melvin up. ron harshman pled not guilty. prosecutors knew that trying a case with only one piece of forensic evidence would be difficult. there aren t a whole lot of cases out there that get prosecuted without a body. there aren t a whole lot of cases that get prosecuted without a weapon. and for a case to be prosecuted with no body and no weapon was almost unthinkable. in july 2001, a jury convicted ron harshman of first degree murder and sentenced him to life in prison. he came 16 years close to getting away with this. 16 years is an awfully long time to get away with murder. he came very close. 15 years later, after the murder, that we went out and found that shell casing before everything caught up with him and now he is in his orange prison jacket paying for his crime.
a .25-caliber shell casing was discovered in melvin s barn, and ron harshman purchased a .25-caliber handgun just a few weeks before melvin disappeared. but ron was never able to produce the weapon, saying it had been misplaced. there was a lot of information there, but nothing new was coming in to give you the opportunity to do anything more with it. nelson pored over the case file and discovered an interesting notation. ron harshman admitted test firing his new .25-caliber pistol in his backyard just after buying it. that gave nelson an idea. what about going out there and seeing if we can find a shell casing and then compare that to the one in the barn. when mr. nelson originally
the week before melvin disappeared. both joanne and ron insisted the calls were innocent, and that s where things stood. one year later, ron and teresa harshman divorced, sold the farm, and ron moved out of the area. he continued to say he had nothing to do with melvin s disappearance. and he even demanded a meeting with police to stop what he called their harassment. we did have the meeting. we had lunch together. it was he was sociable, but he bordered on being angry. and the whole purpose was for me to stop interfering in his life, both his social life and with his coworkers. i explained to him that i was an investigator and that all he had to do was to take a polygraph test and i would personally
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 that 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
after he disposed of melvin s body, he put his motorcycle in the back of melvin s truck, which created the damage found in the bed of the truck. harshman then abandoned melvin s truck 60 miles away in maryland and drove his motorcycle home. what did he do with the body? the body after 19 years has not been found. carefully, carefully, he must have planned where he was going to take the body. how he was going to dispose of the body. during police questioning, joanne snyder admitted that she told ron harshman that melvin would be home alone that day. but prosecutors had no proof that she had any prior knowledge of the murder. i think joanne had some involvement in this case, i am not sure whether that was done intentionally or if she was