but there was no blood evidence anywhere nearby. a bullet like that will usually not travel through a human body. if it does not travel through, you usually do not get blood running anywhere. it s not like the typical tv shows where you see blood flying everywhere. there were no eyewitnesses. unless maybe there were some barnyard animals, and, of course, they weren t talking. joanne waited for two days before she filed a missing person s report. police found melvin s pickup truck about 60 miles away in reisterstown, maryland. it was in a grocery store parking lot. melvin s checkbook and .22-caliber rifle were still inside the truck. so the motive wasn t robbery. the truck was left windows partially down, keys in the ignition. i believe some of melvin s belongings were still located in the truck.
but after only three weeks, melvin and teresa decided they had made a mistake and moved back home. gentlemen, change partners across from where you are. change partners and swing her. however, in this recent disappearance, neither teresa harshman nor her husband, ron, knew of melvin s whereabouts. and the bank reported no activity on any of melvin s credit cards. he had a young son, he was early 20s, and this wasn t the kind of man that would run off and leave family obligations. which is why investigators began to suspect foul play.
no one was going to take his property. he became very vengeful, very very angry. he was not the kind of person that was going to allow his wife to return home and try to rebuild their relationship. there was no forgive and forget. it was i will get my revenge. and that s what he did. prosecutors say the crime was premeditated. the evidence suggests that harshman drove to melvin s home, found him inside the barn. then shot and killed him with his new .25-caliber pistol. [ gunshot ] the .25-caliber round probably didn t exit melvin s body. prosecutors believe harshman drove home and returned later on his motorcycle.
contact with the outside world not to have some sort of record with something. we had divers check the ponds in the area. talked to neighbors, if they had seen anything unusual, if they saw him leave. no one did. melvin s dental records were compared to every unidentified body discovered anywhere in the united states, with no success. the only lead in the case was from a neighbor who said he saw a brown pickup truck near melvin s home on the day he disappeared. it was similar to the truck ron harshman owned. ron s wife and melvin snyder once had an affair. whether it was harshman s truck or not, i don t know. we don t know. police discovered that harshman had purchased a .25-caliber handgun just a few weeks before melvin s disappearance. coincidentally, a .25-caliber
franklin county sits on the outskirts of gettysburg, pennsylvania, a must-see for tourists and military historians alike. but the locals found the lives of melvin and joanne snyder for more interesting than those civil war battlefields. on saturday, may 25, 1985, joanne snyder left for work around 5:30 a.m. she baked pies for a local diner. when she returned home around noon, her 43-year-old husband melvin was gone. and so was his truck. she looked around for him, and observed some things that she felt were out of the ordinary. first of all, he left his tools out. melvin snyder was very meticulous about his things. he was very careful about his things. he wouldn t have just left his tools laying about. joanne called some of her family to come over and help look for melvin. while searching the property a family member found a .25-caliber shell casing on the barn floor.