Deceased/Not Found GA - Shannon Melendi, 19, Atlanta, 26 March 1994

angelmom

The love stays...forever in our hearts
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I live in Atlanta and spent many nights at the Softball Country Club cheering on my boyfriend's team. Later, when Shannon was abducted from the area, it was a chilling reminder of how vulnerable we all are.

I can't imagine the horror for Shannon's family as the tenth anniversary of her disappearance approaches (March 26) and her body has still not been found. Her killer has never been charged. In fact, the main suspect was released from prison just 2 months ago.

This might make a good "case of the month" for March in recognition of the anniversary. All her parents want are some answers.
 
I read this whole thing. Is there any current website for her where we could leave a message?
xxxxxxxxxooooo
mama
 
Love_Mama said:
I read this whole thing. Was her body ever found?

Not that I have ever heard of or found out on the web. I think these cases (where the person is never found) freaks me out worse than even the most horrible murders. I can't imagine trying to go to work or school and continue on with the business of life not knowing where your child or sister or friend might be. Ten years and still no answers.

I know how hard it was to go on with my life after the losses of our babies, but we knew what had happened to them and where they were. This is beyond my comprehension. It breaks my heart.
 
I hope you don't mind me asking Angelmom.......but what happened with your babies? You can PM me if you like.

It seems that there are a great many people on this forum who have gone through some terrible losses in their families. Maybe that's why I too am here. I think that we who have lost a child feel such a huge empathy towards other's who have too. Death is death........but not knowing where their missing children are must surely be the most excruciating thing imaginable. Ten years.........not knowing! How does this family sleep at night!

If you hear anything more on this.........be sure and let us know.

xxxxxxxxooo
mama
 
Love_Mama said:
I hope you don't mind me asking Angelmom.......but what happened with your babies? You can PM me if you like.

It seems that there are a great many people on this forum who have gone through some terrible losses in their families. Maybe that's why I too am here. I think that we who have lost a child feel such a huge empathy towards other's who have too. Death is death........but not knowing where their missing children are must surely be the most excruciating thing imaginable. Ten years.........not knowing! How does this family sleep at night!

If you hear anything more on this.........be sure and let us know.

xxxxxxxxooo
mama

Sorry, hadn't checked this thread in a while. No big secret, we lost three babies to miscarriage. Luckily I was diagnosed with a luteal phase defect and treated; now we have three healthy children.

For the last ten years I have volunteered with the pregnancy and infant loss support group that literally saved my life. It is called SHARE Atlanta. This is a very common way to lose a child, and everyone handles it differently. Our goal, besides support, is to let parents know their options. One of the most common comments we get is that they never knew there was a group and thought they were crazy for feeling intense grief. I hear that even from women who had a loss twenty+ years ago. I don't think it ever goes away completely.

I agree that people who have experienced some type of tragedy are more affected by the heartbreak of others. Part of what enrages me about Laci and Conner's deaths is that I know so many daddies who would do anything for their wife to be carrying a healthy baby to term. Their helplessness is agonizing in the face of that smarmy smile on Scott's face.

Thanks for the hugs... you can never have too many!

edited to fix link
 
We were just talking about this and look what was in today's paper:

AJC

I hope they can come up with something so this guy isn't walking around free. He has a similar history to the guy who took Carlie.
 
its so sad to hear about all these teens children and adults that go missing and sometimes le take there time when someone is reported missing becuse they assume its like a family dispute or a goodlooking runaway sometimes i wish they could trade places with a mother or father of someone missing and they could see what they go through im only 22 and recently missing people and crimal justace has intrested me i think of all these people and i go it can happen to anyone, is it normal to be scared sometimes im at home alone with the cat and dog i live behind woods and sometimes i get scared that something might happen to me

i hope the family has closure and finds her so that they can be at some peace
 
Shannon Melendi's family continues to look for her and I'm so glad that Dekalb County has decided to reopen the case after 10 years. I saw it on the news just the other night on Channel 2.
I wish that Clinton County Ohio would do the same for Carrie's case. SOmething has to be done to stop people from disappearing and also something needs to be done to insure that nobody forgets after a certain amount of time passes. All too often, after it's broadcasted on the news a few times, people dont remember. The family and those closet to them never forget. I hope that something comes of this case very soon.

FindCarrie
www.findcarrieculberson.com
 
its so sad that after 10 years no news their are some cases where family still has no news and its been 29 years and still no answers some people think im a little to over cauous but one can never be i tell my friends i can be here to day and gone tomrow and its not a joke i wish all the sick people who do these things would stop
 
smile22 said:
its so sad that after 10 years no news their are some cases where family still has no news and its been 29 years and still no answers some people think im a little to over cauous but one can never be i tell my friends i can be here to day and gone tomrow and its not a joke i wish all the sick people who do these things would stop

Smile, my family waited 11 years to get the bad news. Unfortunately my parents passed before my sister's remains were found. It was 20 years ago this past February that she disappeared. She was only 19 years old. Please do continue to keep this family and the others who are also missing loved ones in your prayers. I can tell you from experience that it helps.
 
8-31-2004
A DeKalb County grand jury on Monday indicted Colvin "Butch" Hinton III on charges connected to the murder of Shannon Melendi.

The two-count indictment, announced at an afternoon news conference in which the victim's father Luis attended, came down more than 10 years after Melendi’s disppearance. Her body has never been found.

Hinton was scheduled for a court appearance at the DeKalb County Magistrate Court Tuesday afternoon, but it was canceled. The court date was apparently unnecessary.

Hinton is in the custody of DeKalb County authorities. He has been charged with murder and felony murder. Officials said he would have been charged with an additional count of kidnapping, but the statute of limitations has run out.

“Shannon Melendi is going to have her day in court and the district attorney’s office is going to be her voice,” said Jeffrey Brickman, the DeKalb County District Attorney.

“Our main focus as a family is that he will not hurt another family again,” said Luis Melendi, Shannon’s father. “I don’t want any other family to go through what we’ve been through over the last 10 years.”

http://www.11alive.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=51226

My prayers are with the Melendi family and with those prosecuting this case. I pray for justice for Shannon....and that she is found, and soon.

With HOPE, Lanie
 
I read the whole story, including Hinton's sexual assault history going all the way back to age 16. Read how he was let go to do it again over and over, and again even after Shannon was abducted. It made me :furious: to read the following: "Melendi {Shannon's dad} tried to establish the Shannon Melendi Foundation. Its motto: 'Keep sexual predators behind bars. Save our Children'. However, there was too much resitance from criminal rights advocates." Who the heck are these "advocates", and why are they more powerful in influencing how sexual predators are handled by the justice system? :banghead:
 
Police named Hinton as a suspect when they discovered he had served a two year sentence for kidnapping and molesting a 14-year-old girl in 1982.


Are you kidding me. Two years!! Two hundred years would not have been enough. But he got nine years for trying to beat an insurance company.
 
Another absolutely beautiful girl with her whole life in front of her taken way too soon. Thank God the investigation is still moving forward. I hope her parents get to see this thing through.
 
A DeKalb County judge has placed a gag order on family and friends of Shannon Melendi, an Emory University student who vanished in 1994, telling them to stop making public comments about the man arrested in the case last year.

"Any continued statements the victim's loved ones may make to the media regarding this defendant have the potential to fatally prejudice the prosecution of this case," Superior Court Judge Anne Workman wrote in an order signed Tuesday.

The judge said she acted to protect the right of Colvin C. "Butch" Hinton III to have his murder trial before a jury not prejudiced by pretrial publicity. Workman noted that Hinton's trial on a federal arson charge in 1996 was moved to another state because of publicity about his status as the suspect in the Melendi case.

Hinton was charged with Melendi's murder last year after authorities said they received new evidence. They would not elaborate


http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/dekalb/0305/31melendi.html
 
mom-a-licious said:
I read the whole story, including Hinton's sexual assault history going all the way back to age 16. Read how he was let go to do it again over and over, and again even after Shannon was abducted. It made me :furious: to read the following: "Melendi {Shannon's dad} tried to establish the Shannon Melendi Foundation. Its motto: 'Keep sexual predators behind bars. Save our Children'. However, there was too much resitance from criminal rights advocates." Who the heck are these "advocates", and why are they more powerful in influencing how sexual predators are handled by the justice system? :banghead:

I totally share in your rage and disgust that there are people out there who value the "rights" of criminal sex offenders who prey on children - over the well being of all families, children and the general community. I don't know who they are - maybe family and relatives of criminals, or people who were wrongly convicted and vindicated....I still don't get it REALLY. In my opinion, these people lack the ability to exist peacefully in our society - once someone is proven to be a murdering sex offender - they should be put to sleep!!! If it can't be proven beyond reason or circumstanial evidence - they should at the VERY least be locked up or seriously monitored by authorities for the rest of their lives! This is something I feel SO strongly about.
It is OBVIOUSLY a problem, it's plain to see just by the amount of similiar cases that exist and continue to occur. How many children have to be robbed of their innocence - or their lives? How many families have to lose loved ones - AT THE HANDS OF CRIMINALS WHO HAVE RECORDS OF ABUSING CHILDREN before this society smartens up? We can't solve every problem in the world - but we can at least try to keep violent criminals locked up where they belong - if they do not have the ability to control themselves.....
:furious:
 
U\UcTYWYWZV&urcm=y]Link may not work...password site


Prison talks may figure in Melendi murder trial

By DAVID SIMPSON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/02/05
DeKalb County prosecutors hope to use Colvin "Butch" Hinton's prison conversations and the accounts of women who say he attacked them to help persuade a jury that Hinton killed Shannon Melendi, an Emory University student who vanished in 1994.

Melendi's body never was found, and the grand jury that indicted Hinton for murder last year said it was not known how she died. Prosecutors cannot say how they hope to overcome those obstacles, because they — along with Hinton's lawyer and Melendi's family and friends — are under a judge's gag order intended to limit publicity before jury selection begins Aug. 10. But recent court filings by the district attorney's office offer some information about prosecutors' plans.

The prosecution won permission from Superior Court Judge Anne Workman to bring five inmates of federal prisons to the DeKalb County Jail so they can testify. Lead prosecutor John Petrey said in court papers that Hinton, who served eight years in prison ending in 2004, made statements about the Melendi case to the inmates.

The court papers do not show what the inmates say they learned from Hinton. But a transcript of an earlier hearing before Workman shows that Petrey said the grand jury last year heard "evidence concerning Mr. Hinton's statements about that day [March 26, 1994, when Melendi disappeared]. There was evidence about disposal of the body concerning Ms. Melendi, but there was no evidence as to the cause of death."

Prosecutors also have sought Workman's permission to use testimony from five women who say Hinton, now 44, attacked them years before Melendi disappeared. Court papers listed those alleged incidents as an attempted rape in 1977, sexual battery in 1981 and three attacks in 1982: a rape, an attempted rape and an attempted murder.

In 1982, Hinton was imprisoned in Illinois for kidnapping and taking indecent liberties with a 14-year-old girl. About six years earlier, he underwent psychiatric counseling in connection with an attempted rape in Kentucky.

Court files do not indicate whether Workman has ruled on whether the alleged earlier attacks can be used at Hinton's trial.

Melendi, 19, vanished from her part-time job at a softball park near Memorial Drive and I-285. Police said that Hinton, a Clayton County resident, was working as an umpire at the park, and he was a longtime focus of their investigation.

He was indicted last year after the DeKalb district attorney's office said that new, undisclosed information had been uncovered.

Hinton is being held without bond. He was released from federal prison last year on a 1996 conviction for trying to burn down his house to commit insurance fraud.
 
And when the man accused of killing her goes on trial Wednesday, Emory will be watching.

"There's definitely interest here," said Kent Alexander, the school's general counsel. "Emory is such a safe campus and this was such an anomaly that the tragedy took on even greater proportions than it would have otherwise."

Colvin C. Hinton III faces murder charges in the death of Melendi, a 19-year-old sophomore from Miami who vanished March 26, 1994, after leaving the Softball Country Club, where she and Hinton worked. The 44-year-old former softball umpire and butcher has pleaded not guilty.

Hinton, who was accused three times previously of abducting women in Illinois and Kentucky, served 15 months in prison for kidnapping a 14-year-old girl from Neponset, Ill., in 1982. He was long considered a suspect in Melendi's disappearance, but was not charged until last year after new evidence was passed from the former prosecutor to his successor.

Among the evidence: federal prison inmates in North Carolina who say Hinton made statements to them about the murder case when they served time together, and phone calls made to police and a campus center from a man who claimed to have abducted Melendi.

Also, records show a bow saw, a set of butcher knives, masking tape and a vacuum cleaner bag were seized from Hinton's suburban Atlanta home. Police have not said how the items tie into the case. Prosecutors are also hoping to use the testimony of the women Hinton was accused previously of abducting. A judge has not ruled on the request.
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/12326179.htm
 

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