February 22, 2023 • 39 mins
April 29th, 1999. A skull is found in a trash bag outside Action Glass in Atlanta, Georgia. Soon after, in different trash bags, various other body parts are found. The remains are identified as the remains of Melissa Wolfenbarger, a 21 year old married mother of two who is reported missing several months prior. In a remarkable twist, Melissa’s remains are verified only after her Father is arrested in connection to an unrelated murder.
On this episode of Zone 7, Sheryl McCollum, a Crime Scene Investigator, is joined by Norma Patton, Melissa's mother, and Tina Patton, Melissa's sister, to discuss Melissa's life and the complex investigation to identify her remains. The conversation explores the details surrounding Melissa's case and sheds light on the challenges faced by law enforcement in identifying the victim and the killer.
Show Notes:
- [0:00] Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum.
- [1:00] The introduction to the case - Sheryl describes an intricate and complex case. Various
- [7:30] Norma, who is Melissa's mother, and Tina, who is Melissa's sister, are introduced
- [10:00] Tina was approached by Melissa's father at her workplace and asked about Melissa's whereabouts, which made her realize the seriousness of the situation
- [12:30] Despite marital problems, would Melissa ever leave her two children?
- [13:30] Melissa’s Father, Carl Patton is arrested for 5 murders that occurred in 1973. Norma helped Carl dispose of the bodies
- [16:00] The unknown skull is identified… as Melissa Walfenberger. Mother of two small children, dead at 21 years old
- [17:00] A primary suspect? Melissa’s husband, Christopher Wolfenbarger
- [21:30] How the death of Carl's daughter altered his perspective on the murders he committed
- [24:00] Melissa did not have a history of causing problems, but it is believed that her husband played a role in her becoming entangled in trouble.
- [26:00] Going to the location of where Melissa’s skull was found; her husband’s workplace.
- [29:00] “She told me ‘my husband is in jail for murder and I was on probation cuz I helped him dispose of bodies.’ Now, I don't know about y'all, but that was an unusual start of a conversation for me.”
- [34:00] As evidence accumulates, a case against Melissa's husband starts to take shape. The circumstantial evidence, coupled with his behavior after Melissa's disappearance, points to him as a potential suspect.
- [37:00] “Melissa didn't deserve what she got. She did not deserve, you know, however she died.”
- [37:30] “Thank you Sheryl, and I certainly appreciate everything that you've done cuz we wouldn't [...] have gotten this far without you. You had just as much to do with all of this and getting, getting us to the right people that could actually do something.”
- [39:00] One of the striking aspects of this case, which even Sheryl has not encountered before, is that a killer has become a crime victim. Carl Patton, Melissa's father, still writes to Sheryl from prison.
- [40:00] Next week on the show, we will be joined by Karen Greer, a renowned television personality in Atlanta.
- Thanks for listening to another episode! If you’re loving the show and want to help grow the show, please head over to Itunes and leave a rating and review! How to Leave an Apple Podcast Review: First, Open the podcast app on your iPhone, Mac, or iPad. Then, hit the “Search” tab at the bottom right-hand corner of the page and search for Zone 7. Select the podcast, scroll down to find the subhe
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Uncle Clark was a criminal. Clark was my grandfather's brother
on my mother's side. He was a thief, a con artist,
and a swindler, and my mother was crazy about him.
As a little girl growing up in a strict Southern
Baptist home with her preacher father and her Sunday school
(00:29):
teaching Mama, Uncle Clark was like a carnival to her.
He was reality TV before it was a thing. He
would come busting into town in the middle of the night,
was some wild story about where he had been and
why he was kind of hiding out in town for
a minute. He also had tales of these exotic places
(00:52):
he had been and all these adventures he was involved in.
He always brought my mom some tres pleasure that he
had acquired just for her, like the time when she
was six years old and got diamond earrings, or the
time he brought a miniature horse with a tiny buggy
just her size. Now keep in mind this was during
(01:15):
the nineteen thirties, the Great Depression, when everybody was broke, poor, penniless, well,
everybody except for her Uncle clauhurt. My mama did not
love him because he was a criminal. She loved him
in spite of it. Family loyalty runs strong in all
of us. Today. We ain't perfect, but family comes first always.
(01:41):
November the ninth, nineteen ninety eight is the last time
Melissa Wolfenburger's mama saw her alive. Her husband saw her
last December of nineteen ninety eight. She vanished without a trace.
Who was she connected to? Did she have a criminal record?
Was some body after her? Or did she leave on
(02:02):
her own? Let's start where it ended. This case takes
us to Atlanta, Georgia, which sits at the foothills of
the Appalachian Mountains, known for its famous Peachtree Street, Peachtree Road,
Peachtree Avenue, Peachtree Circle, Piedmont Park, which is known as
the City of Trees. It has the most trees of
(02:23):
any urban city in the United States. We have some
famous folks from here, Julia Roberts of Valholyfield, Bobby Jones,
John Pemberton, Spike Lee, Two Chains, Gladys Knight, President Carter,
Doctor Martin Luther King Junior. We are now known as
(02:44):
the Hollywood of the South. We're home to Cocola, Delta
Airlines home depot, and the Portia Headquarters. Atlanta is a vibrant, diverse,
welcoming city. It's got big city opportunities with small town charm.
It's April the twenty ninth, nineteen ninety nine. All we
(03:06):
know is where the delivery driver found the skull. It's
unidentified human remains avon Avenue, next to a ripped trashbag.
It's a homicide. That's the manner of death. The cause
of death is undetermined. We don't know what killed this person.
(03:31):
The killer picked the dumping ground. It would make sense
that the killer was familiar with this area of town.
The primary crime scene we don't know. We don't know
where the person was actually murdered. There's three possible crime
scenes where the victim was killed, how the victim was
transported to the dumping ground, and the dumping site itself. Now,
(03:55):
the dumping site is outdoors, somewhat secluded, not well traveled.
It's a narrow, little two lane street there, again, a
little away from downtown. We don't know any ties the
victim had to the area. We don't know anybody tied
to the victim. We don't know anything about the victim
at all. The first major twist in this case, Talafara
(04:18):
County calls the Atlanta Police Department and say, hey, we've
got a body down here in a ravine with no head.
It might be your guy. So the Atlanta Police Department
takes the skull, goes to Talafara County. It's no match.
The second twist June third of nineteen ninety nine, four
(04:40):
more trash bags were found near where the skull was found.
Each of those trash bags contained an arm or a
leg no torso. So now in the same general area
we have two arms, two legs, and a skull. Again,
(05:01):
at this point in time, Atlanta has no missing Caucasian males.
Was the victim transient wherever they from out of state?
Was this a mob hit? Was this person connected to
the cartel? Let's talk about the suspects. There aren't any.
They have no idea who the victim is, so they
(05:23):
certainly have no idea who would want to harm him.
The police have nothing more to go on than what
they have found in the bags. Now here's the other
remarkable twist. At the same time that the Atlanta Police
Department is dealing with the unidentified skull, Melissa Wolfenberger, a
(05:43):
young married mother of two, has gone missing. Her parents
are worried, sick about her because this is not like her.
They saw her at Thanksgiving, they did not see her
at Christmas. Her mama got increasingly more worried as her
birthday rolled around. Melissa had never not contacted her on
(06:06):
her birthday. So her mama goes to her police department,
Henry County, and tries to report her missing, and Henry
County gently explains they can't take a missing person's report
for another jurisdiction. That she lived in Atlanta and that's
who she would have to report her missing to. Her
mama went to Atlanta and tried to make a report,
(06:29):
and Atlanta gently explained to her she's a married woman.
She could leave town if she wants to. We have
no evidence that anything has happened to her. Her husband
hasn't reported her missing, friends, neighbors, nobody has told us
anything nefarius has occurred. Her mama could not get law
(06:51):
enforcement to take a report, couldn't get them to start
a search, couldn't get them to start an investigation of
her whereabouts. Her mama, Norma Patton is with us right now,
and her sister, Tina Patton is with us right now,
and we're going to get right into the victimology of
(07:13):
this case. Norma, thank you so much for being here.
Glad to be here. Tina, I appreciate you being with
us as well. Yes, ma'am, thank you. Tell us about Melissa.
Melissa was. She was quiet, She loved you, you knew it,
and she just had a lot of dreams when she
(07:37):
was in school. She loved animals. It didn't matter whether
it was a dog or a cat, or a rabbit
or whatever. I had to keep a rabbit for my
sister for a little while, and she went with me
to kick the rabbit up. She basically took care of
the rabbit. I was supposed to be the one taking
care of him, but she took care of the rep
(08:01):
But that's just she loved animals. It didn't matter what
it was. She just she loved them. She loved everybody,
and Tina, I know y'all were closed and did some
things like Baton lessons and Dan's lessons. Tell me about
your sister. She was quiet, like Mom said, but you know,
she loved animals and she loved you. Then you definitely
(08:23):
knew she loved you, but she kind of, you know,
she was shy. She kept herself. The only way she
met knew people was through people she already knew normal.
When did you first know in your gut something was
wrong when she didn't come at Christmas or call because
(08:46):
she had asked me for something in particular, and she
said that was all the only thing she wanted and
it wasn't something now I could go to the store.
It was something I had had the fine, And what
it was was a picture of her with her papa,
(09:09):
her daddy father, and that's all she wanted was that picture.
So I found a picture of him and her together,
and she was only five years old, maybe six at
the most, and I took it and had it blown
up into a nake by pen and had it wrapped
(09:32):
up and under the Christmas tree. And she didn't call,
She didn't didn't come get it, you know, And that
was just that wasn't like her, now, Tina. At that point,
you and your dad weren't as worried as your mama,
because Melissa had been known to not show up before
(09:53):
for different reasons. But she didn't have a cell phone,
she didn't always have a car, she didn't always have
a way to get to y'all contact you, so when
did you start to get concerned. I didn't get concerned
until I was at worked one morning at her wolf
house in East Point, and here comes my dad walking
in the door, talking about, where's your sister? Dad, I
(10:15):
don't know why she hasn't worked with me in a while, now,
you know, a few months, at least at least six months.
And he said, because we can't find her. She didn't
show up for Christmas. And I was like, what, she
didn't show up for Christmas? And she didn't call your
mom and tell her Happy Birthday either, And I was like,
wait a minute, something's wrong. If she doesn't call mom
(10:37):
and tell her Happy birthday, something's really wrong. Melissa's life
was not always that easy. She had some issues in
her marriage. She had some issues with police. She had
been to jail a couple of times for small time
stuff like shoplifting or fighting. Y'all started checking jails, and
(10:57):
y'all started checking hospitals, and she wasn't anywhere normal. Where
all did you check? Where didn't we check? I even
called the main waffle house and talked to somebody in
personnel to find out if she was working at another
(11:18):
location somewhere, and they did not have her as an
employee anywhere, which surprised me that they even bothered to check.
But once I got into telling her why I was
asking the question, and you know, she looked according to
(11:39):
their records and couldn't find Melissa as an employee. So
that really that really shook me up. We went to
Atlanta on Brookline Avenue where they were living. The house
was completely deserted. We talked to some of the neighbors
and they said that the he had moved out of
(12:01):
the house right right around Christmas or the first of
the year, and they told us where he was working at.
So we went over there and talked to the to
the owner of the glass company, and they had fired
him because he had had gotten and I hit and
(12:23):
run and one of their trucks and he wasn't where
he was supposed to be, so they fired him. At
that point, we just didn't know. And right now it's
getting to be about a year since you've seen or
heard from her. Now I'm just gonna ask you straight out.
She might have left her husband, but would she have
(12:44):
ever left her two children? No way, the kids, the
kids were her life. She would There's no way she
would have she would have ever left them? And how
old were they right now? And eight? The girl was
three and the little boy was two. They are grown
(13:05):
adults now and the girl is twenty seven and the
boys twenty six. She left him one time, and she
went back because the kids. How long was she gone
was she left him the time she came and stayed
with me, she was gone a week? And they had
some domestic violence in their marriage. I mean it's documented
(13:27):
in police reports. And sometimes she would call the police
on him, and sometimes he'd call the police on her.
And it was volatile. It was more volatile on his end,
not on hers, because she wasn't a violent person. She
wouldn't fight you, And that's important to know. So here
(13:50):
comes the big twist. Carl Patton is arrested for four
murders that occurred in nineteen seventy three. Norma and his
wife turned state's evidence for immunity. Now let that marinate
a minute. Melissa Wolfenburger's father has been arrested for murders
(14:12):
that occurred in nineteen seventy three. He was originally arrested
for four murders, but that count went to five. Norma
and Carl agreed that they would go to court and
tell the truth, and both admitted to what happened. Carl
committed the murders. Norma helped him dispose of the bodies.
(14:37):
The man that arrested Carl was Bruce Jordan of the
Fete County Police Department. Melissa was missing at this time,
so Norma and Carl agreed that, hey, we need to
ask Major Jordan if he will find Melissa. And Carl said,
and this is a direct quote, he caught me after
(14:59):
twenty five years, he must be a pretty good detective.
So Norma goes to Major Bruce Jordan and says, my
daughter Melissa is missing. Will you please help find her.
Major Bruce Jordan says absolutely, I will help you, and
he goes and talks to Carl. He talks to Norma,
(15:19):
He gets the information and he starts to work and
one of the first things he realized is where Melissa's
husband worked at Action Glass and where the skull was
found was on the same street, a Von Avenue. So
he goes to the Atlanta Police Department and says, look,
(15:41):
this skull was found just feet away from where a
missing a woman's husband works. So they agreed on March thirteenth,
two thousand and three, to get the dental records and
have the medical examiner see if they could identify who
that skull belonged to. On March fourteenth, two thousand and three,
(16:06):
the skull is identified as Melissa Wolfenberger. Her mama had
reported her missing in Henry County and Atlanta. She was
a married adult, so of course came up. Nothing we
can do about it. The husband's got a reporter. We
need to see that some overt act had happened to her.
(16:26):
There was no blood anywhere, there was no broken glass anywhere.
There was nothing to let anybody to think that a
crime had been committed. So now we have identified twenty
one year old mother of two small children, Melissa Wolfenberger,
who was married to her high school sweetheart. They had
a relationship that was volatile. They would fight, they would argue,
(16:48):
police were called or rest were sometimes made. They were
in and out of jail, they were in off probation,
but it was never anything to the felony level. So
now we get to the suspects, and I'm just gonna
go and tell y'all, there's one, not the number one.
There ain't but one. Now the entire focus is on
(17:11):
her husband. He's the last person to see her alive.
He never reported her missing. He never called her family
about her whereabouts. He never told the children anything bad
that happened to her or where she was. She had
no car, no money, no clothes, no cell phone when
she supposedly left on her own, never checked with police
(17:32):
or hospitals or the more. And he never looked for her.
He worked on the same street where the skull was found.
He had a pass that was violent, He had a
hit and run in a work truck. He moved out
of town after she went missing. He seemed to know
she wasn't coming back. He did not pick up her
remains from the funeral home, and he didn't pay for
(17:53):
the funeral. At best, he's gonna be the guy that
didn't look for her, didn't bury her, didn't make sure
the children were okay with what happened to their mom.
The worst he is, it's her killer. It is important
to note that Christopher Wolfenburger has denied any involvement in
(18:18):
Melissa's murder, but Sergeant Leyton from the Atlanta Police Department
on Homicide told Dateline that Wolfenburger has an extensive criminal
history with family violence. Witnesses also stated during the investigation
that he had been abusive to Melissa. Christopher told Dateline,
(18:38):
I'm not denying I have a criminal history. We were,
you know, like Bonnie and Clyde, just small time criminals.
But we didn't do anything bad bad. He further told
Dateline that when she never returned home, he figured she
changed her identity and went on to live her dream
without him in California. Now, Norma, when did you suspect
(19:03):
her husband as being the one that murdered her? And
what made you think him? As my mother would say,
it was the look in his eyes when I met him.
You could just see them, the meanness in his eyes.
I didn't like him, and it just it went downhill
(19:31):
from there. I mean, you never trusted him either. Even
in high school, he had Blissa climbing out the bedroom
window and sneaking out to go wherever he wanted to go,
and I always reported her as a runaway. They run
away in December of ninety four and ended up in Oklahoma.
(20:00):
The police called me and told me that they caught
him driving on the wrong wrong way on the interstate
during one hundred and twenty miles an hour with no
lights on. He went off the interstate and hit a bull. Anyway.
They lost track of him, but they caught up with him.
(20:23):
When they caught up with him, he laughed at him.
He said, don't the reason you caught me because I
hit that bull. So that that's the way he always
looked at everything, Tina, Did Melissa ever talk to you
about her marriage or the problem she was having. She
didn't talk about him. I knew about him, you know,
me and her words at a buff house close to
(20:44):
the airport one time together and at night she came
in one night with a handprint around the throat. Her
eyes were red. She had been crying and I knew
what it was. I knew it was Chris, and I
asked her about it. She said, don't say anything. And
I was like, oh no, no, no no, no, I'm going
to say something. And I did, and so did my
(21:07):
boyfriend at the time. And you know, he reached across
and slapped and said something to him, and Christus turned
his head and looked out the window like it was nothing.
But he didn't retaliate when it was a man involved.
Let's talk a little bit about Carl norma with his
crimes and what happened with Melissa ultimately and Carl found
(21:28):
out that she had been murdered, did that change him
at all? Yeah, I don't know how to put it.
Hits a rest and finding out what happened to Melissa,
it just made him realize what he had done to
the families of the people that he had killed. That
(21:50):
just kind of it knocked him for a loop. For
lack of a better way of putting it, he just
and feeling that he let Melissa down because he didn't
protect her. Well, Carl's done all he can do from
behind bars. I have personally written to him for years,
(22:12):
and through those letters he has said similar things to
me that he had no idea what he had done
to those families. And the other thing that he talks
about that I find interesting. He has a moniker and
he's known as the Flint River Killer, but he hates
that and he always says, I'm not a Ted Bundy.
(22:36):
To him, he sees a serial killer as somebody that
goes out to the same victim over and over and over,
and he's very clear that that's not what he did.
And Carl has been very clear to me that every
single person he killed, he felt like had done something
(22:56):
wrong to his family. Would you agree with that? Normal, yes,
And he feels like what was done to Melissa was
just evil and out of just retribution of some sort.
I personally have always thought that it was because Chris
was mad at me because I didn't I didn't want
(23:19):
him to get married, and I thought against the relationship
as long as I could, and I just he never
he would call me right after they got married and
put Melissa on the phone and tricked me into saying
something negative. Then he would say, he would say lessa
you here what your mama just said. He took it
(23:41):
out of her right right now, Tina, your dad has
been clear to me that he never killed an innocent person,
and that Melissa was an innocent person. That what happened
to her, she didn't do anything to another person to
deserve what happened to her. She didn't take anybody's money,
(24:01):
she didn't harm anybody, She didn't do anything that would
result in somebody wanting to go after her a new way.
He's right about that. Melissa was not a person that
would do something wrong to somebody that somebody would have
come up and said, oh, well, you know, she stole
(24:22):
all my money that I had in my house. Someone
take care of her. She wasn't like that. She was quiet,
She stayed to herself. She was not a troublemaker. Whatever
trouble she had gotten to say she met Chris was
because of Chris. He got her into trouble. And that's
one thing that seems to be pretty evident with everybody
(24:43):
that we talked to. She hung out with her husband
and her children and y'all, and occasionally a co worker
or two when she had jobs, but she would move
from job to job, they changed homes. I mean, her
life was pretty much, you know, in a suitcase a
lot of the time. So it didn't like she had
(25:04):
these best friends that she would go hang out with,
these associates of some sort. She didn't have that in
her life. In my business, sometimes if you want to
understand a killer or why somebody would kill, asking a
killer is a good start. So again, when I communicate
(25:27):
with your dad, he's very clear about what he thinks happened,
and he, as a man, says he understands her husband
and what their relationship was, and that he would always
take things out on her and that he even approached
her husband once and was beaten on him a little bit,
(25:50):
and there was no pushback from him at all. When
somebody toad a toad met with him, he would almost coward.
When we went to the scene together and we were
all there and we went from the crime scene sketch
exactly where the skull was found. I personally was stunned
(26:12):
at how close to the front door of action glass
it was. I mean, I'm not a golfer, and I
could sink a putt from where the skull was to
the front door. It seems what Bruce Jordan was able
to do, it was kind of common sense. It's right
there normal. Why do you think it took Bruce Jordan
to connect the dots of who that skull belonged to? Well,
(26:37):
I don't. I really don't know, to be honest with you.
But he I guess he just paid more attention to
what I told him about when listen, he just he
did what Henry County didn't do and went to Atlanta.
Henry County, although you know, they had the missing person's
(27:00):
a report on her, but they never went to Atlanta.
I think it's a miracle you got them to take
a report. I mean, she wasn't even in that jurisdiction,
so I appreciate that at least as a paper trail.
The report came about because we asked a friend and
he called somebody the chest At department and asked them
(27:21):
to take a report. So that's how I got the
report fouled. And I had I had to take the
letter I had gotten from Melissa and all the cards
that she had mailed me since her and Chris had
gotten married, to show them that she stayed in contact
(27:42):
with me in order to get them to even take
the report. But again, I think it's amazing that ever
was even able to happen, and that wouldn't have happened
without you. I mean, you didn't give up when they
told you no. You went back they told you no,
You went to a friend, and then you got it,
you know, eventually on paper that she was missing from
(28:05):
a police department. And I think that's extraordinary. You gotta
have somebody that cares about the person to you know,
you gotta push. You can't just listen to them say
no and walk away and say oh well, you gotta push,
and you have to push hard. And I think that's
the thing that I want everybody to understand. The first
(28:27):
time I met Norma, I was standing on the stage
of a microphone giving a speech, and in my peripheral
I see this woman walk in. She's wearing shorts and
a sleeveless like tank top, and she's got a straw
hat on. But what struck me was she was carrying
an eight by ten frame picture and I knew. I
(28:49):
knew immediately that is a mamma of a homicide victim
or a missing person. So as soon as I got
off stage, I walked straight toward her, and she looked
right at me and she said, this is my daughter, Melissa.
She was beheaded in Atlanta. Will you help me? Well,
how do you say no to that? And so I
told her, of course, I will do anything I can
(29:12):
think of to do. And I said, let's meet at
my office at the college next week. She said I'll
be there, so we said a day in time. She
came to the college, brought the same picture. She sat
with me right out of the gate. The first thing
she said, before you help me, there's something I've got
(29:32):
to tell you. And she told me my husband is
in jail for murder. And I was on probation because
I helped him dispose of bodies. Now, I don't know
about y'all, but that was an unusual start of a
conversation for me, and I thought a couple of I
(29:53):
thought a couple of things. I thought, Okay, this might
be the most honest person I've talked to in a while.
And second, the sins of the father have nothing to
do with Melissa. And again, in my business, if you
have somebody that it's maybe not the most innocent person,
(30:14):
but then they are also harmed, you have a duty
to help with that person. So we don't keep a
score sheet. It's not like I can say, well, you know,
there's a sex worker and she was raped, but I
can't really help her because I mean, she's a sex worker,
she knew the risk. No, absolutely not. You help her
(30:36):
because whoever harmed her is out there and they may
be using her as a practice because they think people
are not going to take it seriously and they're not
going to help her, and maybe that she won't even
report it. Just like serial killers go to these same type,
these unknown people, they work it out on that level.
(30:58):
So whoever harmed Melissa was able to cut her head
off and chop her arms and legs off and do
whatever they did to her. Torso, and I do not
want that, you know, that person out there pumping gas
next to my daughter. I don't want them at a
restaurant where my son is eaten. I don't want them
anywhere near innocent people. And so I understand again, I understand,
(31:25):
Carl Patton. I understand what norma did. I get it.
But I know that Melissa is a separate situation. It's
the truth, and this person has gotten away with it
for far too long, all right. So the case, when
we were out there on scene, we were able to
meet with assisted districal attorney Adrian Love. I know at
(31:47):
one point I was standing there and Adrian walked from
the skull to the woodline, back to where the skull
was toward action glass, and she turned around and the
look on her face, and Tina walks up towards me
and goes, she's mad. And she was mad. She was
(32:11):
mad that this had gone on as long as it did.
I mean, how do you go from finding a skull
in April to not finding the rest of the stuff
till June. Well, that's months that nothing is being done.
And then the person is misidentified, you lose four years
of an investigation. But we've got her on board. Now,
(32:36):
we've got Sergeant Layton on board, we got Investigator Stein
on board. We've got some serious dream team thing happening.
So normally we were all at the crime scene together.
What feeling did you get from Ada Love and Investigator
Stein and Sergeant Layton. I felt like they were gonna
(32:58):
actually do something, And they have done a lot. We
are a lot closer than we've ever been to getting
him arrested. And it just they always answer my calls.
They always take the time to sit down and talk
(33:20):
to me. That's been a long time to get there.
I always say, you cannot substitute walking the scene, and
you certainly can't substitute it with walking with family members,
because you get just this, you know, all encompassed view
(33:41):
of who this person was, who loved them, you know
what their life could have been, should have been. While
you're also simultaneously looking at the area to understand who
would know this road, who would choose to put her here?
Your suspect pull shrinks dramatically just because of a Von Avenue,
(34:04):
and y'all, there's so much about this case, but I
just want to kind of briefly go over the timeline again.
November the ninth, nineteen ninety eight. Melissa was last seen
by her mom December of nineteen ninety eight. Her husband
says that's the last time he saw her, and she
(34:26):
told him he was, you know, she was going to
take off and start a new life. And again she
was going to take off and start a new life
without her children, without a car, without a cell phone,
without any money, without any clothes, without any food, without
any help, without telling her family, without telling her friends, etc.
Her husband worked from October ninety eight to February ninety
(34:49):
nine at Action Glass. He has never reported her missing,
never called her family to look for her, never tries
to find her, never tries to let her visit with
their children. He moves out of the house that they
shared together, moves to a different city way South Georgia,
(35:10):
and when he did that, he started living under an
assumed name. So April twenty ninth, nineteen ninety nine, the
severed skull is found on Avon Avenue June third, nineteen
ninety nine. Arms and legs are found in similar trash bags.
November nineteen ninety nine, her mom reports her formerly missing.
(35:36):
Detective Bruce Jordan gets involved. The remains in two thousand
and three are identified as Melissa Wolfenberger. So again law
enforcement lost four years they could have been investigating a homicide.
In twenty seventeen is when I personally got involved. In
(36:00):
twenty twenty, Karen Greer with Cside Atlanta got involved. In
twenty twenty one, Fannie Willis and Ada Adrian Love got involved.
And so we are much more confident today than we
have been. Norma, is there anything else you want to say?
Whatever you want to say, now's your chance. Well, let's
(36:23):
she wouldn't believe her kid. She helped me. She took
care of me when I had had to have some
surgery and when I wasn't able to get up and
do for myself, she waited on me handed foot. Melissa
didn't deserve what she got. She did not deserve you know,
(36:44):
however she died, she didn't deserve it. Well, I appreciate
both of you coming on. I know it's not easy
to talk about I know it's not easy putting your
personal business and your family business out there, but it's
necessary for people to understand, not just the victimology, but
the suspectology in this case. Norma, You've never been anything
(37:07):
but straight up with me. You've been honest about some
things that we didn't even cover tonight. But I appreciate
you always, you know, showing me the entire case file
that you put together, sharing with me what she thought
about everybody involved in it. It helped me understand pretty
quick who the suspect was and how we needed to
(37:29):
go after him. So I think what you're doing for
Melissa is unbelievable, and you have been tireless in your
fight for her, and I appreciate it. Thank you, Cheryl,
and I certainly appreciate everything that you've done because we
wouldn't be it's far. We wouldn't have gotten this far
without you. You had just as much to do with
(37:54):
all of this, getting us to the right people that
couldn't actually do something. Yess honey, Karen Greer. But Tina,
I will tell you your personality you crack me up.
Sometimes will be somewhere and you know, I think we're
gonna have a conversation that goes in one direction, and
you'll all of a sudden take a hard write and
(38:16):
I'm like, well, I wasn't expecting that, but she's she's
telling the truth. And sometimes, you know, I get a
letter from your dad, and you know, he talks about
how the two of y'all are very similar in that
family loyalty, and he says, sometimes two will fall. Tina
May she'll handle it. But you know, again, I mean,
(38:40):
this case isn't like any other case that I've ever
been associated with. I have never worked a case where
a killer became a crime victim. And like we always
talk about, we are not done. We're not gonna be
done until there's an arrest in this case. That's right.
There's no aspiration date for murder. It's coming. That's right,
(39:04):
it's coming. And y'all, I'm going to end Zone seven
the way that I always do with a quote from
somebody from my Zone seven. This comes from former prosecutor
Christopher Darden. He's still guilty twenty five years later. The
truth always comes to light, and I know that's true
(39:26):
in Melissa's case. The white hats are coming. I'm Cheryl McCollum,
and this is Zone seven. In the next episode, you're
(39:48):
going to hear from an icon in Atlanta. The legendary
TV anchor Karen Greer, who has covered Melissa's case for
twenty years,
Uncle Clark was a criminal. Clark was my grandfather's brother
on my mother's side. He was a thief, a con artist,
and a swindler, and my mother was crazy about him.
As a little girl growing up in a strict Southern
Baptist home with her preacher father and her Sunday school
(00:29):
teaching Mama, Uncle Clark was like a carnival to her.
He was reality TV before it was a thing. He
would come busting into town in the middle of the night,
was some wild story about where he had been and
why he was kind of hiding out in town for
a minute. He also had tales of these exotic places
(00:52):
he had been and all these adventures he was involved in.
He always brought my mom some tres pleasure that he
had acquired just for her, like the time when she
was six years old and got diamond earrings, or the
time he brought a miniature horse with a tiny buggy
just her size. Now keep in mind this was during
(01:15):
the nineteen thirties, the Great Depression, when everybody was broke, poor, penniless, well,
everybody except for her Uncle clauhurt. My mama did not
love him because he was a criminal. She loved him
in spite of it. Family loyalty runs strong in all
of us. Today. We ain't perfect, but family comes first always.
(01:41):
November the ninth, nineteen ninety eight is the last time
Melissa Wolfenburger's mama saw her alive. Her husband saw her
last December of nineteen ninety eight. She vanished without a trace.
Who was she connected to? Did she have a criminal record?
Was some body after her? Or did she leave on
(02:02):
her own? Let's start where it ended. This case takes
us to Atlanta, Georgia, which sits at the foothills of
the Appalachian Mountains, known for its famous Peachtree Street, Peachtree Road,
Peachtree Avenue, Peachtree Circle, Piedmont Park, which is known as
the City of Trees. It has the most trees of
(02:23):
any urban city in the United States. We have some
famous folks from here, Julia Roberts of Valholyfield, Bobby Jones,
John Pemberton, Spike Lee, Two Chains, Gladys Knight, President Carter,
Doctor Martin Luther King Junior. We are now known as
(02:44):
the Hollywood of the South. We're home to Cocola, Delta
Airlines home depot, and the Portia Headquarters. Atlanta is a vibrant, diverse,
welcoming city. It's got big city opportunities with small town charm.
It's April the twenty ninth, nineteen ninety nine. All we
(03:06):
know is where the delivery driver found the skull. It's
unidentified human remains avon Avenue, next to a ripped trashbag.
It's a homicide. That's the manner of death. The cause
of death is undetermined. We don't know what killed this person.
(03:31):
The killer picked the dumping ground. It would make sense
that the killer was familiar with this area of town.
The primary crime scene we don't know. We don't know
where the person was actually murdered. There's three possible crime
scenes where the victim was killed, how the victim was
transported to the dumping ground, and the dumping site itself. Now,
(03:55):
the dumping site is outdoors, somewhat secluded, not well traveled.
It's a narrow, little two lane street there, again, a
little away from downtown. We don't know any ties the
victim had to the area. We don't know anybody tied
to the victim. We don't know anything about the victim
at all. The first major twist in this case, Talafara
(04:18):
County calls the Atlanta Police Department and say, hey, we've
got a body down here in a ravine with no head.
It might be your guy. So the Atlanta Police Department
takes the skull, goes to Talafara County. It's no match.
The second twist June third of nineteen ninety nine, four
(04:40):
more trash bags were found near where the skull was found.
Each of those trash bags contained an arm or a
leg no torso. So now in the same general area
we have two arms, two legs, and a skull. Again,
(05:01):
at this point in time, Atlanta has no missing Caucasian males.
Was the victim transient wherever they from out of state?
Was this a mob hit? Was this person connected to
the cartel? Let's talk about the suspects. There aren't any.
They have no idea who the victim is, so they
(05:23):
certainly have no idea who would want to harm him.
The police have nothing more to go on than what
they have found in the bags. Now here's the other
remarkable twist. At the same time that the Atlanta Police
Department is dealing with the unidentified skull, Melissa Wolfenberger, a
(05:43):
young married mother of two, has gone missing. Her parents
are worried, sick about her because this is not like her.
They saw her at Thanksgiving, they did not see her
at Christmas. Her mama got increasingly more worried as her
birthday rolled around. Melissa had never not contacted her on
(06:06):
her birthday. So her mama goes to her police department,
Henry County, and tries to report her missing, and Henry
County gently explains they can't take a missing person's report
for another jurisdiction. That she lived in Atlanta and that's
who she would have to report her missing to. Her
mama went to Atlanta and tried to make a report,
(06:29):
and Atlanta gently explained to her she's a married woman.
She could leave town if she wants to. We have
no evidence that anything has happened to her. Her husband
hasn't reported her missing, friends, neighbors, nobody has told us
anything nefarius has occurred. Her mama could not get law
(06:51):
enforcement to take a report, couldn't get them to start
a search, couldn't get them to start an investigation of
her whereabouts. Her mama, Norma Patton is with us right now,
and her sister, Tina Patton is with us right now,
and we're going to get right into the victimology of
(07:13):
this case. Norma, thank you so much for being here.
Glad to be here. Tina, I appreciate you being with
us as well. Yes, ma'am, thank you. Tell us about Melissa.
Melissa was. She was quiet, She loved you, you knew it,
and she just had a lot of dreams when she
(07:37):
was in school. She loved animals. It didn't matter whether
it was a dog or a cat, or a rabbit
or whatever. I had to keep a rabbit for my
sister for a little while, and she went with me
to kick the rabbit up. She basically took care of
the rabbit. I was supposed to be the one taking
care of him, but she took care of the rep
(08:01):
But that's just she loved animals. It didn't matter what
it was. She just she loved them. She loved everybody,
and Tina, I know y'all were closed and did some
things like Baton lessons and Dan's lessons. Tell me about
your sister. She was quiet, like Mom said, but you know,
she loved animals and she loved you. Then you definitely
(08:23):
knew she loved you, but she kind of, you know,
she was shy. She kept herself. The only way she
met knew people was through people she already knew normal.
When did you first know in your gut something was
wrong when she didn't come at Christmas or call because
(08:46):
she had asked me for something in particular, and she
said that was all the only thing she wanted and
it wasn't something now I could go to the store.
It was something I had had the fine, And what
it was was a picture of her with her papa,
(09:09):
her daddy father, and that's all she wanted was that picture.
So I found a picture of him and her together,
and she was only five years old, maybe six at
the most, and I took it and had it blown
up into a nake by pen and had it wrapped
(09:32):
up and under the Christmas tree. And she didn't call,
She didn't didn't come get it, you know, And that
was just that wasn't like her, now, Tina. At that point,
you and your dad weren't as worried as your mama,
because Melissa had been known to not show up before
(09:53):
for different reasons. But she didn't have a cell phone,
she didn't always have a car, she didn't always have
a way to get to y'all contact you, so when
did you start to get concerned. I didn't get concerned
until I was at worked one morning at her wolf
house in East Point, and here comes my dad walking
in the door, talking about, where's your sister? Dad, I
(10:15):
don't know why she hasn't worked with me in a while, now,
you know, a few months, at least at least six months.
And he said, because we can't find her. She didn't
show up for Christmas. And I was like, what, she
didn't show up for Christmas? And she didn't call your
mom and tell her Happy Birthday either, And I was like,
wait a minute, something's wrong. If she doesn't call mom
(10:37):
and tell her Happy birthday, something's really wrong. Melissa's life
was not always that easy. She had some issues in
her marriage. She had some issues with police. She had
been to jail a couple of times for small time
stuff like shoplifting or fighting. Y'all started checking jails, and
(10:57):
y'all started checking hospitals, and she wasn't anywhere normal. Where
all did you check? Where didn't we check? I even
called the main waffle house and talked to somebody in
personnel to find out if she was working at another
(11:18):
location somewhere, and they did not have her as an
employee anywhere, which surprised me that they even bothered to check.
But once I got into telling her why I was
asking the question, and you know, she looked according to
(11:39):
their records and couldn't find Melissa as an employee. So
that really that really shook me up. We went to
Atlanta on Brookline Avenue where they were living. The house
was completely deserted. We talked to some of the neighbors
and they said that the he had moved out of
(12:01):
the house right right around Christmas or the first of
the year, and they told us where he was working at.
So we went over there and talked to the to
the owner of the glass company, and they had fired
him because he had had gotten and I hit and
(12:23):
run and one of their trucks and he wasn't where
he was supposed to be, so they fired him. At
that point, we just didn't know. And right now it's
getting to be about a year since you've seen or
heard from her. Now I'm just gonna ask you straight out.
She might have left her husband, but would she have
(12:44):
ever left her two children? No way, the kids, the
kids were her life. She would There's no way she
would have she would have ever left them? And how
old were they right now? And eight? The girl was
three and the little boy was two. They are grown
(13:05):
adults now and the girl is twenty seven and the
boys twenty six. She left him one time, and she
went back because the kids. How long was she gone
was she left him the time she came and stayed
with me, she was gone a week? And they had
some domestic violence in their marriage. I mean it's documented
(13:27):
in police reports. And sometimes she would call the police
on him, and sometimes he'd call the police on her.
And it was volatile. It was more volatile on his end,
not on hers, because she wasn't a violent person. She
wouldn't fight you, And that's important to know. So here
(13:50):
comes the big twist. Carl Patton is arrested for four
murders that occurred in nineteen seventy three. Norma and his
wife turned state's evidence for immunity. Now let that marinate
a minute. Melissa Wolfenburger's father has been arrested for murders
(14:12):
that occurred in nineteen seventy three. He was originally arrested
for four murders, but that count went to five. Norma
and Carl agreed that they would go to court and
tell the truth, and both admitted to what happened. Carl
committed the murders. Norma helped him dispose of the bodies.
(14:37):
The man that arrested Carl was Bruce Jordan of the
Fete County Police Department. Melissa was missing at this time,
so Norma and Carl agreed that, hey, we need to
ask Major Jordan if he will find Melissa. And Carl said,
and this is a direct quote, he caught me after
(14:59):
twenty five years, he must be a pretty good detective.
So Norma goes to Major Bruce Jordan and says, my
daughter Melissa is missing. Will you please help find her.
Major Bruce Jordan says absolutely, I will help you, and
he goes and talks to Carl. He talks to Norma,
(15:19):
He gets the information and he starts to work and
one of the first things he realized is where Melissa's
husband worked at Action Glass and where the skull was
found was on the same street, a Von Avenue. So
he goes to the Atlanta Police Department and says, look,
(15:41):
this skull was found just feet away from where a
missing a woman's husband works. So they agreed on March thirteenth,
two thousand and three, to get the dental records and
have the medical examiner see if they could identify who
that skull belonged to. On March fourteenth, two thousand and three,
(16:06):
the skull is identified as Melissa Wolfenberger. Her mama had
reported her missing in Henry County and Atlanta. She was
a married adult, so of course came up. Nothing we
can do about it. The husband's got a reporter. We
need to see that some overt act had happened to her.
(16:26):
There was no blood anywhere, there was no broken glass anywhere.
There was nothing to let anybody to think that a
crime had been committed. So now we have identified twenty
one year old mother of two small children, Melissa Wolfenberger,
who was married to her high school sweetheart. They had
a relationship that was volatile. They would fight, they would argue,
(16:48):
police were called or rest were sometimes made. They were
in and out of jail, they were in off probation,
but it was never anything to the felony level. So
now we get to the suspects, and I'm just gonna
go and tell y'all, there's one, not the number one.
There ain't but one. Now the entire focus is on
(17:11):
her husband. He's the last person to see her alive.
He never reported her missing. He never called her family
about her whereabouts. He never told the children anything bad
that happened to her or where she was. She had
no car, no money, no clothes, no cell phone when
she supposedly left on her own, never checked with police
(17:32):
or hospitals or the more. And he never looked for her.
He worked on the same street where the skull was found.
He had a pass that was violent, He had a
hit and run in a work truck. He moved out
of town after she went missing. He seemed to know
she wasn't coming back. He did not pick up her
remains from the funeral home, and he didn't pay for
(17:53):
the funeral. At best, he's gonna be the guy that
didn't look for her, didn't bury her, didn't make sure
the children were okay with what happened to their mom.
The worst he is, it's her killer. It is important
to note that Christopher Wolfenburger has denied any involvement in
(18:18):
Melissa's murder, but Sergeant Leyton from the Atlanta Police Department
on Homicide told Dateline that Wolfenburger has an extensive criminal
history with family violence. Witnesses also stated during the investigation
that he had been abusive to Melissa. Christopher told Dateline,
(18:38):
I'm not denying I have a criminal history. We were,
you know, like Bonnie and Clyde, just small time criminals.
But we didn't do anything bad bad. He further told
Dateline that when she never returned home, he figured she
changed her identity and went on to live her dream
without him in California. Now, Norma, when did you suspect
(19:03):
her husband as being the one that murdered her? And
what made you think him? As my mother would say,
it was the look in his eyes when I met him.
You could just see them, the meanness in his eyes.
I didn't like him, and it just it went downhill
(19:31):
from there. I mean, you never trusted him either. Even
in high school, he had Blissa climbing out the bedroom
window and sneaking out to go wherever he wanted to go,
and I always reported her as a runaway. They run
away in December of ninety four and ended up in Oklahoma.
(20:00):
The police called me and told me that they caught
him driving on the wrong wrong way on the interstate
during one hundred and twenty miles an hour with no
lights on. He went off the interstate and hit a bull. Anyway.
They lost track of him, but they caught up with him.
(20:23):
When they caught up with him, he laughed at him.
He said, don't the reason you caught me because I
hit that bull. So that that's the way he always
looked at everything, Tina, Did Melissa ever talk to you
about her marriage or the problem she was having. She
didn't talk about him. I knew about him, you know,
me and her words at a buff house close to
(20:44):
the airport one time together and at night she came
in one night with a handprint around the throat. Her
eyes were red. She had been crying and I knew
what it was. I knew it was Chris, and I
asked her about it. She said, don't say anything. And
I was like, oh no, no, no no, no, I'm going
to say something. And I did, and so did my
(21:07):
boyfriend at the time. And you know, he reached across
and slapped and said something to him, and Christus turned
his head and looked out the window like it was nothing.
But he didn't retaliate when it was a man involved.
Let's talk a little bit about Carl norma with his
crimes and what happened with Melissa ultimately and Carl found
(21:28):
out that she had been murdered, did that change him
at all? Yeah, I don't know how to put it.
Hits a rest and finding out what happened to Melissa,
it just made him realize what he had done to
the families of the people that he had killed. That
(21:50):
just kind of it knocked him for a loop. For
lack of a better way of putting it, he just
and feeling that he let Melissa down because he didn't
protect her. Well, Carl's done all he can do from
behind bars. I have personally written to him for years,
(22:12):
and through those letters he has said similar things to
me that he had no idea what he had done
to those families. And the other thing that he talks
about that I find interesting. He has a moniker and
he's known as the Flint River Killer, but he hates
that and he always says, I'm not a Ted Bundy.
(22:36):
To him, he sees a serial killer as somebody that
goes out to the same victim over and over and over,
and he's very clear that that's not what he did.
And Carl has been very clear to me that every
single person he killed, he felt like had done something
(22:56):
wrong to his family. Would you agree with that? Normal, yes,
And he feels like what was done to Melissa was
just evil and out of just retribution of some sort.
I personally have always thought that it was because Chris
was mad at me because I didn't I didn't want
(23:19):
him to get married, and I thought against the relationship
as long as I could, and I just he never
he would call me right after they got married and
put Melissa on the phone and tricked me into saying
something negative. Then he would say, he would say lessa
you here what your mama just said. He took it
(23:41):
out of her right right now, Tina, your dad has
been clear to me that he never killed an innocent person,
and that Melissa was an innocent person. That what happened
to her, she didn't do anything to another person to
deserve what happened to her. She didn't take anybody's money,
(24:01):
she didn't harm anybody, She didn't do anything that would
result in somebody wanting to go after her a new way.
He's right about that. Melissa was not a person that
would do something wrong to somebody that somebody would have
come up and said, oh, well, you know, she stole
(24:22):
all my money that I had in my house. Someone
take care of her. She wasn't like that. She was quiet,
She stayed to herself. She was not a troublemaker. Whatever
trouble she had gotten to say she met Chris was
because of Chris. He got her into trouble. And that's
one thing that seems to be pretty evident with everybody
(24:43):
that we talked to. She hung out with her husband
and her children and y'all, and occasionally a co worker
or two when she had jobs, but she would move
from job to job, they changed homes. I mean, her
life was pretty much, you know, in a suitcase a
lot of the time. So it didn't like she had
(25:04):
these best friends that she would go hang out with,
these associates of some sort. She didn't have that in
her life. In my business, sometimes if you want to
understand a killer or why somebody would kill, asking a
killer is a good start. So again, when I communicate
(25:27):
with your dad, he's very clear about what he thinks happened,
and he, as a man, says he understands her husband
and what their relationship was, and that he would always
take things out on her and that he even approached
her husband once and was beaten on him a little bit,
(25:50):
and there was no pushback from him at all. When
somebody toad a toad met with him, he would almost coward.
When we went to the scene together and we were
all there and we went from the crime scene sketch
exactly where the skull was found. I personally was stunned
(26:12):
at how close to the front door of action glass
it was. I mean, I'm not a golfer, and I
could sink a putt from where the skull was to
the front door. It seems what Bruce Jordan was able
to do, it was kind of common sense. It's right
there normal. Why do you think it took Bruce Jordan
to connect the dots of who that skull belonged to? Well,
(26:37):
I don't. I really don't know, to be honest with you.
But he I guess he just paid more attention to
what I told him about when listen, he just he
did what Henry County didn't do and went to Atlanta.
Henry County, although you know, they had the missing person's
(27:00):
a report on her, but they never went to Atlanta.
I think it's a miracle you got them to take
a report. I mean, she wasn't even in that jurisdiction,
so I appreciate that at least as a paper trail.
The report came about because we asked a friend and
he called somebody the chest At department and asked them
(27:21):
to take a report. So that's how I got the
report fouled. And I had I had to take the
letter I had gotten from Melissa and all the cards
that she had mailed me since her and Chris had
gotten married, to show them that she stayed in contact
(27:42):
with me in order to get them to even take
the report. But again, I think it's amazing that ever
was even able to happen, and that wouldn't have happened
without you. I mean, you didn't give up when they
told you no. You went back they told you no,
You went to a friend, and then you got it,
you know, eventually on paper that she was missing from
(28:05):
a police department. And I think that's extraordinary. You gotta
have somebody that cares about the person to you know,
you gotta push. You can't just listen to them say
no and walk away and say oh well, you gotta push,
and you have to push hard. And I think that's
the thing that I want everybody to understand. The first
(28:27):
time I met Norma, I was standing on the stage
of a microphone giving a speech, and in my peripheral
I see this woman walk in. She's wearing shorts and
a sleeveless like tank top, and she's got a straw
hat on. But what struck me was she was carrying
an eight by ten frame picture and I knew. I
(28:49):
knew immediately that is a mamma of a homicide victim
or a missing person. So as soon as I got
off stage, I walked straight toward her, and she looked
right at me and she said, this is my daughter, Melissa.
She was beheaded in Atlanta. Will you help me? Well,
how do you say no to that? And so I
told her, of course, I will do anything I can
(29:12):
think of to do. And I said, let's meet at
my office at the college next week. She said I'll
be there, so we said a day in time. She
came to the college, brought the same picture. She sat
with me right out of the gate. The first thing
she said, before you help me, there's something I've got
(29:32):
to tell you. And she told me my husband is
in jail for murder. And I was on probation because
I helped him dispose of bodies. Now, I don't know
about y'all, but that was an unusual start of a
conversation for me, and I thought a couple of I
(29:53):
thought a couple of things. I thought, Okay, this might
be the most honest person I've talked to in a while.
And second, the sins of the father have nothing to
do with Melissa. And again, in my business, if you
have somebody that it's maybe not the most innocent person,
(30:14):
but then they are also harmed, you have a duty
to help with that person. So we don't keep a
score sheet. It's not like I can say, well, you know,
there's a sex worker and she was raped, but I
can't really help her because I mean, she's a sex worker,
she knew the risk. No, absolutely not. You help her
(30:36):
because whoever harmed her is out there and they may
be using her as a practice because they think people
are not going to take it seriously and they're not
going to help her, and maybe that she won't even
report it. Just like serial killers go to these same type,
these unknown people, they work it out on that level.
(30:58):
So whoever harmed Melissa was able to cut her head
off and chop her arms and legs off and do
whatever they did to her. Torso, and I do not
want that, you know, that person out there pumping gas
next to my daughter. I don't want them at a
restaurant where my son is eaten. I don't want them
anywhere near innocent people. And so I understand again, I understand,
(31:25):
Carl Patton. I understand what norma did. I get it.
But I know that Melissa is a separate situation. It's
the truth, and this person has gotten away with it
for far too long, all right. So the case, when
we were out there on scene, we were able to
meet with assisted districal attorney Adrian Love. I know at
(31:47):
one point I was standing there and Adrian walked from
the skull to the woodline, back to where the skull
was toward action glass, and she turned around and the
look on her face, and Tina walks up towards me
and goes, she's mad. And she was mad. She was
(32:11):
mad that this had gone on as long as it did.
I mean, how do you go from finding a skull
in April to not finding the rest of the stuff
till June. Well, that's months that nothing is being done.
And then the person is misidentified, you lose four years
of an investigation. But we've got her on board. Now,
(32:36):
we've got Sergeant Layton on board, we got Investigator Stein
on board. We've got some serious dream team thing happening.
So normally we were all at the crime scene together.
What feeling did you get from Ada Love and Investigator
Stein and Sergeant Layton. I felt like they were gonna
(32:58):
actually do something, And they have done a lot. We
are a lot closer than we've ever been to getting
him arrested. And it just they always answer my calls.
They always take the time to sit down and talk
(33:20):
to me. That's been a long time to get there.
I always say, you cannot substitute walking the scene, and
you certainly can't substitute it with walking with family members,
because you get just this, you know, all encompassed view
(33:41):
of who this person was, who loved them, you know
what their life could have been, should have been. While
you're also simultaneously looking at the area to understand who
would know this road, who would choose to put her here?
Your suspect pull shrinks dramatically just because of a Von Avenue,
(34:04):
and y'all, there's so much about this case, but I
just want to kind of briefly go over the timeline again.
November the ninth, nineteen ninety eight. Melissa was last seen
by her mom December of nineteen ninety eight. Her husband
says that's the last time he saw her, and she
(34:26):
told him he was, you know, she was going to
take off and start a new life. And again she
was going to take off and start a new life
without her children, without a car, without a cell phone,
without any money, without any clothes, without any food, without
any help, without telling her family, without telling her friends, etc.
Her husband worked from October ninety eight to February ninety
(34:49):
nine at Action Glass. He has never reported her missing,
never called her family to look for her, never tries
to find her, never tries to let her visit with
their children. He moves out of the house that they
shared together, moves to a different city way South Georgia,
(35:10):
and when he did that, he started living under an
assumed name. So April twenty ninth, nineteen ninety nine, the
severed skull is found on Avon Avenue June third, nineteen
ninety nine. Arms and legs are found in similar trash bags.
November nineteen ninety nine, her mom reports her formerly missing.
(35:36):
Detective Bruce Jordan gets involved. The remains in two thousand
and three are identified as Melissa Wolfenberger. So again law
enforcement lost four years they could have been investigating a homicide.
In twenty seventeen is when I personally got involved. In
(36:00):
twenty twenty, Karen Greer with Cside Atlanta got involved. In
twenty twenty one, Fannie Willis and Ada Adrian Love got involved.
And so we are much more confident today than we
have been. Norma, is there anything else you want to say?
Whatever you want to say, now's your chance. Well, let's
(36:23):
she wouldn't believe her kid. She helped me. She took
care of me when I had had to have some
surgery and when I wasn't able to get up and
do for myself, she waited on me handed foot. Melissa
didn't deserve what she got. She did not deserve you know,
(36:44):
however she died, she didn't deserve it. Well, I appreciate
both of you coming on. I know it's not easy
to talk about I know it's not easy putting your
personal business and your family business out there, but it's
necessary for people to understand, not just the victimology, but
the suspectology in this case. Norma, You've never been anything
(37:07):
but straight up with me. You've been honest about some
things that we didn't even cover tonight. But I appreciate
you always, you know, showing me the entire case file
that you put together, sharing with me what she thought
about everybody involved in it. It helped me understand pretty
quick who the suspect was and how we needed to
(37:29):
go after him. So I think what you're doing for
Melissa is unbelievable, and you have been tireless in your
fight for her, and I appreciate it. Thank you, Cheryl,
and I certainly appreciate everything that you've done because we
wouldn't be it's far. We wouldn't have gotten this far
without you. You had just as much to do with
(37:54):
all of this, getting us to the right people that
couldn't actually do something. Yess honey, Karen Greer. But Tina,
I will tell you your personality you crack me up.
Sometimes will be somewhere and you know, I think we're
gonna have a conversation that goes in one direction, and
you'll all of a sudden take a hard write and
(38:16):
I'm like, well, I wasn't expecting that, but she's she's
telling the truth. And sometimes, you know, I get a
letter from your dad, and you know, he talks about
how the two of y'all are very similar in that
family loyalty, and he says, sometimes two will fall. Tina
May she'll handle it. But you know, again, I mean,
(38:40):
this case isn't like any other case that I've ever
been associated with. I have never worked a case where
a killer became a crime victim. And like we always
talk about, we are not done. We're not gonna be
done until there's an arrest in this case. That's right.
There's no aspiration date for murder. It's coming. That's right,
(39:04):
it's coming. And y'all, I'm going to end Zone seven
the way that I always do with a quote from
somebody from my Zone seven. This comes from former prosecutor
Christopher Darden. He's still guilty twenty five years later. The
truth always comes to light, and I know that's true
(39:26):
in Melissa's case. The white hats are coming. I'm Cheryl McCollum,
and this is Zone seven. In the next episode, you're
(39:48):
going to hear from an icon in Atlanta. The legendary
TV anchor Karen Greer, who has covered Melissa's case for
twenty years,
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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