Rachel Mellon-Skemp

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2:00have been changed or omitted per their request or for safety purposes. Listener discretion is advised. My name is Sarah Turney, and this is Voices for Justice.

2:16Today, I'm discussing the case of Rachel Mellon-Skemp. In 1996, 13-year-old Rachel Marie Mellon-Skemp stayed home sick from school. By the end of the day, she, along with her blanket and two pillows from her bed, had vanished into the freezing Illinois winter. There were no witnesses, and no trail leading to where Rachel may have gone. The only story we have comes from the last person to see her alive. This is the case of Rachel Mellonskimp. It's Wednesday, January 31st, 1996, and it's a very cold day in Bolingbroke, Illinois. It feels like about 20 degrees below zero with the wind chill. It's one of those days where I have to imagine no one really wants to go outside unless they absolutely have to.

3:10If you're from a warmer climate like I am, I really want to give you some perspective on this weather, because it becomes very important in Rachel's case. According to the National Weather Service, a wind chill of minus 25 degrees, so just a 5 degree difference from the day we're talking about, can result in frostbite within 15 minutes. Again, you'd think that it's the kind of day that no one would want to be outside voluntarily, or really at all if they could avoid it. Especially if you weren't feeling well, like 13-year-old Rachel Mellenskamp. She was home sick from school that day with a sore throat.

3:46Now, like I said, Rachel was 13. She was an honors student in the 7th grade at Bernard J. Ward Middle School. She was a bright and responsible kid, with hobbies like science and recycling. So while it's never been directly said by her parents, she seemed old enough, mature enough, and responsible enough to stay home by herself while her mom Amy went to work. But Rachel isn't home alone that day. Her stepfather, Vincent Mellon, was unemployed at this time, so he was there too. And since Rachel isn't here, we obviously only have his account of what happened. He says it was a typical day outside of Rachel being sick, and that they didn't really do much other than play video games together.

4:30According to Rachel's biological father, Jeff Skemp, Rachel called her paternal grandmother around 11 a.m. to thank her for some Christmas gifts she'd sent. Now, for some reason, Rachel wasn't allowed to speak to this grandmother, so when she asks if Vincent was home and Rachel says yes, they end the call shortly after that. It's possible that Vincent caught Rachel on this phone call, but we don't know. I can say that Jeff has described this phone call as normal, and said that Rachel didn't say anything to indicate that she was having any type of problem at home. That's really the only part of this day that's been verified by any outside party.

5:08According to Vincent, that afternoon, Rachel got bundled in a blue blanket and laid down in her room for a nap. Unfortunately, we don't have an exact time for when that happened. But he says that at about 2.30 p.m., he took the family's German shepherd, whose name was Duke, out for a walk in the freezing cold. He said that he didn't plan on being out for very long on this walk, so he left their front door unlocked. But Duke apparently slipped out of his collar to chase a rabbit he saw in a nearby field. Vincent says that he did try to look for Duke, but he eventually gave up and went home after about 30 minutes, figuring he would find his way home eventually.

5:46So he's back home by about 3 p.m. without Duke. But not to worry, Vincent does say that a few minutes later, a neighbor knocked on his door stating that a man in a red or maroon car, who said that they were a real estate appraiser, found Duke, who then gave him to this neighbor, who then returned him home. So Duke does make it home safe. Vincent would later tell investigators that when he got home from walking Duke, he did not check on Rachel. He just assumed that she was still napping in her room. Not long after, around 3.15 p.m., Rachel's younger siblings got home from school. According to reporting by the Chicago Tribune, it was Rachel's sister who noticed that she wasn't home, but she didn't really think anything of it, so she didn't say anything.

6:32When Amy Mellon gets home around 5 p.m., she goes to check on her daughter to see how she's feeling. And Rachel isn't in her room. Also missing are two pillows from Rachel's bed and the blue blanket she'd been using, according to Vincent. Her winter coat, shoes, purse, money, and Walkman were all left behind. There's no note, no trail to follow, and no indication of where Rachel may have gone in the freezing cold in just a sweatshirt, sweatpants, and house slippers. This message is sponsored by Greenlight. Money is this invisible thread that ties us all together. It's something everyone has to deal with.

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8:21When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. Amy Mellon reported her 13-year-old daughter Rachel missing to the Bolingbrook Police Department at about 5 or 6 p.m. on January 31, 1996. And their response was lackluster, to say the least.

9:03According to Amy, it takes officers an hour to get to her home to even take their report. When they do, they don't see any signs of forced entry, and despite none of Rachel's personal items being missing, like a backpack, clothing, toiletries, or appropriate attire for the freezing weather, they want to classify her as a runaway. They inform Amy and Vincent that they won't begin investigating her disappearance until she's gone for at least 24 hours. Now, this does seem to be in part due to Rachel having run away from her home over a year prior. According to reporting by the Chicago Tribune, the previous spring, one of Rachel's younger siblings broke something in their house, and Rachel got scared that she would be blamed for it.

9:50So Rachel wrote a note, went to a friend's house, and slept outside. When she woke up, she called her step-grandparents to take her home. She was gone for a total of 12 hours. Now, obviously, this instance was very different from what was happening now. There didn't appear to be any reason for Rachel to leave, and she did not leave a note. But we know how these things go. Most kids who go missing do come back. And sometimes these departments just have tunnel vision for reporting these kids as a runaway, which is exactly what happens. So really, without any help from police, Amy started calling Rachel's friends to ask if they'd seen her, including her friend Carrie.

10:32Carrie wasn't home when Amy called. She was at volleyball practice. But when she did get home, her parents relayed the message that Rachel's mom couldn't find her. Carrie calls Amy back and tells her that she hadn't seen Rachel since yesterday, when they were both at school. She says it was a pretty short conversation. After this, Carrie starts calling all their friends to see if anyone had seen Rachel. After about two hours and speaking with Amy a few times, she says they organized their own search for Rachel around the neighborhood. Basically, one of her friend's moms picked up a group of Rachel's friends and led their own search for her.

11:06Like I said, just kind of walking around the neighborhood, bundled up as best as they could. But they don't find any trace of Rachel. And really, the community as a whole seems to have pitched in to look for her. Rachel's home becomes this kind of command center for people to pick up flyers to help plaster them everywhere they could. And Amy took weeks off of work to dedicate her time to looking for Rachel, and really running this makeshift command center. Just a few days in, they'd printed over 7 ,000 flyers. A few pizzerias in the area also helped pick up and distribute flyers to their customers by putting one on every pizza box they sent out.

11:45Manager of the local Domino's Pizza, Dawn Turner, told the Chicago Tribune that her whole crew was actively helping to look for Rachel and to distribute these flyers, saying the case just hit too close to home. Rachel's school also held a fundraiser to help establish a reward fund for the case, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children jumped into action to help create a new photo of Rachel to show what she would have looked like with a haircut she'd recently gotten but the family didn't have a photo of. They also helped distribute her flyer with this new photo. At this time, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said that one in seven children they featured on these flyers were being returned home safely.

12:28So this really was a huge deal for Rachel's case. But the response to this effort is something I think is so chilling. According to the director of case management at that time, Ben Ermini, they didn't get a single lead from these flyers for the first two months. This is something he has called unusual, saying that they typically get at least a trickle of leads from an effort like this. But he says it wasn't until the third month of distributing these flyers that they got just two tips about Rachel. Luckily, there was some pretty good local media coverage of Rachel's case to help get it out to more people.

13:08There are dozens of newspaper articles from back in 1996 discussing her case, the progress investigators were making, and lack thereof. At this point, they were putting out a public plea for the man in the red or maroon Carr who found Duke to come forward, calling him a good Samaritan. Really, it seemed like they went above and beyond to not scare this potential witness away. I was also able to dig up a snippet of an interview with Vincent from WGN News in the days following Rachel's disappearance. I'll play that for you now. I didn't really look around the neighborhood as far as thinking, you know, something might be suspicious.

13:47So, you know, I don't know what to say other than, and I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary at that point. It seems like that at this time, Amy and Vincent were very active and present in the media, giving interviews and statements about Rachel's disappearance. Now at this point, you're probably wondering where Rachel's biological father is. Jeff Skimp was living in Dallas, Texas when all of this was happening. He and Amy got divorced when Rachel was a toddler, and while he was active in Rachel's life, He was on the other side of the country when all of this happened. He says the last time he saw Rachel was the summer of 1995, when she came to visit him in Dallas, though they did keep in touch over the phone.

14:32According to an interview he gave to Case Files Chicago, when he got the news that Rachel was missing, the police were pretty nonchalant about it. He says it was more of a heads up that they couldn't find Rachel, but that they believed that she was likely just with a friend and would be back soon. But Jeff says that by the next day, February 1st, he was pretty frantic. It was becoming clear that Rachel probably wasn't just at a friend's house or had run away like she had in the past. This was also clear to Amy and Vincent. They say they began fighting the Bolingbrook PD to reclassify Rachel's case from a runaway to a missing child who may be in immediate danger.

15:11Amy cites the weather, what Rachel was wearing, and how she seemed to take nothing with her as reasons for asking for more urgency. Ultimately, they really win this battle with the Bolingbroke Police Department. It seems like in part because the department also admitted that no matter what happened to Rachel, she wasn't going to last long if she was outside without her winter clothes. Time really was of the essence in Rachel's case, and they'd already lost some of the most critical hours in any missing persons investigation by initially labeling her as a runaway. This is something that Jeff Skemp knew.

15:47He flew to Illinois to search for his daughter that very weekend. In an interview with HLN, he says he spent most of that weekend at Rachel's home with Amy and Vincent and this is what Vincent told him. He says, I don't know what happened. He says, I was out and when I came back, she was gone. He said, somebody came in and snatched her. And I, you know, at that point, you know, I really didn't know a lot of the facts and didn't know a lot of things. So I basically took him at his word. Did you catch that? I think it's one of the biggest pieces of evidence in Rachel's case at this point. According to a variety of statements from Jeff, Vincent has given conflicting statements about what happened on the day she went missing.

16:36When he spoke to the police, he said that he didn't check on Rachel when he got home from walking and losing Duke, but told Jeff that when he got home, he noticed that Rachel was gone, and didn't report her missing to the police until Amy got home, or even called Amy at work to tell her that Rachel was missing. Now, luckily, over the next few days and weeks, the Bolingbrook Police Department began taking Rachel's case more seriously. They started pulling her friends out of class for questioning, and they conducted more thorough searches of the area, including sending dive teams into nearby bodies of water.

17:12But no trace of Rachel was found. Not her blanket, either of her two missing pillows, or any of the clothing that she was wearing on that day she went missing. While some areas around Rachel's home have been described as more rural, with areas where someone could have had an accident and succumbed to the elements. They lived in what I'd describe as a typical neighborhood setting with plenty of people around. So many people found it odd when there didn't appear to be any witnesses. No one came forward to say that they saw Rachel leave the house, saw someone come and take her, heard a scream or a struggle, or flat out saw her at all after she went missing.

17:52They also couldn't find a single witness to say that they saw Vincent or Duke on the day that Rachel went missing, other than the neighbor and that man in the red or maroon car who helped return Duke home. That man did come forward a few days after the public plea for him to make contact with investigators. It turns out that that entire story did check out. He did find Duke, found the neighbor who recognized him, and later returned him home. But neither of these people and no one else actually saw Vincent take Duke out for a walk. They just found and returned Duke. And investigators weren't fully convinced that Vincent was being completely honest about the day that Rachel went missing.

18:34Really, once the Bolingbrook Police Department actually began looking into Rachel's disappearance, they immediately suspected that she fell victim to some type of foul play, and they narrowed their sights on Vincent. They also noticed something pretty alarming when they first spoke to him. He had scratches all over his body. When they asked him about this, he said that he got scratched up while working on his car. But they wanted to verify his statement and the many others he'd given them thus far in the investigation. And since we're in the year 1996, they decided to do this in part by administering a series of polygraph tests, which Vincent apparently failed miserably.

19:18I mean, we know that they are notoriously unreliable, but this is how investigations were conducted at this time. They used the tools they had available to them. Vincent was the last person to see Rachel, and things weren't looking good for him. But they don't have enough to press charges at this point, so they can't really do anything besides keep investigating and keep looking, which they did, but nothing was really panning out. Now, they do consider other theories beyond Vincent. They also thought that maybe Rachel's relatives had taken her out of state to live with them in secret, that maybe someone picked her up from her house that day and they ran.

19:58But that theory was quickly ruled out by investigators as they continued looking into the case. They searched Jeff's home in Dallas and his sister's home in Mississippi, and Rachel was nowhere to be found. They also considered a random stranger abduction, but again, they didn't have any witnesses to push that idea forward. They really were at a standstill in this case, and by May, the Bolingbrook Police Department asked for the help of the FBI. Not long after, Rachel's father Jeff up and leaves his entire life behind in Texas to move back to his hometown of Maywood, Illinois. This was a permanent move to help search for his daughter, which I do think further discounts the theory that Rachel was taken by relatives, at least on her father's side.

20:43Either way, at this point, he has the same suspicions about Vincent as the police do, so he wants to be right there and to take a more active role in the investigation. Now, just to give a little background, Vincent wasn't a new stepfather to Rachel when she went missing. He and Amy had been together and married for quite some time, and he'd been in Rachel's life since she was about three. Like I mentioned earlier, they had two kids together in addition to Rachel living at home, so they acted as this family unit for about a decade. But according to Jeff and various reports, there were some troubles at home.

21:20Vincent Mellon had a long record of domestic violence. We don't have a detailed record of each and every instance, but we do know that calls were made to the home for that reason. In his interview many years later with Casefile Chicago, Jeff alludes to these calls and even says that he thinks if police had searched their home that night, the night Rachel went missing, they would have found her. I think that if the police search their garage the night that they first get called there, especially knowing how many times they've been called to that house, if they search that garage and open up the trunk of that car that didn't run, I bet they find her right then and there.

22:09Things were heating up for Vincent Mellon. and they only got worse when police discovered something that could point to a motive for him wanting Rachel gone. Now, it is unclear when the Bolingbrook police found this. Some sources say it was a few months into the investigation, while others allude to it being found earlier. We just know that it wasn't found in the initial search of the home. But at some point, while searching Rachel's room, investigators find her diary stuffed, really hidden under her bed, and in one specific entry a few months prior to her going missing, Rachel wrote about an incident where Vincent sexually assaulted her.

22:48Specifically, that he'd kissed her and touched her inappropriately. That's all we know. Again, everything was pointing to Vincent Mellon. He had a history of domestic violence. He gave conflicting statements. There were no witnesses to verify where he was that day. And now they have a written statement from Rachel that he'd sexually assaulted her. He had the means, motive, and opportunity. But unfortunately, we know that sometimes that's just not enough for investigators to move forward. They state that without any physical evidence, they could not press charges against Vincent Mellon. And once Vincent and Amy Mellon catch win that he appears to be the prime suspect, they stop cooperating and they stop talking.

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24:2318+. Select Hulu content via Disney+. Additional content on Hulu app. Terms apply. Visit Disneyplus.com slash Hulu for details. By the one-year anniversary of Rachel going missing, her case was featured on America's Most Wanted, which seems to have breathed a bit of new life into her case. And really, by this time, Amy and Vincent seem to have kind of taken a step back from doing media, while Rachel's father Jeff continued giving interviews and really demanding accountability. He said outright that while the police were telling him that they don't have any proof that a crime was committed, he had absolutely no problem saying that he was certain that there was.

25:00And really, it seemed clear that there was something brewing behind the scenes that police just weren't telling the public about yet. According to reporting by the Chicago Tribune, who did an excellent job following this case, in January 1997, Amy Mellon was subpoenaed by the Will County Grand Jury, quote, because of her unwillingness to cooperate with authorities, end quote. Now, this information came from a source who is not named, only being described as someone close to the case. But the article also added that she is not the target of any investigation, has not appeared in front of the grand jury, and that subpoena could be dropped if she begins cooperating with investigators.

25:42Again, Jeff openly discusses this. He says he hasn't spoken to Amy for about six months, since Mother's Day of 1996. he says outright quote Amy and Vince are not cooperating they are blaming the police end quote now up to this point Amy has said that she does believe that Rachel was met with some type of foul play that she was likely abducted from their home and that her husband Vincent is completely innocent of any wrongdoing by this time Amy and Vincent left their Bolingbrook home and moved to another nearby suburb, and like I said, just kind of shut down with the media and the police. And really, despite the subpoena and Rachel's case seeming to heat up during this time, nothing happens.

26:29At least that we're aware of, because it's clear that things were still happening behind the scenes. Everything seems to come to a head around the year 2000, when just days before the four-year anniversary of Rachel going missing, Vincent is picked up by the Bolingbroke Police, held for nine hours and served with a search warrant to obtain samples of his blood, saliva, and hair as a part of what they say is a first-degree murder investigation. It seems like progress is finally being made in Rachel's case. Just four days later, both Vincent and Amy Mellon were actually brought before a grand jury to testify.