michelle dropped one of the ranch hands off at the local bar, but the other, roy melanson, asked her if she would drop him off farther down the road so he could get his truck. she agreed. all right. prosecutors believe somewhere along the way, melanson ordered michelle to stop the car. he let the dog out. there was a struggle, resulting in the ripped zipper. and he killed her. the evidence suggests he dumped her body down the side of the mountain. okie made his way to a ranch about 15 miles away, an indication that michelle was dead since he wouldn t have left her side if she had been alive. melanson drove michelle s car to texas where he used her 35 millimeter camera, then pawned it with the unexposed film inside. there were certainly the
but she decided to try her hand at landscape photography, and she headed to the mountainous wilderness of western colorado. she rode polo ponies and branded cows and went rock climbing and was a student at the rochester institute and was quite a student of photography. she was a realist and she knew how to face things and worked through them. michelle faithfully called her parents almost every day to let them know where she was and what she was doing. but when several days passed without a call, her parents became alarmed. i knew that she didn t run off. you know, they said, well, this is one of these girls that, you know, just decides she s a free spirit and off she goes. she was not that way. when local officials were
almost 20 years after michelle wallace s disappearance, a team of forensic specialists searching through the high-altitude forests of western colorado found a human skull. nearby were other human bones identified by a forensic anthropologist as those from a female in her late teens to mid-20s. this woman had been thrown from the road and come to rest against the tree. her body, her bones, were found in such a manner as to indicate exactly how she had come to rest. one of the scientists tested this hypothesis by dropping a bucket from the road at the top of the hill. the amazing thing is that the bucket landed at exactly where the cranium had been. the necrosearch team also
of braided hair. interestingly enough, those braids are identical in appearance to a photograph that was actually obtained from the camera of michelle wallace when it was recovered in 1974 from the pueblo police department who had recovered it from a pawnshop. again, the case stalled. the hair, while promising, looked to be a dead end. another decade passed and the case grew cold yet again. until a homicide investigator, cathy ireland, discovered something in the evidence file that had been overlooked. so i came across a hair brush that had been bagged and sealed and it had michelle wallace s name on it. and the forensic evidence it contained changed the course of the investigation. ring ring! progresso! i can t believe i m eating bacon and rich creamy cheese before my sister s wedding well it s only 100 calories, so you ll be ready for that dress
camera. on the camera was was a roll of film. the last photographs on the roll of film were photographs of michelle s dog, okie, wearing his hiking packs. in the very last photograph on the roll was a picture of roy melanson with a young woman he met in pueblo, colorado. melanson denied having anything to do with michelle s disappearance. he said they stopped for coffee and he admitted sneaking out the back way and stealing her car. and he said michelle s dog was tied up outside. melanson told police he dumped michelle s car in amarillo, texas. when police recovered the car, they found no evidence of violence either on the inside or outside. although the car had been wiped clean of fingerprints.