A FORMER roommate has urged the man he suspects of Melissa Witt’s murder to talk to police and says he fears he will shoot him.
No one has ever been charged with the murder of Melissa Witt 30 years ago, but hopes are growing that a suspect will be named soon.
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The 19-year-old’s naked body was found in the Ozarks in Arkansas six weeks after she disappeared from her home city of Fort Smith, an hour’s drive south.
Blood and signs of a struggle were found in the parking lot of a bowling alley where Melissa had gone to meet her mother in December 1994, but police were unable to turn up any serious suspects or clues despite a state-wide search, in part due to what some say are blunders by investigating officers.
Her case held some similarities with the murder of another 19-year-old girl, Melissa Trotter, across the border in Texas, in 1998.
For that crime, killer Larry Swearingen was found guilty and sentenced to death, and many suspected he had also been behind Melissa Witt’s killing, although he was never charged.
READ MORE UNSOLVED MURDERS
But author and private investigator LaDonna Humphrey, who has spent years writing about the case, concluded that Swearingen couldn’t have carried out the murder, and puts another suspect fully in the spotlight.
That person isn’t named directly in Connected By Fate, her third and – LaDonna claims – final book on the unsolved Melissa Witt murder.
However, their name appears multiple times in Melissa’s diary, and their former roommate has come forward to claim they kept a personal item belonging to the murder victim on their wall for many years.
CHILLING SECRET
Speaking to The U.S. Sun under the pseudonym “Nixon O’Neil,” the ex-friend of the suspected killer, explains how both of them “know” about the chilling secret.
Nixon, who also grew up in Arkansas, was in high school when Melissa vanished, and the news spread quickly across the state.
He first met Melissa’s “killer” in 2001 through a mutual friend and the pair moved in together a year or so later.
Although at first the pair “partied” together and got on, Nixon said he soon uncovered a darker side to his roommate, particularly when he was drinking or getting high.
It was in 2004 that Nixon first heard his roommate mention Melissa Witt, and revealed the pair’s eerie connection.
After spotting a woman’s Mickey Mouse watch hanging on the wall, Nixon asked his roommate how it got there.
Nixon said his roommate replied, “Have you ever heard of Melissa Witt?”
If that switch ever flips – and he likes guns – he could very well shoot me.
Nixon O’Neil
He then continued, “I was actually seeing her at the time, and I got me a Mickey Mouse watch and got her one because she really liked Disney stuff.”
Nixon said, “For some reason, I had this unsettling, kind of an eerie feeling, something just didn’t sit right.”
Melissa was known to own a Mickey Mouse watch, but it wasn’t found on her body in the Ozarks and never turned up in any future investigations.
His roommate went on to say that he had met Melissa through a mutual friend in Fort Smith and that the pair had started seeing each other.
“He said she was a really good girl, sweet, nice, he said he thought a lot of her and even said that she’s the type of girl you want to marry,” he added.
Nixon asked his roommate if he’d ever been brought in to speak to the cops following Melissa’s disappearance and the discovery of her body.
“He said he got brought in a few times, but he always had his attorney with him, and he’d shut it down,” he said.
“I know the attorney, he’s very good. They have money, family money.”
Most astonishingly, Nixon’s roommate claimed he was meant to see Melissa the night that she disappeared.
“He said he was supposed to have gone up and met her that evening and they were going to go out on a date,” Nixon said.
But he claimed he had forgotten about a fraternity party that night that he was meant to drop off a delivery at, and said he stopped there on his way to go see her.
“I said, ‘Well why didn’t you go up there,’ and he’s like, ‘Well I had the fraternity party so I wasn’t able to, and looking back on it, I wish I had because that was the day she disappeared,'” Nixon recalled.
STILL IN TOUCH
What stayed with Nixon the most was how unaffected his roommate seemed as he described the murder of his girlfriend.
“He wasn’t somber at all it was like he had little energy when he spoke,” he said. “Like matter of fact, like I am talking to you right now.”
Nixon says he is still devastated by Melissa’s story and has kept in touch with the man he believes to be her killer.
“It’s just so damn sad,” he said. “Seeing a piece of s**t get away with something like that.”
MELISSA WITT TIMELINE
THE final movements of murdered Arkansas teenager Melissa Witt.
Dec 1, 1994: Melissa and her mother Mary Ann Witt have a falling out over money. Feeling bad, she wrote a note asking Melissa to join her for a burger at Bowling World.
Morning, Dec 1: Melissa went to class at Westark Community College, now the University of Arkansas, in Fort Smith.
Afternoon, Dec 1: Melissa meets a friend for lunch at Chick-fil-A down the road from college. She then goes to her part-time job as a dental assistant.
5 pm, Dec 1: Leaving work, her car wouldn’t start due to a dead battery. A stranger came along and gave her a jump start.
5.45 pm, Dec 1: Melissa arrives home and charges. A neighbor sees her leaving the house wearing a white V-neck sweater and blue jeans.
Evening, Dec 1: She arrives at Bowling World to meet her mother but never makes it inside.
Approx 6.30 pm, Dec 1: Signs of struggle heard in the parking lot. A young boy hears a woman scream “Help me,” but there are no security cameras outside the Bowling Alley.
7.45 pm, Dec 1: Someone hands in Melissa’s car keys. No one spots the blood spatters.
2.00 am, Dec 2: Mary Ann calls her daughter’s best friend, Tara Limbird, assuming she had gone to see her.
9.00 am, Dec 2: Mary Ann reports her daughter missing. Cops tell her since Melissa is over 18, she can leave on her own.
Dec 3: Melissa’ car, a white 1995 Mitsubishi Mirage, is found at Bowling World.
Jan 11, 1995: Cops receive a “strange” phone call they believe is tied to Melissa’s disappearance from a woman with a heavy Southern accent. She is heard saying, “Go ahead and tell them what you found,” before a younger male voice says, “I can’t,” and hangs up.
Jan 13: Two days after the phone call, Melissa’s body is found by a trapper in the Ozark National Forest, some 50 miles north of Fort Smith. She had been strangled to death and sexually assaulted and was found naked, lying face down some 30 yards from the road. A Mickey Mouse watch, her purse, and a gold earring were all missing.
Nixon claims to have last seen his ex-roommate a year ago.
“He knows that I have a relationship with LaDonna and he treats me the same,” Nixon said.
“However, he doesn’t know where I live currently. He doesn’t know where my child is at.
“And I don’t want him to know that because if that switch ever flips – and he likes guns – he could very well shoot me.”
Nixon says he has told the suspected killer “numerous times” to talk to the cops.
“I purposely went and met him the night the first book was released and took a picture of us together,” he said.
“A selfie. I just did that to taunt him because he knows that LaDonna and I know, and we’re doing everything we can to get him.”
He added, “It’s been a cat-and-mouse thing, really.”
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