19-year-old Melissa Witt was kidnapped and murdered on her way to a bowling alley in Arkansas to surprise her mother in December 1994. Nearly 30 years later, her killer has still not been caught.
Investigators found blood and apparent signs of a struggle in the parking lot of Bowling World in Fort Smith and in Witt’s abandoned vehicle, where a set of keys belonging to the juvenile was left behind.
“She was short on money and was going to go out and get her mother a burger,” said J.C. Ryder, a former Fort Smith Police Department detective who was the lead investigator on the case. He told THV11 In 2021.
“The trail led from the rear of her car to where the bad guy’s car was parked,” Ryder said.
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Melissa Witt, 19, was abducted from the parking lot of Bowling World in Arkansas on December 1, 1994. (Facebook/All The Lost Girls)
Her nude body was discovered six weeks later by a hunter on a logging road 50 miles away in the Ozark National Forest: she had been strangled and had been robbed of her shoes, clothes, jewelry, and even her Mickey Mouse watch.
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The investigation into Witt’s murder and subsequent disappearance — including previously unseen interviews and footage — is the subject of a new Hulu documentary series, “The End of At Witt: Hunting a Killer,” which premiered Tuesday.
“She was like an ambassador for the university, and they were recruiting students because they wanted students like her. You know, she worked after school. She was a hard worker by nature and had big dreams for life,” Charlene Shirk, a former KFSM-CBS reporter who covered Witt’s case, said in the documentary.
“She went bowling to see her mom. In a church bowling league. It’s all the things we’re told to do as young people: get a good education, work hard, have a good relationship with your parents and be a good kid.”
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Witt had planned to surprise his mother by visiting her while she was out bowling. (Facebook/Who Killed Missy Witt)
Thirty years later, police departments in Fort Smith, Crawford County, Sebastian County and Van Buren continue to work with the FBI to find Witt’s killer.
According to a Hulu press release, the series will also follow detectives investigating “a local serial killer’s reign of terror” in a small Arkansas town both before and after Melissa’s disappearance.
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Authorities say Charles Ray Vines, known as the River Valley Killer, raped and stabbed two elderly women to death in nearby Arkansas counties in the 1990s and was arrested after attacking a 16-year-old girl in 2000. The girl’s stepfather discovered Vines during the attack and tried to beat him to death but was thwarted by arriving sheriff’s deputies. According to KNWA.
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Charles Ray Vines is seen in a 2016 arrest photo. (Arkansas Department of Corrections)
When FBI agents tried to solve Witt’s case in 2019, they turned their investigation to Vines.
“A woman had emailed detectives,” FBI agent Rob Allen said in the documentary, “who worked with Charlie Vines’ mother, and Charlie Vines would occasionally show up at his mother’s place of employment. This witness reported seeing him wearing what appeared to be a bowling league shirt.”
Police told the filmmakers that Vines had even drawn a map of the Ozark Mountains and completed a work order within an eight-minute drive of where Witt’s body was found.
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During the investigation, police used a police dog to search the area where Witt was found and found a mattress cover and cigarette filter nearby that had Vines’ DNA on it – the same Cambridge brand cigarette filter found where Witt’s body was found, Allen said.
But according to the documentary, Vines, who died in September 2019, was ill and unconscious at the time these clues were discovered and was unable to speak to detectives from multiple departments who tried to interview him.
Vines isn’t the only lead in the girl’s mysterious murder: Author LaDonna Humphrey, who has written three books about the case and produced her own documentary, “Uneven Ground: The Melissa Witt Story,” has her own theory.
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Humphrey believes that a man with whom Witt was romantically involved and who was mentioned in her diary, whom authorities have not named, killed her.
“Not someone 10 years older than her,” Humphrey said. He told Newsweek magazine. They also speculate that the man, whose name has not been released, has a criminal history but is not currently serving time in prison.
Although the documentary took a “different direction,” the creator told media that he is “really excited and hopeful” that the release of the new film will “bring more attention and awareness to Melissa’s case.”
