True Crime with Kendall Rae - Missing Baby Found After 51 Years: The Incredible Story of Melissa Highsmith

Episode Date: January 24, 2023

Melissa Highsmith had been missing for the last 51 years – since she was a baby. After years of feeling like they’d never see her again or have closure, her family’s wish came true, and Melissa was recently finally reunited with those she lost so long ago. Shop my charity merch! https://milehighermerch.com/  All profits from this charity merch will be donated to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children: https://www.missingkids.org/  Thank you to NCMEC for participating in this episode! You can donate to our campaign here: https://give.missingkids.org/campaign... This episode is sponsored by: ZocDoc Honey Check out Kendall's other podcasts: The Sesh & Mile Higher Follow Kendall! YouTube Twitter Instagram Facebook Mile Higher Zoo REQUESTS: General case suggestion form: https://bit.ly/32kwPly Form for people directly related/ close to the victim: https://bit.ly/3KqMZLj Discord: https://discord.com/invite/an4stY9BCN CONTACT: For Business Inquiries - [e-mail]

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So today, we are going to be talking about the incredible story of Melissa Heismith. And this is very similar to a case I covered recently just last year on Holly Klaus. I recently saw this in the news and just knew I had to cover it because I love cases like this. I love when there is a happy ending for families, especially when they have been through so much trauma.

And I just think it is so cool. The way cases are being solved these days with DNA. It's happening more and more frequently. We're hearing about more stories like this in the news and it's just incredible. So today we are going to talk about a woman named Melissa Highsmith who had been missing since she was a baby for the last 51 years. And she was recently reunited with her family.

It's amazing. And National Center for Missing Exploited Children, which we just raised over $159,000 for in 2023. Thank you again. I can't say it enough. I'm just so excited. But we're going to be mentioning them a lot in this video. So the NeckMek team has been kind enough to record some clips to be included in this video so you guys can get a better idea of what NeckMek does. And before we get started, I wanted to insert a little thank you message that NeckMek wanted to give to all of you who participated in the campaign last year. and Nick McWanning to give to all of you who've participated in the campaign last year. Hello, I'm Michelle Delaun,

President and CEO at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I'm here today to thank Kendra Ray, her fantastic team, and every one of you who contributed to this wildly successful campaign that supports our great organization. Your donations will support our efforts to find missing children, to stop child

sexual exploitation, and ultimately to prevent these crimes from happening in the first place. Every child deserves a safe childhood, and I'm just grateful to know that there are so many of you who not only believe that, but you're willing to get involved and support us. I encourage you, please, visit our website, look at the free resources that we've designed to help you better protect the children in your lives. And follow us on social media, help us raise awareness of missing and exploited children. We have a lot of children and family counting on all of us. Thank you again, Kendra Ray for your generosity and all of you for your support. So again, thank you guys. I will be continuing to raise funds for NeckMek in 2023. So you can always access my donation page

if you would like to make a donation. I also have NeckMek Charity Merch that's still available and 100% of the profit from that goes directly to them. So I will have all that linked below, of course, but let's get into this story here. So we're gonna start back in the mid 1960s. So Alta Appenteko, who was 18-year-old at the time, was introduced to 17-year-old Jeffrey Highsmith

during a blind date that was set up by his roommate. Jeffrey says that he remembers just how gorgeous he thought that Alta was when he first met her. And then they ended up getting married in November of 1968. And they were pretty young. She was 19 at the time and he was 18. And just a year later, Helta had her first baby. Melissa Highsmith was born on November 6, 1969. So Melissa was actually named after a friend of theirs at the time a friend of Alta's and Jeffrey says that he remembers her being a very active baby, very happy baby.

Now Alta did struggle a lot with becoming a parent. It can be very hard, especially at a young age. And when you hear what she herself went through as a child, it all makes a lot of sense. Alta was actually one of 12 kids. And when her mother couldn't take care of all those kids, she sent the youngest six to go live in an orphanage and Alta grew up there.

Specifically, they went to the Church of Christ children's home and she lived there for 16 years. So because of that, Alta really never got experience what it's like to be loved by a mother. And so she struggled to be a mother herself, but she did try to give her daughter Melissa the absolute best life that she could. So Melissa was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and they stayed there for a little while, but eventually they decided to relocate to Southern Illinois, and unfortunately this is when Alta and Jeffrey began fighting a lot and fighting so much that their

relationship actually ended. In past interviews that they've done, they have each explained their side of why they split up, but ultimately it was because Jeffrey was pretty selfish and was unfaithful to Alta. Although Jeffrey has said that there was more to it that Alta was mean to him. He found her to be very cold and their relationship was just negative a lot of the time. And so that also contributed to them breaking up as well. Of course, they both have different sides to their story. But once they broke up, Alta called one of her brothers,

Perry, who helped move her and Melissa back to Fort Worth. And from what I gathered, it doesn't sound like she had too much of a plan, but returning to the place where she was from seemed like a good start. So at first, she and Melissa moved in with one of her brother's ed and his wife, and they were there for a little bit, and then she ended up moving in with her niece Carlene. Because she had so many siblings, her niece was actually the same age as her. So it was a good situation for a little while. But for whatever reason, the living situation

ended up not working out. I'm not sure if she just wanted a different situation or if it wasn't working for some reason, but that's when Alta received a message from an old acquaintance named Carol. Now, Carol and Alta grew up in the same orphanage. I'm not sure how close they were, but they definitely knew each other.

Alta says she doesn't know how Carol found her, but she took her up on the idea of them moving in together. And Carol actually had a young son, so she thought that was nice for Melissa to have someone to play with. And while they were living together, Alta actually found a job cleaning churches, and that's how she supported her and her daughter.

Because Jeffrey would send them no financial support, so she was completely on her own. But obviously now that she had found this full-time job, she had to find someone to help her take care of Melissa while she was at work. So she put an ad out in the Fort Worth Star Telegram. Now, it's not really been reported why Alta didn't have like a family member

take care of her or maybe Carol, but it's possible they had other obligations as well and she had no other choice but to find a sitter. Now, obviously finding someone to care for your child is so hard. I have just recently gone through this. I know what it's like to have to trust someone. It can be very difficult as a mother, especially with the situation that

Alta was in. She had to get to this job. She was looking for someone quickly. So on August 18th, 1971, she placed this ad in the Fort Worth star telegram and it said, baby sitter wanted from 8 to 3.30 pm. Spanish gate apartments call after 3 pm and pretty shortly after it was posted she received a response from a woman who claimed to want the job. Now obviously back then the idea of you know stranger danger wasn't as common like people didn't realize how dangerous the world really was. I mean the internet literally didn't even exist back then. And because of that, it wouldn't be as simple as running

a quick background check on someone or looking them up online. She was in a situation where she just had to pretty much trust that this person had good intentions. She did try to do some due diligence and tried to meet up with this woman, ask this woman to come meet her outside of where she worked so that she could meet her.

Ask her a few questions before she passed off her 22-month-old baby to this stranger. So they arranged a time to meet in a place. And even though that was all set, the person never showed up. Now, this made Alta super nervous. This was definitely not ideal because she did have to go to work the next day

or she would be fired. And this was not ideal for Alta because she needed this job to provide for her and her daughter. So she was very upset when this woman never showed, but eventually the woman called her back. She said that she did, in fact, want to care for Melissa. She was interested in the job and she told her that she had a big backyard that Melissa could play in.

And at this point, Alta felt like she was stuck. She felt like she was low on options. She needed the job and couldn't take her daughter with her so she needed child care and she was in a desperate situation. situation. And this summer's hottest blood flow, sir, guaranteed to keep you cool. The savings are coming from inside the house. Open this summer path, energy savings are the best, so cool. The FQ Energy for everything, Captain Banner now to learn more. So on August 23rd, 1971, Alta left Melissa home with Carol, her roommate, and Carol was instructed to pass Melissa on to the babysitter when she arrived. Again, I don't fully understand why Carol wasn't watching Melissa that day. I mean, she did have her own son.

It's possible she had to go somewhere, or I'm not sure why. And I don't want to speculate. I mean, there's nothing that can be changed about the situation now. Anyways, there's no point, but I know people will have questions about that. So that day is kind of confusing. A lot of the details about what happened

to Melissa that day are just unclear and what we do know have come from various stories that have been told over the years. And Carol has never done any type of interview or spoken out herself. So keep that in mind as I'm trying to explain some of the details of Melissa's disappearance because there are many parts that are just confusing because we don't know what happened. But the story that is out there goes like this. Apparently Carol was home that morning, lying on the couch, and it was early in the morning,

Alta had already gone to work, and I guess Carol was pretty hungover because the two of them had gone out that night and had quite a bit to drink. And again, confusing, I'm not sure where Melissa was when they went out. There are just details of this that are completely unexplainable.

So sometime around 7.30 AM, and we're not exactly sure on that time, but that's what is believed. A person showed up at the house and we're not entirely sure if this woman was actually a woman. It's quite possible. It was a male dressed up as a woman, but whoever this person was,

identified themselves as Ruth Johnson, unless his babysitter. And the only really notable detail about this person is that they had long white gloves on. Obviously fashion was very different back then, but during the heat of the summer in Texas I can't imagine why someone would be wearing long gloves. But it is believed that this person could have been wearing gloves to conceal the fact that they were actually male or to prevent DNA from being passed on. Carol did as she was instructed. She passed baby Melissa off to this Ruth Johnson person and what's really weird is this Ruth person actually

entered their house and when she saw that Carol had a son she offered to take him as well. But for whatever reason, luckily she decided not to let this woman take her son too. So after this, Carol goes back to the couch and it's been said that she got a bad feeling and as soon as she heard the car start, she actually got up and went and tried to get Melissa back, but at that point it was too late, and Melissa was gone. And again, I just wanna make it really clear that this Carol person has never been formally interviewed. So how exactly this information is even known is unclear. My best guess is Carol told Alta about all this,

and she's just kind of passed on whatever story she was told. But again, a lot of this is just unexplainable. So then Alta was at work all day and she said that she told the babysitter to drop Melissa back off around five or six when she got home. So she gets home and she's waiting for her and the babysitter never shows up. And she did not have a telephone number for her.

So she had no way of contacting her. Alta remembers calling the police, and of course, it was the 70s, and she was told that she had to wait 24 hours before they could do anything. But once that time had passed, she called back and the official investigation into the disappearance of 22 month old Melissa Highsmith began.

Fort Worth police and the FBI got involved and because non-family infant abductions are pretty rare, they first went to Illinois thinking that maybe her father, Jeffrey, had coordinated her abduction. But Jeffrey was truly just as shocked as everyone else to hear that Melissa had gone missing. So at that point, Detective Star had to look at this as a non-family infant abduction. Now recent studies by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children states that although rare, non-family infant abductions

are often perpetrated by single women of childbearing age. When this type of abduction was more common, women who couldn't have their own children found ways to get children, even if that meant taking them from someone else. And for decades, that's kind of been the leading theory in this case that this Ruth person wanted their own child, and so they took Melissa. They saw the ad, saw an opportunity, and just took her. There's also a possibility that she was sold into an illegal adoption ring and this stuff does happen

it's very scary. I mean the possibilities of what could have happened to Melissa exactly are endless because so many years had passed since her abduction and when she was finally found. So as you can imagine in the days and then weeks and then months following Melissa's abduction, Alta really struggled. She totally blamed herself. How could you not? And she really completely shut down. She did make an attempt to get back together with Jeffrey, but at first he refused.

And actually, after about a year or two, he did decide to move back to Fort Worth and they got remarried. After that, Jeffrey and Alta went on to have four more children, three daughters, Rebecca, Vicki, and Sharon in one son named Jeffrey, named after his father. And what's crazy is they say that they didn't always know that they had a missing sister for years.

It wasn't until they were about eight or nine years old that Jeffrey started to talk about what had happened. Alta didn't like to talk about it and likely because it was too painful and she felt responsible for what happened to her daughter. So her simulings said that they learned a little bit about her abduction but it was always very unclear what exactly happened.

And there really wasn't much to tell them. It didn't seem like Jeffrey and Alta even really knew the full story and the police had no leads at all. It just seemed like things had gone cold and we're going to stay that way. But as they started to grow up, the gravity of the situation really started to hit them. You know, they have this missing sibling who could still be out there and their interest in finding her continued to grow.

And they say that they never gave up hope that she was out there somewhere. Their son, Jeffrey, who I'm going to refer to as Jeff, because I don't want this to get confusing, but he always had a serious interest in finding his sister. And he felt like it was his responsibility to do so. And while his sister and his father definitely held out hope, he really seemed to be the one that was the leader in the family when it came to taking action to find Melissa. My mom never talked about it. It's pretty painful. really seem to be the one that was the leader and the family when it came to taking action to find Melissa. My mom never talked about it.

It's pretty painful. My mom feels guilty, obviously, any mother would. So we learned that from my dad. Melissa was born in November and so every time November would come around, he would always remind us of her birthday. And I have three other older sisters as well. And so when I got to be seven, eight years old, my sisters would tell me the story about our oldest sister, Melissa. And it wasn't until I was probably 13 or

14 that I actually seen the, well, I guess when the internet came out, I was able to look up her, the old newspaper files and able to see her story. And when that sense I've been a teenager, I've been obsessed with trying to find her. And, you know, like all victims of loss, you have to move on with your life and you've got to get to live life. And we, I have, but I've never been able to let her go. I've never been able to say, I'm going to stop looking. It's always been what I feel, my life's goal to find my sister. And from what I've gathered, it seems that at some point, Alta just kind of gave up hope that she would ever see Melissa again. She said that she felt like she had to move on at some point, that the agony every day of what happened was just too much to bear. And I can't imagine, especially with how responsible she had to have felt all these years.

But obviously, Jeffrey has some responsibility here too. I mean, he just left Alta to deal with raising a baby on her own, no financial support, so she was in a terrible position that day. And he has come out and said that he too feels responsible for what happened. I mean, he did say he was young and selfish at the time, and that Alta left and took their daughter to Texas. He says he fully recognizes that if he had helped her financially, she would have had to work so hard and wouldn't have had to find this random person to babysit Melissa because she was in a desperate situation. But really, the main person to blame here is her abductor, which we will discuss more later. When all this first happened, there was quite a bit of public interest in the case, but over the years, it slowed down a lot.

Never really stopped, but definitely dwindled. The National Center for Missing Expo to Children created an age-progressed photo of what Melissa might look like over the years, in hopes that one day she would be recognized. And over the years, tips would come in here and there of mostly women who thought that they were Melissa, but every time they found out that it was not her and the Highsmith family was just left disappointed. When it comes to age progressions, at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, we are hoping everybody out there takes a moment out of their day to look at these images.

These are basically images of what a missing child might look like now. So we do images of children who've been missing, you know, for two years, onto 20 years, on up, it doesn't matter. As long as a child is missing, this is part of our fight to never give up. And so, when we put out an age progression photo,

our job is also to distribute that image as far and wide as possible, to encourage everybody to take a look and just see if you recognize this child. Now it's not supposed to be an exact match. So that's what we want people to keep in mind. It's a likeness. It's what the child may look like today. And it's just something that may spark recognition and also to get this case out in the public again.

It's a tool for law enforcement and for us to hopefully get more attention for these cases. And we know that they work. We've seen children who have been missing for many years, the recognized through an age progression photo and make a difference in that case. And we've seen those children come home. So we're counting on the public, we're counting on everybody out there who's watching and listening to do their part and just take a moment out of their day because you never know when you might help bring a missing child home. Most recently in September of 2022, Nick Mech received an anonymous tip where the person stated that they thought they saw someone matching Melissa's description just outside

of Charleston, South Carolina. A possible stunning new development in a missing case that dates back more than 50 years, one of the oldest in the nation, in fact. A Texas toddler named Melissa Heismeth is believed to have been kidnapped by her babysitter back in 1971. Well now, someone claims all these years later to have seen her in Charleston, South Carolina, 1000 miles from where she was taken. The anonymous tipster said that a person resembling the age

progression photo that you see on your screen now released by the National Center for missing and exploited children. Thinks they have spotted her. Their family first got word of this sighting after Neckmeck and a local news station picked up the story. for missing and exploited thinks they have spotted her. Their family first got word of this sighting after neck

mech and a local news station picked up the story. A little overwhelmed. We, uh, I just seen it. Somebody posted it on Facebook and we see the story from National Center for Exploded Missing Children. We seen that story of what

they posted and I looked up her name in it. We seen the local news station down in Charleston. Did a piece about it. And then after that, more stations picked it up and it just has gone and gone viral. And by October, their family actually went

out to South Carolina hoping that this was it that they had found her and their prayers were finally being answered. Unfortunately, just like every other possible sighting they had had up until now,

this person was not Melissa. However, this tip was helpful. It really kind of reignited a spark for their family, you know, a bit of hope that they might actually find her one day, and it reignited interest from the public in the case. My mom's lived with this pain for a long time. She blames herself because of her daughter being kidnapped. A kidnapped baby in four or 50 years ago

remains one of the oldest missing person cases in the country. Her brother, though, still believes that his sister is out there and hopes science and technology can help reunite them. Jeff and his wife made a Facebook page to try to raise awareness for their family started to do media outlets. Then it was

case at the time and n no leads came for the SMU shows police back then pour suspects. Do you think you again? Well, I can't give Alta with the hope and heartbreak still alive 50 years later. I don't know what to think. Sometimes I think

I'm I never see her again. I've never seen that video. Her heartbreak is still the same. It hurts. I almost wanted to start crying and hurt. And at that point, all they could really do was keep spreading the word and

hope that one day Melissa might find them. What happens now to investigate this to cross reference DNA? Um try to find this person. Well, uh, my parents DNA is on file with the National Center for Missing Exploded Children. The footwork

Police Department reopened the case. I believe last year. Um wife and I, we've done podcasts. We started a Facebook page called Help Find Melissa Highsmith. We ask all your viewers to please like and share the photos. What you see on Help Find Melissa Highsmith. We've actively done everything we could. We've done a couple podcasts.

We've done a couple of local footwork TV interviews. And we're just hoping the momentum continues. The more people that talk about it, the more people that like and share the photos, the more people that are interested in the case, if they share it with their friends then her memory will never be lost. We believe she's still alive and obviously somebody else does too in South Carolina as well. And as you can imagine, none of this was easy on their family and definitely not easy on Jeffrey and Alta's marriage. In fact, the two of them ended up getting divorced a second time, just 29 years after they remarried because of how much they were fighting.

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items and save a dollar each with your card. Kroger, fresh for everyone. But like I said, this story has a happy ending and on Thanksgiving of this last year, 2022, Melissa Highsmith was reunited with her family. I cannot even imagine how incredible this moment must have been how full they must have all felt in these moments.

I'm sure there were a lot of, you know, bittersweet feelings, thinking about all the years that they had missed, and, you know, emotions had to just be running really high. I'm sure there were so many times over the years that they felt hopeless feeling like they would never seem a little less again and to have this closure and finally see her and hug her after all this time must have just been incredible. It is overwhelming but it's the same same time. It's just the most wonderful feeling in the world. I just couldn't believe it. I thought I would never see her again.

And they said, Dad, she's alive. And I started crying. Like I mentioned earlier, the story of her being found after all these years is very similar to the case I told you about earlier this year. The one about Holly Klaus, who was discovered after 40 years with the help of DNA testing through a popular genealogy website. And this is almost exactly how Melissa Heismith was found. The Heismiths had their DNA on file with Nickmick, and on November 6th, they received a message saying that there was a new match, specifically that Jeffrey and Alta had a match through a grandchild. So the Heismists were connected with a woman named Lisa Jo Sheely, who is a clinical laboratory scientist

and amateur genealogist who helped them interpret the results and right away. They learned that these people had to be the children of their long lost daughter, Melissa Heismith. We never gave up hope looking for her. Through the years, we had several tips. We would go off to other states, and we would go off and talk to different girls,

have DNA made, and our hopes were dashed. It was hard. Just days ago, Melissa reunited with her parents after a DNA test that traces ancestry through genetic traits. Her three children came up as my grandchildren and as my wife's grandchildren, Alta's grandchildren. And that could only be one reason for that is that's Melissa was the mother. Jeffrey immediately found her on Facebook going by the name Melanie Walden

and he messaged her and tried to explain everything as best as he could but where do we even start after all those years but he told her that he'd been missing his daughter for 51 years and she was likely the genetic match. Can you imagine getting a message like that? Melanie, who has since changed her name back to Melissa, says that at first she thought this was a scam. I mean, I think any of us would. It would be so shocking to get a message like this. She told him that she would pray for him, but she was not who they were looking for.

Obviously, this is very understandable. I think most people would have a reaction like this in response like this. I mean, some strangers messaging you, saying that you are his daughter. I would probably think it's a scam too. She was hesitant, but the more she started to look into the story, the more things started to click for her.

Everything started to make sense. She realized that she even had the same birthmark on her back that baby Melissa did. So once she realized that she really could be their daughter, she reached out to the woman who raised her and it turns out that this woman knew about this all along. She actually purchased Melissa on the street for $500. They reached out to her over Facebook. At first, she thought it was a scam. My father texted me on messenger and he told me, you know, I've been looking for my daughter for 51 years. This whole time, Melissa didn't know her birth family was trying to find her.

The person that raised me, I asked her, is there anything that you need to tell me? And it was confirmed that she knew that I was baby Melissa. When you were little, when you were a baby, I bought you, she told me off the street for $500. And obviously that was really all the confirmation that she needed to know that she really was the daughter of Jeffrey and Alta. Now, as far as the woman who raised Melissa

all these years, her identity and information about her has not been released. But Melissa had definitely experienced a very difficult childhood. Melissa says that she left home at age 15 and began to work the streets as a sex worker. And she had several jobs at different fast food restaurants as well. Her education stopped after high school, and she wanted to get married a few times, and had three children of her own, all of which she ended up putting up for adoption.

Melissa says that she began to turn her own life around when she found religion. And I imagine and hope that since reuniting with her own biological family, her life has only continued to improve. Like I said, Melissa was reunited officially with her family on November 28th, 2022, and photos and videos from this are just as emotional as you'd imagine. Melissa said that she was just overflowing with emotion and obviously her family was as well. I mean, can you imagine being in this situation just all the feelings you would feel after all of this time?

It was just a mixture of joy and terrified, being terrified and excited and just trying to understand, you know, make sense of everything. When we found out at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that Melissa Heismuth was found, found alive, and found right there in Texas, I can't even tell you, we were all jumping for joy. It was amazing. We know that these things can happen and they do happen, but still every time it is so awesome. And it's really hard to describe the feeling. But in this case, it was extra special because not only has she been missing for 51 years, but we had just worked very closely with the family because a few months before that there was a tip that came into the National Center.

And while at the time we did not reveal too much about that tip, it was an anonymous tip. And basically someone had said that they had reason to believe that she was in South Carolina. And so imagine that in this 50 plus year old case, somebody takes the time to call the center and say, Melissa Heismuth might be in South Carolina. And so we decided at the National Center to put that information out to the public. Now that doesn't always happen in every single case because a lot of times, because of the ongoing investigation, we wanna keep some information, you know, private. And so this particular tip,

we thought it would be benefit everybody in the case to put the information out there. And so we did, And what happened next was this snowball effect. People were learning and hearing about this case for the first time. And with social media, it just gathered and gathered more and more steam. And the family realized, oh my gosh, people really care about our search for Melissa, and they're getting involved, and they're asking what they can do to help. And the next thing you know,

the family traveled from Texas to South Carolina, and they handed out flyers, and they just dedicated themselves really renewing their efforts to search for her. Because of that renewed attention, it just gave them that positive energy they needed to push forward. And so they doubled, tripled their efforts.

And then a few months later, they get the news that she was found alive. There was a match because of their DNA that was submitted through a DNA site. And so it is a perfect example of why we never give up, why families should keep searching and the public and investigators. And it's a great example of what DNA can do for cases just like this. And so as you know, we've seen many, many cases now in the

past few years that have been cold for decades and missing persons cases where they have been solved because of DNA. So, we could not be more excited for Melissa's family and we hope that the same will happen for our other families, because there are a lot of other families out there still searching and hoping for the same outcome. And as happy of an ending as this is, there is more work to do here, because the person who's responsible

for Melissa's abduction has yet to be found. And there are so many questions still unanswered about what happened. The investigation is ongoing and the High Smith family does believe that the woman who raised her could have been involved in her abduction, but there is no confirmation of this yet. If it turns out that she is involved,

it's possible investigators already know, and they're just keeping that information sealed until an arrest has been made, but it's also possible that she wasn't involved in her abduction at all and she just purchased her on the street like she said. Like I mentioned, non-family child abductions are rare, but they were more common back then. Just because they were much easier to get away with at that time, this woman could have benefited from someone else's abduction or been in on it from the beginning, and we can only hope that

answers come soon for Melissa and the Highsmith family. And despite all the good that has come from finding Melissa after all these years, it has come out that the Statue of Limitations on Melissa's abduction expired 20 years after her 18th birthday. However, luckily the Fort Worth Police Department has said that they will continue to work this case until her abductor is found and brought to justice. Stories like this just make me feel so hopeful about the future when it comes to crime. The work that is being done when it comes to DNA and solving crime is incredible and it only gets better every year. And organizations like NeckMek do such amazing work for families in all types of situations. And that's why I have decided to raise funds for them because

I know that they're putting it to excellent use. I know it can often be, you know, out of a really dark place. But this kind of story is a great reminder that not everything ends in tragedy. And you can never really give up hope. I really just hope at this point that Melissa's abductor is brought to justice and that in some way somehow there's a way to work around the statue of limitations. So if you are interested in keeping up with Melissa's story and supporting the Heismith family and Melissa along the way, the previous Facebook page has now been turned into a found page where I imagine the Heismith family will be posting updates and photos over the weeks and months to come. So if you are on Facebook, maybe pop over there, give them a like, and send them words of support and encouragement. I know it will probably go a long way. I'm just so happy for the Heismith family and for Melissa. I hope reuniting with each other

has brought them both, you know, so much healing. But that's all the information I have on this case at this point. I definitely want to hear your thoughts, so let me know below. And hopefully this abductor is brought to justice one day. That is going to be it for me today, guys. Thank you for joining me for another episode. And make sure you follow the show on Spotify

and Apple Podcast. It really does help me out. If you want to watch the video version of this show, you can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked, or you can just search Kendal Ray. I will be back with another episode soon, but until then, stay safe out there. It's Jeep 4x4 season. Make your next adventure epic with Jeep Wrangler 4xE.

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