Sounak Sengupta
NBC’s ‘Dateline: The Mystery on Reminisce Road’ chronicles how 28-year-old single mother Melissa Mooney was found murdered inside her new Castle Hayne, North Carolina, apartment in early August 1999. She was an FBI office manager, and the federal agents joined hands with local law enforcement to track down the killer. However, the case remained unsolved for nearly a decade before they arrested the perpetrator.
How Did Melissa Mooney Die?
Melissa Ann “Missy” Galade Mooney was born to Frederick and June (née Graybush) Galade in Pennsylvania on October 25, 1970. As a girl from the Pennsylvania coal country, Melissa was quiet, a reader, but no push-over. Her elder sister, Debbie Galade, recalled how Melissa “could hold her own” and was “quite capable of keeping a secret.” She graduated from high school at 17 before sitting and passing the entrance exam for a clerical job at the FBI without letting her family know till she stated she wanted to go to Washington and join her new posting.
Though she had never been to Washington before, Melissa did well as she climbed the ladder at the FBI and learned to have fun in the city. However, Debbie was worried since her younger sister “was like a magnet for just the wrong guys” — the argumentative ones. Like her job, Melissa kept her dating life secret, and her family did not hear of Roger Mooney, a Marine, till the two got married in a 1994 civil ceremony in their living room. The dismayed Galades learned their son-in-law had been married before, and their daughter was already pregnant.
Melissa birthed Samantha on July 4, 1995, and the Mooneys moved to North Carolina the following year after Roger received his coveted transfer to Camp Lejeune. Frederick Galade recalled his daughter was happy to be in North Carolina and landed a job at the FBI’s office in Wilmington, an hour’s drive from Camp Lejeune. However, the couple divorced in April 1999, with Melissa, then an office manager, moving with her daughter to an apartment close to her office. Meanwhile, the former spouses were engaged in a bitter battle over child support.
But the move never transpired, with her colleagues finding the 28-year-old single mother dead in her brand-new apartment on 3108 Reminisce Road in Castle Hayne, New Hanover County, on August 6, 1999. Her then-boss, Larry Bonney, recalled, “She was half on the mattress and half on the floor, kinda over in the far corner of the room.” The body was unclothed, and the coroner ruled she had been strangled to death. The investigators found her car in the driveway and a large boot print on the front door that appeared to have been kicked in.
Who Killed Melissa Mooney?
From her colleagues to her family, everyone pointed the finger at Melissa’s former husband, Roger. The show noted Melissa had two characteristics that stood out — she was unflinchingly punctual and loved her daughter. On August 6, she recruited her co-workers to help her finish moving from her Canterbury Woods apartment near the hospital to her new home in the Apple Valley subdivision that was then under construction. However, her colleagues got worried when Melissa did not appear on time and drove to her place to find her body.
Melissa and Roger were immersed in a brutal legal battle over child support, with her demanding more money and him not relenting. Roger was known to have anger issues, and her colleagues alleged he had physically abused her when the two were married. Even though he seemed to have the motive, the investigators ruled Roger out as a suspect since he had been watching Samantha the night Melissa was killed at his home near Camp Lejeune, 70 miles from her new house.
Based on her activity and the last phone call she placed around 10:00 pm, the detectives believed Melissa died around 11:45 pm. Roger couldn’t complete the 140-mile round trip, murder his former wife, and report for work by 5:30 am the next day without his daughter noticing his prolonged absence. The Wilmington FBI office director Larry Bonney also stated, “Actually, this man has a motive not to kill her. Because now he can’t go overseas and serve his country like he’s trained his whole life to do because he’s now a single dad.”
The New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office (NHCSO) secured six dedicated phone lines for tips and dug into Melissa’s complicated love life. They went through her address book and tracked down dozens and dozens of her friends, love interests, and former FBI co-workers who lived all over the country. However, they had solid alibis or lacked the motive to commit the heinous crime. After two years of painstaking work with no arrests, the investigation went cold. The detectives finally decided to start from scratch and got new pairs of eyes for help.
They advertised an $80,000 reward for information and re-canvassed the neighborhood for potential witnesses. This time, the authorities had a new suspect — Tyrone Delgado, a Louisiana native with a three-year stint in the Navy and a martial arts enthusiast. He lived down the street from Melissa in the then-scarcely populated, remote subdivision with his then-wife and children. They ran a background check on him to discover he had been a suspect and charged in some terrible cases, including a brutal sexual assault.
Tyrone had been previously arrested for breaking into a Leesville, Louisiana, pregnant woman’s home in 1994 and sexually assaulting her. However, an FBI affidavit explained how his mother, Bessie Huff, an elected official in Leesville, used her influence and money to intimidate and pay the victim and had the charges dropped. The victim suffered wounds hauntingly identical to Melissa’s, and the investigators delved further to discover more than a dozen other women who claimed he had brutalized them, including former girlfriends and wives.
However, the investigators lacked evidence that warranted an arrest until Tyrone’s erstwhile wife, Ana Cruz Delgado, came forward after he tried to kill her in 2003. He was immediately arrested on assault charges, and the detectives noticed Ana had suffered from injuries strikingly similar to Melissa’s. The investigators had also found a hair sample at the crime scene, and its mitochondrial DNA was a probable match to Tyrone. He was arrested in December 2005 in Louisiana and charged with Melissa’s murder.
Tyrone Delgado is Still Incarcerated Today
Most of the evidence that the prosecution presented against Tyrone Delgado during his mid-2008 trial was circumstantial. However, the prosecutors presented five of his victims from around the country who testified about him choking, raping, or assaulting them — drawing similarities in Melissa’s murder. While no charges ever came of the three victims, he had been convicted of assaulting two others, including his former wife, Ana. Her testimony about Tyrone’s behavior and injuries from a brutal 2003 assault ultimately tied the case together.
Tyrone was convicted of first-degree murder and burglary in July 2008 and sentenced to life without parole. Erstwhile District Attorney Ben David noted, “I regard Tyrone Delgado as the worst defendant I’ve ever prosecuted.” After the hearing, Tyrone called out to Ana and requested her to let the kids write to him in prison. A state appeals court upheld his conviction in 2010, and the Supreme Court dismissed his appeal in 2019. The 54-year-old remains incarcerated at the Lumberton Correctional Institute and has amassed six infractions.
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