Kriti Mehrotra
It was December 1, 1994, when the quiet town of Forth Worth, Arkansas, was left shaken to the very core as 19-year-old Melissa Witt disappeared without a trace left behind. Though, as explored in Hulu’s ‘At Witt’s End: The Hunt for a Killer,’ what is even more heartbreaking is that not only was her body found over 45 days later, but her case is unfortunately still unsolved. There have been several suspects along the way, thanks to the evidence to have come to light, yet officials are still investigating the matter in the hopes of soon bringing it to a satisfactory close.
Melissa Witt’s Disappearance Sadly Wasn’t Taken Seriously at First
While many believe it was a tense morning for Melissa “Missy” Witt on December 1, 1994, as she had an argument with her money over their finances, officials believe it was normal since the argument was not as much as a fight but a mere squabble. In fact, that much was proved by that evening because when the 19-year-old returned home from college and her part-time job at a local dentist’s office at around 5:30 p.m., she’d found a note from her mother inviting him to the bowling alley like it was their ritual as there was a church league meetup. The teen hence changed her clothes and left in her white Mitsubishi.
According to Police records, Missy had bought her car a few months prior after having saved for a long while, but she’d faced some trouble that day while leaving work as it wouldn’t start. She actually had to ask a passerby to help her jumpstart it, just to learn she had turned the lights on, and so the battery had died – nevertheless, she managed to make it home okay and even left without any issues. However, she never made it into the bowling alley, and it genuinely worried her friends and family alike since not showing up for anything was extremely unlike her.
After all, Missy was essentially a model teenager – she helped those in need, was a model recruit for her university, had friends whose lives she lightened by just being there, and had a close bond with her mother. In fact, it was routine for the mother-daughter duo to meet up at the bowling alley in the evenings and share some good times and a meal together before going home, so her loved ones immediately raised alarms. But alas, because Melissa was 19, local deputies didn’t file any missing person’s report as they believed she could simply run away – thus, it wasn’t until more than a day later that they actually filed a report.
Melissa Witt Was Strangled To Death in the Worst of Ways
Even though Melissa’s loved ones had frantically been trying to look for her since Thursday, December 1, evening itself, it wasn’t until Sunday that an official search for her actually began as her car was found in the bowling alley parking lot. It was subsequently impounded and tested, but officials still maintained they didn’t suspect any foul play since everything seemed okay, that is, until they returned to the parking lot shortly after. There were three pools of blood near where the teen’s car had been parked, which officers likely completely missed at first owing to the misty rain that had been pouring on that Sunday, December 4, morning.
As if that’s not enough, as detectives followed the blood pattern, they also recovered her earrings and her hairclip strewn about, only for the trail to then suddenly end near the front of the establishment. That’s when it became evident that Missy had indeed reached the bowling alley, she just never made it inside – a fact later also confirmed by an employee coming forward to state someone had turned in a set of keys they’d found outside and the keychain had Missy’s name on it. This had some blood spatter, too, all of which was soon confirmed to be of the missing teenager, driving officials to launch an extensive investigation.
But alas, it wasn’t until mid-January 1995, around 45 days after the fact, that Missy was located – her completely nude body was found lying near a headstone-shaped stone in the Ozark Mountains. The fact she was nude, with her clothes, watch, or any other personal belongings nowhere in sight, indicated her killer had carefully disposed of her there and that she also could have been sexually assaulted. The latter couldn’t be verified owing to the fact her body had already started to decompose, but she was positively identified through dental records, and it was ascertained that she had been strangled to death while struggling for her life.
There Have Been Several Suspects in Melissa Witt’s Murder
Because of the heinous way Melissa had been killed and disposed of, the very first people officials looked into were known murderers and predators in the Arkansas area. This included convicted killer Larry Swearingen, convicted rapist William Dillard Taylor, as well as alleged serial killer Charles “Charlie” Ray Vines, but their investigations yielded nothing. There were witnesses who’d come forward to state they’d heard an argument or a woman screaming outside the bowling alley on a fateful evening before she and a man got into a car and drove off, essentially confirming the theory she had been abducted, but nothing could be corroborated.
The evidence against all the suspects was circumstantial too, and most of it sadly couldn’t be looked into much further because by the time a specialized cold case got to this point in their re-inquires, Larry and Charlie had passed away. While Larry was executed by lethal injection in 2019 for an unrelated 1998 homicide of 19-year-old Melissa Trotter in Texas, Charlie had died of a terminal illness the same year while serving three life sentences for raping and killing different women across several years. As for William, since no inquiry into him concerning this matter panned out, he was essentially cleared of any involvement and has thus only ever been convicted of sexually assaulting his own daughters and step-daughters.
Since then, though, newly uncovered evidence has suggested that Melissa’s killer could have been someone she already knew – a claim author LaDonna Humphrey has elaborated in her book Connected By Fate. According to her, the police are now looking into a man who was mentioned several times in Missy’s personal journal and has an extensive history of violence that apparently more than a dozen people have backed. She asserted she had actually even spoken to this particular male’s roommate at the time, just for them to concede he was supposed to meet Melissa on the fateful evening and later even had her missing Mickey Mouse watch in his possession.
However, since the case is ongoing and the evidence against this possible suspect is purely circumstantial or hearsay at this point, he has not been named, charged, or arrested. Then there’s the fact that a local Arkansas native by the name of Travis Dale Crouch is also still a person of interest – this 1997 convicted rapist has a long history of violence too, and he actually knows the area where Melissa’s body was found. Therefore, investigators are doing their best to cover all avenues and are currently even going through the archives of all the evidence collected nearly three decades ago so as to have it re-analyzed for DNA testing if necessary. So, although Melissa’s case remains unsolved to this day, there are people vehemently working on it in the hopes of finally bringing some closure to the community. We should mention there is currently a $29,000 reward for any tip offering critical information that could help crack this case, so if you know anything, please do not hesitate to call your nearest law enforcement agency at 1-800-440-1922.
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