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Sometime during a neighborhood Christmas party in 1989, 5-year-old Melissa Bron disappeared.
>> Loved it. She really did. We had a great time, but it's late. We're, you know,
Melissa, will you go get the coats? None of the adults or other children at the party saw where she went or noticed
anything unusual. It took science to see what witnesses did not. [Music] [Music]
Tammy Brandon and her 5-year-old daughter Melissa had moved from Texas into this suburban apartment complex in
Lorton, Virginia. Tammy was a single mother, recently divorced, working as an accountant and beginning a new phase in
her life. >> Tammy is a very good mother. She's a very sweet, very caring person. Kept to
herself more or less. Uh, you know, she wasn't what I would call extremely outgoing,
although she did participate in just about everything. >> One of the attractive features of the
apartment complex was the active social program for the residents. Every Friday night was some sort of social gathering
in the clubhouse. And during the holidays, there were special events. the night of December 3rd at the Christmas
party. That's something that they they basically did uh for almost every holiday. People looked forward to it. Um
they always had a nice layout within the clubhouse and people spent time getting
to know their neighbors. >> Tammy Brandon and her daughter Melissa both attended that Christmas party in
1989. Altogether about 200 residents of the complex were there. Everybody was very upbeat, having a very good time.
The children played with each other all through the night, going around and snatching all the food and having a good
time. [Music] >> When it was time to leave, Tammy asked Melissa to get their coats.
>> Oh, man. >> Oh, sure. [Music] >> They have packages and everything. Shortly after handing the coat to her
mother, Melissa disappeared. >> Merry Christmas. >> Merry Christmas to you, too.
>> Yeah. I've got to get going here. >> Yeah, it's going to be late. >> Oh, I know. I got to find
>> cleaning up for every Where's um >> Where's Melissa? She was just here a minute ago.
>> Tammy looked for her daughter throughout the clubhouse. >> Melissa. >> Yeah. Where's Melissa?
[Music] In a utility room off the lobby marked private, a fulllength window leading to
the outside was wide open. The window faced a wooded area behind the apartment complex. It's possibility that somebody
could have went out that window and not been seen by anybody outside. And it's in an area where it's secluded through
the inside. Partygoers wouldn't have seen anybody exiting through that window. Also,
Fairfax County police searched the entire area and questioned everyone who attended the party.
>> It was very cold out that night. It was pretty imperative that we try to locate
as quickly as possible. It was hard to imagine a young child with a dress on and a small coat surviving temperature
that night. Although no one at the party noticed anything unusual, police feared that
Melissa had been abducted. Tammy Brandon pleaded for her daughter's safe return during a televised news
conference. To >> the person who took Melissa, I beg you to please call somebody,
anybody, and tell us where she is. No matter what's happened, she's all that I have. Please bring her back to
me. Melissa, if you can hear mommy and get to a telephone, call our number like I taught you to
call me. We love you. We miss you very much. Please come back to us. Mommy's waiting.
>> All the way down to uh Davis Ford Road. Police could find no trace of 5-year-old
Melissa Bron despite the help of hundreds of volunteers. >> We had hundreds of police officers down
there. We had hundreds of people from the military bases. We had people volunteering their airplanes, their
helicopters. The search was phenomenal. It just showed how this case touched so many people.
>> Yellow ribbons were placed throughout the neighborhood, a symbol of concern and hope for Melissa's safe return.
Police questioned Melissa's father, who was in Texas on the night of Melissa's disappearance. He was immediately ruled
out as a suspect. >> I also ask that if the person who took my daughter can hear me, please let her
go. We love her very much. If anyone has any information that may help, please contact someone
who will pass the information on to us. Thank you. >> Police questioned everyone who lived at
the apartment complex as well as all of the employees. [Music] >> Caleb Hughes worked at the apartment as
a maintenance man and attended the Christmas party. Police interviewed Hughes at his home a
few hours after the party around 2:00 a.m. Mr. >> Hughes. Kelly views. Yes. >> I'm Sergeant Garcia from the Fairfax
Police Department. I'd >> like to ask you a couple questions about the party at the apartment complex that
you work at. >> They asked him where he had been since leaving the apartment complex.
>> What'd you do after you left the party? >> I drove straight home. I stopped off for
a six-pack and I got home about 12:30 quarter 1. >> He said he stopped just before he got
home near his house. Well, if he got home at 12:304 to 1, they stopped selling beer in Virginia at 12:00. So,
he didn't stop for beer. He couldn't. >> What did you do after you got home? >> I did chores, laundry, you know, stuff
like that. Do >> you mind if we look around? >> No, go ahead. During the search, police noticed
something unusual. Hughes told police he had been doing his laundry, but the clothes he was washing
were the ones he wore to the party. >> Do you always wash your sneakers with your clothes, Mr. Hughes?
>> He was also washing his belt and the knife holder >> said, "Why would you wash all your
clothes? You don't have another pair of blue jeans. And why would you wash your sneakers?
Caleb had no response. The side a few sneakers had been shaved away. Although the sneakers had been
washed, tests showed traces of human protein, possibly blood, deep in the fibers.
Caleb Hughes wasn't cooperating either. Hughes told police he did not speak to Melissa Brandon at the Christmas party,
but several witnesses contradicted him. >> Hello. >> Hi. Hi. >> Do you have something to eat?
>> Said, "Caleb, I think you know more. I think you took Melissa out of that party." And all Caleb would do is just
sit there. And finally, Caleb said, "Prove it." Looked me straight in the face. Had no emotion at all. And that's
what investigators set out to do. Weeks passed and still there were no signs of 5-year-old Melissa Brandon.
The community of Lorton, Virginia, held a candlelight vigil at the Brandon's apartment complex just a few feet from
the clubhouse where Melissa was abducted. Bumper stickers, yellow ribbons, and flyers with Melissa's picture were
everywhere. >> It was all anybody talked about because this wasn't one girl in one family. This
was any child, all of our families. If this could happen to Tammy Brandon's daughter, this could happen to anyone's
daughter. And there was a desperate outcry to find who would have taken this child.
>> The remaining suspect was Caleb Hughes. Hughes attended the Christmas party, but
he denied having anything to do with Melissa's disappearance. Forensic scientists began their
investigation with a look inside Hugh's car. The interior of the car, it was cluttered with a lot of of debris, dirt,
bags of books, uh, dog hair. I just looked at it and thought, "Holy mackerel, how am I going to be able to
find any type of evidence that would link Melissa to this car?" >> The car was sprayed with the chemical
luminol, which fluoreses when it comes into contact with the hemoglobin component of blood. Luminol revealed
blood on the steering wheel, foot pedals, and floor mat. The blood was collected for DNA analysis, but the
results were inconclusive. The car was also searched for trace evidence, specifically hair and fibers
and was sent to special agent Doug Dietrich of the FBI for analysis. >> First thing that I do is look at the the
tapings that came from the front seat of the car. trying to identify what types of materials are there and if possible
anything that may have come from the victim if she had been in that car. >> Dietrich discovered quite a bit of
animal hair in the car. Most of it dog hair, but three of the hairs from Hugh's front seat were different. They were
rabbit hairs that had been dyed black. The rabbit hairs were microscopically similar to a German rabbit hair coat
Tammy Bron wore to that Christmas party. When Tammy Bron was leaving the apartment, she told Melissa to get her
fur coat. Melissa got the fur coat and as a child will do she draped that coat across her shoulders
and of course those hairs from that coat certain transfer to her. >> Dietrich also discovered blue and red
fibers on Hugh's front passenger seat. The red fibers were cotton, an extremely common fiber, but the blue fibers were
extremely rare. The 50 blue fibers were man-made and acrylic. They were all the same shape, length, and diameter, an
indication they were from the same manufacturer. Gas chromatography revealed that the
blue fibers were dyed with the same blue dye, but the chemical composition of the
blue dye was unusual. >> Melissa Brandon was wearing a blue sweater and red plaid skirt on the night
she disappeared. The outfit had been a gift from Melissa's grandmother, who could not recall where she bought it.
All she could remember was that the sweater had a picture of Big Bird on it, a character from the Sesame Street
television series. Prosecutors needed more evidence than the three rabbit hairs from Mrs.
Brandon's coat found in Caleb Hughes car. They knew that any good defense attorney would argue that Caleb Hughes
could have brushed up against Tammy Brandon's coat at the party and transferred those rabbit hairs onto the
seat of his car. Doug Dietrich was convinced that the blue fibers held the key to Melissa Brandon's disappearance,
but there was no way to tell if the fibers were from Melissa's clothing. After work one night, Doug Dietrich
shared his frustration with his wife. He told her he needed to find the manufacturer of the outfit Melissa was
wearing at the Christmas party. >> Some sort of blue Winnie the Pooh thing or a Sesame Street uh outfit with a red
plaid skirt. >> I don't know anything about Winnie the Pooh. But if it's Sesame Street, that's
sold by J C Penney. Hold on a second. >> Mrs. Dietrich had kept a number of store
cataloges, some going back a few years. red plaid skirt. >> I see that. >> She proceeded to bring a catalog down
from the year before Christmas. And sure enough, on page 11 of that catalog, there was an outfit that looked darn
close to what they were describing to me as the one Melissa Brandon wore the night of her disappearance.
>> When Tammy Brandon was shown the picture from the catalog, she identified it as
the one Melissa was wearing at the party. The FBI asked JC Penney for one of the
outfits in order to analyze the fibers, but they were sold out. The item was a catalogon item. JC Penney sold all 7,000
garments in a matter of months. But JC Penney located a customer in Kentucky who had purchased one of these outfits a
year earlier. The customer bought the outfit as a present for his granddaughter, but it was the wrong
size, so it had never been worn. The customer sent the outfit to the FBI for analysis.
>> The idea of just being able to find an outfit that that's exactly the same outfit that a victim wore in a case.
That's an extremely good stroke of luck. When Doug Dietrich examined the garment,
he made a startling discovery. When JC Penney had this outfit manufactured, they wanted to make it unique. Instead
of using a standard dye, and there are 10,000 of them, Penny's decided to create a brand new color.
JC Penney specifies a particular color. Then they'll work with the dye manufacturer to find some combination of
chemicals that will produce exactly that tone. In this particular case, they went
an additional step and made sure that it was a dye that nobody else had access to
so that they could trademark this sweater from its color point of view. They called their new color plum navy
number 887. JC Penney patented that signature dye and used it only once when they produced
the 7,000 Big Bird sweaters. When Dedricch compared the fibers from the duplicate sweater to those found in
Hugh's automobile, they were the same. >> With several hundred million people in
the country and only 7,000 sweaters, the probability of that particular sweater being located in individual car is very
small. It you can just work out the ratios of the two. >> There's no question to my mind that that
Melissa Brandon had been in the front seat of Cal Hughes's car. and where she went from there. Well, I guess that's a
mystery right now. A mystery police were desperately trying to solve. The search for Melissa Brandon's body
continued for almost a year. Statistics show that children abducted by strangers
are usually murdered within 3 hours of the abduction. The prime suspect, Caleb Hughes, was asked to take a polygraph
test. >> Are you the one who abducted Melissa? >> No. >> Right now, can you take me to Melissa's
body? >> No. >> The results of his polygraph examination indicated deception. >> As soon as he realized that I knew
that he had failed that test, he didn't want anything to do with that that room.
Didn't want anything to do with me. and pretty much bolted out of there. >> But there was a problem in the state of
Virginia. Prosecutors must be able to prove where a homicide occurred. Since the blood in Caleb Hugh's automobile
could not be identified as Melissa's, prosecutors could not reach the threshold of homicide. They could only
prove kidnapping, which carried a maximum sentence of only 10 years. But prosecutors were convinced that the blue
and red fibers in Caleb Hugh's car indicated more than kidnapping. The last Tammy Brandon saw her daughter,
she was wearing the pink nylon coat, winter coat over top of this big bird outfit.
If the child remained in that winter coat in the automobile, you wouldn't have the collection and the
population of blue acrylic fibers that are found on the seat because they'd be inside the nylon coat. They weren't.
>> Prosecutors believe that Hughes removed Melissa's ski jacket in the car, an indication that Hughes committed a sex
act. Hughes had the child's coat off in the automobile and it seems to me the inferences that flow from that are
legitimate inferences of an intent to defilet. While Melissa was waiting for her mother
to say her goodbyes at the Christmas party, >> prosecutors believe that she left for a
moment to get a drink from the water fountain in the hallway near the utility room.
This is where Hughes abducted her. [Music] Hughes took Melissa through the window
in the utility room and fled in his car. Hughes removed Melissa's ski jacket in the car, causing the transfer of the
blue and red fibers onto the front seat. Also in the car, there were three rabbit
hairs from Tammy Brandon's coat, the one Melissa handed her mother seconds before
she was abducted. Where Hughes took Melissa Bron and left her body remains a mystery.
Hughes tracked blood onto his foot pedals and floor mat from his sneakers. Luminol revealed blood on the car's
steering wheel as well. When Hughes arrived home, he immediately washed his clothes in order to remove
trace evidence. He also scraped away the blood stains from the sides of his sneakers before
washing them along with his clothes. But he didn't remove evidence that he couldn't see. the tiny fibers from
Melissa's clothing left on the passenger seat of his car. Caleb Hughes was arrested and charged
not with kidnapping, but with the abduction of Melissa Bron with intent to defile her. He was found guilty and
sentenced to 50 years in prison without parole, the maximum sentence. Caleb Hughes has never confessed to the crime,
and the search for Melissa's body continues to this day. Each piece of evidence, no matter how small, whether
it's a a car, or whether it's a strand of DNA, all have a story to tell. Where they've been, who they've been with, how
long they've been around. And this is the type of information that that I look at and that I decipher and try to
determine what value it has. So, one piece of evidence is can be significant when you add multiple pieces of of this
puzzle. And you never get the whole puzzle. You only get pieces, but you don't need the whole puzzle to see what
that picture's going to say. And in this case, 50 fibers, blue acrylic, 10 cotton, black rabbit hairs. To me, it's
overwhelming evidence. [Music] Why? [Music] Heat. [Music]

Season 4 Episode 5 | Sometime during a neighborhood Christmas party, five-year-old Melissa Brannen disappeared. Investigators turned to forensic science to help them see what the witnesses missed.

Brief Summary

The 1989 disappearance of Melissa Bron leads to the conviction of Caleb Hughes for abduction, but her body remains missing.

Key points

The Disappearance of Melissa Bron. Five-year-old Melissa Bron vanished during a Christmas party in 1989, sparking a massive search.
Tammy's Heartfelt Plea. Tammy Brandon begs for her daughter's safe return during a televised news conference.
Caleb Hughes: The Prime Suspect. Caleb Hughes, a maintenance man, becomes the main suspect in Melissa's disappearance.
The Search for Evidence. Forensic scientists uncover crucial evidence linking Caleb Hughes to Melissa's abduction.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Please bring her back to me.

Tammy Brandon's plea for her daughter's safe return.

4:23WatchOct 15, 2025

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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