Smooth Talker: Trail of Death by Steve Jackson

Author:Steve Jackson [Jackson, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WildBlue Press
Published: 2016-04-06T22:00:00+00:00

[1] Steve Jackson, No Stone Unturned (WildBluePress, May 2015), Kindle Edition

XVII

April 13, 1992

Kathy Young arrived at the penitentiary in Kentucky on what would have been Michele’s 43rd birthday. After nearly six years of investigation and preparation, there was one more thing for the intrepid investigator to do: speak to the man who killed Michele at age 25.

There was still hope that Michele’s remains could be found before going to trial. Although at first a little skeptical of the group with the morbid-sounding name, she’d met with NecroSearch International in Denver, and they’d agreed to conduct a search for Michele’s remains when the snow melted in the Colorado high country.

Not convinced that the NecroSearch team would have any better luck than the thousands of searchers before them, she was nevertheless impressed with their professional and scientific approach. She’d sent them Michele’s hair and from studying pine needles and other biological material found in the hair, NecroSearch botanist Vickey Trammell had narrowed the search area. So there was hope.

Whatever happened with the search, the prosecution of Roy Melanson would be going forward. It was under that premise that Sheriff Murdie set up another conference with District Attorney Stern, whose offices were in Montrose, nearly 70 miles west of Gunnison.

The Seventh Judicial District was comprised of six large rural counties, of which Gunnison County was just one. This meant that Stern’s resources were stretched thin. Also, the Seventh District wasn’t exactly on the cutting edge of homicide trials. In all the years since Michele had disappeared, there had been a handful, all garden variety, quickly solved, and quickly adjudicated.

Stern didn’t have the trial experience to handle this one and he knew it. To his credit, he brought his second in command, Wyatt Angelo, an experienced trial attorney, into the conversation.

Still, Stern brought up the usual arguments against prosecuting a body-less homicide—starting with the need to prove that the victim was not only dead, but that she had been murdered. The first was perhaps easier to get past a jury now that seventeen years had elapsed without any word from Michele. However, the second issue—was she murdered?—was more difficult.

Even assuming that the jury agreed that Michele had been murdered, could they prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was Melanson? His past criminal record, including his rape convictions, would probably not be allowed to be presented to the jury. So how could they prove that he was the killer, rather than Matthews or some unknown assailant who had accosted Michele after Melanson took her car? And finally, what murder charge should they file?

Young and Murdie wanted first-degree murder. At the time of Michele’s disappearance, Colorado’s death penalty statutes had been struck down as unconstitutional; it had since been reinstated, but they would only be able to charge Melanson as the law applied in 1974. Still, a conviction for first-degree murder would mean life without parole. No woman would ever have to fear him again.

For first-degree murder, the prosecutors would have to prove deliberation—that Melanson

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