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[music playing] NARRATOR: For 10 years, the
disappearance of a college co-ed was a mystery, until
new scientific testing cast
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a different light on a man who
had been a suspect all along. [music playing] After immigrating from
Cuba as a young man,
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Luis Melendi and his
wife Yvonne wanted a better life for
their children. So they stressed the
importance of education.
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Their 19-year-old
daughter Shannon shared those dreams and planned
to pursue a legal career.
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-Shannon would light up a room. She was just unbelievable. Her presence was felt
when she came into a room.
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-She was every mother
or father's dream child. She was outstanding
in whatever she did.
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She approached everything
in life with gusto. NARRATOR: President of her class
at Miami Southwest High School,
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Shannon graduated
cum laude, and was a member of the
National Honor Society. After high school she attended
Emory University in Atlanta,
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-She knew exactly
what she wanted. And she was going for it. -Her first two years there were
uneventful until March of 1994,
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when she suddenly
disappeared without a trace. -Basically we had a
19-year-old college student
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who dropped off the
face of the earth. Completely disappeared. NARRATOR: On the day
Shannon vanished,
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she worked at a softball
tournament to earn extra money. -She kept score
during morning games
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for the first time in her life. They broke for lunch. She was seen leaving
the field and was
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never seen or heard from again. -A friend of my
sister-in-law's came up to tell him that
Shannon was missing.
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And my husband
fell to the ground and he said we'll
never see her again. NARRATOR: When the local police
department learned of Shannon's
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disappearance, they initially
thought it was a college prank. -For days and days
and days, the attitude
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was, this is college
girls gone wild. Shannon has just come back from
a great spring break vacation.
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She's met lots of
new guys and girls. She's probably just hanging
out with one of them.
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NARRATOR: Shannon's college
roommate found Shannon's car the next day, abandoned at a
local gas station with the keys
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still inside. Police told her to
drive it back to campus. -So that car was never,
ever treated as evidence
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until many days after
Shannon's disappearance. Many days in which a number
of people were in that car.
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Many days after a number
of people drove that car. NARRATOR: 11 days after
Shannon's disappearance,
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school officials got
a telephone call. -Male voice called
Emory University on their hotline number, and
said that he had Shannon,
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and that he would
make demands later. -The man said, I
have Shannon's ring. I have the ring that
her aunt gave her.
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Shannon is OK, she misses
her family, and hung up. -We really thought that Shannon
was still alive at that point.
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We were hoping that we
would hear from them again, but we did not. NARRATOR: The FBI traced
the call to a payphone
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about 20 miles away. They didn't find
any fingerprints. They did, however,
find a small cloth bag
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with Shannon's ring
wrapped in masking tape. -There was hope. It was the first time that
maybe we can recover Shannon.
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-Please bring us
our daughter back. Please giver her back to us. We love you Shannon.
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VOICEOVER (TV): been missing since March 26-- VOICEOVER (TV): The
Emory University
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student was last seen-- VOICEOVER (TV): Family and
friends can only hope someone
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saw what happened-- VOICEOVER (TV): It's
the Melendi family posted a $10,000 reward--
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VOICEOVER (TV):
Friends continue to put up posters of Shannon's picture. -I just told [inaudible]
going to be OK.
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I hope the people that
took her feel guilty and they just leave her alone. NARRATOR: Police interviewed
everyone at the softball field
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where Shannon was last seen. The club manager said Shannon
worked as a score manager
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for an early softball game. The picture of that game told
police an astonishing story.
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-Lord have mercy. Anybody would have
had to pay attention to what was going on that day.
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It was so bizarre. Nothing like that
has ever happened to me in a softball game before.
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NARRATOR: Chastain said that
the plate umpire couldn't keep his eyes off of Shannon Melendi.
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-I mean, in the
middle of a pitch, he would physically
turn around, and then go back and start
talking to this girl.
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And here I am in the
middle of a pitch, and he had the nerve to turn
around and look and go, ball.
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I said, How do you know? You weren't even looking. Maybe because I
started walking folks.
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NARRATOR: The plate umpire
was 33-year-old Butch Hinton, a mechanic
at Delta Airlines.
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-He was a charismatic guy. He taught Sunday school to kids. He was very active
in his church.
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He played sports. He umpired honestly. -When questioned
by police, Hinton admitted speaking
to Shannon that day,
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but said he didn't see
her after the game. He said, he went
directly home and made
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several telephone
calls to friends. A check of his phone
records confirmed his alibi.
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-We knew from telephone
records and from speaking with other people
that Butch had made
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telephone calls from his home. Police also got a search
warrant for Hinton's home,
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but found nothing. And the trail of Shannon's
kidnapper went cold. It was frustrating
for the police
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and especially the family. -It seems like a lifetime. I remember things as before
Shannon and after Shannon.
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It's like two different people. I'm not the man I used to be. -Six months after
Shannon disappeared,
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police returned to
Butch Hinton's home. This time to
investigate a fire that started upstairs in
one of the bedrooms.
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He alleged it was an accident
with a vacuum cleaner. Then you look at how
the fire started.
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It was clearly an arson. An accelerant was poured
on the floor and ignited. He made an insurance claim.
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Fraud was involved. NARRATOR: While
investigating this fire, police learned something else.
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A neighbor told police
that Hinton set a bonfire in his backyard
six months earlier,
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the same night
Shannon disappeared. -They described
it was very eerie. They said it was
chilling to them.
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Very bizarre. So investigators searched
Hinton's home again. This time, they used
a backhoe to excavate
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the fire pit in his backyard. And they discovered
something odd. Nearly a dozen women's sweaters.
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All petite sizes.
-I knew his wife. I actually went to
high school with her. And the clothing that I
was finding in the fire pit
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was not her size. It didn't belong to
anybody that lived here. The Melendi family
did not recognize
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any of the sweaters
as Shannon's. -That is not the norm that
somebody would bury women's
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clothing in their
backyard, particularly when the clothing didn't
belong to their wife.
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REPORTER: How do you feel to
have the federal authorities digging up your yard
and your property?
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NARRATOR: Hinton denied any
knowledge of these sweaters. He thought they
might have been left
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there by the previous owner. The police didn't buy it. -Makes you wonder
who else is there.
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Who are we missing? How many other victims
do we not know about? NARRATOR: The FBI's forensic
science unit in Washington, DC
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didn't find blood or any
other forensic evidence on the sweaters. Also in the fire pit,
police found wire ties,
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cleaning products
and plastic pants like the ones used by
crime scene investigators.
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In Hinton's garage, they
found it nine rolls of tape. But none of this
pointed to murder.
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-I was in touch with Clint van
Zandt, who was an FBI profiler. And him and I got very close,
and he told me a lot of things
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that I wouldn't tell my family. He assured me that Shannon
was murdered by Butch Hinton,
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very early. And I kept that to
myself for a long time. NARRATOR: Butch Hinton did go
on trial for the arson fire
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and mail fraud for
sending the false claim to his insurance company. He was sentenced to
nine years in prison.
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And during that
time, no one heard from either Shannon
Melendi, or her kidnapper.
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For almost a decade,
no one knew what happened to Shannon Melendi. Her parents continued
to search for answers,
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and they heard plenty of
theories, but no hard proof. -It is life-changing. It takes a big toll on everyone.
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Takes a toll on your marriage. Takes a toll on your children. Friends, family. We lost a ton of friends.
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We had people
point-blank tell us that they just didn't want to
hear about Shannon anymore.
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Because they wanted to
hear about happy things. NARRATOR: Since the
prime suspect was already
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in prison for arson, Shannon's
case fell by the wayside. It was never closed. Over time, there were
other priorities.
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-There were so many
different circumstances that got in the way of the case. OJ Simpson was
three months after.
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That took a lot from the FBI. There was Oklahoma. There was the Centennial Park.
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All of those things were
bigger than Shannon's case. NARRATOR: Prosecutors John
Petri and Mike McDaniel
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reopened Shannon Melendi's case,
because they were convinced Butch Hinton was
somehow involved.
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-John Petri was one of
those movies you see. The miracle, the saint comes in. He was silent for several
seconds, and then he said,
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"I've been waiting for 10
years for this phone call. " NARRATOR: There was additional
pressure on the prosecutors
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since Butch Hinton was
about to be released from prison for his
arson conviction.
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-The FBI sent us boxes
and boxes of file folders. And I just started
going through them.
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Starting with number one. Using little sticky pads and
notes and highlighters to mark
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things that I thought
were either A, strong points to indicate that
Butch Hinton was guilty, or B,
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strong points to indicate
that no, he wasn't. I had no agenda at that point. NARRATOR: But first, they
needed forensic evidence.
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And for that, they started
at the very beginning, with the bag holding
Shannon's ring, left
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by the kidnapper
at the pay phone. -The ring didn't yield
any results forensically.
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There were no fingerprints,
no trace fibers on it to link anything to. But the bag was an important
piece of physical evidence
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that we had. NARRATOR: Prosecutors
learned that the bag was manufactured by the
Millheiser Cooperation
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-Millheiser had
only one customer in Georgia that
bought those bags. That was the Fulton
Paper Company in Atlanta.
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Fulton Paper Company had only
one customer for those bags. That customer was
Delta Airlines.
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NARRATOR: Coincidentally,
Butch Hinton worked for Delta
Airlines as a mechanic. Delta employees used
the bags to ship
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small engine parts for repair. During the original
investigation, police found similar cloth bags
in Butch Hinton's desk at work.
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So now, 10 years later,
forensic scientists compared one of the bags from
Butch Hinton's desk to the bag
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found with Shannon's ring. -We measured the distance
of the warp and weft, the two directions of the weave.
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And we also did a thread count. NARRATOR: Mary Miller
determined both bags were consistent in
construction and size.
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And the weave pattern
was identical as well. Both drawstrings were
made of the same cotton
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polyester microfiber. Then scientists analyzed
the masking tape that had been wrapped
around Shannon's ring.
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And compared it to
the rolls of tape confiscated from Butch
Hint's garage years earlier.
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-They were consistent
with respect to the width of the tape,
the adhesive that was used
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on the tape, and the
coating surface of the tape. The non-sticky side. NARRATOR: But on the tape,
wrapped around Shannon's ring,
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Miller noticed
something that had been overlooked years earlier. Tiny metallic particles,
clearly visible
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using an infrared spectrometer. -It was not a situation
where you can ignore that these particles
were present.
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That took us on
a different path. So it was really
remarkable to find. NARRATOR: Scientists placed the
samples on a carbon substrate
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so they could see them under the
scanning electron microscope. -We looked at it by
back-scattered electron
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imaging. And in that kind of
imaging, metal particles stand out very bright
against everything else.
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-That indicated to us that
there were elements that were of a higher atomic
weight, and further
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down the periodic table. NARRATOR: In other words,
these particles were unique. -It was a copper nickel
alloy that I had never
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seen in an environmental sample. A tungsten cobalt
alloy that I've never seen an
environmental sample.
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NARRATOR: A little research
identified the origin. Investigators discovered
that the only industry using
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this alloy was the
aerospace industry. Unbelievably, at the time
of Shannon's disappearance,
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Delta Airlines was using this
alloy to coat jet engine parts. -To find out that those metals
were only to be found in a jet
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engine aircraft manufacturing
and repair plant, I think that was very,
very critical in the case.
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NARRATOR: Scientists
found the same metal alloy on the rolls of masking tape
confiscated from Butch Hinton's
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garage, probably because he
had taken them from work. -What we found in
the '10 or so tapes
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that we had examined there,
was that collectively we saw all of these same unusual
types of metal particles
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that we had seen on the tape
from the telephone booth, and on a small piece of tape
from Butch Hinton's car.
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NARRATOR: And prosecutors
found one last item in Butch Clinton's background
that astonished everyone.
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When the FBI sent prosecutors
their case files on Butch Hinton, they discovered
some shocking information.
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Before he moved to
Atlanta, Butch Hinton had three prior
convictions in Illinois
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for sexual assault
and kidnapping. In one of those cases, his
first wife walked in on him
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while he was assaulting
a 14-year-old girl. She later testified against him. -Silver tape on her mouth.
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She had electrical
tape, silver tape, rope. Some kind of wire bounding
around her wrists,
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and around her ankles. NARRATOR: Hinton was
sentenced to only four years in prison for that crime.
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-This judge gives
Hinton four years. Then gets out in two. Moves out of the state.
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Moves into Georgia. And eventually
kills my daughter. NARRATOR: In Shannon
Melendi's case,
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prosecutors know that Hinton
met her at the softball game. They may have had lunch
together at a nearby restaurant.
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But Shannon didn't
return to the softball field for her afternoon games. Prosecutors believe he
took Shannon to his home
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and assaulted her. Later that afternoon, he
made several telephone calls to his wife and friends in
order to establish an alibi.
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He drove Shannon's
car to a parking lot and left the keys inside,
then returned home,
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where he most likely killed
Shannon later that night. Whether he cremated her
body in his backyard,
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or disposed of her remains
elsewhere, is still a mystery. Hinton kept Shannon's ring,
wrapped it in masking tape,
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and put it inside a cloth bag. Both items he had
stolen from work. He never realized that these
items contained the rare metal
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alloys from his workplace that
would tie him to the crime. After hearing the evidence, the
jury's verdict was predictable.
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JURY: We the jury
find the defendant, Colin C. Hinton
the Third, guilty. JUDGE: As to count
two, felony murder,
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how does the jury find him? JURY: We the jury
find the defendant Colin C. Hinton
the Third, guilty.
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NARRATOR: Hinton was
sentenced to life in prison. -Not a dry eye in the courtroom.
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Just getting that
verdict, and knowing that we had done the right
thing for that family,
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and that this person would never
see the light of day again. -Why I felt driven in this case,
I don't think I'll ever know.
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A lot of it, I think, goes
back to that first conversation I had with Lewis, when he said,
I've been waiting 10 years.
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God, how can I
disappoint this man? -The focus of our
family has always been to stop Butch Hinton
from hurting another family.
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From putting another
family through what we've been through. There's many Butch
Hinton's out there.
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And we must change our
laws so families don't have to go through what
we've been through.
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-I used to be a big proponent
of the death penalty. But I think death would
be too quick for him.
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-They took something
as small as a bag and turned that into a suspect. And that's just
amazing that they
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can do something like that. That just tells you how far
we've come in this world.
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It's wild. [music playing]