00:00:06
for almost 20 years a young woman was
00:00:08
believed to be missing in the dense
00:00:11
colorado mountains
00:00:14
but 12 small pine needles in a clump of
00:00:16
hair suggested that investigators
00:00:19
narrowed their search to an area 9 000
00:00:22
feet above sea level
00:00:25
this is how forensic plant ecology
00:00:28
helped solve a very cold case
00:00:33
[Music]
00:00:40
[Music]
00:00:44
[Applause]
00:00:44
[Music]
00:00:58
[Music]
00:00:59
after graduating from college 25 year
00:01:02
old michelle wallace decided to pursue
00:01:04
her love of photography
00:01:07
she was known primarily for her photos
00:01:09
of people
00:01:12
but she decided to try her hand at
00:01:14
landscape photography and she headed to
00:01:17
the mountainous wilderness of western
00:01:19
colorado
00:01:21
she rode polo ponies and branded cows
00:01:24
and went rock climbing and was a student
00:01:27
at the rochester institute and was quite
00:01:30
a student of photography
00:01:32
she was a realist and she knew how to
00:01:34
face things and
00:01:38
worked through them
00:01:40
michelle faithfully called her parents
00:01:42
almost every day
00:01:44
to let them know where she was and what
00:01:46
she was doing
00:01:48
but when several days passed without a
00:01:50
call
00:01:51
her parents became alarmed
00:01:55
i knew that she didn't run off you know
00:01:57
they said well this is one of these
00:01:59
girls that you know just decides she's a
00:02:03
free spirit and off she goes she she was
00:02:06
not that way
00:02:08
when local officials were told she was
00:02:10
missing
00:02:11
they instituted what was to become
00:02:14
the largest manhunt in colorado history
00:02:18
there were hundreds of people in the
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woods
00:02:21
literally walking hand in hand across
00:02:24
fields and mountains
00:02:26
search teams covered more than 3 000
00:02:29
square miles of isolated mountain
00:02:31
landscape
00:02:32
but found no sign of michelle or
00:02:36
her red station wagon
00:02:39
it was as if
00:02:40
michelle had simply
00:02:42
disappeared
00:02:45
then a week after she was reported
00:02:47
missing there was a potential break
00:02:52
a local rancher told police about a
00:02:54
german shepherd that had come down from
00:02:56
the mountains and chased his cattle
00:03:01
the rancher said he shot and killed the
00:03:03
dog
00:03:05
the name on the dog's collar
00:03:07
was okie
00:03:09
michelle's german shepherd
00:03:12
the fact that the dog obviously had been
00:03:15
separated from her and found dead later
00:03:19
was of great concern because people felt
00:03:21
clearly that michelle wallace would
00:03:22
never have willingly been separated from
00:03:24
her dog
00:03:26
and another ranch hand came forward with
00:03:28
even more information
00:03:32
he said michelle gave him a ride in the
00:03:34
mountains after his car broke down
00:03:39
he said his friend roy sat in the front
00:03:42
seat with michelle
00:03:43
and that he was in the back seat with
00:03:45
the german shepherd
00:03:46
[Music]
00:03:48
the ranch hand remembers the dog in
00:03:50
particularly because he had to sit in
00:03:52
the back seat of the station wagon with
00:03:54
the dog and amusingly recalled the dog
00:03:57
drooling on him as his new buddy roy in
00:04:00
the front struck up the conversation
00:04:02
with the girl
00:04:04
he said michelle dropped him off at a
00:04:06
local bar and she was taking roy further
00:04:08
down the road to his truck
00:04:11
he said he didn't know roy's last name
00:04:14
and never saw either of them again
00:04:16
the police are looking for a mysterious
00:04:18
roy they don't have a last name for this
00:04:21
man
00:04:23
all they know is that he's the last one
00:04:25
seen with
00:04:26
michelle
00:04:28
investigators suspected roy was the key
00:04:32
to michelle wallace's disappearance
00:04:35
[Music]
00:04:41
michelle wallace was last seen in her
00:04:43
car with a hitchhiker in the colorado
00:04:46
mountains
00:04:46
[Music]
00:04:48
about a week later
00:04:50
police stopped a man matching the
00:04:52
hitchhiker's description in pueblo
00:04:54
colorado 160 miles away
00:04:58
he was identified
00:05:00
as roy mellenson
00:05:02
mr melanson's background is pretty
00:05:03
checkered he had
00:05:05
been accused of and convicted of sexual
00:05:08
assault
00:05:09
and i believe louisiana and texas had
00:05:12
served prison time
00:05:14
in mellinson's possession was michelle's
00:05:17
backpack driver's license and the pawn
00:05:20
shop ticket for a 35 millimeter camera
00:05:25
on the camera was a roll of film
00:05:28
the last photographs on the roll of film
00:05:31
were photographs of michelle's dog oaky
00:05:33
wearing his
00:05:35
hiking packs in the very last photograph
00:05:38
on the roll was a picture of roy
00:05:40
melonson with a young woman that he met
00:05:42
in pueblo colorado
00:05:44
melinson denied having anything to do
00:05:46
with michelle's disappearance
00:05:50
he said they stopped for coffee and he
00:05:52
admitted sneaking out the back way and
00:05:54
stealing her car
00:05:55
[Music]
00:05:59
and he said michelle's dog was tied up
00:06:02
outside
00:06:03
melinson told police he dumped
00:06:06
michelle's car in amarillo texas
00:06:10
when police recovered the car they found
00:06:12
no evidence of violence either on the
00:06:14
inside or outside although the car had
00:06:17
been wiped clean of fingerprints
00:06:20
all they have is somebody who's admitted
00:06:22
stealing a car
00:06:24
from a young woman that he left in town
00:06:26
there is no body there's no evidence of
00:06:28
foul play
00:06:30
it was also suspicious that this wasn't
00:06:33
the only missing person's case melonson
00:06:36
was involved in
00:06:39
there is another case where a woman in
00:06:41
port arthur texas who was his landlady
00:06:45
disappeared and ironically the only
00:06:47
thing that was found was her car
00:06:49
and he was the last person seen with her
00:06:52
michelle's disappearance
00:06:54
sent her mother into a serious
00:06:55
depression
00:06:57
she
00:06:58
became more and more despondent she
00:07:01
couldn't live without her daughter
00:07:04
she lived through her daughter
00:07:07
one morning
00:07:08
george woke to discover his wife was
00:07:11
dead
00:07:12
i never felt anybody cold before
00:07:15
you just can't believe someone that
00:07:18
you lived with for 34 years
00:07:21
would do it
00:07:23
[Music]
00:07:24
she killed herself with an overdose of
00:07:27
barbiturates
00:07:29
my daughter was killed
00:07:31
she was killed
00:07:34
simple
00:07:35
michelle's mother left the suicide note
00:07:38
which included
00:07:40
one last wish
00:07:42
george actually showed me that note
00:07:45
that said when you find our daughter
00:07:46
bury her remains next to me bury her
00:07:49
beside me
00:07:51
with no evidence of foul play
00:07:54
and without a body
00:07:55
the case of michelle wallace's
00:07:57
disappearance went completely cold
00:08:01
because the difficulties improving the
00:08:02
crime of murder without being awfully
00:08:05
darn sure that your victim is dead
00:08:08
five long years passed
00:08:11
until investigators got another
00:08:12
potential break
00:08:15
a hiker on an isolated trail found what
00:08:18
looked like
00:08:20
a clump of braided hair
00:08:22
interestingly enough those braids are
00:08:25
identical in appearance to a photograph
00:08:28
that was actually obtained from the
00:08:30
camera of michelle wallace when it was
00:08:32
recovered in 1974
00:08:34
from the pueblo police department who
00:08:36
had recovered it from a pawn shop
00:08:39
again the case stalled the hair while
00:08:42
promising looked to be a dead end
00:08:46
another decade passed and the case grew
00:08:49
cold yet again
00:08:52
until a homicide investigator kathy
00:08:55
ireland discovered something in the
00:08:57
evidence file that had been overlooked
00:09:01
i came across a hairbrush that had been
00:09:03
bagged and sealed and it had michelle
00:09:06
wallace's name on it
00:09:08
and the forensic evidence it contained
00:09:11
changed the course of the investigation
00:09:18
cold case investigators discovered an
00:09:21
unfortunate oversight
00:09:23
when michelle wallace disappeared no one
00:09:25
thought to compare samples from her
00:09:27
hairbrush to the braided hair found in
00:09:30
the mountains
00:09:32
so everything was sent to joseph snyder
00:09:35
for forensic analysis
00:09:38
under a microscope
00:09:39
snyder visually compared samples from
00:09:42
michelle's hairbrush to the braided hair
00:09:45
looking for similarities in color
00:09:48
consistency and structure
00:09:52
microscopic characteristics were very
00:09:54
consistent with each other the widths
00:09:56
were the same
00:09:57
the medullary component was the same the
00:10:00
the center portions and the mid region
00:10:02
portions of the hair were the same
00:10:04
but this was not conclusive
00:10:07
microscopic similarity is still not a
00:10:10
match
00:10:12
but with this new evidence detective
00:10:15
ireland was not willing to let the case
00:10:17
go cold again
00:10:20
so she contacted a group of scientists
00:10:22
with an odd mission and an unusual name
00:10:27
they called themselves
00:10:29
necrosearch
00:10:30
and they find bodies no one else seems
00:10:33
to find
00:10:35
we are a multi-disciplinary entirely
00:10:38
volunteer organization that helps law
00:10:41
enforcement look for clandestine graves
00:10:43
and to recover evidence and to recover
00:10:45
bodies from those graves
00:10:46
for necro search the starting point was
00:10:49
the braided hair that was believed to be
00:10:52
from michelle wallace
00:10:55
forensic plant ecologist vicky trammell
00:10:58
looked for any plant material that was
00:11:00
in the hair
00:11:02
the hair had spent
00:11:04
five years
00:11:06
outside most likely be
00:11:09
being drug around by scavengers like
00:11:11
coyotes
00:11:12
so my question was not so much where is
00:11:15
the body because i had no way of
00:11:18
determining that but where had the hair
00:11:21
spent five years
00:11:24
the lack of soil in the hair suggested
00:11:26
the body had not been buried
00:11:29
the hair wasn't muddy and there was
00:11:31
bleach marks in other words bleached by
00:11:33
the sun in the places that were exposed
00:11:37
and that would not have happened had the
00:11:39
hair been buried for five years trammell
00:11:42
also found pine needles and shards of
00:11:46
bark in the braids
00:11:48
the bark was from an aspen tree which
00:11:51
tends to grow in cleared areas
00:11:54
she also found needles from two
00:11:57
coniferous tree species the sub-alpine
00:12:00
fir and the engelmann spruce
00:12:05
sub-alpine firs grow in elevations above
00:12:09
nine thousand feet
00:12:11
and engelman spruces grow in wet areas
00:12:15
suggesting the body was somewhere on the
00:12:17
mountain's north slope
00:12:19
which doesn't get much sun
00:12:22
trammell identified an area matching all
00:12:26
these parameters just one mile from
00:12:29
where the braided hair was discovered 15
00:12:31
years earlier
00:12:35
the necro search team made up entirely
00:12:37
of volunteers moved into action
00:12:41
they have a a commonality to them is
00:12:44
that they i think they all wanted to be
00:12:46
sherlock holmes at one time
00:12:49
the team marked off the area and began
00:12:52
what's known as a grid search
00:12:55
each grid measuring one square meter
00:12:59
on their hands and knees just a few feet
00:13:01
apart and literally crawling across the
00:13:03
forest floor
00:13:05
looking for any traces of something out
00:13:08
of the ordinary these are scientists
00:13:09
they're used to
00:13:11
looking for the minute
00:13:13
that is not
00:13:15
the ordinary
00:13:17
search teams thoroughly analyze one grid
00:13:20
area before moving on to the next
00:13:23
on the first day they found nothing
00:13:26
on the second
00:13:28
it was a different story
00:13:31
a lady banana cecilia armbrust who i
00:13:34
believe was a geologist with that group
00:13:36
had actually gone down the hill from
00:13:38
where the others were working
00:13:40
to answer the call of nature
00:13:42
and on her way back up had discovered
00:13:46
what appeared to her to be a skull
00:13:49
she yelled at i found it and we didn't
00:13:52
believe her at first
00:13:53
even though we know that she really
00:13:55
isn't much of a practical joker we
00:13:57
didn't believe her at first
00:13:59
the skull contained
00:14:01
an unmistakable feature michelle's
00:14:04
father told police about almost 20 years
00:14:07
earlier
00:14:08
michelle had a gold tooth
00:14:10
and the sunlight was just right
00:14:13
and it reflected
00:14:15
and then that's how they discovered her
00:14:18
she had never been buried and as a
00:14:20
matter of fact we could determine that
00:14:22
her body probably had just been tossed
00:14:24
off the side of the road and had rolled
00:14:26
up against a tree
00:14:27
and from there gravity and scavengers
00:14:30
had taken their toll
00:14:34
i was glad i could be able to help a
00:14:36
little bit
00:14:37
and i realized that no matter what we
00:14:40
did
00:14:42
that we found her remains it could never
00:14:44
bring her back
00:14:46
so that's that's part of the sadness
00:14:49
i think
00:14:51
but prosecutors still needed to find one
00:14:54
last piece of evidence proving her death
00:14:57
was the result
00:14:58
of violence
00:14:59
and not an accident
00:15:07
almost 20 years after michelle wallace's
00:15:09
disappearance
00:15:10
a team of forensic specialists searching
00:15:13
through the high altitude forests of
00:15:15
western colorado
00:15:17
found a human skull
00:15:21
nearby were other human bones identified
00:15:24
by a forensic anthropologist as those
00:15:27
from a female in her late teens to
00:15:30
mid-20s
00:15:32
this woman had been thrown from the road
00:15:35
and come to rest against the tree
00:15:37
her body her bones are found in such a
00:15:40
manner as to to indicate exactly how she
00:15:43
had come to rest
00:15:45
one of the scientists tested this
00:15:47
hypothesis by dropping a bucket from the
00:15:49
road at the top of the hill
00:15:53
the amazing thing is that the bucket
00:15:55
landed at exactly where the cranium had
00:15:58
been
00:15:59
the necro search team also found pieces
00:16:02
of michelle's clothing
00:16:05
the zipper from her jeans looked like it
00:16:08
had been pulled apart violently
00:16:12
it's obvious that the zipper has been
00:16:14
torn apart as opposed to is simply open
00:16:17
in the normal way so there's evidence of
00:16:21
some violence here
00:16:22
a forensic odontologist compared
00:16:25
michelle's dental records to the teeth
00:16:27
in the skull
00:16:29
and made a positive identification
00:16:34
police and prosecutors now focus their
00:16:37
attention
00:16:38
on roy mellinson the last known person
00:16:41
to see her alive
00:16:44
what do you want to do
00:16:45
you want to kill
00:16:47
that's what you want to do
00:16:50
even if it costs your life
00:16:55
prosecutors knew michelle stopped to
00:16:57
give mellinson and the other ranch hand
00:16:59
a ride into town after their car broke
00:17:02
down
00:17:05
michelle dropped one of the ranch hands
00:17:07
off at the local bar
00:17:09
but the other roy mellinson asked her if
00:17:12
she would drop him off farther down the
00:17:14
road so he could get his truck
00:17:17
she agreed
00:17:20
prosecutors believe
00:17:22
somewhere along the way
00:17:24
melonson ordered michelle to stop the
00:17:26
car
00:17:27
he left the dog out there was a struggle
00:17:29
resulting in the ripped zipper
00:17:32
and he killed her
00:17:36
[Music]
00:17:42
the evidence suggests he dumped her body
00:17:45
down the side of the mountain
00:17:48
later discovered by the necro search
00:17:51
team
00:17:52
[Music]
00:17:55
okie made his way to a ranch about 15
00:17:58
miles away an indication that michelle
00:18:02
was dead since he wouldn't have left her
00:18:04
side
00:18:05
if she had been alive
00:18:10
melonson drove michelle's car to texas
00:18:13
where he used her 35 millimeter camera
00:18:16
then pawned it with the unexposed film
00:18:19
inside
00:18:20
there were certainly the inferences that
00:18:22
were drawn from the fact that he was
00:18:24
buying clothing in downtown gunnison
00:18:27
driving michelle wallace's vehicle at
00:18:29
that time which told us that he knew
00:18:32
that she was dead and he knew that that
00:18:34
she was not around to make a report of a
00:18:36
stolen vehicle he was brazen about that
00:18:38
particular fact
00:18:41
by this time roy mellinson was serving
00:18:43
time in a kentucky prison for burglary
00:18:46
but was extradited to colorado to face
00:18:48
trial for murder
00:18:51
melonson pleaded not guilty and even
00:18:54
refused to attend the trial instead
00:18:57
he listened to the proceedings from his
00:18:59
prison cell
00:19:02
we are not required to prove motive
00:19:04
the issue got raised however during the
00:19:06
course of the trial and closing argument
00:19:08
because the defense said where's the
00:19:11
motive
00:19:12
and after the defense raised that issue
00:19:14
i asked the jury to look at the zipper
00:19:16
that was recovered from the levi's as it
00:19:17
was torn
00:19:20
in september of 1993
00:19:23
a jury found roy mellinson guilty of
00:19:26
first degree murder
00:19:28
he was sentenced to life in prison
00:19:31
see these bastards the devastation that
00:19:33
they leave behind nobody knows
00:19:38
they think they killed an individual
00:19:40
they killed
00:19:41
dozens of people
00:19:43
[Music]
00:19:46
they let these animals roam the street
00:19:49
when they shouldn't
00:19:53
and i think that probably i'll be dead
00:19:55
and this
00:19:56
this
00:19:57
animal
00:19:58
has a chance of walking the street again
00:20:03
and that's what hurts
00:20:05
michelle's father
00:20:07
is thankful to forensic science and the
00:20:09
volunteers who worked so diligently
00:20:13
to find his daughter
00:20:15
they
00:20:16
found the site
00:20:17
and brought it to a conclusion
00:20:20
to me
00:20:21
you can't express the gratitude
00:20:26
and
00:20:29
i i just couldn't believe
00:20:32
that it finally came to an end
00:20:35
the system of justice worked in this
00:20:36
particular case
00:20:38
whether
00:20:40
the system itself ever awards justice
00:20:43
to a victim or their family is in my
00:20:45
opinion a hard question to answer when
00:20:48
you look at the loss of life in this
00:20:50
particular case and the tragedy
00:20:51
associated with it that verdict is never
00:20:53
going to make them whole never will
00:20:56
but
00:20:56
i have some confidence based upon what
00:20:58
happened
00:21:00
that our system does work and it works
00:21:02
fairly
00:21:03
[Music]
00:21:11
[Music]
00:21:26
[Applause]
00:21:31
[Music]
00:21:41
you
