Who killed Melissa Witt? Docuseries investigates teen’s disappearance in the Ozarks
Six weeks after Melissa Witt vanished from an Arkansas bowling alley in 1994, she was found dead in the Ozark National Forest. What happened to the teen 30 years ago is the center of a new docuseries, At Witt’s End – The Hunt for a Killer, an ABC News Studios docuseries available now on Hulu. Andrea Cavallier reports
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Melissa Witt was planning to surprise her mom at an Arkansas bowling alley in December 1994 – but the college student never made it inside the building.
A trail of blood snaked through the parking lot and was found in Witt’s car. There were signs of a struggle, according to investigators, but the teenager had vanished.
Six weeks later, on January 13, 1995, two animal trackers found Witt’s body in the Ozark National Forest, some 50 miles from where she went missing.
Witt, who was 19 years old, had been strangled and stripped of her clothes, shoes, and a Mickey Mouse watch. Those items have never been found.
What happened to the slain teen is still a mystery 30 years later, and is explored in a new four part docuseries, At Witt’s End – The Hunt for a Killer, an ABC News Studios docuseries available now on Hulu.
What happened to Missy?
On December 1, 1994, Melissa worked at her afterschool job at a dentist office and then returned to the Fort Smith, Arkansas home she shared with her mother.
The two had an argument earlier that day, but Melissa’s mother had left her a note inviting her to the bowling alley where she offered to buy her a hamburger.
Melissa drove to Bowling World, where her mother was playing in a league, but never made it inside. Her mom assumed Melissa had gone out with friends instead but began worrying when she didn’t come home and reported Melissa missing to the Fort Smith Police Department.
A few days later, police received a call from Bowling World informing them that a customer had turned in a set of keys on a keychain labeled “Missy” – Melissa’s nickname. There was blood smeared on it.
On December 5, Melissa’s Mitsubishi was found parked at the bowling alley. Near the car, investigators discovered blood stains, a gold hoop earring and a broken hair clip.
The Suspects
The Hulu docuseries focuses on two potential suspects: Charles Ray Vines and Travis Crouch.
Vines - also known as the River Valley Killer - had a criminal record that included two murders in the 1990s near where Melissa had been killed.
His heinous acts against women were similar to the way Melissa was murdered, according to investigators.
In 2000, Vines was convicted of murdering 58-year-old Juanita Wofford and raping a 16-year-old girl who he allegedly tried to kill.
Investigators tried to make a deal with him that if he confessed to unsolved cases, including the murder of Melissa Witt, he would be taken off death row.
In 2019, FBI agents Rob Allen and Rueben Gay led a new investigation into Vines.
“There was a lady who had emailed a detective,” Allen said. “She worked with Charlie Vines’ mother, and Charlie Vines sometimes would show up to his mother’s work, and this witness reported that she saw him wearing a bowling league shirt of some sort."
Investigators discovered that Vines had a work order within an 8-minute drive of where Melissa’s body was found on Ozark Mountain and that he was known to draw maps of the area.
The FBI agents continued their efforts to get an interview with Vines, but he became ill and then in 2019, he died without ever speaking to them.
Vines remained a prime suspect and detectives continued their investigation.
“The working group, Fort Smith PD and FBI, went out to the dump site of Melissa Witt, and this was 27 years later after she had been located,” Agent Allen said.
“The test was what would we see if we ran the dogs on this site where decomposition had happened? What would that even look like? And it was admittedly just a test to, out of curiosity. And what we did was we had them start at a point where they wouldn’t know if they were even going to cross a crime scene of any sort.”
Canine units found a cigarette filter and mattress cover with Vines’ DNA at one location. It was the same Cambridge brand cigarette filter that was located where Melissa’s body was found, Allen said.
Meanwhile, another suspect was being looked at – Travis Crouch. Crouch, who has a long criminal history, had moved to Arkansas and lived near Melissa at the time of her murder after being released from jail in another state.
But investigators could never link him to Melissa’s murder.
He was convicted of assault in 1997 and sentenced to 64 years in prison in Colorado where he currently remains today.
‘All the Lost Girls’
Author LaDonna Humphrey has dedicated years to Melissa’s case, producing three books and a documentary.
Humphrey, along with Amy Smith, founded All the Lost Girls with a specific goal in mind, according to the website: “Finding justice for female strangulation cold cases in the United States.”
She told Newsweek that she was not contacted to participate in the Hulu documentary, which she says goes a different direction than the one she produced in 2023, Uneven Ground: The Melissa Witt Story, but is still “really excited and hopeful” that the exposure will "bring more eyes and more awareness to Melissa’s case.”
“I have carried this torch for a very long time, kind of on my own with the small little team that I had assembled, so it’s exciting and interesting for me to see somebody else come out here and say, ‘I care about this case too. Let’s put it on this global platform.’ So, I’m hopeful. I really, really want to see justice for Melissa,” she added.
Humphrey said she believes Melissa’s killer is a man the teen wrote about in her diary. Yet, the Hulu doc focuses on serial killer Charles Ray Vines.
The author added that the most important thing people can do is call the police if they have any information.
“It’s just going to take that one little piece of information that might seem insignificant to someone to break the case wide open,” she told Newsweek.
“I’m kind of sitting here on the edge of my seat knowing that you know we’re on the cusp of this coming out. It could change the trajectory of the case.”
‘She had big dreams’
Charlene Shirk, a former reporter for KFSM-CBS, covered Melissa’s case for years.
“She went to meet her mom at bowling, at a bowling church league. It’s everything we’re told to do as young people, you know, get a good education, work hard, have a good close relationship with your parents, and be a good kid,” Shirk said on the docuseries.
“She was an ambassador to her college, which meant the college had her go and recruit students because they wanted students like her. You know, she worked after school. She was already a hard worker. She had big dreams for her life.”
Melissa’s mother never got answers in her daughter’s murder. She passed away in 2011 at the age of 75.
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