Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - GORGEOUS MOM DISAPPEARS AFTER FAMILY DINNER: WHAT HAPPENED TO MELISSA?

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

Melissa Patton grows up in Locust Grove, Georgia with her parents and older sister, Tina. In high school, Melissa is head over heels for Christopher Wolfenbarger. The two quickly marry after graduating and move to Atlanta with their baby daughter Christina. When the couple welcomes a son, Joey, they settle in a duplex. Melissa works alongside her sister near the airport. Thanksgiving Day, Melissa Wolfenbarger visits her parents, Carl and Norma Patton. Melissa is excited for the holidays and asks her mother for a very specific gift. When Melissa doesn’t even call Christmas day, Norma Patton is unsettled. Melissa doesn’t have a cell phone or a car, so Norma assumes her daughter is busy with her own family and will pick up her gifts later. When Melissa doesn’t wish her mom a happy birthday two months later, Norma Patton asks family members if anyone has seen her. Tina Patton realizes Melissa hasn’t worked a shift with her in months.  Then, Melissa misses her mother's birthday.  Atlanta PD finds a severed human skull, that rolled out of a ripped trash bag in the middle of Avon Avenue.  Just over a month later, four more trash bags are discovered two blocks down Avon in wooded area. Inside are a pair of legs and arms. Police cannot locate a torso. It would be more than four years before the body is identified as Melissa Wolfenbarger, and 25 years before police arrest her killer.  Joining Nancy Grace today:  Tina Patton  - Sister of Melissa Wolfenbarger Norma Patton  - Mother of Melissa Wolfenbarger Darryl Cohen  -  Former Assistant District Attorney,  Former Assistant State Attorney, Defense Attorney, Cohen, Cooper, Estep, & Allen, LLC, CCEAlaw.com, Facebook: "Darryl B Cohen", Twitter: @DarrylBCohen Sheryl McCullum - Cold Case Investigative Research Institute Founder, ColdCaseCrimes.org, Host of new podcast: Zone 7, Twitter: @ColdCaseTips Joseph Scott Morgan - Professor of Forensics: Jacksonville State University, Author, "Blood Beneath My Feet", Host: "Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan", @JoScottForensic Sydney Sumner - CrimeOnline investigative reporter See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. A gorgeous mom disappears after a family dinner. What happened to Melissa? I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. I was at work one morning and here comes my dad walking in the door.

Where's your sister? He said, because we can't find her. She didn't show up for Christmas. She didn't call your mom and tell her happy birthday either. And I was like, wait a minute, something's wrong. Melissa Wolfenberger, a young married mother of two, has gone missing. Her parents are worried sick about her because this is not like her. The kids, the kids were her life. No way. There's no way she would have ever left them.

You know, I know it's anecdotal when, let me just say spectators, those on the outside looking in. Here, she would never have left her children. But when you know the mom, you realize that that is absolutely true, that there is no way she would have willingly left her children. What happened to Melissa? Joining me in All-Star panel, but first I want to go to Melissa's sister, Tina Patton. Also joining us, her mother, Norma Patton. To both of you, thank you for being with us and also for being Melissa's voice because without you, people would forget about her.

I had never even heard about Melissa or her disappearance until you made it known. Again, thank you for being with us. I want to go first to you, Melissa's mother, Norma Patton. Tell me about Melissa as a mother. Why are you so convinced she would never have parted with her children? Because she just, she loved her kids. They were the most precious thing in the world to her.

She would have never left them under any circumstances. In addition to Norma, Mollis' mother, Tina is with us, her sister. Explain to me why you're so convinced she would never have willingly left her children. Why? She went back home because of the kids. She would have never left them, not for any amount of time at all. Again, with me, an all-star panel. You know, Daryl Cohen is with me, former felony prosecutor in inner-city Atlanta, now high-profile defense attorney from Cohen, Cooper, East Step, and Allen in the Atlanta jurisdiction. Daryl, see, I understand what Norma and Tina are telling me, and I agree with them from what I've now learned about her.

It would take wild horses to drag her away from her family, from her children. But when you're talking to a jury, they've never met Melissa. You have to have hard examples about why, you know, and this is anecdotally, it's story. It's not a statistic or a fact that she would never have done this. I guess the way to do that is to load your jury with mothers or grandmothers because they get it. They know what we're talking about. When we say, oh, H-E-L-L-N-O, Melissa would never have left without them. This is BS. This is bogus. She didn't just go away and move to Arizona to start a new life

for California. That did not happen. So, Nancy, what you have to do is you take Melissa, you take her and make her into a real person, not just a statistic, not something we've seen on the news. But you talk about her as a mother. You talk about the wonderful things she did as a mother. And when the other side objects, you say, thank you very much. I understand. And you accept it. And then you go on and you still continue to personalize her.

You've got to make her someone that the jury loves to the very beginning, regardless of the facts yet. Yeah. Cheryl McCollum, how do we prove it? Joining me is Cheryl McCollum, director and founder of the Cold Case Research Institute, forensics expert. You can find her at coldcasecrimes.org. And she is the one, along with the Patton family, who has spearheaded this and first told me about Melissa's disappearance. She's host of a brand new hit podcast, Zone 7. Cheryl, maybe I'm not, as I would like to say to my judges, Your Honor, let me rephrase that question. In other words, the witness isn't telling me what I need this jury to hear.

They, what is wrong with them? So let me rephrase the question to you. You can't just say to a jury, hey, this mom would never leave her children. You have to be able to prove she would never leave her children. I know it's hard for family members to take in because they're so upset about the whole thing, but I immediately go to the evidence. How can you prove this to a jury? For instance, she never left them alone. She moved from New York to Atlanta so they could have a better life and be around their grandparents. She sacrificed one, two, three, and four for her children. She wouldn't leave them with a babysitter, blah, blah, blah, blah. I've got to have a way to

prove this to a jury. So how do you prove this was a devoted mother that would never have left her children? Because that is fact number one for me. Exactly what you're saying. You paint this picture of who Melissa was. She left jobs so that she could stay home with the children. She did not leave them overnight ever. She wanted them with her. She went out of her way to be with them. She sang to them. She read books to them. She took them to visit their grandparents on both sides. She visited with her sister. She wanted those children with her at all times. There is no chance. She just was walking down the street and said, hey, I'm off to California. Oh, hey, Cheryl, you're giving me an idea. Does the name Drew Peterson ring a bell to you? It should.

Let's see. How many wives did he kill? Two that I know of. Okay. Drew Peterson, police officer, not that that's here nor there, police officer. And his third wife, Kathleen Savio, ends up dead and drowned in a dry bathtub, her body covered in bruises. Remember that? And for some reason, they rule that an accidental death, a dry bathtub. How do you slip and fall with that many bruises in a dry bathtub? Why? You don't. That's how you do it. You don't. Then we get to Stacey Peterson. Well, her body has never been found, but what did he say when Stacey Peterson left, left her car, left her children, left her furs and her beautiful clothes that she had accumulated.

Oh, she left with a boyfriend. What? On foot? What boyfriend? There was no boyfriend. Or how many times have you heard, Oh, she just wanted alone time, mommy time. That is BS. Complete BS. And in Melissa's case, the family only had one car.

So how did she get to California? She walked. They didn't have extra money. They weren't loaded. She wouldn't have had a way to get to California. She had no cell phone. She didn't take any clothes. She didn't take any money. She didn't have a vehicle. She had no way of contacting anyone. She took nothing that was precious to her, including her children. It's just not ring. It doesn't ring true. Well, you know, all of that is true, but you got to be able to prove it to a jury. And I want to point out something that you just said, and you're entirely correct, Cheryl McCollum. She gave up a job to have more time with her children. Now, nobody was

supporting her. She wasn't living off the government. She didn't have a rich husband, a sugar daddy, nothing. And she gave up a job in order to be with her children more and took a job that had horrible hours. You've heard so many stories about moms working all night, stocking shelves, working two and three jobs to support their children. She did that. She did all that and more. Giving up one job that was really good for her so she could spend more time with her children. So what do we know? She has a family dinner. Then she disappears. Listen. Thanksgiving Day, Melissa Wolfenberger makes a visit to her parents, Carl and Norma Patton. Melissa is excited for the holidays and asks her mother for a very specific

gift. When Melissa doesn't even call Christmas Day, Norma Patton is unsettled. But Melissa doesn't have a cell phone or a car, so Norma assumes her daughter is busy with her own family and will pick up her gifts later. When Melissa doesn't wish her mom a happy birthday two months later, Norma Patton asks family members if anyone has seen her. Tina Patton realizes Melissa hasn't worked a shift with her in months. Okay, I smell a rat right there at the beginning. She goes to this family get together and then she's never seen again. Now think about it. She doesn't have a car. How is she getting around? Somehow she manages to take care of her children and get to work. But then suddenly Tina realizes Melissa hasn't worked her shift at a restaurant

in months. It hadn't occurred to her before, but when she began analyzing it, she realized her sister had not worked at the restaurant for months. It didn't dawn on anyone. Why should it? But you heard earlier that she was there and she asked for a specific gift and then never showed up to get it. What was the gift? Listen. She had asked me for something in particular, and she said that was all, the only thing she wanted. And it wasn't something that I could go to the store and buy. It was something I had to find.

And what it was, was a picture of her with her papa, her daddy, father. And that's all she wanted was that picture. So I found a picture of him and her together. She was only five years old, maybe six at the most. I took it and had it blown up into an eight by ten and had it wrapped up under the Christmas tree. And she didn't call. She didn't come get it. You know, and that was just, that wasn't like her. The kids, the kids were her life. There's no way she would have ever left them.

The girl was three and the little boy was two. What happened to Melissa? Now, just to throw a wrench in this, just to take the APD, Atlanta Police Department's focus off missing Melissa, an unrelated skull pops up. Listen. Atlanta PD finds a severed human skull that rolled out of a ripped trash bag in the middle of Avon Avenue. Industrial businesses line one side of the street.

The other is bordered by train tracks. Just over a month later, four more trash bags are discovered two blocks down Avon in a wooded area. Inside are a pair of legs and arms. Police cannot locate a torso. You know, to Justice Scott Morgan, Professor of Forensics, death investigator with,

I believe you said at least 1,000 death investigations under your belt, is that correct? A little bit higher than that, but that's okay, yeah. What do you mean, 2,000, 10,000, 1,100? Just give me a ballpark. Probably closer to 10,000, 1,100? Just give me a ballpark. Probably closer to 10,000. Okay. I thought that was me and the number of pleas and trials I had, but it's actually you.

Okay. Wow. Let that just sink in for a moment. You know, you can't learn that in a book, although you have been educated here, up to here. Ten thousand death scenes, some accidents, some suicides, some natural causes, many of them homicide. Right. worst work nightmare, I guess, would be finding a head, a skull, a skull that you cannot identify. How difficult is that for a death investigator or medical examiner? You have no torso to connect. You got nothing. You don't. You're given very limited, you know, very limited

evidence to draw upon to do an analysis. And people would say, I think, you know, well, you have a skull. Isn't that enough? No, it's not. Because without, you know, we think about things in the totality of evidence. What else is there? Well, what evidence do you have when you have a bag that has been ripped, found in the middle of a road that contains a human skull? Well, there's a lot to go on there relative to this when you begin to think about an investigation. How exactly would a skull become separated from the rest of the skeleton? How far along in the decompositional process is the skull? You know, that gives us

an indication of how long the skull perhaps was in the back. How did the bag wind up in the road and why is it ripped? You know, you begin to think about animal activity. You don't necessarily think that some person that would perpetrate this. And mind you, I'm thinking homicide immediately here. And that's our one working theory is that all deaths are homicides until proven otherwise. Joe Sky Morgan, please stop. I'm not a death investigator with 10,000 deaths under my belt. I'm certainly not a medical examiner. is found disattached from the body in a ripped trash bag out near the street. It doesn't take an MD to figure out it's homicide.

What, the skull just jumped into the bag and threw itself down the street? I mean, practically speaking, of course it's a homicide. And another thing, another thing, how long does it take? You got to help me verbalize this because you're the expert. How long does it take for, I know we say skeleton or skull, but how long would it take for a skull to become skeletonized? In other words, you look at the skull and there is no skin, no eyes, no hair, nothing to help you identify it. Yeah. Assuming that the skull is, in fact, a skull, that means that it's absent of any kind of

soft tissue, anything that's left behind that would be connected to the skull. Just based upon that, the level of heat and exposure, particularly contained in a plastic bag, is going to potentially impact that. So it's going to accelerate this event. But here's the curious thing. This skull was actually recovered in April. So we're coming out of the cooler months. So that's going to kind of skew your data a little bit relative to how long this would have taken. Every single second counts here. But you're looking to get to the point of skeletonization. You're looking at this point in time, probably about at minimum, at minimum, eight weeks to perhaps 12 weeks, I would think.

Okay. Listen to more of the forensic evidence. Talafera County calls the Atlanta Police Department and say, hey, we've got a body down here in a ravine with no head. It might be your guy. So the Atlanta Police Department takes the skull, goes to Talafera County. It's no match. Four more trash bags were found near where the skull was found. Each of those trash bags contained an arm or a leg, no torso. So now in the same general area, we have two arms, two legs, and a skull. You know, we recently had a dismembered body where the body parts were found. Her name, Sade Robinson, beautiful young girl, goes on a date and is never seen alive again. And then pedestrians, moms and dads, find different parts of her in different parks, children's parks all around the area.

And it took some doing to connect the parts together to figure out these are all from one person. And now Cheryl McCollum first is a skull that is in a ripped trash bag. Then suddenly we find other trash bags full of severed remains, but they're identified as a male. So that's not helping anything. In this case, I find it really difficult to believe that you have the same kind of trash bags and you've got a skull in one and body parts in the others, and they're not related. They have to be related. It is important to understand that this was not a quick problem. Whoever perpetrated this killed this person, then dismembered and beheaded them,

put them in the trash bags, and then placed them somewhere. So you basically have three separate crime scenes, where they were killed, how they were transported, and where they were dumped. Cheryl, did I understand you to say Clorox was poured into the skull? Correct. So again, why would a cleaning agent be used? That's like to clean up something.

So that should tell you something about the perpetrator. You have to factor that in. While police are busy with the unidentified male skull and body parts, the family is still looking for Melissa. At the same time that the Atlanta Police Department is dealing with the unidentified skull, Melissa Wolfenberger, a young married mother of two, has gone missing.

Her parents are worried sick about her because this is not like her. They saw her at Thanksgiving. They did not see her at Christmas. More worried as her birthday rolled around. Melissa had never not contacted her on her birthday. We went to Atlanta on Brookline Avenue where they were living. The house was completely deserted.

We talked to some of the neighbors and they said that he moved out of the house right around Christmas or the first of the year. And they told us where he was working at. So we went over there and talked to the owner of the glass company. At that point, we just didn't know. And the owner of the glass company tells the family that the husband, we're talking about the husband, Melissa Wolfenberger's husband, had been fired and then he disappears. Now, Tina and Norman Patton joining us, the mom and sister Melissa. Tina, let me understand this. Your sister is there for Thanksgiving. She asked for a particular picture as a Christmas gift of her and her grandfather. Then she doesn't show up for Christmas. You then

start looking for her yourself. Call the restaurant where she works. And they tell you she hasn't shown up for weeks at her shift. And then at the same time around Christmas time, he is fired from his job and disappears. Do I have that timing correct, Tina Patton? Yes. Okay. That's not good. So police finally track down the husband, and this is what happens. Christopher Wolfenberger tells detectives he last saw Melissa in Atlanta.

Wolfenberger says the couple always talked about moving the family to California and starting new lives. Wolfenberger says Melissa decided to go alone. Wolfenberger says Melissa broke his heart, so he made no attempt to look for her and assumes she's living in California under a new name. Then a stunning twist in the case. While the family's desperately searching for Melissa, we find out the skull that was found in the ripped trash bag. It's not a man.

It's a woman. Cheryl, did the medical examiner actually mischaracterize the skull as a man when it's a woman? It was misidentified as a Caucasian male. Okay. You know, Joe Scott Morgan, how does that happen? You can't look at a skull and figure out it's a man or a woman. In most cases you can, but it's not completely definitive. There is a percentage, and this is what these forensic anthropologists work off of, to get these bodies identified. And I've got to say that not only was it the medical examiner that was involved in this, quite strikingly, it was actually the University of Tennessee body farm, the anthropology department there that came to the same conclusion, Nancy, which is absolutely mind blowing to me because this is what they

specialize in. And then lo and behold, listen, one of the first things he realized is where Melissa's husband worked at Action Glass and where the skull was found was on the same street, Avon Avenue. He goes to the Atlanta Police Department and says, look, this skull was found just feet away from where a missing woman's husband works. So they agreed to get the dental records and have the medical examiner see if they could identify who that skull belonged to. On March 14th, 2003, the skull is identified as Melissa Wolfenberger. Okay, let me understand this straight out to Norma Patton, who has been looking exhaustively for her daughter. No one will listen. She's told, oh, she's run off with a boyfriend.

What boyfriend? Oh, she'll come back. You knew all along your daughter would never have left her children. When did you learn that the skull, which had been misidentified as a white male, is your daughter? Bruce Jordan from Fayette County. He came to the house, to my home, and I walked outside on the porch and I was told that she had been identified in Atlanta that her body had been dismembered. What went through your mind after all the time you had searched for your daughter and you get this news. I was devastated, completely.

I screamed, and I was crying. My two grandkids that were here with me came out to find out what was going on, and I just didn't know what to do. Tina Patton, how did you discover that all this time your sister had been dead and her body misidentified as a white male? I received a phone call and they said, have you seen the news? And I said, no. And they said, well, Melissa was found. And all they found was her skull. What went through your mind? How? How could this happen to her? And I was just distraught. She came in one night with a handprint around her throat. Her eyes were red. She had been crying. I knew what it was.

It was Chris. It was the look in his eyes when I met him. You could just see the meanness in his eyes. Melissa didn't deserve what she got. She didn't deserve it. How could this be? All this time, her family begging police, begging other investigators, telling them she's missing. No one took them seriously. Then when a dismembered skull and body parts are found, they're misidentified as a white male. Only later, after a dental record examination, was it discovered those remains

are in fact Melissa. Listen. My main focus is on the bags Melissa's body was placed in. We both know it would be hard to tie knots, especially in plastic bags, without leaving trace evidence of some sort. Whenever murder occurs, some kind of evidence is left, no matter how careful the killer is. Evidence will be there. It may be overlooked, but that does not mean it's not there. There is no perfect crime. That is a letter from Melissa's dad being read by our friend Walt McCollum, still seeking justice for his daughter. That's Carl Patton. But what more do we know? We know that the body, the remains were in plastic bags.

Josiah Morgan, plastic bags can be a forensic treasure trove. Why? Well, first off, you can trace them back to the manufacturer. Whoever made these things, you can actually get it down to the run that they came off of. The perforations on each bag, you begin to think about how they're connected, what type of bag it is. Also, you know, the plastic that you talk about the plastic bags, one of the things that we look at is that plastic bags are a non-porous surface. So, guess what you can find many times? You can find latent prints. And when you look at the knots and the way bags are tied, think about how you have to manipulate that bag in order to tie it up. That's why we have to be very, very careful when we're undoing a knot,

for instance, at the crime lab or even in the morgue so that we don't destroy any of that evidence. Not to mention, if the individual has left any of their DNA there on that bag, that in fact could kind of cap off this idea of it being a treasure trove for forensic evidence. Exactly. And what do we learn from the remains themselves? Listen, there were some vertebrae that still remained with the head. It wasn't many. And the vertebrae had been sawed through. And he, you know, he made note of a mechanical saw that had dismembered the body, at least at that level, that the tool marks that were left behind were consistent with something

other than a handheld saw. You know, you think about a carpenter saw or hacksaw or those sorts of things. That's not what happened in this case. The level of violence in this case is overwhelming. Out to Tina and Norma, I'm sorry to drag you through more pain, but the fact that we now know a mechanical saw, we believe was used in the dismemberment of this beautiful young mom, your daughter,

your sister. I mean, how do you go forward? How do you sleep at night knowing this happened to her? It's really hard to sleep knowing what was done to her and not knowing why it was done. You know, I wonder sometimes about tell-tale signs. Was there a red flag? Could we tell at the beginning that this was going sideways? Guys, take a listen to this. It was the look in his eyes when I met him. You could just see the meanness in his eyes.

I didn't like him, and it just went downhill from there. He had Melissa climbing out the bedroom window and sneaking out to go wherever he wanted to go. They run away and ended up in Oklahoma. The police told me that they caught him driving the wrong way on the interstate doing 120 miles an hour with no lights on. He went off the interstate and hit a bull. When they caught up with him, he laughed at him. He said, the only reason you caught me is because I hit that bull. So that's the way he always looked at everything. Right at the beginning, I am talking about Melissa's husband. At the very beginning, he was nothing but trouble.

What about it, Norma? He was trouble from day one. And the only reason I let it, my sister kept telling me that I was fighting it too much and I need to let go and just let them have a relationship. And boy, do I regret that today. You know, to Daryl Cohen joining me, former felony prosecutor for years, now veteran trial lawyer, defense attorney. Daryl, did you hear what Tina was saying at the beginning? She says, it was the look in his eyes when I met him. I could just see the meanness. And I know that that is not evidence that it would be allowable in court. I get it. That's totally inadmissible.

And if it did come into court, you, a great trial lawyer would say, that means nothing. How can she tell he's got meanness in his eyes? You would make hate of that. You'd shred it on cross-examination. But it's true, Daryl. Haven't you been in the car, say, with your daughter, and a guy walks up at the red light, and you go, and you lock all the doors. It's a feeling. It's a gut feeling. It's after thousands of years of evolution. That's why the hair sticks up on the back of your neck or you get chills. You are processing something that your brain doesn't understand. And she knew day one, this guy is trouble. Nancy, it's not difficult to see that. Sometimes we have a gut reaction and usually our gut reaction, the first one is what we need to go with. But when you see meanness in somebody's eyes,

it's because sometimes you want to see it. Sometimes he or she just looks evil. And though it's not admissible, it's how we govern our lives. It's how we see, look at people and see their body language, their facial expressions. In this case, the eyes. And in this case, the eyes told everything. But that doesn't mean mom or sister can stop it. It just means you can make your daughter, your sister realize what's going on. And please be aware you can't change somebody. You can't make them do what you want them to do. Oh my gosh, Nancy. So many times I would love to tell my

daughters, this is what you do. And you know what they would do when I say that? The opposite. Why and how would he risk taking a dead body out of that house? Number one, being unseen when you've got a neighbor, literally your walls meet. And then drive a dead body in a car, even if it is just a short distance, and risk being caught. Then take that body inside where you've got the privacy. Where's all that blood going? And then you've got to get rid of that saw because there ain't no way to clean that thing. And then you still have to take the body out of that place and dispose of it.

And you just do it right there. You don't even bother to take it away from where you're tied to. Cheryl McCollum, you and the family have led the charge in seeking justice for Melissa. When you break it down that way about what the killer would have to go through in order to affect this crime, it makes your blood run cold. Nancy, it also is a flag. Again, who would take that amount of time? Who would go get the trash bags, get a circular saw, get the Clorox, drive around, find a place to dispose of the body. That is great risk to the perpetrator.

And listen to more, more from the letter from dad. How do you kill the mother of your two children? And then look at those children in the eye and say your mother deserted you because she didn't want you. Then when it's proven this mother is dead and they want us to visit the grave, you take them to a different location and claim someone must have moved her. Oh my stars. Did that really happen, Tina? Did the father, the husband, actually tell the children mommy deserted them and take them to the wrong grave? Yes, it is true. He did. What happened?

He just, you know, every time their mom was, he would say she ran off. She didn't want to be here anymore, so she left. I don't know where she is. So the children grow up thinking mommy deserted them. Is that right? Yes, they did. To Norman Patton, did you try to tell them differently? We weren't allowed to see them. His mother had custody of them and she would not let us see them. The last time she brought them anywhere around was when she brought them to the cemetery when we buried Melissa.

And they did not even know that they were at this, why they were at the cemetery or who it was. Oh, my stars. What a tragedy. So she's murdered. She's dismembered. And her children are raised thinking mommy abandoned them. Well, in the last days, over 25 years after Melissa's dismembered body is found, discovered just a block away from where her then-husband worked, an arrest has been made. Cheryl McCollum, explain.

You know, they put together a solid circumstantial case. They went through statements. They went through maps. They went through body disposal locations. And they narrowed this case down to one person. There wasn't a number one person. There was only one viable suspect in this case. And that suspect then husband, Christopher Wolfenbarger. To you, Nora Patton, it took so long. It took years for the case to be solved. What is your response to finally an arrest? When I was told that he had been arrested, I just yelled out as loud as I could, thank you, Lord. But we still have a long way to go.

God willing, there will be justice delayed. Yes, delayed. But in the end, the APD did put the case together. By now, a cold, cold case. That's hard to do. Joe Scott, it's really hard to put together a cold case. It's almost impossible. But they did it. And we finally have an arrest. How has this affected you, this quest we've all been on for so long? Well, for me, God bless them.

I see the pain in the family's eyes. And I've seen this look for years and years as a death investigator. And it all brings it flooding back to me now at this point in my life. It's a touchstone moment, I think, for them as a family. family, but it's also a moment in time where those of us that are training professionals moving forward look at the mistakes that were made along the way. Where could we have turned a corner that would have sent us down a different path and not put the family through so much pain, I think is what it comes down to. If we all do our jobs in the beginning, then it's at that point in time we can look back and understand that we could save

a lot of pain that these families go through. Because Melissa's not a forgotten person, all right? She's not just a number that's thrown away. She's a sister. She's a mother. And she's somebody's baby. And that's what you have to keep in mind moving forward with all of this. I just thank God in heaven right now that there is some kind, some kind of resolution. It might not be what we all want it, but there is a resolution here that we can all grow from at this point in time. I just hate that it's been done at the expenses of these precious women. Tina and Norma Patton, I just really don't have words to thank you. You are an example for all other crime victims' families because you never gave up you never

quit there were many times Cheryl and I and Joe Scott talked we talked about the case and there were times I thought there would never be a resolution there would never be an arrest even though we all felt we knew who was responsible for the murder. The damage to you and to her children, but most important to her, can never be fixed. There is no fix. But what is your message today to you, the mother of Melissa Wolfenberger? What is your message to other crime victim families today? Don't give up. Get out there and talk to people, anybody that you can. We went everywhere.

Anybody gave us suggestions, we went. You just have to stay on top of it. You can't, you can't let it go. Tina, it was all consuming your search for justice, your search to find out what happened to your sister. And there could not have been more bizarre facts thrown into this quest. What is your message to other people listening today as we await a formal announcement? No matter what, no matter what happens, what you come across, what other problems come up, do not take no. You've got to push. And when it seems like you're ready to give up, keep pushing.

Don't stop. Don't ever stop. If Tina and Norma Patton could keep going against all odds, then so can we. Tina and Norma, thank you. We wait as God-willing justice unfolds. Goodbye, friend.