About this episode:
Project Sunlight host, Rissa continues the discussion about the nearly 24 year long disappearance of 13-year-old Filipino American Rachel Mellon Skemp from her home in Bolingbrook, Illinois.

Show Notes

Transcript

RISSA: Hello and welcome to the second episode of Project Sunlight. I want to take the time to say thank you to everyone who took note of the premiere and offered me their support. It really means a lot to me, all the comments, likes, shares and the feedback I’ve been getting...so again, thank you.

I have a quick self-correction I want to make; in the previous episode, I mentioned that a link would be in the show notes at projectsunlightpodcast.com, which is wrong but I hope you’ll forgive me as it was really late at night. The podcast’s website is www.projectsunlightpodcast.net. It might have gone right over the heads of many listeners since I got it right in the closing message, but I just wanted to go ahead and correct myself to avoid any future confusion.

This episode is based on a case that has stayed with me ever since I began researching it. Unlike in our previous episode where there was limited information on the victim outside of what was gleaned by local reporters, this case is packed with important details, though questions still remain. Keeping this in mind, there’s still far too little mainstream media attention on the disappearance of Rachel Mellon Skemp, but I was able to rustle up the audio clip that you just heard from local news station Chicago WGN9. Thankfully, Rachel’s family and friends have maintained a website that has several home video clips of Rachel, as well as a gallery of pictures and I will link this in the show notes. Rachel Mellon Skemp has been missing for 24 years, so as you can imagine there’s a lot of ground for us to cover. I wanted to let everyone know that because of the amount of immersion we’ll need to do to get into this case; this is Part 1 and the next episode will be Part 2.

Okay, let’s dive in.

Rachel Mellon Skemp was 13-years-old at the time of her disappearance in Bolingbrook, Illinois on January 31, 1996. She stood at a petite 5’2, 78lbs. Rachel was born during the early morning hours of Tuesday, October 13, 1982 in Melrose Park, Illinois to Amy and Jeff Skemp. So her 37th birthday was just a few days ago at the time of this recording She was described as having a permanent smile etched on her face and this is really apparent by nearly all of the pictures there are of Rachel. Almost every picture that exists of Rachel features her signature smile, long dark hair and hazel eyes and golden brown skin. I read a comment from a neighbor in an article where the neighbor described her as a “young Vanessa Williams.” Although I doubt some of my younger listeners would know her music now, she’s known for a song called “Save The Best for Last”, “Colors of the Wind” in Disney’s Pocahontas, but also for being the first black Miss America in 1983.

Anyways…

Rachel was described as a goofy, bubbly and creative child. She loved animals, science, nature, recycling...and she was known for being really creative. She was quirky and loved to write short stories. One clip of her on the Rachelfind.com which is the website maintained by her family that I referred to earlier, features Rachel playing a guitar while perched on a stool in front of her class, giggling at herself for making a mistake while plucking the strings to “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” In all the other home video tape clips of Rachel, you can see how lively and magnetic her personality truly was. There’s actually one video clip of Rachel 11 days before her disappearance where she sports shorter hair and dangly earrings and it’s just absolutely tragic see how obviously loved she was and still is, you can really just feel the warmth of her personality come through the screen in all of the pictures and video.

Both of Rachel’s parents were youth leaders at their local baptist church which Rachel would also attend later, becoming popular herself in youth group. At the age of three, Rachel’s parents separated and this is when she moved to Bolingbrook, Illinois which is just 30 miles outside of Chicago. Rachel’s mother Amy would marry a man named Vincent Mellon or ‘Vince’ and go on to have two other children, Rachel’s half-siblings. I’ve seen a few people online question why Rachel is known as Rachel Mellon Skemp as opposed to being just Rachel Skemp, but really it’s not all uncommon for children to take the names of step parents. In this case I’d say it was really just a matter of not having a completely different last name from her mother, brother and sister. The Mellon family would live together at 612 Melissa Drive in Bolingbrook.

Rachel was a seventh grader at Bernard J. Ward Middle School at the time of her disappearance. She was apart of a group of close knit friends, one of them being her best friend Carrie Scaglione, who has been outspoken and passionate to this very day about finding Rachel ever since she went missing in 1996. Carrie was interviewed along with Rachel’s father Jeff in a 2016 episode of Case Files Chicago where she talks about how she and Rachel met in middle school through a mutual friend. The girls had lots of classes together, they immediately clicked and Carrie describes her as an old soul, a fan of the Beatles and how Rachel would join her family on weekend camping trips.

Rachel was an A student, and even from a young age she would babysit the neighbor’s children and would help them with their own schooling by teaching them how to read and making practice quizzes. She was also entrusted with babysitting her younger siblings, which is fitting for the oldest child and especially one that is so mature for her age. As I was doing research on Rachel’s life for this episode, I couldn’t help but be impressed more than once with how much this young girl took on at her age.

Even though Rachel had been missing for 20 years at that time, it was still very apparent how deeply Rachel’s disappearance had impacted Carrie. Just watching Carrie become emotional when talking about Rachel is really heartbreaking. Carrie is definitely one of those friends for life, and you can see this in how involved and vocal she has been in Rachel’s disappearance throughout the years.

There was trouble in the Mellon household but it didn’t start with Rachel’s disappearance, it had actually started many years prior. Shortly after the summer of 1990 when Rachel was baptized at the church where her parents had been youth leaders, there was a physical altercation between Amy and Vince. At this time Rachel would have been around 8-years-old. Amy accused Vince of pushing her down a flight of stairs and making verbal threats against Rachel. Amy filed a police report and restraining order, but eventually it was dropped and she got back together with Vince.

Then in 1995, Rachel ran away from home for 12 hours and slept outside of other best friend’s house, Jenny. She was apparently afraid of being blamed for something that her siblings had broken. Rachel eventually called her step-grandparents to pick her up and she returned home.

It would appear that the Mellons were dealing with more than just your average family problems, and eventually, as with many other cases, the pattern of domestic violence only escalates with time. It’s actually quite common for women to return to their abusers, and this is a result of whole body, mind, and soul conditioning...I don’t say that lightly. We’ll get into more of this in Episode 3 Part 2, but I did want to bring this up because Rachel’s mother has gotten a lot of flack for quote unquote “allowing” Vince to treat her and her oldest daughter this way. Later on, I do think that there is justifiable frustration at how Amy and Vince handled Rachel’s disappearance, but before we go down that road in Episode 2 I do want to say one thing. And before I get pushback, I wanted to talk a little bit about why Amy would stay in her marriage...not in an effort to excuse it, I think that was and still is a dangerous mistake and I I think most listeners will agree. But it’s important to separate emotions and look at facts when considering the circumstances that I believe lead to Rachel’s disappearance.

It’s extremely difficult for a woman to leave an abuser, and in the research I’ve come across I discovered that a woman will leave her abuser on average 7-8 times before she can successfully get away from her abuser. When a woman is leaving her relationship, this is the most dangerous time. And while I understand that there is a lot of frustration in this case, leaving an abusive relationship is not a cake walk and I want to make it clear that this podcast is not going to be in the business of finger pointing at victims of abuse.

Additionally, I also want to mention that it’s Rachel’s mother who is a 1st generation Filipino, Rachel being 2nd, which means that Amy is a native of the Philippines while Rachel was born here in the United States. If you listened to Episode 1 on the murder of Karen Santillan Tait, you’ll hear me talk about how the differences between 1st and 2nd generation Filipinas are can be so stark that it significantly impacts the way in which they ask for help. 1st generation Filipino women have a number of obstacles to overcome when they immigrate to America; there can be language barriers, they’re often missing the safety network of friends and family because they’re all the way back home in the Philippines and as a foreigner they may be unfamiliar with the way that our criminal justice system works.

There’s also a very real cultural stigma associated with divorce that 1st generation Filipinas may be seeking to avoid; it’s illegal to divorce your spouse in the Philippines. The Philippines is a country that is 80% Catholic, so although Amy was technically a member of the First Baptist Church of Bolingbrook like Jeff, the cultural implications of divorce likely stayed with her and might also be a factor in how she handled the abuse in her marriage.

There’s a study I linked to in the shownotes of Episode 1 that I referenced which describes how these barriers play a significant role in whether or not a 1st generation Filipina will seek help, and I’ll link it again in this episode’s shownotes.The research findings state that 2nd generation Filipino American women are more likely to seek out the resources available to them locally like domestic abuse support groups, counseling, and legal services in order to safely leave an abusive relationship. We’ll circle back on this point in part 2 and how that relates to Rachel’s disappearance.

So now let’s get into Wednesday, January 31st, 1996, the day Rachel disappeared. It was extremely cold, -20 degrees outside to be exact and it was frigid. There was still snow on the ground. Rachel had stayed home from school with a sore throat, and her stepfather Vince was at home with her as he was unemployed. Why? I couldn’t figure out, I could find any information whatsoever as to what kind of job he’d held.

At 10:45 a.m. Rachel made a phone call to her paternal grandmother in Texas, Lucy Skemp, after receiving a letter from her in the mail. It was only a 4-5 minute phone call, but according to the transcript of a CNN interview with the private investigator that was hired by Jeff, Cynthia Georgantas, Rachel got very quiet which prompted her grandmother to ask, “Is he there?” And Rachel said “Yes.” She hung up shortly after, and according to her grandmother this phone call seemed normal. I think we can infer that her grandmother was referring to Vince, of course, although not much else really explains why Rachel had to interact this way with her grandmother other than a few articles that claim that she was quote unquote “not allowed” to talk to her grandparents in Texas. I couldn’t really find out why in my research, but it could be attributed to generalized divorce tensions since Amy married Vince, or if they knew about the abuse in the Mellon household and the threats made toward Rachel.

Vince says he and Rachel spent the rest of the morning and afternoon playing video games, after which Rachel took a nap. He then says that he took the family’s white German Shepherd, Duke, for a walk at 2:30 p.m. leaving the door unlocked. During the walk, Vince says that Duke slipped out of his collar to chase a rabbit. Interestingly enough, detectives couldn’t find any witnesses to back up Vince’s claim that he had been out walking the dog in the neighborhood. Vince said that he figured the dog would find his own way home which I just think is absurd. It was absolutely freezing cold that day and leaving the family dog out in that temperature German Shepherd or not, if it’s too cold for you it’s too cold for them.

According to Vince he had returned 30 minutes later after leaving, which would

put him arriving home at 3:00 p.m. So he left at 2:30 p.m. the dog gets loose, and he returns 30 minutes later? That’s very little time for him to have been walking the dog, for the dog to have gotten loose and if he had spent any time whatsoever looking for Duke, well...he didn’t spend all that long looking for him did he? I mean these are just things I’m thinking out loud when looking at the timeline, it really is just completely stupid already. He’s not a good liar.

It was 15 minutes later when Rachel’s younger sister came home that she noticed Rachel wasn’t in her room. It until after Amy returned home from work at 5:00 p.m. and was told by Rachel’s sister that she was missing that things started to finally get rolling. Okay and now let’s also point out that for an hour and 45 minutes Vince was doing...what? Apparently not looking for Rachel. He actually told one reporter for ABC7 Chicago that he didn’t search the neighborhood for her either. He said, “I didn't really look around the neighborhood as far as thinking you know something might be suspicious. So, I didn't know what to say other than I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary at that point.”

So you’ve got the family dog missing and now Rachel is not in her room, and he didn’t check on her this entire time. Vince didn’t search for either one of them, and here he is at home...I mean this is just absolutely unbelievable.

It truly is a crock of shit.

Now by 5:30 p.m. Amy called the police to report Rachel missing. Presumably between 5:00 and 5:30 she had called Rachel’s friends like Carrie and Jenny to see if anyone knew where she was, because Carrie talks about how she came home from school that day and found out from her parents that Rachel was missing on Casefiles Chicago. And she told her parents that she hadn’t seen or heard from Rachel, she’d been at school and then to volleyball practice. Carrie called Rachel’s mom right away to find out what was going on and to let her know that she hadn’t seen Rachel since the day before. And I can’t imagine how stressful that must have been at 13 to have to tell Amy’s mom that she really didn’t know anything, I mean Rachel had been at home sick. Then to have to hang up and try to sit down at the dinner table knowing your best friend is missing, you can just progressively see the trauma in Carrie’s voice and body language as she’s talking about this in the interview with Casefiles Chicago and you can’t help but feel it too.I do recommend that everyone watch and share it, it doesn’t cover every detail in the case but since it’s one of the few videos out there on Rachel’s case people should share it on social media as much as possible, please. Don’t forget it’s in the show notes at projectsunlightpodcast.net, grab the link there and post it on Facebook.

So after calling the police, Amy claimed that it took them an hour to arrive at her home...which is alarming. I don’t know what the standard protocol is supposed to be in terms of the response to a missing person’s report it might even vary depending on who’s in the immediate area, but an hour does seem like a lot. At some point, Jeff’s father and Rachel’s grandfather, Ken Skemp, had been notified that Rachel was missing and he was the one to let Jeff know when he came over; they lived in the same apartment complex and at this time Jeff was living in Dallas, Texas and he was working for a cellphone warehouse.

In the midst of all this, a real estate appraiser who was in the Mellon’s neighborhood on business at some point had found the family dog, Duke. Duke must not have gone far because a neighbor recognized him and told the man that he belonged to the Mellon family, and he was returned. I don’t think this is a coincidence, and I couldn’t find anywhere that stated when exactly the dog was brought back, but the indication that I get is that he wasn’t missing for long. So again, it’s doubtful Vince even bothered to look for the dog before returning home a half-hour after leaving to walk him.

One of the biggest red flags in this case that’s an important detail is that the blue blanket she had been sleeping with and two pillows were also missing from her bedroom. Rachel’s winter jacket and boots were still there, as well as her purse. In one article that I read by the Chicago Tribune, Amy remarked that Rachel hadn’t been wearing her favorite jewelry because it was still there in her room. Rachel was wearing pajamas according to the reports I’ve read, a pink sweatshirt, yellow sweatpants and red slippers. So if she left her jewelry behind, the implication is that she had been in those same clothes when she went missing.

So if she’s not in the house, she doesn’t have her winter clothing or her purse, and she’s presumably in pajamas and slippers...why would she leave those things behind if she were going somewhere? In below zero temperatures?

It’s completely implausible.

Well it doesn’t get any better, unfortunately, because according to Amy police told her that they wouldn’t take any action for another 24 hours. Having to wait 24 hours before investigating this disappearance when you have a 13-year-old girl missing in sub zero degree weather with no coat, no boots, no purse...she wouldn’t have had a cellphone as this was 1996 and children in those days wouldn’t have had cell phones like they do now...those 24 hours would have been absolutely crucial to finding Rachel. According to Jeff in his interview with Casefiles Chicago Police told him that Amy had probably just left with one of her friends.

Even if she had left with a friend, neither of her two best girlfriends knew where she was, and according to Rachel’s family her circle of friends were all very close. And the one and only time Rachel had ever run away, she left a note explaining why. Still, the days went by with no sign of Rachel, no phone calls to anyone she was close to, there was apparently no activity on her bank account so she hadn’t used her debit card.

On Saturday, Jeff flew into Illinois from Texas, to help look for Rachel. In the CNN interview transcript that I found from February 2011, Jeff says that when he asked Vince where Rachel was, Vince just said “I was out, and when I came back she was gone." He said, "Somebody came in and snatched her.” Jeff says that at the time he really wanted to take Vince at his word because he didn’t have all the facts...but he did find it suspicious. And with good reason, I mean I know that they’ve been frantically looking all over and calling around but why assume someone came in snatched her? Someone would have to know she was home alone, or be prowling the neighborhood looking for unlocked doors. In the middle of the day, in the freezing cold, someone would have had to presumably force her out of the house without anyone in the neighborhood noticing. And somehow they would manage to get lucky because the front door the Mellon home was unlocked and Rachel was alone sleeping. Yet as far as we know, everything in the home was normal, with the exception of Rachel missing and her bedding, it’s not like there were things out of place or signs of a struggle.

As police were investigating, they found that there were no signs of forced entry. I didn’t really understand this statement because Vince had stated that the front door was left unlocked…so if, as Amy’s mother believed that someone had walked in and kidnapped Rachel, it’s not like they would have had to try very hard, but I digress. In an article I was reading in the Chicago Tribune where I got a lot of the information from this case, Vince is interviewed he himself remarks that it had been far too long, and quote “As cold as it’s been, it just doesn’t make sense.” So even he realizes that things are not adding up, he has a completely flat and emotionless demeanor about him in every interview I’ve read, I just don’t buy whatsoever that any of this is really accurate. His affect in the video clips that I’ve seen in the news just don’t come across as someone who’s worried about Rachel at all. Just looking at his body language, you can see the tension simmering beneath the surface and like there was nothing behind his eyes. It gave me chills.

I was reading an article by the Daily Herald where the reporter describes how Jeff wandered into Rachel’s room one day, put on the headphones attached to Rachel’s walkman and hit play to Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” which had become one of her favorite artists at the time, and it really struck a chord with me just imagining him sitting on that empty bed… it really breaks your heart. The last time Jeff had spoken with his daughter was Christmas Day, and Rachel had gently teased him about the TLC album “CrazySexyCool” That he had gotten her as a present, saying it was “so last season” because she was growing up and no longer a little kid that liked pop music, which I found to be funny because I could remember saying something similar to my own dad at her age. She had also told Jeff that she would like to live with him someday in Texas.

While the days continued to go by with no sign of Rachel, police began to realize that it was unlikely Rachel had left on her own; finally they began searching the immediate area by going door to door, there were also searches by land, air and water using helicopters, dogs, horses, drones, geothermal imaging and dive teams. Even Jeff’s home in Dallas was searched, along with his sister’s home in Oxford, Mississippi. Despite these search efforts, Rachel seemed to have completely vanished into thin air without a trace.

On February 4th, 1996 Police told reporters that there was quote unquote “no evidence of foul play” as they hadn’t found evidence of a crime, but they were completely bewildered as to what could have happened to her. By February 22nd, The police continued to insist there was no evidence of foul play. Amy and Vince Mellon hired a private investigator, Cynthia Georgantas, fearing that Rachel’s case could fade from the spotlight.

More months pass, and in July Amy Mellon appears on the Jerry Springer Show where a psychic tells Amy that she believes Rachel is dead. I can’t quite say that I’d have chosen Jerry Springer as my platform, but I understand wanting to use whatever means there is available in order to get out the word...but if I’m being really honest and I know this is a divisive topic, but I’m not a big fan of relying upon psychics.

Again more time passes, and by October 13, Rachel’s 14th birthday (which by the way was also just a few days ago at the time of this recording) she was still missing. Jeff returned to Bolingbrook, Illinois days later, hoping to quote “stir things up” and I have to really commend Jeff on his strength, because he has been at the forefront of the search for Rachel all these years. Jeff ended up moving back to Bolingbrook, Illinois, he said that he just couldn’t bear to be so far away in Texas and I’d imagine that indeed it must have been really hard.

In January of 1997, things really start to get messy. Amy decided to freeze out police because of their suspicion that Vince had killed her, saying quote “I found out that they made up their minds that Vince is a suspect and that's that.” Then just one day before the one year anniversary of Rachel’s birthday, it’s revealed that Ken Skemp, Rachel’s grandfather, had received two letters demanding that he return Rachel and threatening his life. However, Ken believed at the time that this was a hoax by a Chicago TV reporter, which is just sad. I couldn’t find more about this online, although I know that it’s fairly common for families to receive false tips and it just really sickens me.

So more years pass, and at the four year mark is when things really heat up in this case. There’s a diary with an incriminating entry that will completely blow your mind....there is an intersection with an infamous Bolingbrook murderer who actually worked as a detective on Rachel’s case, and even a subpoena to testify before a grand jury.

All that and more to come Next Saturday, in Part 2.

References

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