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Melissa Witt, a 19-year-old girl, was abducted from the parking lot of Bowling World, Fort Smith, Arkansas on the evening of December 1, 1994. She was strangled to death, and 45 days later, her body was found around 50 miles away in the Ozark National Forest.
The investigation began in the 1990s, but even after three decades, the true culprit behind the murder of Melissa Witt remains unknown. The terrifying homicide is still one of the most difficult cases in the entire history of not just Fort Smith, but the state of Arkansas.
The murder of Melissa Witt and the entire story of investigation following that is documented in the new Hulu series titled At Witt's End: The Hunt for a Killer. In association with ABC New Studio, the four-episode series premiered on August 6, 2024, and is available for streaming on Hulu.
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The synopsis on Rotten Tomatoes reads:
"Exploring the ongoing search for answers in Melissa Witt's case and following new investigators as they comb through extensive evidence, uncovering new information in the decades-long search for her killer."
Disclaimer: This article contains mentions of r*pe and s*xual assault.
What happened to Melissa Witt on December 1, 1994?
It was a winter morning on Thursday, and Melissa got ready for her classes. She wanted some money and asked her mother, Marianne, who denied it. They had a little debate over this, but she then went to her classes. After the classes, she went to work, as a dental assistant.
At around 5:00 pm, she returned from work and found that her mother was not home. Marianne had left a note for her daughter, saying that she had gone bowling at the Bowling World and invited her to join for some hamburgers while they bowled.
This was a very recurring thing for them, to hang out at the Bowling World, so Melissa hopped into her 1995 White Mitsubishi to meet her mother. However, she never went inside the bowling alley as Melissa Witt was abducted by someone from the bowling alley parking lot and was never found alive.
5 details about the murder of Melissa Witt
1) Melissa Witt was hit on the head and abducted from the parking lot
Tara Limbird, one of Melissa's closest friends, said they had plans to meet the next day before she disappeared. She remembered getting woken up in the middle of the night when Melissa's mother called asking if she had met with her daughter. When Melissa didn't show up, Marianne first assumed that she had gone out with her friends. But when hours passed away, she began to worry.
Marianne started calling all of Melissa's friends, and by 3:00 am, she started driving frenziedly all around the streets, searching for her only daughter. At around 9:00 am the next day, she called the Fort Smith Police Department, which then started the investigation. Jay C. Rider, the Former Captain of Ford Smith PD, looked into it and thought this was a runaway case in the beginning.
Marianne had reported that she argued with her daughter, and the police thought it could've influenced her to run away. Melissa was 19 and legally allowed to live alone. Rider had previously received hundreds of runaway cases and thought Melissa's to be the same. But all of her friends and relatives went on a massive search, distributing fliers and posters throughout the town.
After a few days, law enforcement received a phone call from the Bowling World, informing them that one of their customers on Thursday provided them with a set of keys with a keychain named "Missy" that had blood smeared on it.
This brought a completely different turn to the case. On December 5, 1994, Melissa's Mitsubishi was found in the bowling garage. Near the car, the investigators discovered marks of blood stains, a gold hoop earring, and a crushed hairclip.
2) Rumours began to spread that Melissa Witt already knew the killer
During the investigation, it was found that Bowling World had only private security, so there was no security in the parking lot on Thursday. Additionally, there was no CCTV surveillance around the premises, and when the cops checked the CCTVs around other buildings, nothing was found.
Daren Bobb, a KFSM TV-5 Anchor at that time reported that over the next few weeks, hundreds of s*x offenders and possible suspects were interviewed. But it was only two years after that the law for s*x offenders registry acts became legal in Arkansas.
In partnership with the local media, law enforcement made a plea to the public for information about anyone present at the bowling alley on Thursday. Calls began to flood when someone said that they witnessed a white female with an African American male around 6:30 pm.
The witness said that the white girl was having a debate and that it was as if she already knew the person. There were also rumors Melissa Witt was involved with drug suppliers and was taken hostage, but no concrete evidence was found.
Marcus Blair, a former reporter at Southwest Towns Record, said that people were terrified and began to lock doors at night. The Witt family offered a reward of $30,000 for information leading to the suspect. Suddenly, an anonymous witness came forward saying that between 6:30 to 7:30 pm, on Thursday, there was a big argument when his dad drove him to the bowling world. The witness too felt that the girl was debating with someone who was not a stranger to her.
3) The decomposed body of Melissa Witt was found in the woods of Ozarka National Forest
On Friday, January 14, 1995, two animal trackers were walking down the woods at around 9:40 am when they stumbled upon something in the distance that looked like a mannequin lying face down on the ground. It was around 30 feet away from the logging road, and when they went closer, they were terrified.
It was the decomposing body of a naked young woman. The pair immediately called the Franklin County Sheriff's Department, who called the Fort Smith Police Unit. The scene was soon flooded with the authorities, detectives, medical assistants, and reporters. Chris Boyd, the Former Mayor of Fort Smith PD, soon sent the body to the crime lab.
During the autopsy, the dental work and fingerprints taken from the body made everyone's fear come true. Visual identification from the face was almost impossible, with massive decomposition. However, with the dental records, it was proved that the body belonged to Melissa Witt. The search for the runaway turned into a homicide investigation.
4) Melissa Witt was strangled to death
During the investigation, evidence was provided by a person who was hunting in the woods. He saw a man in the woods changing his clothes next to a dark grey car parked along the same logging road. The evidence described that the man was somewhere between 20 and 30 years old, around 5'11 height, and approximately 180 pounds. But the man's presence somehow looked odd because he didn't have any hunting or fishing gear.
The body was found approximately 20 miles north of Ozark off Highway 23. According to the autopsy reports, Melissa Witt died from asphyxia due to strangulation. Also, pieces of dried grass and other debris were found in her upper and lower airways, which belonged to the Ozark National Park.
It proved that she was killed somewhere near the woods where the body was found. During the autopsy, they couldn't determine if she was r*ped due to advanced decomposition in the lower half of the body.
5) Melissa Witt was completely robbed and her body was kept hidden for 45 days
The autopsy reports confirmed that Melissa was killed on the very day of her abduction. While the search party was involved in looking for any evidence, they found indentations behind a rock, which indicated that her body was hidden behind the rock in between two trees. Investigators started to set up a profile around the description of the killer. It was clear that the killer knew the woods very well and how isolated it was.
The police suspected that someone had dragged the body from near the rock to near the road for someone to take notice of it. It could be the killer or a local who wanted the body to be found. Melissa's clothes, shoes, the other golden hoop, and her Mickey Mouse watch were missing from the crime scene. Additionally, cigarette butts and papers were found near the body.
Marcus Blair, the former reporter at Southwest Times Record, found news on the front page of Houston News about a man named Larry Swearingen, arrested for killing a woman named Melisssa Trotter. Shockingly, she looked very similar to Melissa Witt.
Blair contacted the police department and learned that upon investigation, Larry had also abducted and strangled Melissa Trotter and dumped her body in Houston National Forest. Also, police tracked that during November 1994, he was staying with his grandparents in Clinton Arkansas.
Swearingen's legal advisors prevented him from talking anything about the case until 2019 when he was executed without confessing to the murder of either Melissa Trotter or Melissa Witt.
Later investigations into the murder of Melissa Witt
Almost six years later, in the early 2000s, another potential suspect was taken under the jurisdiction, named Charles Ray Vines. He was arrested in Fort Smith, for breaking into a house and attacking a young girl. During the attack, he beat her and attempted to s*xually assault her. Vines worked in construction and also helped his father as a mortician.
When Vines was arrested, a completely dark side of him began to uncover, which showed Vines had an obsession with r*pe and necrophilia. Vines confessed that in 1993, he had brutally beaten and r*ped an elderly 58-year-old woman named Juanita Wofford. In 2000, he was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Wofford and Ruth Henderson.
In 2019, two FBI agents Rob Allen and Rueben Gay tried to interview Vines, with the hope of getting some important information regarding Melissa Witt's murder. However, Vines died in 2019 of natural causes while imprisoned in an Arkansas maximum security unit near Pine Bluff.
Over the years, many detectives have tried to solve the cold case of Melissa Witt but reached dead ends. However, they agreed that Melissa truly knew the murderer, and it was written somewhere in her diary. The killer wanted her to find him that night and was waiting for her until the car showed up.
Unfortunately, on Sunday, March 20, 2011, Melissa Witt's mother, Marianne, passed away at 75, never getting to find her daughter's killer. Chris Boyd, the former Mayor of Ford Smith PD, still wishes to crack this 30-year-old case, find the murderer, and finally provide the Witt family justice.
We bring more chilling facts about crimes that remain unsolved. Follow us for the latest news and updates on Hulu's documentary At Witt's End: The Hunt for a Killer.
