August 29, 2024 • 46 mins
Mother of two, Melissa Wolfenbarger is missing. Her husband doesn't report her missing and tells investigators that they always talked of changing their names, getting fake identification and going "off-grid" out west, and that is what he thinks she did. A skull is found near where Chris Wolfenbarger works, but it is identified as the skull of a man. Years go by before the skull and other bones found near her husband's former workplace are identified as Melissa Wolfenbarger. But the case remains unsolved. Investigator Sheryl McCollum devotes years on the case and documents it in her incredible podcast called Zone 7 with Sheryl McCollum. On this episode of Body Bags, Joseph Scott Morgan will give you the complete story and explain how a Serial Killer helped break the case in an attempt to get justice for his daughter.
Transcribe Highlights
00:11.82 Introduction - Avon Avenue and Melissa Wolfenbarger
05:03.78 Discussion of a skull and a missing mother of two
09:43.56 Discussion a head found in the road, where is the rest
15:02.40 Discussion of family and contact
19:53.10 Talk about the "finder"
24:57.23 Discussion of what to do when you find part of a body
29:47.38 Discussion of skull identified as male
34:41.20 Discussion of arms and legs found
39:51.28 Discussion of investigation
45:29.76 Discussion of serial killer helped solve crime
Conclusion - listen to Zone 7 podcast for details
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body Doors with Joseph Scott More. The name Avon is
a curious name. I think that probably most folks, particularly
my generation, think of Avon to think of, let's see,
what's the old commercial Avon lady calling and bringing cosmetics
(00:24):
to the door of a home, which is kind of
interesting to say the least. I think Avon is still
a thing. I actually think it's like a multi national
company that's still based in London. But you know, the
origin of the name Avon is kind of fascinating. Avon
(00:47):
actually is a descriptor of a river. It's the name
of a river in south southwest England. And as a
matter of fact, someone very famous is associated with that
region and living in proximity to that river, and that
(01:08):
would be William Shakespeare. As a matter of fact, every
now and then he is actually referred to as the
Bard of Avon. But today we're going to talk about
another location that also carries the same moniker, only this
(01:31):
is not the Avon River. It's Avon Avenue in southwest Atlanta,
and we're going to be talking about a case involving
a young mother who has been dead now since nineteen
(01:54):
ninety nine. And finally, an arrest has been made in
her case. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body backs.
As I have stated in the past, Dave, uh, I
(02:18):
count myself as a New Orleanian, spent parts of my
life there, ever since I was an infant, then into
young adulthood. Been down. Still go home. I call it home.
And you know, the world of New Orleans is actually dictated,
I think geographically, at least by water. You've got the
(02:43):
Mississippi River. Obviously that kind of cuts its way, you know,
through the city and literally divides Metro Metro New Orleans,
restating in three two, dividing tro New Orleans into two halves.
Some people refer to it as the East Bank in
(03:06):
the West Bank, which is not accurate because the river
turns there, so it's technically the north bank and the
South bank. But who am I to state otherwise. And
of course you have a Lake Poncha Train that is
literally on the north side of New Orleans. And then
of course you've got the Gulf of Mexico to the south.
(03:27):
But unlike New Orleans, Dave, Atlanta is a curious place.
Did you know Atlanta really doesn't have a river that
dictated how the city was going to be laid out.
The Chattahoochie River is there, and when we were kids,
people used to talk about shooting the hooch. They'd go
(03:49):
down the hooch the Chattahoochee River and rafts and they
were drinking and all that stuff. But it didn't really
dictate how the city was lan laid out. It was
laid out out as a train city. Actually, did you
know that one of the original names of Atlanta was
called Terminus, and Terminus means literally the end of the line.
(04:12):
It terminates there, And by virtue of that, having been
an investigator in both New Orleans and in Atlanta, there's
some logic to the way New Orleans is laid out.
If you know where the river is, if you know
where the lake is, you can pretty much get there.
It's laid out in grids. I've often said that Atlanta
(04:32):
seems like somebody on acid laid out the streets there,
because you'll have a street that comes to a sudden end,
and it won't pick up for another mile and a
half perhaps, and it'll have the same name and they
switch back on one another. It's the most curious thing.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I've always thought of Atlanta as a conglomeration of a
bunch of small towns that kept growing out until they
fed into one another. And that's why it's like that.
It's not like there's one city like in New Orleans,
where you know, you've got a lot of history and
you've got a port. In Atlanta, you're landlocked, and you
have a bunch of small communities that just spread out
(05:13):
and became a big one, which is why it is
so difficult talking about roads in particular. You mentioned Avon
right off the bat, and when we were first talking
about this story about Melissa Wolfenberger, you mentioned Avon Road.
You mentioned the road, and I started thinking, do I
have to put makeup on to go for a ride?
And then I went, wait a minute, I remember something
(05:33):
about this, and it was just one of those things
where you're going, why why do we know about that?
It's because this case boggles the mind of how it
possibly was not dealt with and solved sooner than it
actually was. We're doing the story because there has finally
been an arrest in a story that, to be honest
with you, Joe, if you find a skull in the
(05:56):
street and you have a woman missing and her husband
works in that building right over there. I'm guessing maybe
somebody ought to test it. I'm just saying maybe testing
the bones. Uh we did even in ninety nine we
had DNA, right, Was there not a way that they
could look at the at the skull? Oh wait a minute,
(06:19):
Wait a minute. He she was not reported missing? Was she?
We have a missing mother of two who's not been
reported missing by her husband.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Yeah, but here here's where you uh what what's what's
the term they use in uh in writing? You lose
the plot at this point in time, and boy, you
you set a mouthful there. Brother that not reported and misidentified? Okay,
now full Hey wait, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta
(06:51):
tell I gotta tell our friends here full disclosure. Uh.
My office at the time was the Full County Medical
Examiner's Office. I worked there during the period of time
when Melissa's case occurred. This was not my case. It
was former Oh yeah, yeah, Avon Avon Avenue, which I'm
(07:17):
very familiar with. I worked over my career in Atlanta.
I worked a ton of cases, and they weren't all homicides.
You had a variety of cases that but I spent
a lot of time. It's kind of a it's kind
of a medium thoroughfare. You know, there's bus stops like
every block, so it's got it's it's heavily trafficked you know,
(07:39):
through there. But again, Avon is one of those locations.
And I didn't just randomly think this up. Avon is
one of these places where it's in southwest Atlanta. So
it's it's down from like the heart of Atlanta where
like Olympic Park is and all that stuff and the
old CNN building, Coca Cola, World of Coke and all that.
(08:02):
It's southwest, like really southwest Atlanta. It's in the city limits.
And David, it's one of these streets that literally runs
east and west and guess what, all of a sudden,
it runs directly into a major railhead.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
And it stops terminus.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Then yeah, terminus, and then you cross over this these
rail lines and there's multiple rail lines. You've got Marta
that runs through there. I think there's probably uh, you know,
the the regular you know train tracks that go through
there that convey everything from people to you know, to cargo.
(08:41):
And then all of a sudden, about half a mile away,
Avon picks up again. And if you can you imagine
this back back in those days, and I know a
lot of people will identify with this. We didn't have
Google Maps or anything. We used map books and all
of our vehicles at the m's office, we had a
big map book that we would flip to, and even
(09:03):
that wouldn't help sometimes because you couldn't tell where these
goofy roads started and ended. And Melissa's case actually happened
on the more easterly end of Avon, It wasn't back
toward the more residential area that's on the other side
of the train track, so this is more in an
(09:24):
industrial area. And right you were you mentioned that her
husband at the time of her disappearance actually worked at
a glass company that was immediately adjacent I mean like
right there, right there, you know, adjacent to where this
(09:45):
head is actually found lying in the road on Avon. Dave.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
The scary part about all of this is that Melissa
Wolfenberger and Christopher Wolfenburger met when they were in high school,
and he was kind of the bad boy, and she
was smitten with the bad boy. They hook up in
high school, they get married shortly after, they have two children,
(10:13):
and they actually they're from outside of Atlanta. They're not
from the Atlanta metrary, living in a rural area, and
they move, Christopher moves her to get her away from
her family. Is what it seems like to me. Everything
I've been able to find out, Joe, is that as
Christopher Wolfenberger was able to pull Melissa away from her family.
(10:35):
She was young when they got married, and married right
out of high school. She's twenty one and has two children,
and Christopher has separated her. You know, she used to
have a lot of contact with her family. In over
a couple of years, it slows to a trickle. They
don't see her that often, but they do talk. And
she works at a waffle house sometimes with her older sister.
And nothing permanent, nothing full time, just something she would
(11:00):
fill in and make a few extra bucks. But Christopher
has cut her off. She does not have a car.
She doesn't have anything of her own, no phone, no cars,
no motor lights, you know, like Gilligan's Island without the fun.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
And she does go home on Christmas. On Thanksgiving in
nineteen ninety eight, and she makes a request about a
very special gift she wants for Christmas is a picture
of her grandfather yes, it's very special to her, and
that's what she wants for Christmas. That's the kind of
thing you remember, you know, when somebody asks for something
that's so personal and so important to them. And we'll
(11:36):
be back in a couple of weeks, and I'd like
to have that. She doesn't make it back for Christmas,
Joe after making that request of the picture for her grandfather. Nope,
she doesn't show up. Matter of fact, there's no call
on Christmas. There's no nothing. Melissa's gone. Mother's Day, rolls
(11:58):
around in May, haven't heard from her. It's five months later.
She doesn't make the call on Mother's Day, doesn't call
her mom. Now they don't have the closest to families. Okay,
this is a disjointed family. Actually, we could do a
body Bags episode on her dad. Yep, a serial killer
named Carl Patten. Look it up. Well, not a serial killer.
(12:20):
He killed five people. So what do you call that?
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, yeah, that's a serial killer. I think I think
the classification now is three or more. Okay, and so yeah,
he fits the description. I hate the way the paper
addresses this or or makes reference to it, because they
(12:43):
say they don't identify this as a serial killer's victims.
They refer to the bodies as serial killings, and it's
a it's a weird way, you know that they refer
to this. But yeah, so yeah, So if you've killed
(13:07):
three or more, okay, you're in the atmosphere of serial
killer here.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Okay. So Melissa's dad, Carl was a murderer. Her mother
was involved in the last killings that he did, involved
it after the fact. So Melissa and her older sister
both are born into a family with the father of
a murderer. So it's odd that you go forward her
life after high school after being taken away by Christopher,
(13:33):
separated from her family. He's now separated her from the herd.
It's such a controlling thing. And I tell women this
all the time. This is the youth pastor in me.
If you're dating a guy, yeah, and or a girl,
and everything that person does is to pull the wall
between you and your family, there's something wrong.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Doesn't mean they're bad evil, It just means that's not
a good relationship. Because a healthy relationship incorporates others. It
does not build an island with walls around it. You
don't live on Alcatraz. Man not in America anyway.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, yeah, and that's I think that that's an indication
of kind of the indwelling, I don't know, for lack
of a better term, kind of rot that existed. And
you know what, Dave, I think that retrospectively, looking back,
I think at least that when you get somebody, when
(14:28):
you get somebody that you can isolate, that you can
take away their means to take care of themselves, to
move about, to realize who they are as now a
parent and a wife and those sorts of things. I
think it's actually easier to destroy them, I think now.
(15:02):
I don't know if this works for you, Dave. I
think now for me, I look forward to Christmas now
more than I did when I was a kid. It's
because the grand babies I love. There's just I don't know,
there's something about it. I don't know. If that happens
with you, it's become more important. I think for me,
(15:28):
are you really now? I think that if if you
and I could have a conversation with our eight year
old selves, they probably debate that, man, But yeah, you know,
for me, I can't imagine not being able to talk,
you know, to my wife, to Kim, you know, and
(15:51):
to Noah, my son and my daughter and my grandbabies. Man,
I can't imagine that. And you use the term island
a moment ago, that's a god, that's a that's a
horrible image when you think.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
An island without a dock at the island where there
is no visitors. And April twenty ninth, nineteen ninety nine,
a skull is found. Melissa Wilfenberger is not reported missing.
At this point. When the skull is found, her family
hasn't even realized they haven't seen her in a while
(16:24):
yet that that's coming, but not yet. So on this
road you were talking about earlier, Yeah, a skull, how
is it found, Joe? Is it like they were sitting
in there with a candle in it like a Halloween.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
No, no, no, no, no, nothing like that. It was
actually a worker. And this happens a lot. I'll have
these little moments. Stay when I'm going down the road
and I'll see like bags sitting on the side of
the road. I know that this probably doesn't happen to
you to the degree it does to me, but I'll
see like discarded items laying on the side of the road,
(16:56):
and it will automatically cause me to flashback to events
that I had, you know, as an investigator, where you
it would send a chill down most people's spawn when
they if they could look in some of the bags
that I've seen over the years, and it's not me.
I mean, I'm used, I was used to doing it.
Can you imagine being a worker, You're doing an entirely
(17:21):
different profession, and you happen to come across a bag
and you opened a bag up and there is a
human skull and it's not just like a skull, a
completely skeletonized item. There's enough tissue there to appreciate that
there was hair. Yeah, and they actually this is one
(17:43):
of the problems that arose in this case because they
refer to the short cropped hair that was left behind,
almost like stubble. And you know, we can make certain
I think that we can make certain intellectual leaps. You know,
(18:04):
as people, we make assumptions based upon if we just see,
like if you're standing behind somebody in a line, for instance,
and you see that they've got short cropped hair, well,
automatically your mind flashes to it's got to be a dude,
right right. It's not always accurate. And if you've if
you're absent facial features where you have tissue that is
(18:29):
no longer covering the face and you're gone down to
a skeletal level on certain areas of the skull. These
suppositions take on a life of their own. And that's
you know what they say about assume. Oh wait a minute,
that's that's actually what had occurred.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Regularly, Joshmo. Yeah, on Avon Dry Road, Avenue Road.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
It's Avenue Avenue.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
On Avon Avenue. Yeah, sees a bag in the road
and opens it up, which, to be honest with you,
after doing this show with you, yeah, I and opening bags, I'm.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Not I wouldn't advise it if.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
There's a bag on the side of the road unless
I see hundred dollars bills pouring out the side. They
don't have blown in open.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Beware. You know what they say about cats and curiosity,
So I would yeah, approach with care moly, Yeah, because
you never know what's going to be contained. And you know, Dave,
I've had events where over the course of my career
where I've had people that when I arrived at the scene,
I've actually seen people seated on the ground with their
(19:33):
knees pulled into their chest, shaking and weeping because they
and I can look at them, and I'll know because
we classify these people, it seems as and I'll spell
it out as the FI N D E R. They
are the finder, and we will note that in our
reports that this individual is the finder. And the thing
(19:55):
about it is this, It's not like this individual found
a dead body hold onto the soft That's not what
he came up with. This poor man found a head
in a bag. So not only are you dealing with
(20:16):
the dead, now you're dealing in your mind with a
decapitation that just kind of ups it. Do you see
what I'm saying here?
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Yes, I'm still stuck on the I for some other reason, Joe.
When I was thinking about a skull being found in
a bag, I'm thinking about a skull that is skeletonized,
and I'm not even sure if it's a real skull.
But now you're saying that not only was it a
skull that had skin still on it, it's got enough
(20:47):
hair to see that some of it's stubble, which makes
me think, I don't know where I thought this, Probably
from a cartoon. I thought hair and fingernails continued to
grow after we died.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
To a minimum, really minimal amount. Yeah, it's you know,
they try to make it sound like, you know, people
arrived from the dead and their fingernails or you know,
Firey Long or yeah Howard, and that's really just not
the case. Yeah. But but in this in this case,
the problem that you have here is this bag is
torn open. It's not torn open by him and already yeah,
(21:23):
it was torn when he found it, and it's lying
kind of tore the shoulder toward a grate in the
road like a drainage. Great, and you can draw any
kind of conclusion from that, you know. One of the
things that I that when I and I have to
big shout out uh to to mat to is Cheryl
McCollum here Zone seven, Zone seven Podcasts. By the way,
(21:46):
she has taken the lead in this case the Cold
Case Institute. She is a marvel uh and she has
followed Melissa's case loath these many years and is one
of the big reasons that thing came to a conclusion.
The the thing about it is this, when when Cheryl
(22:07):
presented me with this case, my initial thought was, you've
got a dismembered body, and this does happen. We've actually
covered these kind of cases, my friend, where you're thinking, Okay,
somebody has wrapped a body up and after dismemberment, and
they are essentially depositing the body in a variety of
(22:29):
different you know, all over the place. Yeah, that's not
what happened here. I don't think what I think happened.
And the reason the bag was torn my money, and
I don't know if there's necessarily any way to prove this.
I think a dog got the back. I think that
a dog got the bag. The smell that was emanating
(22:50):
from the bag is just it's it's it's irresistible to animals.
They can't it. They have to go and inspect. It's
part of their primal nature. I think that dog, and
this plays into it. If my theory is right, I
(23:12):
think the dog grabbed the bag and tried to tear
it and got to the road and maybe a car
was approaching or something and frightened the dog and the
dog ran away, and that portion of the remain was
remained there. It was left there. Hence the bag is
being torn open. I don't necessarily think that this is
(23:36):
a matter of somebody rolling down a windows they're driving
down and throwing on avenue and just tossing it out.
I don't believe that, all.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Right, Well, when a skull is found in an area
like this, which is classified as an industrial area, there
are businesses around it, I would think, and I'm obviously wrong,
but I would think that you would find out where
it was a skull found, where was the bag when
you found it. Let's get a marker or something, spray
(24:04):
paint and mark the spot with an X. Okay, this
is where it was, right, And now let's from here.
Let's spread out and let's do a grid searge of
all the area around here, and let's talk to every business,
find out if there's any kind of cameras, any kind
of security. Let's map the road, who's driving along this
road on a regular basis, and let's see if we
(24:25):
can figure out how did this skull come to be here?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yeah? Yeah, for me, And you know, I can't. I
can't get into the minds of the investigators at that
particular time that were there, on that specific date back
in ninety nine, how they didn't do that. That's my
problem with this, because because if they had taken time.
And this is the kind of thing. And let me
(24:50):
tell you this, and I've worked these kind of cases
where this is what you do if you have an
element of a body, particularly what you leave to be ahead. Okay,
we're not talking about some random bone that is probably bovine,
you know, a cow, or maybe a hog bone, or
we're talking about a human skull. You know what you do.
(25:13):
You get a couple of buses and you drive out
to the police academy and you grab every cadet that
is currently in training and say we're going out for
some real world experience. Here, cadets. You load them up
on the truck and you give them very x you
give them very specific direction. We're going to line up
(25:34):
shoulder to shoulder, and we're going to march in a
straight line in this direction, then that direction, and this.
Nothing like that occurred. And you know, I think I
would think that there would be there may have been
a quicker resolution because Dave, here's the problem. When Melissa's
(25:59):
skull was taken back to the medical examiner's office, they
really didn't know what they had. There was no appreciable
trauma necessarily that they could come up with.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
What do you mean by that by appreciable trauma?
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Joah, Well, the side of the head is not blown out, okay,
Or you don't have a depressed skull fracture, something that
you can look at say definitively, this is going to be.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
The cause of day.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
That's a problem because you need the rest of the
elements of the body to help you out. And not
only do you need the rest of the elements to
help you out, Dave, it helps in the identification. And
here's the problem, David. You know, Dave. Once Melissa's skull
made it back to the Medical Examiner's office in Atlanta,
(26:59):
they were still trying to determine who this was. As
a matter of fact, they didn't even know if this
was a male or female. It was at that moment,
Tom that Melissa's gull was sent to the University of Tennessee,
(27:22):
otherwise known as the Body Form. Be very careful, I
always say, in putting your faith in its totality in
(27:49):
one person or one organization, just simply based upon how
much ink has been splashed about them over the years,
either in books or movies or news. I've got great
friends over the course of my career that have worked
at UT, have worked at the Body Farm that have
(28:10):
done their graduate work there, and I've got friends that
have attended courses there. I have students that go up there.
But in this one instance, Dave, there's a major problem
because in nineteen ninety nine, remember we have a skull
that we're talking about here singularly, they sent Melissa's skull
(28:33):
to UT to this place that we've all heard of,
the great doctor Bass, who I'm a big fan of,
by the way, and Dave, they misidentified the skull in
what we call the sexing of a skull. They identified
(28:53):
the skull as a male skull. And that's hard to
believe when you consider how many how many skeletal remains
they examine. Because there is the body Farm, the body Farm,
there is a research arm of the Anthropolt Physical Anthropology Department.
(29:13):
They study how bodies decay there, at the rates that
they decay, and they do all kinds of experiments and
studies and that sort of thing. But they also have
another element there where they send out teams of forensic
anthropologists to look at specimens or specimens will come into
them in active cases. Melissa's was an active case and
they asked for an opinion on her case, and they
(29:36):
identified the skull as a male Dave.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
I can't figure out how that's even possible at this
stage of the game. But that was twenty five years
ago from where we are today, and I'm thinking, I
know that there were pretty big leaps and bounds in
DNA technology between oj Simpson's trial and what ninety five
ninety six to by ninety nine, So okay, I guess
(30:00):
they were looking at the stubble hair and thinking this
has got to be a dude's hair, but they were wrong.
But here's the other part that bothers me, Joe, is
that we're dealing with a skull that was found. They're
trying to identify anything they can about this skull. Meanwhile
they find other body parts start showing up, arms and legs.
April twenty ninth. The skull is found June third Yep,
(30:22):
not that much longer. We're dealing with, you know, last
days of April, third day of June. Yep. Really a
little over a month.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Yeah, not too far, not too far down the tracks
and these elements that they found. First off, there's a
big part that you didn't mention, and I know the
reason you didn't mention it because arms, legs, head, no torso. Yeah,
and that's in a dismemberment case, that's the most difficult
(30:52):
element of the body to get rid of. It's the messiest.
I'm gonna be perfectly blunt with you here, and you
and I are all always open and blunt about these matters.
We have to be on bodybags. And it's the most
problematic for someone that is that has dismembered a body.
What are you going to do with a torso? And
that that's very difficult. And there's listen, you know this
(31:17):
this case does in fact, you know it's Melissa. We
know that now at the stage, but early on, when
you don't have a torso, you cannot determine the sex.
And even if you just had skeletal remains of a pelvis,
there are pelvic dimensions that we apply. You know, women's
(31:39):
hips are wider because they have to accommodate childbirth and
you don't have a pelvis to examine at that point
in time. But with a skull, here's two terms. I'm
going to throw throw these two terms at you. When
we're talking about male skulls. For instance, a male skull,
if you if folks at home will run their fingers
(32:01):
adjacent to where their eyebrows are. That's called the brow line.
With males, that's generally referred to as being robust, okay,
because it's kind of not really protuberant, but it's it's
when you look at a male's forehead compared to a
female support forehead, you'll see that the brow line is
more robust, and females they're actually, here's a here's kind
(32:24):
of a cool word. My kids at school always find
it interesting. Uh. The term for UH female features most
of the time is grass isle and grass isle actually
UH is defined as fine if I ne like finer,
more more delicate. And I really wonder what they were seeing,
(32:45):
you know, with her skull when they misidentified it, because
it's not you know, with her case, it wasn't a
matter of doing a DNA at that particular time. They
were looking at what's referred to as the morphology of
the skull and simply based on that and taking measurements,
they determined by those predetermined numbers that they have accrued
over all these years, they've called this a mail. And
(33:08):
so that puts you off on a tangent that is
going to skew the investigation greatly. As a matter of fact,
they thought that Dave, they actually thought that this case
may be a man that was missing out of South Georgia.
A man. Wow. So how much further can you be
(33:29):
put off? Course? With this and the fact that they
didn't recover initially at the scene those other elements of
the body that are wrapped, and again they are immediately
adjacent to Avon Avenue and oh, by the way, immediately
adjacent to a glass shop where Melissa's husband worked.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
You know, you know that's helpful after the fact. And Letty,
why at the point when the skull was found, Melissa
Wolfenberger had not been reported missing. Her family hadn't seen her,
but they hadn't put it all together yet because Christopher
had separated her from the family. When the arms and
legs are found, that was June third, they were beginning
(34:17):
to hey, we're hunting around for her now, but still
no report yet, and yet two years go by. But
back up, I asked you about the grid search and
you explained how they would bring out the good debts
from the academy and walk arm in arm. But when
the arms and legs are found, they're not found in
the middle of the road. But how far away are
(34:38):
we talking? Are we talking about where they would Could
they have been dropped off after the skull was found,
or were they dropped at the same time. Is there
a way to tell that?
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Well, I suppose, I suppose perhaps that could have been,
and I think that going to that that idea would
be there's kind of an interesting thought. And now I
have no proof of this. There are times in the
past where people have dismembered bodies and have frozen elements
of the body in like a deep freezer, okay, and
(35:11):
they would one by one take these elements out and
deposit them over the course of a period time over
broad ranging geographic area, and that would throw individuals off
that were examining the remains by the level of decay.
Because if you have something that is found safe, for instance,
(35:32):
in April, and it was frozen when it was put out,
and then now it's in the state that it's in.
But yet you find something that's found in June, and
maybe it's not as far gone. But here's the problem, Dave,
you can't make that assessment because they didn't search the
area at least thoroughly enough. To find these other elements
(35:53):
that may have been out there. I think that they
probably were. And since we know that each one of
those elements was individually packaged, that means that the head
was individually packaged. And I think that the animal that
found those bags chose that bag with the head in
it and left everything else behind. And this wooded area
(36:17):
and Dave the area where those the limbs were found,
it's a dense it's kind of a dense overgrowth that's
in there, like if you were going to hide something, okay,
that's where you would go, okay. And so you know,
if you're going to concentrate all of those elements, not
just one, but all of them there, it's hard to
(36:39):
make sense out of having the head separate, you know,
moving forward, and so that that's the whole thing creates
a major problem. But I think one of the things
that we have to think about here as well is
how did how did how did the arms and legs
(37:00):
become separated and the head becomes separated from the body.
I have to come back to what the husband did
as an occupation, and I don't know how many of
you guys have ever been in a glass shop and
I'm not talking about glass, like blowing glass, all right,
I'm making art. I'm talking about like where you're making windows.
(37:21):
Guess what they have sauce. They have high speed sauce
in these locations. And the husband allegedly had access to
this place, so you have control over this area. If
you wanted to go into a place like this and
essentially dismember a human remain, I don't know. I think
(37:45):
that it would be a pretty good candidate. The location
would be at least I've seen the crime scene, not
the crime scene images. But when when Cheryl, when Mac
went back out to that scene and revisited, she stood
in the very location where the head was found. Guess
what she looked back to. I think I might be wrong.
(38:05):
She looked back to her right and yeah, to her right,
So it would have been like at her two o'clock
position from where the head was found. Guess what you
could see action glass. It's literally they say, the fencing
around the place. It was right there, dude, right there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
And so when they get there, they find out that
Christiper was fired from there. So now they're not in
the house. Christopher moved. Christopher has been fired from the
only job. They knew that he had. They've got no
idea of where Christopher has moved. They don't know where
their daughter is, where the grandkids are, They don't know anything.
Norma then tries to report her daughter missing in Henry County.
(38:46):
They won't accept it because that's not where Melissa live.
You pointed out, this is in Fulton County, is where
they were living. And so Norma tries to report Melissa
missing in Atlanta and the police tell her that, look,
Melissa is a grown woman. She's married, she has the
right do what she wants to do. She can leave down,
she doesn't have to talk to you, no law, the
cops said, there's no indication anything happened to her. Now,
(39:09):
the husband's not concerned because he tells police. You know,
for a number of years, Melissa and I have talked
about getting some fake IDs, changing her identities and just
taking the kids and leaving and going to California and
just getting off the grid. I think that's what she did.
I don't know who believes that story. The same cops
(39:30):
that couldn't figure out where the legs and arms were
after they found the skull in the middle. You know,
I don't know, Joe, but that's what happened, and they
actually bought that and went away. How do you what
kind of people are investigating this is what I'm asking.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
It's baffling, and you know, I think that many people
a knee jerk reaction will see, well, there are hundreds
of cases that occur all the time, and you can't
throw all over your energy. This is kind of this
is kind of elemental level stuff here, you know, and
you begin to think about it. It all depends on
(40:03):
how vested you are. One of the problems is is
that you've got the mother who you can imagine, she's
never swam in these waters before. It's easy for me
to sit here as a forensics guy and a former
death investigator and talk about what should have done. But Norma,
Norma's never you know, worked a case. You know, she
(40:25):
doesn't know what it's like to go to APD or
go down to Henry County Police Department or to the
Fayette County Police Police Department where you know, some where
there was some involvement relative to this that actually wound
up helping her with the case. You just scratching your hood.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
I'm just thinking about something, and you know, what I
would do, I mean, really would when you were just
I just thought about this. If I had something like
this happened in my world, I would call you, I'd
call Nancy, I'd call sheel Nutt. You know a group
of friends that I know that are in this realm.
I would not know where to go on my own.
I would have to call friends for help because I
(41:03):
really wouldn't know and how could they. That's got to
be the most miserable thing in the world. Where's my
adult daughter and my grandkids?
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Interestingly enough, and to their great credit, that's who Norma
wound up. She I think she came to the end
of a rope. She actually reached the World's a funny thing, Dave.
She actually reached out to an investigator with Fayette County,
which again is a met for folks that don't know.
It's a metro area Atlanta County that is actually south
(41:35):
kind of south southwest of downtown. Henry County is south
and kind of southeast down the I seventy five corridor.
And the guy in Fayette County was actually involved to
a certain degree with Norma's husband, who is the serial
killer that's currently in prison in Georgia for five homicides.
(41:58):
He's a guy that helped her out. He's the guy
that kind of pushed this up the line that that,
you know, brought this to an awareness. I think that
you know that still it wound up bringing this thing
full circle, you know, to for Norma and her family
to And I hate the term closure because as you
(42:20):
well know, and as I've stated before, there's no such thing.
But you know, I think that we what we do
desire for the family is a journey toward peace with it.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
And yeah, I think that's a great way to phraseer Joe,
a journey toward peace, because you don't make it.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
You really don't. And and here's the thing. Melissa was
finally identified, but it it was two thousand and three
when she's identified and she's actually identified by DNA.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Okay, I was going to ask you how that happened
because we had the you had the skull, and you
had the and he had the legs. Was it because
her dad was now in the system and he had
his DNA andenter and they were able to test it
and boom, so her dad being convicted of the murders
from the seventies gets convicted is in prison in two
thousand and three, they're able to get it, and he
(43:18):
then says, you know what, the detective who solved my crimes,
who solved my murders, that's the guy you need to
get he was he caught me. See what he can do.
And that's so it all bid happen. When Crawl ends
up in prison.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Karl actually pled with them to please help, please help
find find out what happened to my daughter. Please. You know,
he's got nothing else that he's sitting in prison, and
of course is working with him on this, and that
that kind of gets a proverbial ball rolling. You know,
once you know who the person is. That's why all
(43:54):
investigations start with identification. It's one of the most critical
things when you're talking about death investigation. I can't stress
that enough. If you don't know who they are, you
can say, well, yes, I have a dead body. But
beyond having a dead body and certain types of trauma
and those sorts of things, where you going to go
with it because you have to know something about the
(44:15):
life of that person who inhabited their circle. So when
all of that information just kind of vaporizes, all you're
left with are human remains that are sitting in a
bag in a cold, cold cooler in a medical examiner's office.
But here's the really cool thing, now, Dave. For years,
(44:39):
for years, Melissa Wolfenberger's husband, Christopher was a person of interest,
But now he has been arrested, no longer a person
(44:59):
of entries, but an identified suspect, and finally maybe the
family will have peace. We're going to keep you abreast
relative to the developments. He's been charged with murder, not
(45:22):
not tried, not convicted. Okay, it's having two weeks ago,
just two weeks ago, and I would urge each and
every one of our listeners, our friends, please do yourself
a favor. Go to Zone seven podcast. Listen to what
my friend Cheryl Mac has to say about this case.
(45:47):
She has got episode after episode after episode. She has
poured her life into this case over the last few years.
This is proof that if you put your shoulder to
the stone and you don't give up, that hope may
spring eternal. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks
Body Doors with Joseph Scott More. The name Avon is
a curious name. I think that probably most folks, particularly
my generation, think of Avon to think of, let's see,
what's the old commercial Avon lady calling and bringing cosmetics
(00:24):
to the door of a home, which is kind of
interesting to say the least. I think Avon is still
a thing. I actually think it's like a multi national
company that's still based in London. But you know, the
origin of the name Avon is kind of fascinating. Avon
(00:47):
actually is a descriptor of a river. It's the name
of a river in south southwest England. And as a
matter of fact, someone very famous is associated with that
region and living in proximity to that river, and that
(01:08):
would be William Shakespeare. As a matter of fact, every
now and then he is actually referred to as the
Bard of Avon. But today we're going to talk about
another location that also carries the same moniker, only this
(01:31):
is not the Avon River. It's Avon Avenue in southwest Atlanta,
and we're going to be talking about a case involving
a young mother who has been dead now since nineteen
(01:54):
ninety nine. And finally, an arrest has been made in
her case. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body backs.
As I have stated in the past, Dave, uh, I
(02:18):
count myself as a New Orleanian, spent parts of my
life there, ever since I was an infant, then into
young adulthood. Been down. Still go home. I call it home.
And you know, the world of New Orleans is actually dictated,
I think geographically, at least by water. You've got the
(02:43):
Mississippi River. Obviously that kind of cuts its way, you know,
through the city and literally divides Metro Metro New Orleans,
restating in three two, dividing tro New Orleans into two halves.
Some people refer to it as the East Bank in
(03:06):
the West Bank, which is not accurate because the river
turns there, so it's technically the north bank and the
South bank. But who am I to state otherwise. And
of course you have a Lake Poncha Train that is
literally on the north side of New Orleans. And then
of course you've got the Gulf of Mexico to the south.
(03:27):
But unlike New Orleans, Dave, Atlanta is a curious place.
Did you know Atlanta really doesn't have a river that
dictated how the city was going to be laid out.
The Chattahoochie River is there, and when we were kids,
people used to talk about shooting the hooch. They'd go
(03:49):
down the hooch the Chattahoochee River and rafts and they
were drinking and all that stuff. But it didn't really
dictate how the city was lan laid out. It was
laid out out as a train city. Actually, did you
know that one of the original names of Atlanta was
called Terminus, and Terminus means literally the end of the line.
(04:12):
It terminates there, And by virtue of that, having been
an investigator in both New Orleans and in Atlanta, there's
some logic to the way New Orleans is laid out.
If you know where the river is, if you know
where the lake is, you can pretty much get there.
It's laid out in grids. I've often said that Atlanta
(04:32):
seems like somebody on acid laid out the streets there,
because you'll have a street that comes to a sudden end,
and it won't pick up for another mile and a
half perhaps, and it'll have the same name and they
switch back on one another. It's the most curious thing.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I've always thought of Atlanta as a conglomeration of a
bunch of small towns that kept growing out until they
fed into one another. And that's why it's like that.
It's not like there's one city like in New Orleans,
where you know, you've got a lot of history and
you've got a port. In Atlanta, you're landlocked, and you
have a bunch of small communities that just spread out
(05:13):
and became a big one, which is why it is
so difficult talking about roads in particular. You mentioned Avon
right off the bat, and when we were first talking
about this story about Melissa Wolfenberger, you mentioned Avon Road.
You mentioned the road, and I started thinking, do I
have to put makeup on to go for a ride?
And then I went, wait a minute, I remember something
(05:33):
about this, and it was just one of those things
where you're going, why why do we know about that?
It's because this case boggles the mind of how it
possibly was not dealt with and solved sooner than it
actually was. We're doing the story because there has finally
been an arrest in a story that, to be honest
with you, Joe, if you find a skull in the
(05:56):
street and you have a woman missing and her husband
works in that building right over there. I'm guessing maybe
somebody ought to test it. I'm just saying maybe testing
the bones. Uh we did even in ninety nine we
had DNA, right, Was there not a way that they
could look at the at the skull? Oh wait a minute,
(06:19):
Wait a minute. He she was not reported missing? Was she?
We have a missing mother of two who's not been
reported missing by her husband.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Yeah, but here here's where you uh what what's what's
the term they use in uh in writing? You lose
the plot at this point in time, and boy, you
you set a mouthful there. Brother that not reported and misidentified? Okay,
now full Hey wait, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta
(06:51):
tell I gotta tell our friends here full disclosure. Uh.
My office at the time was the Full County Medical
Examiner's Office. I worked there during the period of time
when Melissa's case occurred. This was not my case. It
was former Oh yeah, yeah, Avon Avon Avenue, which I'm
(07:17):
very familiar with. I worked over my career in Atlanta.
I worked a ton of cases, and they weren't all homicides.
You had a variety of cases that but I spent
a lot of time. It's kind of a it's kind
of a medium thoroughfare. You know, there's bus stops like
every block, so it's got it's it's heavily trafficked you know,
(07:39):
through there. But again, Avon is one of those locations.
And I didn't just randomly think this up. Avon is
one of these places where it's in southwest Atlanta. So
it's it's down from like the heart of Atlanta where
like Olympic Park is and all that stuff and the
old CNN building, Coca Cola, World of Coke and all that.
(08:02):
It's southwest, like really southwest Atlanta. It's in the city limits.
And David, it's one of these streets that literally runs
east and west and guess what, all of a sudden,
it runs directly into a major railhead.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
And it stops terminus.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Then yeah, terminus, and then you cross over this these
rail lines and there's multiple rail lines. You've got Marta
that runs through there. I think there's probably uh, you know,
the the regular you know train tracks that go through
there that convey everything from people to you know, to cargo.
(08:41):
And then all of a sudden, about half a mile away,
Avon picks up again. And if you can you imagine
this back back in those days, and I know a
lot of people will identify with this. We didn't have
Google Maps or anything. We used map books and all
of our vehicles at the m's office, we had a
big map book that we would flip to, and even
(09:03):
that wouldn't help sometimes because you couldn't tell where these
goofy roads started and ended. And Melissa's case actually happened
on the more easterly end of Avon, It wasn't back
toward the more residential area that's on the other side
of the train track, so this is more in an
(09:24):
industrial area. And right you were you mentioned that her
husband at the time of her disappearance actually worked at
a glass company that was immediately adjacent I mean like
right there, right there, you know, adjacent to where this
(09:45):
head is actually found lying in the road on Avon. Dave.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
The scary part about all of this is that Melissa
Wolfenberger and Christopher Wolfenburger met when they were in high school,
and he was kind of the bad boy, and she
was smitten with the bad boy. They hook up in
high school, they get married shortly after, they have two children,
(10:13):
and they actually they're from outside of Atlanta. They're not
from the Atlanta metrary, living in a rural area, and
they move, Christopher moves her to get her away from
her family. Is what it seems like to me. Everything
I've been able to find out, Joe, is that as
Christopher Wolfenberger was able to pull Melissa away from her family.
(10:35):
She was young when they got married, and married right
out of high school. She's twenty one and has two children,
and Christopher has separated her. You know, she used to
have a lot of contact with her family. In over
a couple of years, it slows to a trickle. They
don't see her that often, but they do talk. And
she works at a waffle house sometimes with her older sister.
And nothing permanent, nothing full time, just something she would
(11:00):
fill in and make a few extra bucks. But Christopher
has cut her off. She does not have a car.
She doesn't have anything of her own, no phone, no cars,
no motor lights, you know, like Gilligan's Island without the fun.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
And she does go home on Christmas. On Thanksgiving in
nineteen ninety eight, and she makes a request about a
very special gift she wants for Christmas is a picture
of her grandfather yes, it's very special to her, and
that's what she wants for Christmas. That's the kind of
thing you remember, you know, when somebody asks for something
that's so personal and so important to them. And we'll
(11:36):
be back in a couple of weeks, and I'd like
to have that. She doesn't make it back for Christmas,
Joe after making that request of the picture for her grandfather. Nope,
she doesn't show up. Matter of fact, there's no call
on Christmas. There's no nothing. Melissa's gone. Mother's Day, rolls
(11:58):
around in May, haven't heard from her. It's five months later.
She doesn't make the call on Mother's Day, doesn't call
her mom. Now they don't have the closest to families. Okay,
this is a disjointed family. Actually, we could do a
body Bags episode on her dad. Yep, a serial killer
named Carl Patten. Look it up. Well, not a serial killer.
(12:20):
He killed five people. So what do you call that?
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, yeah, that's a serial killer. I think I think
the classification now is three or more. Okay, and so yeah,
he fits the description. I hate the way the paper
addresses this or or makes reference to it, because they
(12:43):
say they don't identify this as a serial killer's victims.
They refer to the bodies as serial killings, and it's
a it's a weird way, you know that they refer
to this. But yeah, so yeah, So if you've killed
(13:07):
three or more, okay, you're in the atmosphere of serial
killer here.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Okay. So Melissa's dad, Carl was a murderer. Her mother
was involved in the last killings that he did, involved
it after the fact. So Melissa and her older sister
both are born into a family with the father of
a murderer. So it's odd that you go forward her
life after high school after being taken away by Christopher,
(13:33):
separated from her family. He's now separated her from the herd.
It's such a controlling thing. And I tell women this
all the time. This is the youth pastor in me.
If you're dating a guy, yeah, and or a girl,
and everything that person does is to pull the wall
between you and your family, there's something wrong.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Doesn't mean they're bad evil, It just means that's not
a good relationship. Because a healthy relationship incorporates others. It
does not build an island with walls around it. You
don't live on Alcatraz. Man not in America anyway.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, yeah, and that's I think that that's an indication
of kind of the indwelling, I don't know, for lack
of a better term, kind of rot that existed. And
you know what, Dave, I think that retrospectively, looking back,
I think at least that when you get somebody, when
(14:28):
you get somebody that you can isolate, that you can
take away their means to take care of themselves, to
move about, to realize who they are as now a
parent and a wife and those sorts of things. I
think it's actually easier to destroy them, I think now.
(15:02):
I don't know if this works for you, Dave. I
think now for me, I look forward to Christmas now
more than I did when I was a kid. It's
because the grand babies I love. There's just I don't know,
there's something about it. I don't know. If that happens
with you, it's become more important. I think for me,
(15:28):
are you really now? I think that if if you
and I could have a conversation with our eight year
old selves, they probably debate that, man, But yeah, you know,
for me, I can't imagine not being able to talk,
you know, to my wife, to Kim, you know, and
(15:51):
to Noah, my son and my daughter and my grandbabies. Man,
I can't imagine that. And you use the term island
a moment ago, that's a god, that's a that's a
horrible image when you think.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
An island without a dock at the island where there
is no visitors. And April twenty ninth, nineteen ninety nine,
a skull is found. Melissa Wilfenberger is not reported missing.
At this point. When the skull is found, her family
hasn't even realized they haven't seen her in a while
(16:24):
yet that that's coming, but not yet. So on this
road you were talking about earlier, Yeah, a skull, how
is it found, Joe? Is it like they were sitting
in there with a candle in it like a Halloween.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
No, no, no, no, no, nothing like that. It was
actually a worker. And this happens a lot. I'll have
these little moments. Stay when I'm going down the road
and I'll see like bags sitting on the side of
the road. I know that this probably doesn't happen to
you to the degree it does to me, but I'll
see like discarded items laying on the side of the road,
(16:56):
and it will automatically cause me to flashback to events
that I had, you know, as an investigator, where you
it would send a chill down most people's spawn when
they if they could look in some of the bags
that I've seen over the years, and it's not me.
I mean, I'm used, I was used to doing it.
Can you imagine being a worker, You're doing an entirely
(17:21):
different profession, and you happen to come across a bag
and you opened a bag up and there is a
human skull and it's not just like a skull, a
completely skeletonized item. There's enough tissue there to appreciate that
there was hair. Yeah, and they actually this is one
(17:43):
of the problems that arose in this case because they
refer to the short cropped hair that was left behind,
almost like stubble. And you know, we can make certain
I think that we can make certain intellectual leaps. You know,
(18:04):
as people, we make assumptions based upon if we just see,
like if you're standing behind somebody in a line, for instance,
and you see that they've got short cropped hair, well,
automatically your mind flashes to it's got to be a dude,
right right. It's not always accurate. And if you've if
you're absent facial features where you have tissue that is
(18:29):
no longer covering the face and you're gone down to
a skeletal level on certain areas of the skull. These
suppositions take on a life of their own. And that's
you know what they say about assume. Oh wait a minute,
that's that's actually what had occurred.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Regularly, Joshmo. Yeah, on Avon Dry Road, Avenue Road.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
It's Avenue Avenue.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
On Avon Avenue. Yeah, sees a bag in the road
and opens it up, which, to be honest with you,
after doing this show with you, yeah, I and opening bags, I'm.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Not I wouldn't advise it if.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
There's a bag on the side of the road unless
I see hundred dollars bills pouring out the side. They
don't have blown in open.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Beware. You know what they say about cats and curiosity,
So I would yeah, approach with care moly, Yeah, because
you never know what's going to be contained. And you know, Dave,
I've had events where over the course of my career
where I've had people that when I arrived at the scene,
I've actually seen people seated on the ground with their
(19:33):
knees pulled into their chest, shaking and weeping because they
and I can look at them, and I'll know because
we classify these people, it seems as and I'll spell
it out as the FI N D E R. They
are the finder, and we will note that in our
reports that this individual is the finder. And the thing
(19:55):
about it is this, It's not like this individual found
a dead body hold onto the soft That's not what
he came up with. This poor man found a head
in a bag. So not only are you dealing with
(20:16):
the dead, now you're dealing in your mind with a
decapitation that just kind of ups it. Do you see
what I'm saying here?
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Yes, I'm still stuck on the I for some other reason, Joe.
When I was thinking about a skull being found in
a bag, I'm thinking about a skull that is skeletonized,
and I'm not even sure if it's a real skull.
But now you're saying that not only was it a
skull that had skin still on it, it's got enough
(20:47):
hair to see that some of it's stubble, which makes
me think, I don't know where I thought this, Probably
from a cartoon. I thought hair and fingernails continued to
grow after we died.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
To a minimum, really minimal amount. Yeah, it's you know,
they try to make it sound like, you know, people
arrived from the dead and their fingernails or you know,
Firey Long or yeah Howard, and that's really just not
the case. Yeah. But but in this in this case,
the problem that you have here is this bag is
torn open. It's not torn open by him and already yeah,
(21:23):
it was torn when he found it, and it's lying
kind of tore the shoulder toward a grate in the
road like a drainage. Great, and you can draw any
kind of conclusion from that, you know. One of the
things that I that when I and I have to
big shout out uh to to mat to is Cheryl
McCollum here Zone seven, Zone seven Podcasts. By the way,
(21:46):
she has taken the lead in this case the Cold
Case Institute. She is a marvel uh and she has
followed Melissa's case loath these many years and is one
of the big reasons that thing came to a conclusion.
The the thing about it is this, when when Cheryl
(22:07):
presented me with this case, my initial thought was, you've
got a dismembered body, and this does happen. We've actually
covered these kind of cases, my friend, where you're thinking, Okay,
somebody has wrapped a body up and after dismemberment, and
they are essentially depositing the body in a variety of
(22:29):
different you know, all over the place. Yeah, that's not
what happened here. I don't think what I think happened.
And the reason the bag was torn my money, and
I don't know if there's necessarily any way to prove this.
I think a dog got the back. I think that
a dog got the bag. The smell that was emanating
(22:50):
from the bag is just it's it's it's irresistible to animals.
They can't it. They have to go and inspect. It's
part of their primal nature. I think that dog, and
this plays into it. If my theory is right, I
(23:12):
think the dog grabbed the bag and tried to tear
it and got to the road and maybe a car
was approaching or something and frightened the dog and the
dog ran away, and that portion of the remain was
remained there. It was left there. Hence the bag is
being torn open. I don't necessarily think that this is
(23:36):
a matter of somebody rolling down a windows they're driving
down and throwing on avenue and just tossing it out.
I don't believe that, all.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Right, Well, when a skull is found in an area
like this, which is classified as an industrial area, there
are businesses around it, I would think, and I'm obviously wrong,
but I would think that you would find out where
it was a skull found, where was the bag when
you found it. Let's get a marker or something, spray
(24:04):
paint and mark the spot with an X. Okay, this
is where it was, right, And now let's from here.
Let's spread out and let's do a grid searge of
all the area around here, and let's talk to every business,
find out if there's any kind of cameras, any kind
of security. Let's map the road, who's driving along this
road on a regular basis, and let's see if we
(24:25):
can figure out how did this skull come to be here?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yeah? Yeah, for me, And you know, I can't. I
can't get into the minds of the investigators at that
particular time that were there, on that specific date back
in ninety nine, how they didn't do that. That's my
problem with this, because because if they had taken time.
And this is the kind of thing. And let me
(24:50):
tell you this, and I've worked these kind of cases
where this is what you do if you have an
element of a body, particularly what you leave to be ahead. Okay,
we're not talking about some random bone that is probably bovine,
you know, a cow, or maybe a hog bone, or
we're talking about a human skull. You know what you do.
(25:13):
You get a couple of buses and you drive out
to the police academy and you grab every cadet that
is currently in training and say we're going out for
some real world experience. Here, cadets. You load them up
on the truck and you give them very x you
give them very specific direction. We're going to line up
(25:34):
shoulder to shoulder, and we're going to march in a
straight line in this direction, then that direction, and this.
Nothing like that occurred. And you know, I think I
would think that there would be there may have been
a quicker resolution because Dave, here's the problem. When Melissa's
(25:59):
skull was taken back to the medical examiner's office, they
really didn't know what they had. There was no appreciable
trauma necessarily that they could come up with.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
What do you mean by that by appreciable trauma?
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Joah, Well, the side of the head is not blown out, okay,
Or you don't have a depressed skull fracture, something that
you can look at say definitively, this is going to be.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
The cause of day.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
That's a problem because you need the rest of the
elements of the body to help you out. And not
only do you need the rest of the elements to
help you out, Dave, it helps in the identification. And
here's the problem, David. You know, Dave. Once Melissa's skull
made it back to the Medical Examiner's office in Atlanta,
(26:59):
they were still trying to determine who this was. As
a matter of fact, they didn't even know if this
was a male or female. It was at that moment,
Tom that Melissa's gull was sent to the University of Tennessee,
(27:22):
otherwise known as the Body Form. Be very careful, I
always say, in putting your faith in its totality in
(27:49):
one person or one organization, just simply based upon how
much ink has been splashed about them over the years,
either in books or movies or news. I've got great
friends over the course of my career that have worked
at UT, have worked at the Body Farm that have
(28:10):
done their graduate work there, and I've got friends that
have attended courses there. I have students that go up there.
But in this one instance, Dave, there's a major problem
because in nineteen ninety nine, remember we have a skull
that we're talking about here singularly, they sent Melissa's skull
(28:33):
to UT to this place that we've all heard of,
the great doctor Bass, who I'm a big fan of,
by the way, and Dave, they misidentified the skull in
what we call the sexing of a skull. They identified
(28:53):
the skull as a male skull. And that's hard to
believe when you consider how many how many skeletal remains
they examine. Because there is the body Farm, the body Farm,
there is a research arm of the Anthropolt Physical Anthropology Department.
(29:13):
They study how bodies decay there, at the rates that
they decay, and they do all kinds of experiments and
studies and that sort of thing. But they also have
another element there where they send out teams of forensic
anthropologists to look at specimens or specimens will come into
them in active cases. Melissa's was an active case and
they asked for an opinion on her case, and they
(29:36):
identified the skull as a male Dave.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
I can't figure out how that's even possible at this
stage of the game. But that was twenty five years
ago from where we are today, and I'm thinking, I
know that there were pretty big leaps and bounds in
DNA technology between oj Simpson's trial and what ninety five
ninety six to by ninety nine, So okay, I guess
(30:00):
they were looking at the stubble hair and thinking this
has got to be a dude's hair, but they were wrong.
But here's the other part that bothers me, Joe, is
that we're dealing with a skull that was found. They're
trying to identify anything they can about this skull. Meanwhile
they find other body parts start showing up, arms and legs.
April twenty ninth. The skull is found June third Yep,
(30:22):
not that much longer. We're dealing with, you know, last
days of April, third day of June. Yep. Really a
little over a month.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Yeah, not too far, not too far down the tracks
and these elements that they found. First off, there's a
big part that you didn't mention, and I know the
reason you didn't mention it because arms, legs, head, no torso. Yeah,
and that's in a dismemberment case, that's the most difficult
(30:52):
element of the body to get rid of. It's the messiest.
I'm gonna be perfectly blunt with you here, and you
and I are all always open and blunt about these matters.
We have to be on bodybags. And it's the most
problematic for someone that is that has dismembered a body.
What are you going to do with a torso? And
that that's very difficult. And there's listen, you know this
(31:17):
this case does in fact, you know it's Melissa. We
know that now at the stage, but early on, when
you don't have a torso, you cannot determine the sex.
And even if you just had skeletal remains of a pelvis,
there are pelvic dimensions that we apply. You know, women's
(31:39):
hips are wider because they have to accommodate childbirth and
you don't have a pelvis to examine at that point
in time. But with a skull, here's two terms. I'm
going to throw throw these two terms at you. When
we're talking about male skulls. For instance, a male skull,
if you if folks at home will run their fingers
(32:01):
adjacent to where their eyebrows are. That's called the brow line.
With males, that's generally referred to as being robust, okay,
because it's kind of not really protuberant, but it's it's
when you look at a male's forehead compared to a
female support forehead, you'll see that the brow line is
more robust, and females they're actually, here's a here's kind
(32:24):
of a cool word. My kids at school always find
it interesting. Uh. The term for UH female features most
of the time is grass isle and grass isle actually
UH is defined as fine if I ne like finer,
more more delicate. And I really wonder what they were seeing,
(32:45):
you know, with her skull when they misidentified it, because
it's not you know, with her case, it wasn't a
matter of doing a DNA at that particular time. They
were looking at what's referred to as the morphology of
the skull and simply based on that and taking measurements,
they determined by those predetermined numbers that they have accrued
over all these years, they've called this a mail. And
(33:08):
so that puts you off on a tangent that is
going to skew the investigation greatly. As a matter of fact,
they thought that Dave, they actually thought that this case
may be a man that was missing out of South Georgia.
A man. Wow. So how much further can you be
(33:29):
put off? Course? With this and the fact that they
didn't recover initially at the scene those other elements of
the body that are wrapped, and again they are immediately
adjacent to Avon Avenue and oh, by the way, immediately
adjacent to a glass shop where Melissa's husband worked.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
You know, you know that's helpful after the fact. And Letty,
why at the point when the skull was found, Melissa
Wolfenberger had not been reported missing. Her family hadn't seen her,
but they hadn't put it all together yet because Christopher
had separated her from the family. When the arms and
legs are found, that was June third, they were beginning
(34:17):
to hey, we're hunting around for her now, but still
no report yet, and yet two years go by. But
back up, I asked you about the grid search and
you explained how they would bring out the good debts
from the academy and walk arm in arm. But when
the arms and legs are found, they're not found in
the middle of the road. But how far away are
(34:38):
we talking? Are we talking about where they would Could
they have been dropped off after the skull was found,
or were they dropped at the same time. Is there
a way to tell that?
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Well, I suppose, I suppose perhaps that could have been,
and I think that going to that that idea would
be there's kind of an interesting thought. And now I
have no proof of this. There are times in the
past where people have dismembered bodies and have frozen elements
of the body in like a deep freezer, okay, and
(35:11):
they would one by one take these elements out and
deposit them over the course of a period time over
broad ranging geographic area, and that would throw individuals off
that were examining the remains by the level of decay.
Because if you have something that is found safe, for instance,
(35:32):
in April, and it was frozen when it was put out,
and then now it's in the state that it's in.
But yet you find something that's found in June, and
maybe it's not as far gone. But here's the problem, Dave,
you can't make that assessment because they didn't search the
area at least thoroughly enough. To find these other elements
(35:53):
that may have been out there. I think that they
probably were. And since we know that each one of
those elements was individually packaged, that means that the head
was individually packaged. And I think that the animal that
found those bags chose that bag with the head in
it and left everything else behind. And this wooded area
(36:17):
and Dave the area where those the limbs were found,
it's a dense it's kind of a dense overgrowth that's
in there, like if you were going to hide something, okay,
that's where you would go, okay. And so you know,
if you're going to concentrate all of those elements, not
just one, but all of them there, it's hard to
(36:39):
make sense out of having the head separate, you know,
moving forward, and so that that's the whole thing creates
a major problem. But I think one of the things
that we have to think about here as well is
how did how did how did the arms and legs
(37:00):
become separated and the head becomes separated from the body.
I have to come back to what the husband did
as an occupation, and I don't know how many of
you guys have ever been in a glass shop and
I'm not talking about glass, like blowing glass, all right,
I'm making art. I'm talking about like where you're making windows.
(37:21):
Guess what they have sauce. They have high speed sauce
in these locations. And the husband allegedly had access to
this place, so you have control over this area. If
you wanted to go into a place like this and
essentially dismember a human remain, I don't know. I think
(37:45):
that it would be a pretty good candidate. The location
would be at least I've seen the crime scene, not
the crime scene images. But when when Cheryl, when Mac
went back out to that scene and revisited, she stood
in the very location where the head was found. Guess
what she looked back to. I think I might be wrong.
(38:05):
She looked back to her right and yeah, to her right,
So it would have been like at her two o'clock
position from where the head was found. Guess what you
could see action glass. It's literally they say, the fencing
around the place. It was right there, dude, right there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
And so when they get there, they find out that
Christiper was fired from there. So now they're not in
the house. Christopher moved. Christopher has been fired from the
only job. They knew that he had. They've got no
idea of where Christopher has moved. They don't know where
their daughter is, where the grandkids are, They don't know anything.
Norma then tries to report her daughter missing in Henry County.
(38:46):
They won't accept it because that's not where Melissa live.
You pointed out, this is in Fulton County, is where
they were living. And so Norma tries to report Melissa
missing in Atlanta and the police tell her that, look,
Melissa is a grown woman. She's married, she has the
right do what she wants to do. She can leave down,
she doesn't have to talk to you, no law, the
cops said, there's no indication anything happened to her. Now,
(39:09):
the husband's not concerned because he tells police. You know,
for a number of years, Melissa and I have talked
about getting some fake IDs, changing her identities and just
taking the kids and leaving and going to California and
just getting off the grid. I think that's what she did.
I don't know who believes that story. The same cops
(39:30):
that couldn't figure out where the legs and arms were
after they found the skull in the middle. You know,
I don't know, Joe, but that's what happened, and they
actually bought that and went away. How do you what
kind of people are investigating this is what I'm asking.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
It's baffling, and you know, I think that many people
a knee jerk reaction will see, well, there are hundreds
of cases that occur all the time, and you can't
throw all over your energy. This is kind of this
is kind of elemental level stuff here, you know, and
you begin to think about it. It all depends on
(40:03):
how vested you are. One of the problems is is
that you've got the mother who you can imagine, she's
never swam in these waters before. It's easy for me
to sit here as a forensics guy and a former
death investigator and talk about what should have done. But Norma,
Norma's never you know, worked a case. You know, she
(40:25):
doesn't know what it's like to go to APD or
go down to Henry County Police Department or to the
Fayette County Police Police Department where you know, some where
there was some involvement relative to this that actually wound
up helping her with the case. You just scratching your hood.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
I'm just thinking about something, and you know, what I
would do, I mean, really would when you were just
I just thought about this. If I had something like
this happened in my world, I would call you, I'd
call Nancy, I'd call sheel Nutt. You know a group
of friends that I know that are in this realm.
I would not know where to go on my own.
I would have to call friends for help because I
(41:03):
really wouldn't know and how could they. That's got to
be the most miserable thing in the world. Where's my
adult daughter and my grandkids?
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Interestingly enough, and to their great credit, that's who Norma
wound up. She I think she came to the end
of a rope. She actually reached the World's a funny thing, Dave.
She actually reached out to an investigator with Fayette County,
which again is a met for folks that don't know.
It's a metro area Atlanta County that is actually south
(41:35):
kind of south southwest of downtown. Henry County is south
and kind of southeast down the I seventy five corridor.
And the guy in Fayette County was actually involved to
a certain degree with Norma's husband, who is the serial
killer that's currently in prison in Georgia for five homicides.
(41:58):
He's a guy that helped her out. He's the guy
that kind of pushed this up the line that that,
you know, brought this to an awareness. I think that
you know that still it wound up bringing this thing
full circle, you know, to for Norma and her family
to And I hate the term closure because as you
(42:20):
well know, and as I've stated before, there's no such thing.
But you know, I think that we what we do
desire for the family is a journey toward peace with it.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
And yeah, I think that's a great way to phraseer Joe,
a journey toward peace, because you don't make it.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
You really don't. And and here's the thing. Melissa was
finally identified, but it it was two thousand and three
when she's identified and she's actually identified by DNA.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Okay, I was going to ask you how that happened
because we had the you had the skull, and you
had the and he had the legs. Was it because
her dad was now in the system and he had
his DNA andenter and they were able to test it
and boom, so her dad being convicted of the murders
from the seventies gets convicted is in prison in two
thousand and three, they're able to get it, and he
(43:18):
then says, you know what, the detective who solved my crimes,
who solved my murders, that's the guy you need to
get he was he caught me. See what he can do.
And that's so it all bid happen. When Crawl ends
up in prison.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Karl actually pled with them to please help, please help
find find out what happened to my daughter. Please. You know,
he's got nothing else that he's sitting in prison, and
of course is working with him on this, and that
that kind of gets a proverbial ball rolling. You know,
once you know who the person is. That's why all
(43:54):
investigations start with identification. It's one of the most critical
things when you're talking about death investigation. I can't stress
that enough. If you don't know who they are, you
can say, well, yes, I have a dead body. But
beyond having a dead body and certain types of trauma
and those sorts of things, where you going to go
with it because you have to know something about the
(44:15):
life of that person who inhabited their circle. So when
all of that information just kind of vaporizes, all you're
left with are human remains that are sitting in a
bag in a cold, cold cooler in a medical examiner's office.
But here's the really cool thing, now, Dave. For years,
(44:39):
for years, Melissa Wolfenberger's husband, Christopher was a person of interest,
But now he has been arrested, no longer a person
(44:59):
of entries, but an identified suspect, and finally maybe the
family will have peace. We're going to keep you abreast
relative to the developments. He's been charged with murder, not
(45:22):
not tried, not convicted. Okay, it's having two weeks ago,
just two weeks ago, and I would urge each and
every one of our listeners, our friends, please do yourself
a favor. Go to Zone seven podcast. Listen to what
my friend Cheryl Mac has to say about this case.
(45:47):
She has got episode after episode after episode. She has
poured her life into this case over the last few years.
This is proof that if you put your shoulder to
the stone and you don't give up, that hope may
spring eternal. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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