Episode 3: The Disappearance of Rachel Mellon Skemp - Pt 2.
About this episode:
Project Sunlight host, Rissa, talks 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 Project Sunlight. This episode is part 2 of The Disappearance of Rachel Mellon Skemp, so you should really listen to Episode 1 or else this episode won’t make sense. The clip you just heard was Rachel’s best friend Carrie in an episode of Casefiles Chicago. I had to take an extra week to research this case in depth, which meant sifting through digital newspaper archives night after night and piecemealing together the timeline from the few publications that covered Rachel’s case. I am having to research for the database and the podcast whenever I’m able to between work, sleep and eating...so thank you to everyone for your patience and I really appreciate the kind comments, encouragement and enthusiasm. It’s so important that our communities take note of the disappearances and murders of these women because the mainstream media won’t. And yes, every once and a while Filipino women are featured on major news outlets as victims of crime - but rarely. We can’t expect the nuances of our community trauma to be captured in soundbites, although we can expand on it in mediums like this podcast. And that’s what this is for, that’s why we’re here.
Whether we’re discussing a disappearance or a murder, it’s critical that these Filipina victims are found and brought home wherever that may be, in the diaspora or in the Philippines. Families, friends, loved ones, they need answers, and justice. The name of the podcast comes from the quote by Louis Brandeis, an American lawyer and associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939. “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”
He was referring to transparency in government and using it as a means to prevent corruption, but it’s a quote that’s been slimmed down to “Sunlight is the best disinfectant” and popularized to encompass a broader idea that shining a light to expose the truth is necessary for remedying what’s been hidden.
I started collecting information to compile into a database on missing and murdered Filipino women in the United States about 5 months ago. I was inspired by the activism surrounding missing and murdered indigenous women to look inward at my own community, noticing with increasing concern that that there was a dearth of information on missing and murdered Filipino Women in the United States.
Several patterns and commonalities emerged from my research of over 100 murdered and missing Filipinas dating back to 1965. Many Filipina victims of gendered violence had little more than mere mentions of their disappearances or deaths in local newspapers. Compared to more widely publicized crimes that many Americans would know by the name of the perpetrator or victim alone, the stories of Filipinas are riddled with inaccuracies and misspellings of names, often lacking photos, critical background information and in-depth interviews.
Rachel Mellon Skemp is one of the Filipinas in the database that had more information on her case than several others, but other than the Chicago Tribune, the Daily Herald and mostly local news interviews by Jeff and Carrie, I found very little mainstream media coverage of Rachel’s case. It’s disheartening because we have a thirteen-year-old girl who’s been missing since 1996 and as you’ll hear, there have been significant developments over time but less and less so in recent years. I do think that this case can be solved, but the lack of visibility on Rachel’s case is a major hindrance. I think that mounting public pressure and re-interviewing family and friends could be key to reinvigorating the investigation.
So let’s get into the episode and talk about the details and developments that occurred in the years after Rachel went missing.
In late August of 1997, Police Cmdr. Richard Darrah, point man in the investigation, says police are working with FBI agents to pursue new leads generated by new information developed in the case, however, police decide against releasing it to the public.
On September 3rd per the Daily Herald, Rachel’s father, Jeff Skemp, received a mysterious message printed in green marker on the blank side of a store-bought sympathy card that he had gotten in the mail that seeming to offer vague clues as to where Rachel’s body might be, it read “I keep 'receiving' a vision of a shoe now burned within walking distance of a park or place where she liked to go meet people her own age, her friends. I think it is or was buried there. The police investigation is not going rightly now but the prevailing opinion they have is correct. Your daughter is very happy, praising God and thanking him in heaven. I know Earthly passing is difficult to take, but know she is exquisitely happy."
The word receiving is in quotation marks, I don’t really understand why.
The article describes it as an “anonymous card” so it would seem to imply it wasn’t signed...I wonder if there was any handwriting analysis done on this card. That’s one thing I have to say that frustrated me in researching this case, there’s very little information on the forensics but I suppose that could be a strategy on the part of law enforcement in order to keep their cards close to the vest. But I have so many questions about this card that he received, and I haven’t really seen it mentioned anywhere else. Maybe it was a hoax, or a self-professed psychic or a medium...I don’t know, but I find it interesting.
Another angle that could be considered is that the author may have referred to “receiving a vision” to distance themselves from having maybe heard about Rachel’s disappearance from the person who took her. Were they trying to alleviate a guilty conscience? I think it’s something to ponder. But the fact that it hasn’t really been mentioned in the news articles I’ve found makes me think that this could have been another hoax or a ploy for attention. I hate having to acknowledge that there’s people out there who toy with families of missing persons, unfortunately, many families go through this. Perhaps this person was well-intentioned and and a complete stranger truly believed in their so called vision, but to contact family like this is just crossing the line.
Anyways...so three years after Rachel’s disappearance on what would have been her 17th birthday, Jeff continued to urge the public to be vigilant in the search for Rachel.
When I was browsing through public court records for the state of Illinois I found several references to numerous financial debts that Amy and Vincent had to answer for. Most of the issues seemed to stem from unpaid landlords, there was an apparent foreclosure complaint, forcible entry and detainer complaints which means an occupant is refusing to leave a property even after being given notice. Many of these complaints go back far enough that they honestly seemed to have started really when Amy and Vincent got married, before Rachel went missing. Knowing that there was financial strain and what seems to be like a lot of moving around to different addresses within Illinois, it had to have been really difficult with three children.I’ve never been able to figure out what Vince did for employment, but if he was struggling to keep a job and Amy had to juggle the financial hardship along with the abuse, that’s a lot to bear.
In the interview with Casefiles Chicago (which by the way is also in the show notes if you’d like to watch it) Carrie talks about how it was really hard to be pulled out of class by investigators to answer questions, to be re-interviewed about Rachel’s disappearance. When you watch her talk about Rachel, you really get the feeling of how heavily this has weighed on her throughout her life. She’s lived without her best friend for longer than she had been alive at the time when Rachel disappeared, remember they were only 13-years-old. That would have been a pivotal time in both of their lives; and I’m sure they had plans, dreams, visions for the future and none of it included being apart from one another. My heart really goes out to her.
In 2000, this is where the case takes a hard turn for the worst. In January, it’s revealed by police that a grand jury has been hearing testimony for nearly two months regarding Rachel’s disappearance, and they now believe that Rachel is a victim of homicide. What prompted this move by law enforcement hasn’t been revealed, but they’ve stated that they do suspect foul play. In 2009, a reporter for the Daily Herald wrote that police revealed Vince had scratches on his body at the time of Rachel’s disappearance, which he said came from working on his car. I would imagine that this would have been observed either the day of or in the days immediately after she went missing, so I’m really curious to know if police took pictures.
The Daily Herald says that police questioned Vince for 9 hours. Wouldn’t we all love to have been a fly on the wall in that room? Of course, there’s no audio recording or CCTV footage of the interview, but perhaps whatever was discussed was enough to kick things up a notch because police served Vince with a warrant for samples of his blood, hair, and saliva. Now this really makes me think that perhaps the forensics team found something in the Mellon family home, or perhaps there had been evidence collected from Vince’s car. At this time Amy and Vince were living in Joliet, which is about 45 minutes way from Bolingbrook. What’s strange is that on the very day the warrant was served, Vince and Amy were moving out of the house. So once again, we have likely financial distress and upheaval.
Law enforcement said that they thoroughly searched the immediate area in Bolingbrook for Rachel and didn’t find anything, but remember, she wasn’t classified as a missing person right away. There’s also the problem of Vince’s account as to how he and Rachel spent the morning together leading up to the afternoon when he allegedly left the house to walk the dog. Let’s just think about the possibility that if Vince isn’t telling the truth, that from the time Rachel hung up the phone with her grandmother at 10:45 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. when her younger sister came home, he had a lot of time in between to make her disappear along with any evidence.
Now if you’re wondering what Vince’s motive may have been, here’s what hadn’t been publicly known until 2000. Ahead of Amy and Vince’s testimony before the grand jury, law enforcement had obtained a diary of Rachel’s with an entry dating back to August ‘95 just months before her disappearance, revealing that Vince had kissed and touched Rachel inappropriately. She wrote that he had warned her about predators, attempting to show her what quote unquote “shouldn’t happen” until she’s older. Ugh, talk about absolutely repulsive and just inconceivably hypocritical in every way. That must have been absolutely terrifying to have experienced this grown man, her stepfather, touching her and trying to impart this weird message to her about older men...while he’s doing the very thing he’s warning her against?
It’s just beyond gross and stupid, Rachel had to have been incredulous as to how wrong, how contradictory this was...she was a smart young girl with a good head on her shoulders. In the interview transcript with CNN, Jeff says that Rachel never spoke about this incident. In fact he says that she was so much of a people pleaser, that it’s likely she would have been afraid to say anything at all...and when you consider the previous instances of her being threatened, Amy being abused, it’s not difficult to understand why it was written in her diary.
In the same interview with CNN, the private investigator that the Mellons hired, Cynthia Georgantas with the cold case unit in the Lemont Police Department talked about how there was a steak knife found underneath Rachel’s bed, and a book titled ‘Daddy’s Kiss’. Whether or not this book was for children I couldn’t determine, it wasn’t anywhere online that I could find. If it was, it could have easily been explained away with two other younger children in the home...however, I believe it points to the possibility that Rachel was being groomed. Knowing this, it’s possible Rachel stashed the knife under her bed for protection. I haven’t heard about anything further on these items, but it’s unclear whether there was DNA evidence on the knife.
I think the most likely scenario based on the facts that we know, is that Rachel was probably attacked during her nap and the pillows, the blue blanket she was wrapped in while sleeping, I think those were disposed of with her in an effort to conceal evidence. And I do agree with law enforcement that Rachel was a victim of foul play. Vince had at least a few hours to stash Rachel’s body and he might have already had a location in mind if he’d been grooming her as a child.
I’ve come across a couple posts in forums online, as well as a Medium article stating that Rachel was seen crying at her locker the day before her disappearance in 1996 and refusing to confide in friends, but I’ve never seen this mentioned by Jeff, Carrie, or the private investigator. This leads me to believe that at most it could be an unverified rumor since I’ve never once read about this supposed crying episode at her locker in any news articles, but I’m bringing it up just in case I’m wrong, because I very well could be. What this information would imply is that it’s possible Rachel had something distressing she needed to tell someone that could be critical to filling in the gaps of this case. Perhaps that would also tie in with the fact that she had written down in her diary that Vince touched her inappropriately. But I think it’s dangerous to dwell too much in speculation without the ability to back it up. All I’m saying is to be very critical of any unverified information that’s online because anything that isn’t fact is little more than a red herring in an already frustrating case.
The grand jury ultimately didn’t hand down any indictments. It’s both Vince and Amy testified before the members of the jury but it’s been kept secret, so I wonder if we’ll ever know what was revealed…other than Vince allegedly took the fifth, meaning he invoked his right to remain silent. Jeff also testified before the grand jury and he afterward he had said that he was really encouraged, so I’m sure this was another really hard thing to go through, watching Vince walk away from this essentially and turn it into a damage control campaign. I really want to know whether or not the diary was brought up. If the discovery of the knife and the children’s book was brought up, whether or not the history of the restraining order and threats against Rachel in years prior were admissible.
Amy and Vince held a press conference afterward to proclaim his innocence and to quote unquote set the record straight. I couldn’t find any video but I did find a clipping from the Daily Herald that talked about it, in which Amy said “The police have asked me to buy into their theories and speculation, but I cannot believe it. I know my daughter and I know my husband.” Vince just sat there apparently, emotionless and quiet, making very little eye contact with anyone. Again if you go back and watch the interview with him when Rachel first went missing, he just doesn’t seem sincere...or concerned, at all.
Apparently both he and Amy each had their own attorneys. Vince’s attorney, John Schrock said that there was nothing to hide. " Vince did however complain to one member of the media saying,”They went out of their way to get me and we still have no promising leads," and “Everybody's out to get me." What’s so ridiculous about this statement is that Vince knows that without evidence of forced entry into the home where they lived at the time, and there was none, the pool of suspects is considerably reduced to just those who would have known Rachel was at home alone. The only other alternative would be a home invader who managed to get lucky by finding an unlocked door and took Rachel without having left behind any evidence and we touched on this earlier in Part 1. The totality of the facts that we have available don’t point to anyone other than Vince Mellon.
The police department issued a statement in response that they disagreed with the Mellons, that they hadn’t made a rush to judgement and that they’d continue to operate within the parameters of the law. According to the Mellon family attorneys, Rachel’s case was to be featured on America’s Most Wanted but the police department pulled the plug on it. So this is getting really ugly. I would imagine this had a lot to do with the clash with the police department, but Jeff actually continued to push for the show to air coverage of Rachel’s case in the following years.
Amy accused the Bolingbrook police of mishandling the investigation into Rachel’s disappearance, maintaining that they had focused on Vince as the perpetrator to avoid the embarrassment of admitting to their mistakes. Now Jeff actually had his own criticisms of how the police handled Rachel’s disappearance, but Jeff did not believe in Vince’s innocence. He said in one interview that quote “I just think that Will County's just inept. They [the police] waited a week before they went in the house. They wait too long before they realize the seriousness of the case. They've just got a terrible track record."
Both Vince and Amy were given polygraphs; Amy passed, but Vince failed parts of his. Now of course we know that a polygraph can result in a false positive and often times these days they’re really not indicative of anything other than physiological responses to certain questions. So I don’t know why these tests are still being done but 27 states actually allow their results to be admissible in court. Polygraphs are considered controversial and experts are divided over their legitimacy. Still, I thought I would mention it. Jeff said that he had actually been at the Mellon house after Police had arrived to let them know of the results, and it was then that Vince pulled Amy to the side and told her that they would no longer be cooperating with police.
Jeff states that he found Amy and Vince’s refusal to cooperate with police puzzling. Now I’ve seen online people accuse Amy of conspiring with Vince to cover up what he did to Rachel, and even Jean Cesarez on CNN really grilled Jeff on whether or not he thought she would intentionally cover up for him and he said he would certainly hope not. I do understand the frustration with this case, but I really think that Amy is still a victim here, and I mean a victim of Vince’s continuous manipulation.
Amy claimed that she and Vince had done everything possible to find Rachel in the years since her disappearance, which included hiring Cynthia Georgantas, a private investigator, and going on stakeouts in other states, probably based on whatever leads were received. Later on Cynthia Georgantas ends up working for Jeff, I’m not sure at what point but she was very up front about her findings and to this day is still working the case.
A lawsuit was brought against the Bolingbrook Police Department soon after the grand jury testimony, where Amy alleged that police had taken items from her home during an illegal search while she was at work and Vince was in questioning with police. Then, allegedly a private detective discovers that a telephone in the Mellon home was tapped, prompting Vince’s lawyer to say that he wants to know who’s listening in on his client. Apparently plainclothes officers were spotted entering the house with a black duffle bag. A judge would order the Bolingbrook police to answer as to whether or not other law enforcement agencies might have been the ones to search the home, the Assistant’s State Attorney ended up arguing that this could reveal their secret weapon in the law’s war against crime. Something to that effect. From what I can find the other law enforcement agency is the FBI, and Amy accused them of taking personal photos of Rachel out of her underwear drawer which agents then used when investigating in the Philippines.
The Philippines National Police circulated Rachel’s photo in case she might have run away there, but I think this is so far fetched. I understand wanting to look into every possibility, however. Later, a judge would end up throwing out Amy’s lawsuit.
What’s really sad is that Amy actually said she believed Rachel was still alive. She just couldn’t accept that she could be dead. This is a theme with Amy that I would venture is part of Vince’s manipulation, her believing that Rachel is in fact alive and that Vince could have nothing whatsoever to do with it, then with the added fact of his need to control her... it’s really sad.
In February of 2001, an article in the Chicago Tribune revealed that police hoped a newly elected state’s attorney would review Rachel’s case. Her name had fallen out of the headlines once the grand jury had failed to return an indictment. To Jeff’s relief, the new state’s attorney had been on top of the case and they felt that there was promise in solving it. But what’s so heartbreaking is that at this point, Jeff said he had started to believe he’d never see Rachel again. The Bolingbrook police department stated that they had only circumstantial evidence, and no direct physical evidence to link Vince Mellon to Rachel’s disappearance and murder. However, the police commander hoped that what they had was enough to impanel a new grand jury.
In April of 2001, Amy claimed that her daughter had called her three times in one night. What would have led Amy to believe that this was in fact Rachel is anyone’s guess because it’s really not mentioned or seemingly verified. I hate to say it but it sounds like yet another cruel hoax. Of course this likely only reinforced Amy’s belief that Rachel was alive, but it’s not clear if she still believes that now.
Jeff continued in his efforts to find Rachel, he established a group of search volunteers and the website rachelfind.com to get the word out and it’s still there today with information about Rachel. On May 25, 2002 in commemoration of National Missing Children’s Day, the city of Bolingbrook dedicated a tree to Rachel in a neighborhood park just steps away from the home where she disappeared, and a time capsule was filled with items from her friends and family that were there in attendance as part of a special ceremony. For those who might not know, burying time capsules involves putting little trinkets or sentimental items into a sealed container into the ground to be dug up by a recipient at a later date, or in this case 100 years. Rachel’s friends and family wrote messages on it, put some in it I imagine. You can see a video of this ceremony at the link provided in the show notes.
There’s a plaque at the foot of the tree that reads: “Remembering Rachel, Rachel Marie Mellon Skemp, Missed since January 31, 1996 (Missing from Bolingbrook, present in our hearts). And so this is a place that’s intended for the community to go sit, remember Rachel.
There’s another curious detail that I have to mention involving the investigation into Rachel’s disappearance, and that is that infamous retired Bolingbrook cop and wife killer Drew Peterson worked on her case. Drew Peterson’s fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, went missing from their Bolingbrook home only six miles away from where Rachel disappeared. If you don’t know anything about Drew Peterson, well, to summarize, he’s a real scumbag as he fooled around on his wives, was abusive, and is in prison for the murder of his third wife. Prosecutors argued that he made the murder of his wife appear to look like an accident. He also solicited someone for $25,000 to kill the prosecutor in the murder trial of Kathleen Savio.
Stacy Peterson has never been found to this day and unfortunately her family believes that she was murdered as well, but have never given up on finding her remains.There is some online speculation about whether or not Drew Peterson could have dirtied up the investigation, if in fact he had anything to do with helping to conceal the Rachel’s whereabouts.
However, I think what’s missing in terms of a connection to Rachel’s case is motive. As far as I can tell there’s nothing that indicates that Drew Peterson knew Vince Mellon before Rachel’s disappearance in 1996. Peterson murdered his third wife in 2004, and his third wife presumed to have been also murdered disappeared in 2007. So without any direct evidence that Vince and Drew would have known each other, I don’t how much time anyone should really spend speculating further.
Now Stacy Peterson’s family members have joined Jeff and Rachel’s friends in public press events to call attention to their missing loved ones. And that’s about as much of a connection that I could find...really that they’re in the same club that no one wants to be in, as family members and victims.
In 2003, Vince Mellon was arrested and booked into the county jail and charged with domestic battery for slapping his teenage son who was 15-years-old at the time. According to the Chicago Tribune, Vince had pushed him and slapped him in front of Amy, who said he was drunk and out of control. Although there weren’t any visible marks on her son and he didn’t receive any medical treatment, she did sign off on the complaint that put him in jail, although he bonded out for $200 days later. Months after, Vince did end up pleading guilty to the charges and he was sentenced to jail time, ordered to attend anger management classes and domestic violence classes. So you can see how Amy was grappling once again with a situation in which Vince was putting his hands on someone, now her son, and continuing the cycle of violence that he had likely started with Amy when they had gotten married. Their financial troubles also continued, and both were thrown in jail for failure to pay for a one night stay in a motel in 2005.
In October of that same year, Vince was leaving a strip club when he was involved in a car accident. He apparently was pulling out of the club into the path of an oncoming station wagon driven by a teacher. Upon discovering that he was drunk, police booked him into jail and he was charged with a DUI. He pleaded guilty to the charge but failed to comply with the terms of his sentence. The guy who hit him was actually quite delighted to have been able to put him in jail, and when I say delighted I do mean he was so glad to have put Vince behind bars even for a short amount of time, saying “I was going about the speed limit, maybe 40, when all of a sudden this Suzuki-Jeep knockoff slid into my lane,” “He came out of the Crazy Rock parking lot and I T-boned him." He described Vince as being loaded, not catatonic, but definitely drunk. He even took a shot at the state prosecutor that the police department had been hoping would bring about closure to Rachel’s case by reinvestigating, saying “It just turned out I did (State’s Attorney) Jimmy Glasgow’s work for him, "That’s my claim to fame,” Wilson said. “I put Vince Mellon in the hospital and then in jail.”
Jeff held a memorial service on the ten year anniversary of Rachel’s disappearance at the church she had grown up attending in 2006. As far as I could tell, neither Amy nor Vince attended this service, I don’t believe they were at the tree dedication in 2002 either. This was a point at which Jeff made it known that he no longer believed Rachel was alive...this memorial that he held seemed to serve as a way for him to cope with that reality. But Jeff was very open about the fact that closure wasn’t possible for him without answers as to what happened to Rachel and what he referred to as the dignity of a Christian burial. It’s so hard watching the coverage of Jeff throughout the years after this point and see the toll that it continues to take. Few people have the ability to continue to push for answers and the more that time passes. Jeff Skemp said he hasn't lost all hope that someone knows something but for whatever reason has remained quiet but he hopes will find the courage to come forward.
At the memorial in an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Jeff said “As a parent, you always have hopes and daydreams that Rachel is going to come back," he said. "But from the beginning, in the pit of my stomach, in the depths of my heart, I knew she was gone. "It's apparent that Rachel has probably passed away and is no longer with us. I think it's time for us to get together and comfort each other and say goodbye to Rachel, give her a proper send off.”
The police at this point admitted that although leads had slowed down, the case was still open and active. Months later, another private detective by the name of James Miller offered a $30,000 reward for information that leads directly to the whereabouts and recovery of Rachel Mellon or results in the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for her disappearance.
By 2009, the Mellon family had moved to Cleveland, Tennessee and avoided the media.. I think that this is quite telling; whether the Mellons were struggling beyond their means to survive that they had to move, or Vince wanted his family far from Illinois and the air of suspicion around him, if you’re hoping that a missing family member will come home I can’t imagine moving away from the area. Now she likely really didn’t have a choice in the matter, because remember this is a woman who is very conditioned to abuse. And that abuse is not just going to be physical, it is verbal, it is mental, it is emotional, it is spiritual.
In March of 2009 Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow pushed for a legislative measure that would allow a judge at a pretrial hearing in a murder case to determine whether so-called hearsay evidence - testimony or documents that quote someone secondhand who is not in court - may be admitted at trial. This would impact the prosecution of suspected murderers in cases like Rachel’s in which authorities say they strongly suspect foul play but are limited by a lack of physical evidence without a body. Prosecutors would have to prove in a pretrial hearing those statements are reliable and that the defendant's wrongdoing made the witness unavailable to testify. Glasgow encouraged the police departments to review unsolved murder cases to see if the new proposal would apply. This is all according to an article I read from the Daily Herald; I really have to credit these reporters for being the few following this case so in depth over the years. I couldn’t have put the episodes together without this information so really big ups to them.
Jeff was really hoping that this legislation would be able to bring some measure of closure to his daughter’s case, saying quote "To me," he said, "It would be a wonderful blessing if anything ever happened." But nothing did happen. And that’s another one of the many many things that just drives me nuts about this case.
The law did pass and Glasgow was able to successfully use hearsay statements in the Drew Peterson murder trial for his third wife, Kathleeon Savio, made by Stacy Peterson, Drew’s fourth wife, from witnesses to whom she had confided. Which is absolutely incredible if you think about the fact that poor Stacy is still missing, never found, but it’s her words that sealed Drew’s fate in the trial of his previous wife’s murder. Now, that was not to say that it passed easily or without a fight. Glasgow actually had to appeal the judge’s decision in that case to prohibit eight out of fourteen statements of hearsay evidence. But it was reported that Glasgow had to ask the Judge to disregard the legislation that he passed in favor of the state’s common law because it imposed a reliability requirement that was more restrictive to prosecutors than it was helpful. So it wasn’t even the legislation that really helped to get the hearsay statements admitted in the trial as evidence.
Full disclosure and disclaimer, I’m not a lawyer...but it would appear that Rachel’s diary entry alone must not have been enough evidence to convict Vince Mellon. Even with the other circumstacial evidence consider and the warrant for Vince’s DNA with the predication being murder, it seems to still not be enough. And I don’t know why.
One question I have is whether or not Rachel’s been declared legally dead. I would think that after nearly 24 years of her never surfacing and zero evidence that she could even be alive that she would be, but perhaps the absence of her remains prevents it.
Vince and Amy stayed married; the last anyone really heard from them was from the 2009 article I quoted earlier about the hearsay evidence, in which Vince said in a phone interview from Tenneseee, "We've been through an awful lot...we appreciate you keeping Rachel's name out there and to keep the story going in the news, but we have nothing to say. They (the police) pretty much put us through hell and high water.”
I think it’s telling that it’s Vince who seems to think he has had the last word...Amy has not spoken to the media in years, perhaps not even since the press conference in which she defended Vince and proclaimed his innocence. I don’t think she really gets a choice in that regard and it’s been that way ever since Vince told her they wouldn’t be cooperating with police and their press conference years earlier in which Amy had to act as his spokesperson. But his ego clearly couldn’t let the media have the last word and so he spoke out, but only in an effort to absolve himself of the blame he so resents.
Now as more years passed and there were breaks in cold cases, Jeff has really tried to remain hopeful. But the lurching rollercoaster of each discovery of remains in the state of Illinois has been hard on him, it’s not what anyone wants to hope for whatsoever...he has always said that he’ll never stop holding onto a small sliver of hope that remains she could miraculously surface alive. He knows it’s not likely, but I saw him mentioned in articles regarding the three women in Cleveland, Ohio who were rescued after years of captivity and torture. But we’re talking apples to oranges here and unfortunately I just don’t think it’s remotely possible.
Since then, there’s been next to no movement in Rachel’s case. In 2016, Cynthia Georgantas appealed to the public through the media for leads on a classmate named Autumn, someone purported to be another friend of Rachel’s who may have some important information that could impact the case. What this information could be has never really been disclosed, we have to remember that in quote unquote “no body” cold cases, the odds are typically stacked against prosecutors to provide evidence so they have to be vigilant about the information released to the public. Double jeopardy prevents the repeated trying of the accused on the same charges, so there’s only once chance to get it right.
There was yet another memorial in 2016 to mark Rachel’s disappearance, this time to mark the 20th anniversary and to once again bring to the attention of the public that this case has still not been solved. The retired lead detective and now Village of Diamond Mayor Terry Kernc spoke at the memorial and through tears according to the Chicago Tribune, called it quote, "The biggest disappointment and failure of my life.” "Somebody knows what happened to Rachel," said Kernc, "For the sake of the family, they need to come forward."
There’s no news as to whether or not Autumn has been located or has made contact with investigators. Just recently on what would have been Rachel’s 34th birthday, Jeff Skemp, Carrie and others gathered at Rachel’s tree to once again mark another of life she would have lived, had it not been interrupted. I would imagine that should yet another January 31st come to pass without any information on Rachel’s case, there could be another memorial to signify her disappearance on that cold wintery night almost 24 years ago. But Jeff has had a hard time holding these memorials over the years and he’s not the one that needs reminding, he remembers that every day. He’s told media that he had imagined her as a college graduate, and maybe one day, a teacher.
It’s indisputable that Rachel’s life and her future was stolen from her. My opinion is that Rachel is out there somewhere, but without anyone coming forward with new information or a lead, I don’t think we can count on a confession from Vince. And as for Amy or Rachel’s siblings, I think listeners and critics of the Mellons really need to put their emotions aside and consider that a very real danger likely still exist; decades of abuse doesn’t just resolve on its own, or even with time unless all the right circumstances are in place. If and until that happens, it’s likely we won’t get those answers.
But what’s important to remember now is that the more people know about Rachel’s case, the more the public can exert pressure to continue investigating. The only way that works is if community upholds the efforts to remember Rachel’s face and maintain the fight for justice. Anyone with information about Rachels’ disappearance is urged to call the Bolingbrook Police Department at: 630-226-0600 or you can even contact the private investigator that is still working this case to this day, at : (630) 243-6100. Her family deserves answers.
References
News Articles
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/naperville-sun/ct-nvs-rachel-mellon-missing-memorial-st-0203-20160131-story.html
https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/chi-childabduct-rachel-skemp-story-archive-story.html
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/ct-bol-rachel-mellon-missing-tl-0128-20160126-story.html
Other
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/usedtobedoe/mellon-rachel-m-january-31-1996-t5228-s10.html
http://charleyproject.org/case/rachel-marie-mellon