💔🕯️ SHE WAS EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT AND WAITING TO MEET HER BABY — THE HEARTBREAKING CASE OF LIESE DODD

ALTON, ILLINOIS — January 2025 — Liese Dodd was only 22 years old and just weeks away from welcoming her first daughter when her life took a heartbreaking turn.

On June 9, 2022, Liese was found unresponsive inside her apartment in Alton, Illinois. She had been approximately eight months pregnant and preparing for the arrival of a baby girl. 👶💔

For her family, the tragedy meant losing not only a young woman they loved, but also the future they had imagined for the mother and daughter who were supposed to begin a new chapter together.

Liese’s former boyfriend, Deundrea Holloway, was later accused in connection with her pᴀssing.

According to prosecutors, the relationship between Holloway and Liese had ended, and Liese did not want to continue it. Authorities said the circumstances surrounding that separation were part of the events that preceded the fatal incident.

The case then moved through a lengthy legal process.

For more than two years, court proceedings and competency evaluations continued as prosecutors and defense attorneys worked through the case.

On January 17, 2025, Holloway pleaded guilty to charges including first-degree murder, intentional homicide of an unborn child and concealment of a homicidal death.

A Madison County judge subsequently sentenced him to 60 years in prison.

The sentence brought a significant legal chapter to a close.

But for Liese’s family, there is no simple ending.

A prison sentence cannot restore the young woman who was preparing to become a mother. It cannot give her family the opportunity to watch her hold her baby for the first time. And it cannot create the countless memories that should have followed. 💔

Liese should have been preparing a nursery, choosing baby clothes, imagining her daughter’s first smile and wondering what kind of person her little girl would become.

She should have had the chance to meet her daughter.

Her daughter should have had the chance to know her mother.

Instead, both lives were lost before that first meeting could ever happen. 🕯️👶

Stories like Liese’s can easily become focused on court dates, charges and sentences. But behind every headline is a person with dreams, relationships and a future.

Liese was more than a name in a legal case.

She was a 22-year-old woman preparing for motherhood.

She was a daughter, a loved one and a mother who never got the chance to hold the child she was carrying.

Her unborn baby was also a life her family had already begun preparing to welcome.

🕊️ May Liese and her baby girl be remembered not only for the heartbreaking circumstances surrounding their loss, but for the love and hope that surrounded them.

If their story touched your heart, leave a ❤️ below and share a kind message for Liese’s family.