Smooth Talker: Trail of Death, page 4
With time to kill before the bus departed, he decided to throw back a few drinks at the Columbine Bar. Maybe find a new sucker for his lies ... or something even better. He accomplished the first when Chuck Matthews, a Vietnam combat veteran and ranchhand, sat down next to him and they struck up a conversation.
Over a half-dozen beers, Melanson told the older man that he owned a cabin, horses, and land in Schofield Park. He was having trouble of late with a bear that was harassing his animals, he said. He didn’t suppose Matthews knew of anybody who could help him out with the bear.
Well, sure, Matthews said. He had a rifle back at his place. He’d fetch it and a saddle; then they could go get a couple of Melanson’s horses and together they’d get rid of that danged old bear. The two men staggered off to Matthews’s beat-up car, took off for the ranch where Matthews worked, and picked up the rifle and saddle. They left for the Burton cabin, but by the time they arrived it was too dark to look around for the “bear.”
The next morning, Melanson had another story. He’d rented his horses to a guy who obviously hadn’t returned them. The other man owed him money, too. The guy lived in a cabin on Kebler Pass. Would Matthews mind driving him there? They might just spot that pesky bear along the way.
As the crow flies, Schofield Pass is only about ten miles north of Kebler Pass. But 12,809-foot Mount Baldy stands between them, and the only way to get from one to the other was to go back to Crested Butte and then head west up the other fork in the road to Kebler. Melanson knew the drive. To get from the Schofield summer range to Spadafora’s place in Somerset, he’d been over Kebler Pass several times.
Matthews agreed to the new plan. So after tossing Melanson’s toolbox in the car (in case of engine trouble) and stopping to buy more beer, they were rattling down the road again.
On Kebler Pass, however, Melanson couldn’t seem to locate the cabin, his horses, or the guy who owed him money. To make matters worse, Matthews’s car kept breaking down. If it wasn’t something with the engine, then it was a tire gone flat, and even the spare had a slow leak. Still, Melanson wanted to explore several dirt logging roads that ran south from the main road. He said that if he couldn’t find the man who owed him money, he at least wanted to find that bear.
It was worrisome, considering they didn’t see a soul on the logging roads, and couldn’t expect much help if the car broke down permanently. But Matthews, fortified with beer, gamely tried to help his new friend.
Driving along one such road, about ten miles up the pass from Crested Butte, Melanson suddenly asked him to pull over; he thought he’d seen something. Maybe the bear.
Matthews did as asked, then got out of the car. “Hand me the rifle,” Melanson said. Again Matthews complied and even turned his back on his pal and walked over to the edge of the road where Melanson had pointed. It was pretty country with steep north-facing slopes covered by coniferous trees and aspen tumbling down to a flatter area through which a creek ran along the edge of a meadow.
When Matthews turned back around, Melanson had a strange look on his face, as if he had just thought better of something. “Let’s go,” Melanson said and tossed the rifle back into the car.
The pair made it back to Crested Butte, where they stopped at a gas station to see if they could fix the leak in the tire. It couldn’t be fixed, so they pumped it up, bought another six-pack of beer, and headed up the road to the Burton cabin. That’s when he and Matthews met the girl and her dog.
The next morning, August 31, Melanson walked into the J. C. Penny’s department store in downtown Gunnison. He bought a cotton dress shirt and polyester slacks, paying with a check on which he wrote “For new clothes.”
He then left the store and got into the red Mazda station wagon belonging to Michele Wallace. Even though the store was only a block in one direction from the Gunnison Police Department and a block in another from the Gunnison County Sheriff’s Office, he was unconcerned about being stopped in the car. He knew there was no one to report it stolen.
Melanson drove to Pueblo and went to a bar where he called the Burton house. He learned that Lucille and her husband were out of town. One of Sally’s older sisters, Becky, was left in charge and said she didn’t want Melanson to come over. He stashed the Mazda and went to the Burton’s home anyway.
After spending the night with Sally, he got another sister to drive them to where he had parked the Mazda. He explained that a friend from Boulder had left it for him to use.
Melanson seemed to be doing much better than when Sally had last seen him a couple of days earlier. He was wearing new clothes and had acquired all sorts of new possessions. He had new camping equipment, including a backpack, sleeping bag, and stove. And he had a nice camera, even allowing Sally to take his photograph as he lay smiling on a couch behind one of her friends.
On September 3, the day Michele’s mother reported her missing, Melanson drove the “borrowed” Mazda to a pawnshop, where he pawned the camera and a lens. He signed the pawn ticket using his real name. However, when he checked into a motel with Sally later that afternoon, he signed in under the name Allan King, giving an address of General Delivery, Nile, South Carolina. He didn’t provide a license plate number when registering, but the owner of the motel took it down later that evening anyway.
Soon Melanson was on the road again. Leaving Sally behind, he went first to Kansas. Then he was off to Cedar Falls, Iowa, where on September 8, he pawned a sleeping bag and Kelty backpack at Ken’s Pawn Shop. From Iowa, he headed south to Elk City, Oklahoma, where he met 34-year-old Thurman Gene Wilder.
Melanson was again drinking in a bar when Wilder came in and the two men started talking. Wilder said he was looking for work as a heavy-equipment operator. He had transportation—a white Cadillac he was mighty proud of—but no job opportunities.
“It’s your lucky day,” Melanson said. It just so happened that he had a friend who owned a big construction firm in Pueblo, Colorado. He was sure he could get Wilder a job driving a bulldozer.
The next day, they headed west, Melanson in the Mazda with South Carolina plates; Wilder in his 1963 Cadillac. They got as far as Amarillo, Texas, where they stopped for a cold beer at The Hard Hat Lounge. Melanson announced that he needed to take the Mazda to a garage for repairs. First, though, he had Wilder assist him with transferring his stuff from the Mazda to the trunk of Wilder’s Cadillac. Then, telling his new friend to wait for him in the bar, Melanson left.
A half hour later, Melanson returned, saying he had had to leave the car at the garage. It was going to take a few days for repairs. “We’ll have to go to Colorado in your car,” he said, “and pick mine up when we come back this way.”
On September 12, the day after the Gunnison Sheriff’s Department investigator talked to Frank Spadafora, an anonymous caller reported a suspicious white Cadillac with two men in it prowling around a Pueblo high school. “It keeps coming and going,” the caller said. “I think they may be selling drugs.”
Officer Russ Laino responded and pulled over the Cadillac. Melanson was driving and said he and his friend, Thurman, were just waiting to give one of the students, Sally Burton, a ride home from school. He handed over a Texas driver’s license; Wilder handed over his as well.
Laino went back to his car to run the licenses through the police computer to check for any outstanding warrants. “The computer’s down,” he was told. He read off the license numbers to be checked later and went back to where the two men sat in the Cadillac and handed back their licenses.
It was a half hour later when Laino got a sudden message from dispatch. The computer was back up: The guy from Texas was wanted for aggravated rape. Alarmed about having left the suspect, Roy Melanson, at a high school filled with young women, the officer stepped on it. But the white Cadillac was nowhere to be seen.
A BOLO was issued, and a couple of hours later, Laino spotted the white Cadillac in front of a motel. He checked with the motel manager, who said one of the men had checked in under the last name of Allen. Laino called for backup and Melanson and Wilder were arrested at gunpoint.
Wilder gave the police permission to search his car. There they found a number of things that belonged to Michele Wallace. That included a vehicle registration for a 1973 Mazda, her driver’s license, her Amoco Motor Club membership card, and an insurance card in the name of George Wallace. In the car, the police also recovered camping equipment and a dog pack, as well as a Mazda tool kit.
At the jail, Melanson was stripped. In his pants were two pawn tickets: one for a sleeping bag and backpack; the second for a camera. They also recovered an unused bus ticket from Gunnison to Pueblo—and a set of Mazda car keys.
The Pueblo detectives were sharp. One of them recalled that a BOLO had been issued by the Gunnison Sheriff’s Department for a red Mazda station wagon owned by a Michele Wallace. They didn’t know what they had yet, but they knew that there was no good reason Melanson would have the young woman’s personal effects.
They called Gunnison and learned about the search. Undersheriff Fry said they had a warrant out for Melanson’s arrest on check fraud charges from another case. “Hold him until I can get down there,” he said.
The evidence from Wilder’s car and Melanson’s pockets was handed over to Officer J. E. Trujillo. Meanwhile, Wilder told detectives Jimmy Smalley and Bob Silva about meeting Melanson and how they had left a red Mazda station wagon in Amarillo.
Unaware of what Wilder was saying, Melanson told Smalley that he’d never been in Michele Wallace’s car. He said he didn’t even know what a Mazda looked like.
However, the Amarillo police soon turned up the car. It had been abandoned one block from The Hard Hat Lounge. Amarillo PD crime lab technician G. W. Dickerson checked out the car for evidence of foul play but found none.
In separate interviews, Melanson and Wilder both mentioned that the former had spent time with the Burton family in Pueblo. Melanson even admitted to having a relationship with Sally, although he denied it was sexual, since that would have landed him in more hot water for having sex with a minor.
Other detectives interviewed Sally Burton, who admitted knowing Melanson, saying she had met him near her family’s cabin. She told them about Melanson’s arrival in Pueblo and the little red car she and her sisters had traveled in. She even pointed out the room at the Bell Motel where she spent the night of September 3 with Melanson. And yes, she said, they did have sex.
More detectives talked to the motel owner, who remembered Melanson, though under the name Allan King. He still had the license plate number he took off the Mazda. It belonged to the car owned by Michele Wallace.
In the meantime, Melanson was being raked over the coals regarding Michele by Smalley and Silva. At first he said he didn’t know her. Then he seemed to remember that she may have been one of a group of “hippies” who had shown up at his cabin in Schofield Park before moving on.
On September 13, Undersheriff Fry drove to Pueblo, where he met with the Pueblo detectives, who brought him up to date on everything they had learned. Fry asked to speak to Wilder and Melanson. He began with Wilder, who told him about meeting Melanson. “What kind of car was Roy Melanson driving?” Fry asked.
“A red Mazda station wagon,” Wilder said.
“Did you ever hear Roy say anything about a girl by the name of Michele Wallace?”
“No,” Wilder replied, shaking his head. “Never.”
Fry finished with Wilder and asked that Melanson be brought in. A few minutes later, he was told that Melanson didn’t want to talk to him but did want to talk to the FBI.
FBI Special Agent Lad Scroggins arrived and talked to Melanson for several hours. At first, the ex-con stuck to his story. But with the agent pressing, he suddenly “remembered.” Yes, he had met Michele Wallace. He had gone into a bar with her to have a drink. “We left the dog tied outside,” he said. Melanson said he made an excuse to borrow her car. Then he left. “And that was the last I seen of her,” he said.
Neither Scroggins nor the other detectives were fooled by Melanson’s confession. As an ex-con, he knew that taking a stolen car across state lines was a federal offense—the only crime in this case the FBI would have jurisdiction over. They figured he was hoping that the FBI would charge him for the car theft, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison, and in the intervening time period, the Michele Wallace case would be forgotten.
The next day, Fry arrested Melanson for fraud. He was suspected of having broken into a car in the Schofield Park area and then forging his name and cashing checks that belonged to the car’s owner. Fry took possession of the evidence related to the Wallace case, including her camera from the Pueblo pawn shop, and put his prisoner in the back of his county car.
The drive back to Gunnison was uneventful. Melanson was sticking to his story: The last time he saw Michele Wallace, she was alive and drinking in a bar.
Melanson was booked into the Gunnison County Jail that night. The next afternoon, Sheriff Porterfield and Fry questioned him about Michele Wallace. Again, he denied having anything to do with her disappearance.
“What are you going to do when she shows up back in Chicago?” he retorted in response to their questions. “I’ll be in the clear then.”
Melanson asked what was going to happen with the fraud charge. When they replied that it would be up to the courts, he indicated that he was through with the interview but that he would think about it and “decide if I want to say anymore.”
He decided against. But the investigators were hearing a lot more about Melanson from other law enforcement agencies. He was a suspect in three rapes in Texas, and was under indictment for one in February of that year when he fled the state.
Texas authorities also wanted to talk to him about a murdered woman whose body had been found in a field; they knew he had been in the area at the time, but they had little else to go on. And Louisiana police wanted to question him about a series of strangulation murders in that state.
Fry made arrangements to retrieve Michele’s sleeping bag and backpack from Cedar Falls. On September 20, Chuck Matthews was asked to report to the Gunnison jail. They wanted to ask him more questions and see if he could identify Roy Melanson as the “Roy” he had met the day before Michele Wallace disappeared.
There was soon no question about that. Melanson was being led from his cell when Matthews came in. “That’s him,” Matthews yelled and with his fists clenched, advanced at the other man. He might be a drunk, but he had served his country honorably and wouldn’t abide a man who attacked women. “You son of a bitch,” he shouted “You did somethin’ to that poor girl!”
“I didn’t do nothin’,” Melanson snarled back.
The two men moved toward each other. Matthews was smaller, but he was more than willing to mix it up with Melanson. Deputies quickly stepped between them.
Matthews settled down quickly in an interview room and gave a more detailed account of his time with Melanson and Michele Wallace. Undersheriff Fry took particular note when Matthews said they had been in the Kebler Pass area, about eight miles up and had taken several side excursions on tracks south of the main road. He recalled one in particular because they drove through two streams to get to the place where Melanson had him stop and hand him the rifle.
There was something curious, Matthews added as the interview drew to a close. The morning after Melanson left him at the bar and drove off with the girl, a friend gave him a lift back to his car to retrieve his rifle and saddle. Melanson’s toolbox was still in the car, he said, and that’s where he left it. But when he returned to the car the following day, the toolbox was gone. “That means he stuck around long enough that morning to come back for his tools.”
With Matthews’s positive identification, the Gunnison County Sheriff investigators were certain they had the right man and that Michele Wallace had been murdered. It was unlikely he had taken her very far, which meant her body was somewhere in the mountains. But they couldn’t find her, and without a body the District Attorney was reluctant to attempt a murder trial.
After killing Michele Wallace, Roy Melanson stole her camera. This photograph of him lying on a couch two days after the murder was the last image on the film. Photo courtesy of Gunnison County District Attorney’s Office.
The circumstance became even more aggravating when, a week after picking up Melanson in Pueblo, Fry had the film in Michele’s camera developed. Most of the photographs were from her camping trip. But the last frame on the roll was a photograph of the suspect lying on the couch at the Burton home, a young girl sitting in front of him reading a newspaper; Melanson had a smirk on his face as though daring the investigators to catch him.[1]
[1] Steve Jackson, No Stone Unturned (WildBluePress, May 2015), Kindle Edition
VII
October 1974
Donna Campeglia’s heart didn’t give up on Michele being alive until she heard about her dog from Maggie Wallace. Her brain had warned her that it was over when her friend didn’t call during that first week and the searchers couldn’t find her. But if the dog had been wandering free before it was shot, she knew that something terrible had happened to Michele.
A few day later, that was confirmed when George Sr. called. Michele had last been seen in the company of a known rapist, and that he’d shown up later with her car and pawned her camera.
He must have threatened the dog, Donna thought. She would have never just let Okie go; she would have done anything to protect him.
Devastated, Donna thought about the last time she’d seen Michele who’d come to visit her. Donna was living in Tucson with a mutual friend, Gary, who Michele had once dated.
Michele was still recovering from a broken collarbone and unable to lift her arm when she got in the shower one day. “Hey kid,” she’d called out for Donna. Referring to each other as ‘Hey kid,’ was one of their jokes since junior high, and they’d continued to use it, including in their frequent letters.
