of his home. it was jaw-dropping! just chilling! they started digging and they found women s clothing. it was just escalating! escalating! there were so many victims, aren t there? there. were there still are. until this guy is no longer in existence. i will carry this fight! hello, and welcome to hello, and welcome to dateline! shannon melendi dreamed big. at 5, she wanted to become a supreme court justice. in college, she scored as prestigious internship at the headquarters foundation. then, suddenly she vanished! detectives had a suspect in their sights. but it would take years, and the revelation of another teenager s horrific tale, to our unravel the mystery of sharon s disappearance. here s dennis murphy with shannon s story! the snapshots, the videos. they documented her life. the photographer dad, the camera professional captured every moment of his daughter s life. she loved life. she wanted to do everything! these parents did no
know what s happened. it would take a new prosecutor to look at the case with fresh eyes. john, who was the chief assistant da for dekalb county georgia. well, we never really had much at all until the u.s. attorney s office did in fact bring the boxes to. us and i was able to find an empty store room in the courthouse. and created, what i call a war room for this case. so i buried myself in his office, started going through the file. one thing was clear, hinton had been the key is suspect early on because he had a criminal past. as petri came across the file he came across a single name. tammy singleton. she told the same story she had told the fbi. it was a real small town. i did know anybody. back in before the disappearance, she was 14 years old and living with her parents in illinois. one day, she got a call from
i prayed hard. he took the gag off of her mouth and started asking her questions. he asked me if i ever had sexual intercourse. i told him no i had not, i was a virgin. i had never had sex. what did you say about his fate? about his demeanor? he had a high kind of personality. i recall the evil that passed over his eyes. there was definitely an evil in his eyes. at the time he is talking to me. hinton took her to a bed and sexually s assaulted her. at that point i had lost it, and it was painful what he was doing. so i was screaming, please don t do this to me! please don t do this to me! and crying. after the assault, he left tammy in the basement, handcuffed with duct tape on her mouth. and at some point i hear his wife, i hear her voice upstairs. so i began to make some noise in the basement. and she s like, what is that? and he kept running to the basement. which was curious to her. so in the meantime, i managed to like the duck tape off of my mouth. so that my mo
back in the 80s meant he was a free man. free to divorce and remarry. free to move to georgia, free to get those jobs at delta airlines and the softball field. and free to meet shannon in march of 1994. as john petrie study the files, he s realized there was a lot there. but with a huge challenge. shannon s body had never been found. but this prosecutor wanted to take a chance. this is the kind of case that you look at and you say, i want one of those! i can make a difference here? yes, i can make a difference! hinton was released from prison for that insurance fraud case back in 2003. it will take a few months before law enforcement finally investigated him for murder, ten years after janet disappeared. and i heard butch being arrested. for the murder of shannon. and my tears, just hit my glasses. my glasses were wet from the
their daughters of dr., as a search for continues. coming up, an ingenious idea to ensure that whoever has shannon cannot take off. we put 77 billboards around the city. i felt that if you will see her face, they can t move her. and then the phone rang and a friend in atlanta said, what s hinton s house is on fire. when dateline continues.