{"id":1943,"date":"2022-02-12T12:36:43","date_gmt":"2022-02-12T12:36:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wickedness.net\/serial-killers\/melanson-roy\/"},"modified":"2022-07-28T22:26:58","modified_gmt":"2022-07-28T22:26:58","slug":"roy-melanson","status":"publish","type":"serial-killers","link":"https:\/\/wickedness.net\/serial-killers\/roy-melanson\/","title":{"rendered":"Roy Melanson"},"content":{"rendered":"
American serial killer and rapist Roy Allan Melanson was born on February 13, 1937, in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. He was linked to three murders and numerous rapes across three states and remains the prime suspect in at least two other murders. Melanson received two life sentences for two murders in 1974, and died in May 2020 at the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility, in Ca\u00f1on City, Colorado.<\/p>\n
Roy Melanson was a drifter and a smooth talker who committed crimes and spent more time behind bars. In one of his earliest offenses committed in Orange and Jefferson County, Texas, he was given 12 years in prison for rape, which he served half of before being extradited to Texas in 1975 for another sentence which led to a life sentence. But this was reduced as well, and he got out in March 1988, a few months before another victim’s body was found, as a continuation of Melanson’s crime spree. It is alleged that he killed an inmate while imprisoned in Texas.<\/p>\n
51-year old Anita Andrews was last seen alive on the night of July 10, 1974, tending to the bar, which was close to closing hours. The body of Andrews was found the following morning by her sister, Muriel, after being raped, stabbed in a bloody frenzy thirteen times with a screwdriver, and her throat slit.<\/p>\n
Her attacker may have used a cigarette as a cigarette butt was found in an ashtray after the murder indicating his presence, as well as leaving several clues behind \u2013 partial fingerprints at the rear staircase, fingerprints on a beer bottle, and an open cash register. It took decades for her case to be resolved, and only after the advancement of DNA evidence technology.<\/p>\n
Roy Melanson arrived in Gunnison County, Colorado, presenting himself as an experienced sheepherder. Together with Charles Chuck Matthews, Melanson was hitchhiking back to the bar after their car had broken down. Michele Wallace was a freelance photographer and an experienced traveler returning from a hiking trip near Crested Butte in Colorado, when she picked up both men in her truck, dropping off Charles Matthews first, before continuing on the journey with Melanson.<\/p>\n
Wallace was never seen alive again; Wallace’s disappearance became a cold case murder and remained as such until it was reexamined by one county sheriff in the 1990s. A short while later, Wallace’s remains were found alongside an abandoned road deep in the woods near some tall mountains. It could not be determined exactly how she had died.<\/p>\n
Suspected victim of serial killer Roy J. Melanson, Pauline Klumpp was renting a home to Melanson in 1988. One day, Klumpp asked Melanson for help with her air conditioner and help her carry a TV. The two were seen together shortly thereafter, but Klumpp mysteriously vanished after that. Investigators believe that her killer most likely decapitated her and disposed of her head like garbage by tossing it in a grassy area nearby.<\/p>\n
Roy Melanson was in a small town near Baton Rouge, Louisiana a month later. One day he overheard a young woman named Charlotte Sauerwin at the laundromat who had been waiting for her fianc\u00e9 to buy land on which they could start a family home.<\/p>\n