Police spoke to Melissa’s boyfriend following her disappearance, too, but he claimed to know nothing about it. He alleged that he was never at the bar with Melissa that night despite multiple witnesses saying otherwise.
Still, Melissa’s boyfriend – the suspect in her case – died not long afterward. Additionally, his Colorado home subsequently burned down.
Investigators initiated a search of his residence, but no evidence was found.
“They did go out to the residence of the suspect and did a preliminary search there. They ended up not being able to find anything,” Rafferty stated.
“No remains, no clothes, no personal belongings were found. She left a bar after a St. Patrick’s Day dance. That was pretty much it.”
In the over 23 years since Melissa vanished, there have been few developments in her case. Another one of her cousins, Melody Gomez, expressed her unrest over the little media attention given to Melissa’s case – which parallels many other cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW).
“It was like she just fell off the face of the earth, basically. In those rural areas, there are no resources,” Melody said.
Melanie agreed and shared how she personally knows three or four people who have gone missing, which – given the population numbers of her local area – is significant.
“It’s like so many people from that area, the reservation, are coming up missing or have been missing for years, and it’s like nobody even cares,” she stated.
There was a sliver of hope that Melissa’s case would be solved after the skeletal remains supposedly belonging to a Native American female between 30 and 60 years old were discovered in Dulce, New Mexico, in 2020.
It was believed the remains could have belonged to Melissa. But, following another round of testing, it was learned that the bones were male, meaning they did not belong to Melissa.
