How could this have happened here?
Sam’s stay in New York had turned hellish.
The torture, according to court records, started on New Year’s Day and went on for weeks. Seven people, including Arzuaga, held him captive in Room 22, meting out a hideous pattern of abuse. Authorities say the group kicked him, beat him with sticks, dog toys, ropes, bottles, belts, canes and wooden boards. They starved him, forced him to eat feces and drink urine and tobacco spit.
They made him kneel facing a wall, doused him with bleach and sexually assaulted him with foreign objects, court records say. Among those in the room were two young children who were coerced into some of the abuse, authorities said. Asked this week if the children belonged to Arzuaga and if the children were now in state custody, Wolford, the assistant district attorney, declined to comment.
New York State Police Capt. Kelly Swift, the local commander overseeing the case, called Sam Nordquist’s killing “one of the most horrific crimes I have ever investigated.”
While all this was going on for weeks inside Room 22, there appears to be no indication that that any witnesses overheard the torture. No one reported any suspicious activity at Patty’s Lodge, officials said this week.
The case has triggered a wave of soul-searching in Canandaigua, with neighbors wondering how the crime went unnoticed for so long.
Tarra Morrice, who lives with her husband and young children in a house neighboring Patty’s Lodge — a few dozen feet from Room 22 — said she wept upon hearing the news.
“We didn’t hear anything, didn’t notice anything,” Morrice, 38, said. “That’s part of the reason we were upset, because any indication could have helped or something. But there was nothing.”
Some in the area want Patty’s Lodge to be held responsible for what happened there. But the hotel is not under investigation for any wrongdoing, authorities have said.
Still, for years, the hotel has been the target of complaints from residents, code enforcement officers and the Department of Social Services about rodent and insect infestations, government inspection records show.
Railyn Rogers was placed by the Department of Social Services at Patty’s Lodge for three weeks in 2022 with her 3-year-old daughter. She still lives in the area, still drives past Patty’s Lodge. Her experience, and the details of what happened to Sam there, haunt her.
“How many times did we drive past there and this was going on?” Rogers said. “It makes me feel some sort of guilt. It’s horrible.”
Manny Patel, who is identified in city inspection records as an owner of Patty’s Lodge, declined to comment when NBC News reached him by phone. He said he’d talked to investigators and had nothing more to share. “I have no say in this,” he said.
Concerns for Sam grow
Weeks went by with little or no response from Sam, his family said. His sister Kayla Nordquist kept sending her brother pictures of her children. She said that aside from threats of more welfare checks, Sam had a weak spot for photos of her young kids and would usually gushingly respond. But not this time. Over the next few days, the family repeatedly called Sam’s phone and got no response.
On Feb. 9, they called New York State Police, asking for another welfare check on Room 22.
Police told the family someone answered the door and claimed not to know who Sam was, Linda said. When the family told authorities that the explanation was implausible, troopers returned to Room 22 the same day and this time were met by Arzuaga. Arzuaga said she and Sam broke up and that he left a few weeks prior, police said, according to his mother.
That same day, Linda and Kayla asked a trooper to file a missing person report. The trooper declined, they said.
“She said I need to stop watching so much TV, something about it not being a true crime episode,” Kayla said.
The State Police disputed their account. “Upon receiving concerns about Mr. Nordquist’s whereabouts, we took appropriate investigative steps,” said State Police spokesperson Crane.
“We understand the family’s grief and frustration and remain committed to a full and thorough investigation,” Crane added.
Sam’s family insists that police did not treat Sam as a missing person until Feb. 10, when the family filed a missing person report with the Oakdale Police Department, their local police in Minnesota. That report was added to a national law enforcement database and forwarded to authorities in Canandaigua.
The family also posted online about their search — and amateur sleuths and local residents jumped into action.
Michelle Pickard, who lives in nearby Farmington, New York, said she came across a missing person flyer for Sam on Facebook and felt compelled to help. Pickard said she spent a couple days searching for Sam at Patty’s Lodge and elsewhere, showing pictures to residents.
“I don’t know what drew me to this,” Pickard, 47, said in an interview. “I don’t normally do things like this. I could tell how Kayla was feeling. My heart just told me to do it. I would want someone to do the same for me.”
Sam’s family planned to fly to New York to do investigative work of their own, they said. Linda was waiting for her next paycheck before she could book a trip to Canandaigua to find her son.
“We were going to blow horns and drive up and down the streets. I made 300 copies of flyers. We were going to put a flyer on every door, every business, go door to door if we had to,” she said through tears. “Because if something was happening or if Sam was to a point where he couldn’t go home or whatever, at least Sam could possibly hear my voice and know: ‘Mom’s here. Mom’s looking.’”
Her opportunity never came.
A body found, and arrests made
On Feb. 13, local authorities found Sam’s decaying body, wrapped in plastic, in a field about a 20-minute drive southeast of Patty’s Lodge. His body was likely dumped at the beginning of the month, investigators said.
The next day, that five people — Arzuaga; Jennifer Quijano, 30; Kyle Sage, 33; Patrick Goodwin, 30; and Emily Motyka, 19 — were arrested in his death. A few days after that, two other suspects — Arzuaga’s son Thomas Eaves, 21, and Kimberly Sochia, 29 — .
They have all been charged with first-degree murder, second-degree murder, kidnapping, conspiracy, endangering the welfare of a child and concealment of a human corpse. Four of them — Arzuaga, Quijano, Sage and Goodwin — have also been charged with aggravated sexual abuse. Arzuaga additionally faces two charges of coercion for allegedly forcing the children to participate in the attacks.
Authorities haven’t revealed why they believe this particular group came together to carry out the torture and killing. They have only said some were romantically involved and others knew each other from the area. Records show that Goodwin, a registered sex offender, was staying in Room 16 at Patty’s Lodge at the time of his arrest. He and Sage, who lived nearby, were both on parole after serving prison time. Goodwin was convicted of sexual abuse and sexual acts against children, Sage of disseminating indecent materials to minors.
An outpouring of support
In death, Sam finally received what he traveled so far to find: an outpouring of love.
For weeks, friends, family members and strangers who sympathized with his tragic story have joined a wave of online posts commemorating him and calling for justice. LGBTQ advocates have held vigils and protests in his honor.
Advocates have also publicly questioned why the case hasn’t been considered a hate crime. Some have compared Sam to 21-year-old Matthew Shepard, a gay man who was beaten, tied to a fence and left for dead in 1998. Shepard’s murder drew international attention and fueled a movement for anti-LGBTQ hate crime legislation.
Transgender people, in particular men, are significantly more likely to face intimate partner violence, according to federal data and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
But those accused in the death were not charged with a hate crime. New York investigators pushed back against the criticism; Wolford, the prosecutor, said Sam’s killing was being prosecuted as murder in the first degree, the most serious crime in New York state law, with a penalty of life in prison without parole. (New York doesn’t have the death penalty.)
“A hate crime would make this charge about Sam’s gender or about Sam’s race, and it’s so much bigger,” Wolford said. “To limit us to a hate crime would be an injustice to Sam. Sam deserves to have his story told in its entirety.”
She said that the investigation would continue. Dates for the seven defendants’ next court appearances have not yet been set.
The Nordquist family traveled to New York last month to meet with investigators and receive his body.
They brought him home, back to Minnesota, where he was laid to rest.
At Patty’s Lodge, the children’s bicycles that leaned outside Room 22 have been removed. A red rose placed at the doorstep is now gone. The rainbow Pride flag and a Puerto Rican flag that adorned the windows no longer hang there.
They have been replaced by a set of stark, white blinds.
