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