Insets, from left: Mahamud Tooxoow Mahamed and Jessica McCormick (McDonald County Sheriff”s Office). Background: Apartment in Noel, Missouri, where McCormick was last seen alive (Google Maps).
A 43-year-old man killed his girlfriend in Missouri and stuffed her body in a pink suitcase before kidnapping her three children and taking them some 400 miles to Iowa, where he abandoned them to flee the country, authorities say.
Mahamud Tooxoow Mahamed, a permanent resident from Somalia, pleaded guilty Friday to kidnapping resulting in death for the slaying of 25-year-old Jessica McCormick, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri announced.
Mahamed came onto police radar on July 16, 2019, when McCormick called 911 to say he held a knife to her throat and tried to force her to have sex with him at their apartment in Noel, which is in the Ozarks, according to a plea agreement. McCormick also expressed concern that Mahamed would harm her children, one of whom he fathered. She ran outside and called 911.
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“He’s going to go up,” McCormick told dispatchers, referring to her apartment.
She was then overheard yelling at Mahamed.
“Tito stop, please don’t. He’s going upstairs to the kids now, come on!” she screamed.
Police rushed to the apartment, but Mahamed fled the scene. It was the last time McCormick was seen alive. McCormick and her kids, who at the time were ages 4, 2, and 6 months, were reported missing on July 17, 2019.
The McDonald County Sheriff’s Office on July 29, 2019, received a 911 call from a man who saw a pink suitcase with feet sticking out on Missouri Highway 59 in Lanagan, roughly six miles from McCormick’s apartment. It appeared the suitcase had fallen from a bluff above, tearing the zipper and exposing the feet. The body was badly decomposed, the feds said.
Around the time McCormick’s body was discovered, Mahamed called his cousin in Minnesota and told her he was bringing McCormick’s three kids to her. When the cousin asked why, Mahamed said “something bad had happened and he could be in trouble,” cops wrote.
Mahamed arrived at the cousin’s home in Rochester, Minnesota, on Aug. 1, 2019. The cousin gave Mahamed some cash to rent a hotel room, but he returned to the cousin’s home a couple of days later and tried leaving the kids with her. Instead, she gave Mahamed money for another hotel room. But he ended up taking the kids to a friend’s home in Des Moines, Iowa.
Police recovered the kids, who were not physically harmed, on Aug. 8, 2019. The friend told cops that Mahamed had shown up with the kids a couple of days prior. On the day they were recovered, the friend said she woke up to the kids crying around 4 a.m. Mahamed was nowhere to be found. He had left her a note saying “he could not care for the children and had left,” cops wrote.
Meanwhile, the suspect told other friends he didn’t know where McCormick and the children were.
“I’m trying to find them,” he said in one message. “… it’s just the safety of her and the kids is what everybody is worried about.”
“Who the f— has my kids,” he said in another.
Sometime between then and Sept. 19, 2019, Mahamed fled the country and traveled to Guatemala.
Police obtained a warrant to search Mahamed and McCormick’s car and found clothing items with her blood on them, along with items that appeared to have been bleached. Investigators also spoke to one of Mahamed’s friends, who sold him the pink suitcase.
Mahamed was detained in Guatemala and extradited back to the United States in July 2021. He’s been in federal custody ever since.
The defendant faces life in prison when sentenced at a date to be determined.
