in the early morning hours of October 8, 2019.
“We didn’t have any big fights,” Elledge, then 23, told detectives.
“I think the last big fight was actually the week before. And it wasn’t really a big fight.”
Then in an interview with KRCG, Elledge said he had suspicions that Mengqi was having an affair.
“I know she was talking to somebody else on the side,” he said.
“And I didn’t know that until after she had left. But whatever she’s doin’ I just hope she’s safe.”
The then-Boone County prosecuting attorney, Dan Knight, told 48 Hours correspondent Peter Van Sant that even early on in the case, he saw cracks in Elledge’s story.
When she had allegedly disappeared, Mengqi left behind her passport, cellphone, house keys and car – but more noticeably, she had left behind her 1-year-old daughter.
Knight told Van Sant: “It became apparent early on that Mengqi would not have abandoned her child … She was a great mother.”
Investigators also found no trace of Uber rides, airline tickets or credit card activity which grew their suspicions about Elledge’s story that she had run away.
In a shocking twist in events, just 16 days after the woman disappeared, Elledge was arrested – but not in relation to Mengqi’s case.
Knight slapped Elledge with a charge relating to child abuse after Mengqi sent a photograph of their daughters bruised buttock to her mum in China, and claimed her husband had pinched the baby as she wouldn’t stop crying.
But the day he was arrested, cops searched Elledge’s apartment and stumbled across crucial pieces of evidence in relation to his wife’s disappearance.
They seized a muddy pair of boots which belonged to Elledge and kept on to them in case they would one day be relevant.
With no evidence tying Elledge to Mengqi’s disappearance, Knight decided to make a bold move after seeing Van Sant’s accumulation of evidence.
Knight charged Elledge with first-degree murder on February 19, 2020, just before Covid “basically shut down the court system” in the United States.
But the case was about to take a major turn, with Elledge sitting in jail on a $50,000 bond.
On March 25, 2021, a hiker in Rock Bridge Memorial State park noticed an unusual shiny object laying in the woods.
The man, Steven Roberts, soon realized he had stumbled across a woman’s purse and began digging around the area.
When he made the horrific discovery of a skull, he immediately called the cops.
Soon after, a coroner would identify the remains as Mengqi Ji’s.
The muddy boots made a comeback to the case as Knight began researching cases that had placed people at the scene of a crime through soil and gravel evidence.
He then realised that tree needles could be the missing link between Elledge’s muddy boot and him being the murderer.
Knight rang the Missouri Botanical Garden, and began the process of DNA testing several juniper tree needles found stuck to the soles of Elledge’s dirty boots.
The garden’s plant geneticist Christine Edwards meticulously removed the pine needles stuck to the sole of the muddy boot while her co worker was tasked with climbing several juniper trees around Mengqi’s grave.
He designated a number to each tree and then picked fresh needles from their highest branches.
“This involved a ladder and a 10, 15-foot-long pole pruner so that we could make sure that the needles that we were getting came from the exact tree,” he told Van Sant.
The DNA from the needles taken from Elledge’s boot was compared to the fresh needles and results showed an exact match to the tree that stands over Mengqi’s makeshift grave.
“DNA from these juniper trees helped solve this crime,” Knight said, with Van Sant claiming he had never seen anything like this before at his entire career at 48 Hours.
Van Sant reports on the case in The Tree That Helped Solve A Murder, which will air Saturday, July 29, at 10/9c on CBS and stream on Paramount+.
DNA matches were found in pine needles attached to Elledge’s boots and the tree which stood above Mengqi’s graveCredit: AP
Joe Elledge’s muddy boot that led cops to catching Mengqi’s murdererCredit: DEFENSE ATTORNEY MATEI STROESCU & DISTRICT ATTORNEY DAN KNIGHT/BOONE COUNTY DA’S OFFICE
Elledge insisted that Mengqi has suddenly disappeared in October 2019Credit: DEFENSE ATTORNEY MATEI STROESCU & DISTRICT ATTORNEY DAN KNIGHT/BOONE COUNTY DA’S OFFICE
Mengqi’s purse and skull was discovered by a hikerCredit: Facebook