Smooth Talker: Trail of Death, page 15
When LeJeune was first interviewed after the DNA hits identified Melanson, his heart was full of revenge. He wanted a few minutes alone with Melanson. But now he’s moving on, as he always has, keeping his true friends and family close. “I’ve never asked for sympathy for me,” he said. “Life turned out the way it was supposed to.”
In Illinois, Donna does the same with her memories of her friend, “Mush.” The photographs Michele took of her still hang on the walls, and the box of letters is safe.
In the meantime, she tries not to think about Melanson though she participated in the Epic Mysteries episode. After reading the newspaper article from before the memorial service again, she wrote, “I don’t even know if monster is befitting what he is. He’s a soulless sub-human, who doesn’t deserve to still be breathing air. Just goes to show you what a sociopath he is that he can even open his stupid mouth and say ‘I’m not a monster.’”
In September 2012, Kathy Young, who now works as an investigator for a District Attorney’s office west of Denver, attended the Colorado Parole Board hearing in September 2012 when they met to consider Melanson’s request for parole. Prior to George Wallace Sr.’s murder, Young had promised him that she would speak for the family if Melanson ever came up for parole. She attended the hearing, a video conference with the board in Denver and Melanson in prison and addressed the board before he spoke, as well as wrote a letter opposing his release. But she chose to remain off-camera and he had no idea she was present.
“I know of at least one other agency which is currently looking at Melanson as a potential suspect in yet another murder of a young woman,” Young wrote to the parole board. “I have to wonder how many others there may be.”
At the hearing, Melanson still denied all of his crimes, including the rapes in Texas and murders in Colorado and California. It was all a big misunderstanding, according to his statement to the board.
However, Young’s letter to the board assured that there were no misunderstandings, and reminded them of the devastation he’d caused. “In 1974, he came across a woman in the Colorado mountains who out of kindness and what she perceived to be the right thing to do, due to the remoteness of the area, gave him a ride to town.
“Instead of thanking Ms. Wallace and going his own way, he took advantage of her, murdered her, took her car and belongings and used them to finance his way across country. He showed no regard for Ms. Wallace or her life. He saw her as an object and an opportunity. He denied her of the life, dreams and opportunities she had before her.”
Although she was prohibited from talking about George Sr.’s murder, Young noted that Michele’s death had torn the family apart and continued to haunt them. “Melanson chose to conceal Ms. Wallace’s remains in a remote area of the Colorado mountains in the hopes she would never be found. This act in itself added an additional agony to her family member’s and friends’ lives. In the ‘not knowing’ where Ms. Wallace was for nearly 20 years, they were unable to move forward, they were stuck, unable even to attempt to begin any sort of healing or recovery from their loss.”
Young told the board that the family asked her to convey their plea that Melanson never be released from prison in Colorado. “They believe he is the true definition of evil and that he is a violent and dangerous predator who cannot be rehabilitated no matter his age. They believe he has and will continue to use his charm, guile and deception to take advantage of others for his own gain as he sees fit at any given time.
“Melanson’s record speaks for itself. Whenever he is free from incarceration he commits evil; he harms and kills people, and he destroys the lives of his victims and the people connected to them. He has claimed no responsibility for his actions and has shown no remorse. He should never be released from prison.”
Young says she has mixed emotions about the case. “I have no regrets about working the case, meeting George, being able to lay Michele to rest next to her mother, etcetera,” she wrote for this update when asked what she thinks about when the topic of Michele Wallace or Roy Melanson comes up. “But at times it feels like a ghost from Christmas past that keeps creeping back into my life or defines me when it’s not all I am about.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
On the pages that preceded readers were exposed to horrific acts of violence committed by a thoroughly evil man and the equally heroic efforts of law enforcement it took to stop him and bring him to justice. But this book is also intended to portray what this sort of despicable individual can do to the lives of so many other people beyond those he brutally raped and murdered—the families, the friends, those who dedicated themselves to catching him, the communities that many years later are haunted by his acts, and even the journalists who wrote about his violence and its repercussions over the years. To the extent that the brutality of men like Roy Melanson makes anyone feel less safe, we are all their victims.
The three murders that make up the core of this book began in 1974. However, the killer’s reign of terror began even earlier than that with his first attempted rape in 1962 and wasn’t resolved until 2011 (and indeed there are likely many other victims). That’s fifty years of evil to account for. As such, in order to give a sense of the how this story unfolded and affected individuals and communities, I’ve included parts of reports from various publications written over the years, including the Napa Valley Register, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Denver Post, my own 2002 book NO STONE UNTURNED: The True Story of the World’s Premier Forensic Investigators, and the findagrave.com website, as well as various court documents and interviews. I’ve attempted to give credit where credit is due through footnotes and attribution, and if I’ve missed any then I hope they’ll forgive the oversight.
Additionally, readers of NO STONE UNTURNED will recognize the Michele Wallace homicide case from a section of that book. Fourteen years later, in spite of the repetition I hope SMOOTH TALKER filled in some of the gaps from the Wallace murder, as well as put it into context with the murders of Anita Andrews and Charlotte Sauerwin, and how resolving the three cases became interrelated.
There are many people to thank for their help and support in writing this book. I’ll start with the professionals such as my friend Kathy Young Ireland, and my other friends and colleagues at NecroSearch International. I am also deeply indebted to Don Winegar, Paul Gero, and Leslie Severe, and Stanley Carpenter. This book became an Epic Mysteries episode on the Investigation Discovery channel and I’d like to thank those associated with that Sharlene Martin, Nancy Glass, Matthew Watts, Eric Neuhaus, Rocki Alt, and Lauren Saft. I’d also like to thank my friend, Donna Campeglia, and tell her how sorry I am for her loss of “Mush.”
The editing in this book was greatly assisted by Ian Dickerson, Lorie Matteson, Kim Ristoff and Jacqueline Burch. And a deep thanks to Professor Cindy Whitney at Western State University in Gunnison for dropping everything (including beer) to secure photographs for me and the ID people.
I would be remiss not to thank my friend and partner at WildBlue Press, Michael Cordova, for putting up with my insanity, as well as the rest of the crew at WildBlue, Ashley Butler, Mackenzie Jackson, Carla Torrisi Jackson, Lauri Ver Schure, and Elijah Toten.
Most of all I want to thank you, the readers, without whom there’d be no reason to write these books. I’m YOUR fan.—Steve Jackson
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Table of Contents
Other WildBlue Press Books By Steve Jackson
Preface
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgements
Steve Jackson, Smooth Talker: Trail of Death
