Forensic Files - Season 9, Episode 4 - No Corpus Delicti - Full Episode | Forensic Files

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

A woman disappears without a trace.Even though foul play is suspected, the leads don't pan out and the trail turns cold. Twenty years would pass before police are able to link a clump of hair discovered in an isolated area with the missing woman.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

The episode details Michelle Wallace's disappearance and the forensic investigation that led to her murderer, Roy Mellinson, being convicted.

Key points

The Mysterious Disappearance. Michelle Wallace goes missing in the Colorado mountains, sparking a massive manhunt.
A Break in the Case. A rancher reports finding Michelle's dog, leading to new clues about her disappearance.
The Discovery of Remains. After years of searching, a team finds Michelle's skull and clothing, indicating foul play.
Justice Served. Roy Mellinson is found guilty of first-degree murder in Michelle's case.
A Father's Grief. Michelle's father reflects on the impact of her murder and the justice system.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I never felt anybody cold before.

A father reflects on his wife's death.

7:15WatchJan 1, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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