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This is Murder, She Told. True crime stories from Maine, New England, and small town USA. I'm Kristen Sevey. You can connect with the show at MurderSheTold.com or on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast. Telling her story is very important. Getting to know who Nettie was is very important. I don't want her memory to die, ever.
She may not be here, but she's here forever and always in the heart, and in the heart of her family and her friends and the community of Worcester. Noreta Melendez, who went by Nettie, spent the evening of Saturday, June 4th, 1989, baking at her home in Worcester, Mass. Her graduation ceremony from North High School was set for the next day, and 17-year-old Nettie was making cookies and cupcakes for a party after the event.
Monday would be a busy day, with errands and graduation rehearsal in the morning, the ceremony in the evening, and her graduation celebration that night. She called one of her older brothers and his wife, asking them to come over and help her bake. Nettie was excited and proud to graduate high school. She had insisted that her older sister Jolanda come home for the ceremony and party.
When Jolanda explained that she couldn't afford to buy Nettie a present and wasn't going to attend, Nettie insisted that just Jolanda's being there was enough. So Jolanda and her newlywed husband headed back to the family home in Worcester to celebrate her youngest sister's accomplishment. Like many teens on the edge of adulthood, Nettie dreamed of getting out of the neighborhood where she'd grown up.
After graduation, she intended to take business classes at the nearby Quinn Sigmund Community College, her first step in pursuing a business career. According to her older brother, Peter, Nettie wanted to become a, quote, woman of the 90s.
Her entrepreneurial spirit was reflected in the fun class prophecy section of her high school yearbook, which foretold each student's future. It was predicted that Nettie would run a clothing store with her cousin and close friend, Doris. This is Doris talking about her relationship with Nettie.
We weren't like typical cousins. We were sisters. We were best friends. It was all the above. So we had this love-hate relationship. And, you know, we just went through our stuff just like all siblings and sons and cousins all do. Our ups and downs was like based on stupid, silly stuff. Her and I had like our own little language almost where we would just look at each other and we know what we were thinking and we would laugh for no reason. That was our relationship. She was more my sister to me.
Nettie had a work ethic to match her big dreams. For the past 18 months, she had been working after school and on the weekends as a receptionist and assistant at Sanimate Supply Co., a company that provided commercial cleaning and supplies to local businesses. She intended to join Sanimate's small full-time staff while taking her business classes.
To celebrate Nettie's graduation, Santa Mate president Jay Tivnan purchased a full-page ad in the North High yearbook. It read, Congratulations, Noreta Melendez. Graduating senior. Our number one star. Between the full-time job opportunity and the yearbook ad, Nettie seemed to have been held in high esteem by her employer.
In her yearbook dedication, she thanked her friends at Sanimate for, quote, all the support, encouragement, and help for my future. This is Nettie's oldest brother, Peter.
Very ambitious, yeah. At her teenage years, she always wanted to make sure that she wasn't going to be stereotyped, you know, as a Latino, you know, living off the system. She had plans to go to college and major in business and to be a successful woman, basically. Nettie wanted freedom and independence and got her license at the earliest opportunity.
She got her license at 16. She was very eager to get her license to drive. She would take her father's car as much as she could. She loved to drive. She'd even drive the Fannie Mae truck. They used to trust her. That much they had in trust in her that they would let her use the vans and stuff. When she set a goal out, she did it. And I was very proud of her. Nettie was adventurous and bold, and she encouraged Doris to join her.
There used to be a club in the Galleria, which was downtown, and it was for people 18 to 13, and you can go clubbing. And she would always want to go. My aunt was more liberal than my mother. My mother was strict. You know, I had to do certain things in order to get privileges. And I would tell Nettie, she said, I can't go. And then she would encourage me to jump out the window. And that's how I started jumping out the window to go do what I wanted to go do.
She influenced me, you know, in a negative way, but in a good way because I got to live my high school, you know, life a little bit. I wasn't so secluded and strict and I didn't feel left out as much. She encouraged it. Flipping through the pages of the North High 1989 yearbook, it's easy to see that Nettie played a vibrant role in her school community. As a member of the pep club, she worked to build school spirit amongst her fellow students. She was active in the drama club and worked on the yearbook staff as well as the school paper.
Her U.S. history teacher described Nettie as outgoing, pleasant, happy, and always cordial. Her camaraderie for her fellow students was clear in her parting words in the yearbook. Good luck to all my graduating classmates, and congratulations for all the years of work. We're finally here. I hope you all succeed in your goals and future plans.
A small girl with a big voice, Nettie wore her dark, curly hair brushed back from her forehead, full eyebrows arching over her big, brown eyes. Nettie had her own sense of fashion. It was sort of preppy, but it was her own unique style. She used to take a lot of her brother's shirts and wear those. She would rock them. She would make them work. It was Nettie. It was Nettie style.
I would come home and I see her wearing a shirt of mine or my brother Benny, a shirt of his, you know. So he would also have arguments with her. Why are you doing wearing my shirt? You know, that was the style back then. The girls used to wear the baggy, baggy shirts. And so whenever I asked her, you know, hey, why are you wearing my shirt again? It was just brother sister type of, you know, wearing our clothes. Her
Her mascara reminded me of, like, a tarantula. You know, she would put so much that it was like glob, but that was the style back then, you know, the 80s. Her makeup was very simple, but her signature was her clumpy, tarantula-looking eyelashes. It worked on her. She was beautiful with or without it. There were a bunch of guys at North High School that wanted to date Nettie. Doris reflected on how she handled that attention.
We asked Doris what would set her off.
She would go from zero to a thousand real quick. If she didn't get her way, you made her wait. She would leave. She'd just walk away. Wouldn't wait for you. Very impatient. We would go what used to be called the Galleria, which we used to call downtown. And we would go together. We would supposedly meet in a certain spot. And if I wasn't on time, even if I was a minute late, she would leave. She didn't wait for nobody. She didn't like to be kept waiting. It was like one of her biggest pet peeves.
When Nettie's older sister, Jolanda, who she shared a room with, moved out of their Plumlee Village apartment, Nettie had the room to herself. This is how she made it her own. Her curtains, they reminded me of kitchen curtains, but they were like ruffled. Everything in her room was pink. She even had a pink phone, like a rotary phone. Just very girly girl. She was modern, too. Very modern and just very clean, too. Everything had to be in a specific spot. Very organized. I remember that, too.
At her senior prom, Nettie wore a strapless silver gown. Although her sister-in-law, Margie, had spent two hours arranging her hair for the dance, she ultimately decided to wear it in her regular style. Margie later recalled, It drove me crazy. But Nettie must have looked dazzling however her hair was styled. And not only was she one of the finalists for prom queen, her date and fellow classmate, Estris, was voted as most attractive.
Estris was not Nettie's boyfriend. He was, however, a close friend. In her yearbook dedication, Nettie addressed Estris, quote, You're a sweetie. Thanks for listening to me when I was unhappy. Around 8 a.m. on the morning of Monday, June 5th, Lily, a classmate, stopped by Nettie's apartment in Plumlee Village. They had graduation practice in an hour, and Nettie had an errand she needed to take care of.
She had borrowed a van from her employer for the weekend to go to the beach with some friends. It was Sanimate Company policy that employees could use work vehicles after hours. Despite her youth and part-time employment with the company, Nettie enjoyed a position of responsibility and trust and seemed to have been a full member of Sanimate's business family.
Lily and Nettie made a plan. Nettie would drive the van back to Santa Made while Lily picked up Doris. Lily and Doris would then drive to Nettie's work and pick her up, and then the three of them would head on to graduation practice.
I still have the image in my head of her when she passed by in the van and she looked like so little in the van in the window, you know, with the white and black checkered shirt on that I know was her brother Benny's. You know, she had her hair up and she just like drove by and she just looked so weird. Like you're 5'3". Like, how are you driving? That was impressive to me.
The Santa Mate warehouse was a little less than a mile from Nettie's home, so the drive only took a few minutes. Company president Jay Tivnen was sitting in traffic between 8:05 and 8:10 a.m. on Shrewsbury Street when he saw Nettie outside the business. While at work, Nettie made a short phone call to an unknown recipient.
It was later revealed that a car was seen following the van at the time Nettie was returning it, and that the man driving the car beeped his horn. And then Nettie beeped the van's horn in response, in a friendly way as if the drivers recognized one another.
At 8:35 a.m., Lily and Doris arrived at the warehouse to pick Nettie up. They saw the van she had borrowed was there, but there was no sign of Nettie. They backtracked by car and looked for her, thinking that perhaps she had decided to leave on foot, having grown impatient waiting for them. But they couldn't find her. The girls had graduation rehearsal at North High at 9 a.m., and after searching for a while, Doris and Lily went on without her.
Nettie's older sister, Jolanda, would later reflect that missing an arranged ride was unlike her. She said, My sister is the type that if her ride were late, she would call and nag. At North High, graduation practice started and finished without her. Between 10.30 and 11 a.m., Nettie was seen at the Santa Mate warehouse again by her co-workers. She was returning a set of keys that she'd forgotten to drop off with the van earlier that morning.
Nettie walked right past Jay and the warehouse manager with the keys in her hand. Jay would later say that he assumed she'd been working that day, and only later learned that her supervisor had given her the day off. According to Jay, she appeared to be her usual happy self.
About an hour later, between 12.30 and 1 p.m., Nettie bought a soda at Toscano's Market, a deli on Shrewsbury Street, where she was a regular. Toscano's employees knew Nettie from her daily visits to the market. They said that Nettie was a friendly kid who would often make small talk while she waited for her usual, a tuna fish sandwich.
One man said that on this visit, Nettie seemed herself. She said hi as she usually did, in that big, vibrant voice of hers, and that was it. As the afternoon of Monday, June 5th wore on, Nettie's family members at home in Plumlee Village grew concerned. She'd spent the weekend making extensive preparations for graduation, and now she was nowhere to be found.
I had already been living with my wife, so I went to work that day. And then after work, I had stopped over at my parents' house and my mother had mentioned that she hadn't seen Nettie or heard from Nettie and that my cousin Doris and them had mentioned that she wasn't at the rehearsal.
So that's when I first found out that, okay, that's very uncharacteristic of her to, one, not check in with my parents to let her know where she was, but two, you know, missing her graduation rehearsal. They were expecting to see her that afternoon to get ready for the ceremony. But Nettie never came home. Doris was in her same graduating class, so Doris and the rest of the Melendez family headed to the Worcester Auditorium, expecting to see Nettie there.
They called her name. I turned around. I looked around. I saw her brother, Benny, step up with beautiful roses. I looked back at Estris and Lily. Like, do you know where she is?
And just remembering this feeling that I needed to return back to the house, because that was odd and strange that she wasn't there, that her diploma. And I was kind of panicking. Jolanda would later remember, the whole day, my mother had this feeling. Rosa's intuition that something was wrong would prove to be correct.
At about 6:45 p.m. on Monday evening, as Nettie's family grew increasingly concerned, a man walking in a nearby wooded area found a purse discarded in the brush. The purse contained an eyeshadow, a blush, a Maybelline pink mist lip gloss, and a wallet covered in a pattern of tiny pink hearts. Inside the wallet was Nettie's North High bus pass, some family photos, and $20. The strap was missing from the purse,
The man turned her purse over to the Worcester police about 45 minutes after finding it. But at that point, Nettie's family had no idea the purse had been discovered. The Melendez family reported Nettie missing to the Worcester police department between 8 and 8.30 p.m. on Monday night.
When we reported her missing, they made a comment about, you know, could she have run away? Were there any history of her running away? We're like, no, absolutely not. That's not her. And that in order for us to report somebody missing, they had to be missing more than 24 hours. We stressed the fact that this was not characteristic of her not to communicate or be in contact with our parents to let them know where she was.
So they took the report, but, you know, wasn't much to go on. Basically, they told us, you know, to let them know if she shows up. Nettie's parents also called the local newspaper, the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, to spread the news about Nettie's disappearance and asked the public for any information.
Concerned that police weren't taking their report seriously, Nettie's family decided to take matters into their own hands and look for her themselves. They began their search in Plumlee Village, the apartment complex where they lived. The complex is made up of an assortment of sprawling three-story units grouped around a central high-rise, bordered on one side by the interstate.
The evening chilled and a patchy drizzle set in as they checked the walkways and parking areas between the identical buildings before fanning their search out beyond Plumlee Village's monotonous expanse. They crossed a bridge into a residential neighborhood on the other side of the interstate, heading for a large wooded area. These woods cover several city blocks and contain several parks, sports fields, and recreation areas.
The far end of this green space, Bell Pond, is about a mile from Nettie's home. The Melendez family searched along the walking paths and into the wooded area by flashlight late into the night, from one end to the other. Jolanda later reported that she and her husband feared for their own safety as they hunted for Nettie. The dejected searchers returned home around 4 a.m.
The next morning was overcast. After a sleepless night, Nettie's family headed out into the gloom to resume their search. They printed flyers with Nettie's picture and posted them all around the city, asking people if they had seen their missing loved one. Meanwhile, at the Worcester Police Department, a records clerk noticed matching names on a lost and found report and a missing persons report.
Taking a closer look, he realized that the purse turned in the previous evening belonged to missing girl Nettie Melendez. Immediately, Worcester police dispatched two detectives to search Belle Ponte, the area where the purse was discovered. After hearing from police, the Melendez family decided once again to look for Nettie themselves. Nettie's father, Benito, older brothers, Peter and Benny, and a family friend went back out to search.
As the day wore on, they moved south through the woods, from Bell Pond toward Elliott Street, a dirt road that ran a half mile into the woods at their southern border. Elliott Street was known as both a lover's lane and a place where stolen cars were stripped for parts. The searchers poked at the damp underbrush with sticks as they hunted. Although they weren't trained searchers, they tried to be thorough.
At about 4 p.m., in a hilly wooded area about 40 feet from Elliott Street, Nettie's older brother, Benny, made a heartbreaking discovery. On the forest floor, amidst the wet leaves, he recognized the black and white checks of his own shirt. As he started to clear the debris, he discovered a body lying face up.
Benny, stunned, was unable to call out to the others, who were searching only a few feet away. It took only a moment for his brother Peter to realize what he had found. When Peter gently swept the leaves away, it was Nettie's eyes staring up at him. She was still wearing the black and white checked shirt and black skirt she had worn on Monday morning. It was plain to see that she was gone.
One of the buttons on the flannel shirt was broken, as well as the plastic clasp of her bra, leaving her breasts exposed. The strap of her purse was wrapped around her neck. Nettie's body was lying among small trees and scrubby ground cover, only about 150 feet from where her purse had been found the previous evening. Worcester police descended on the crime scene. Her loved ones only stayed long enough to positively identify her body.
At 5.35 p.m. on Tuesday, June 6th, 1989, the medical examiner arrived and wasted no time declaring her death a homicide. I'm sending my brother money directly to his bank account in India because he's apparently too busy practicing his karaoke to go pick up cash. Thankfully, I can still send money his way. Direct to my bank account.
As the evening wore on, Nettie's loved ones gathered at home. Some family members required medical attention because they were so shattered by the devastating news.
Her mother, Rosa, was never the same. According to Peter, a part of her just died. It had been a happy time for all of us. Then all of a sudden, it just got turned upside down, and everything changed. The Worcester Police Department dispatched six teams of detectives to scour the city for information and evidence related to Nettie's final hours. They shared what they knew about the case with reporters.
Because Nettie's purse had been turned in with its contents intact, they didn't think robbery was a motive. They believe that Nettie was killed between 4 and 6.45 p.m. Monday afternoon, roughly an hour before her purse had been found and turned in. Doris, though, wasn't so sure. She still contests the sightings of Nettie that happened that day. No, I don't think they were accurate. I think they were confusing me with her.
The last reliable sighting of Nettie was at Santa Maid, when she dropped off the van that morning. Doris figures that the second sighting at Santa Maid at 10.30 was a case of mistaken identity, because Doris went by the business around that time to look for Nettie. She believes that the workers at Toscano's Market were also mistaken. Nettie was in all the time, but they could have mixed up their days, and the sighting that afternoon was discounted by the police.
Doris believes that whoever she went with that morning at Santa Made was likely the killer. Police didn't find any footprints or similar clues at the scene, likely because of the rain that had fallen the previous night. Detectives said that they were waiting to interview three potential suspects to narrow the focus of the investigation.
North High held a moment of silence for Nettie on Wednesday morning. Her family shared with school officials that they didn't have enough money to provide a proper funeral. The school community rallied around the Melendez family, raising $1,900. Faculty, staff, and individual students contributed $1,100, while student organizations donated a combined $800.
While the students and faculty at North High dealt with the shocking news of their classmate's death, Dr. Fielding conducted an autopsy at UMass Medical Center. He determined Nettie's cause of death to be ligature strangulation and confirmed initial impressions. Nettie had no defensive wounds, and she had not been sexually assaulted.
Over 300 people attended Nettie's funeral mass on Saturday, June 10th, 1989, at the Roman Catholic Church Our Lady of Fatima. Nettie, dressed in her white cap and gown, lay in a lilac-colored casket at the church's altar. A red, black, and white tassel decorated with a gold 89 rested next to her face. Her classmates, also wearing their caps and gowns, packed the pews of the church.
This heartbreaking send-off was intended to give their friend something she wouldn't see in life, her high school graduation. It was bittersweet. It was hard. It broke me. I didn't want to believe it was her. I had in my brain that it wasn't her. I thought she was still alive. She was hiding in my closet. But reality was facing me.
And I just played along because I was still lost. Like I wasn't hitting me truly. But it was beautiful. They were all lined up. We played a song for her, Thinking of You. I just remember the picture of me reaching out for her when they were putting her in there. And Estris was holding me back because I wanted to go with her. But I remember when I turned around and I saw the students there and everybody was crying and just staring and just had her back.
During the funeral mass, friends honored Nettie with their memories. One friend read a note that she had written, and Doris symbolically presented Nettie with her diploma.
Standing beside her cousin's casket, Doris said, I give you the diploma you never received. I didn't get to see you graduate, so I have it for you here. I love you so much. Doris then gave it to Nettie's mother, Rosa. 156 vehicles joined in the funeral procession. Many of the cars had orange and black crepe paper, North High's colors, on their radio antennas.
As the procession wound its way to the cemetery, it made a detour to Plumlee Village, pausing outside Nettie's building so the family could bring her home one last time. They threw roses into the grave and I took my hat off and I threw it at her.
And my fellow alumni did the same. So she had a layer of roses and then the layers of the cap. So no one of the year of 1989 has a cap. It is literally buried with Nettie. And it was our tribute to her. It was my tribute to her that I'm always going to be with you. And inside my hat was a picture of me and her.
In the days following Nettie's death, 18 detectives worked around the clock and interviewed over 100 people. Although they were looking into three possible suspects at the beginning, their leads soon ran cold. As time passed, the public criticized the police for their handling of the case. Why didn't they look for Nettie on Monday night, when she was reported missing?
Worcester Deputy Chief John Coakley said that due to the high number of missing persons reports they received, it was not the practice of the department to search right away unless it was a young child. When the Melendez family reported Nettie missing, police told them that a person must be missing for 24 hours before a search could begin.
This practice, however, went against Massachusetts law. The Missing Children's Act, established in 1984, required an immediate search for any minor reported missing, and Nettie was just 17. Her information should have been entered into a statewide database established by the Missing Children's Act. Judith Johnson, one of the crafters of the Missing Children's Act, was frustrated with this misstep by police.
I think our children deserve better than what they're getting. If a car goes missing, they run right out and look for it. We're talking about a human life. That little girl is gone, she said. A Worcester police official argued that 99 times out of 100, the person isn't really missing.
One state trooper opined that the Missing Children's Act gave police more responsibility without increasing the resources necessary to get the job done, adding, I'm not sure it spurred police to do anything more than they had already done in the past. The police hadn't connected the dots between Nettie's missing persons report and her lost purse that was turned in that same evening.
Her stepfather, Benito, was angry with the police and said they had everything they needed to find Nettie on Monday night, except a sense of urgency. On June 12, one week after Nettie's death, Captain James Gallagher with the Worcester Police Department said that the toxicology report had come back from her autopsy and revealed the presence of alcohol. Doris told reporters that she had spoken to detectives several times and had told them that Nettie didn't like alcohol.
A month and a half later, the same police captain told the press that they were winding down their investigation. He said that they had no active leads, no suspects, and diminishing hopes that a continued full-time investigation would lead them to her killer. He said that though two detectives still spent part of each day on the case, unless fresh leads turned up, they would soon be taken off. He said...
We are not getting anywhere. We have pretty much eliminated everyone who might have been a suspect in the beginning. This will be a case that we routinely review and periodically actively investigate. Nettie's loved ones were still processing the fact that she was gone. All of them were changed forever.
I was scared. I always wondered why, who could it be? Why would somebody want to hurt somebody like that? Like why? Like she was such a beautiful person. She didn't have a mean bone in her unless you triggered her. She was just a beautiful soul. And the fear that I had gave me anxiety. It gave me panic attacks to the point that I did not get my license until I was 28 because I had this fear that if I went out alone, that someone was going to abduct me
And do the same that they did to her. I always lived in fear. I didn't open my blinds. I felt like somebody was watching me, following me. I got very paranoid. I'm not going to lie, I'm still to this day the same way.
It affected us. It still affects us all these years. Our family's never been the same since. My mother, even to this day, is a shell of herself. Yeah, you know, she laughs and, you know, but you could tell she isn't our mother that used to be. You know what I mean? She was always happy and everyone would want to come over our house before all this happened. We used to have gatherings and everything. And now it took a chunk out of her.
And so she changed a lot. You know, all of us over the years, it just affected all of us to the point we'll never forget, but it's just not the same. In September of 1989, three months after her death, Nettie's mother, father, and one of her brothers moved away to Virginia Beach. How could they continue to live in the home where Nettie was stolen from them? Rosa, who struggled in coping with her daughter's death, couldn't even bear to visit Nettie's resting place.
A year later, on the anniversary of her death, June 5th, 1990, a memorial mass was held. That same day, the North High graduating class of 1990 honored Nettie by beginning their commencement ceremony with a moment of silence. Nettie was posthumously presented with a Michael Miller Award, given to a student who showed good citizenship, friendship, loyalty, trustworthiness, and the spirit of North High.
At this ceremony, the first-ever Nereida Melendez Award was presented to a graduating senior. It was created by North High and Santa Mate in honor of Nettie and was presented to a work-study student who embodied many of the admirable qualities that Nettie possessed. Although her parents had left Worcester, two of Nettie's older brothers were present to see their sister's memory honored.
In the lobby of North High, a plaque bearing Nettie's photograph immortalized the slain student. She had an important place in the history of the school. After a year working her case, Worcester detective John McKiernan reported that there were no active leads and that initial suspects had not been spoken to for a while. He didn't believe Nettie's murder had been premeditated, and he thought that it was haphazardly done.
Her case would remain at a standstill until the spring of 1994, nearly five years after her death, when police announced that new information reinvigorated the case. In June of 1994, a local reporter was allowed to view the evidence kept by Worcester PD. Along with dried leaves and grass from the crime scene, the box contained her wallet, the black button that had broken off Nettie's shirt, and the black skirt she had worn on the last day of her life.
Also in the box was a small envelope containing some golden brown hair. These items were kept on the highest shelf in a storage room at the police station, awaiting the day when new information could be gleaned from them.
In 2002, Nettie's case, along with other unsolved Worcester homicides, became a political football in the race for Worcester County District Attorney, campaigned on the proposed formation of a cold case squad. This idea would come up again through several election cycles until 2007, when a cold case team was put together by newly elected DA Joseph Early.
There was hope that this would renew Nettie's investigation, especially for her parents, who had moved back to Worcester in 2004. The Melendez family had wanted the Massachusetts State Police to review the case, but Worcester PD worked homicides internally and did not request state assistance in any of the city's unsolved murders.
Nineteen years after Nettie's death, in 2008, Peter gave an interview remembering his younger sister. His own 17-year-old daughter, Selina, bore many similarities to her late aunt, especially in her mannerisms and strong work ethic. Peter recalled the details of searching for and finding her body on that gloomy June day nearly 20 years ago.
Peter and his family longed for an answer to the question of who killed Nettie. He said, "We always think, at least there's a chance." Worcester police approached Nettie's case with renewed vigor in 2009, telling Peter that they hoped to investigate her death, quote, "as if it happened yesterday." The cold case unit assigned multiple detectives to re-interview every witness. They identified a couple of suspects still living in the Worcester area.
The pieces of evidence that had waited so long in police storage were sent away for extensive forensic testing. They also presented the case to the VDOC Society, a prestigious group of forensic experts and investigators who lent a hand on cold cases. They told us at one point that they had presented her case to the VDOC Society. I can't remember the year that it was, but they had presented her case in Philadelphia to this VDOC Society to basically
to basically get a profile of a person who would have done this. When they came back, they basically told us that they all felt that it was someone she had to have known, that she trusted, and that the way that she was found, the person who did it felt remorse. The fact that she was laid on the ground covered in leaves, that she wasn't just placed there. In 2014, the Worcester DA said that the progress in Nettie's case could lead to a resolution within months.
Although the DA couldn't give specific information due to the ongoing investigation, Worcester police confirmed that the case was still active and a high priority. In 2019, Nettie's sister-in-law, Margie Vasquez, shared that police had told her that DNA had been found and a person of interest identified.
The family and the police department, we feel we all have a strong suspicion of one person. But again, you know, lack of evidence or I don't know about the DNA part, but lack of evidence is what we're told.
In the fall of 2019, the detectives came to us and told us that they were looking at the DA's office presenting her case to a grand jury. So we're like, great, you know. But like I said, that was in the fall of 2019.
And then COVID happened. And basically, as you can imagine, everything closed down. The courthouses did stop hearing cases. And ever since then, that was the last time we've heard from the, what's the detective's office? We've never heard from the DA's office. If they're being tight-lipped about it, fine. That's okay. I mean, if you guys, you know, if the detective's office and DA's office is being tight-lipped about it because they feel they got something, okay.
Okay, I'm fine with that. But don't leave this on, you know, for the next five years to make a case. I mean, I hope that there's a reason why they're being tight-lipped about it. And I know we got one shot at the apple, right? One bite at the apple. So I want to make sure that if they have a case, that it's a tight case to make sure that this son of a bitch is accountable for what he did.
Despite the retesting of evidence and the hope for a speedy resolution, there is still no answer for Nettie's loved ones. In the years since she was killed, Rosa has dreamed of her daughter visiting her. In these dreams, Nettie holds an infant with thick, wavy hair. She tells her, "Mama, I'm not dead. I'm alive. I've just been hiding." The happy mother is radiant, ageless,
Rosa, who was finally able to visit her daughter's grave in 2010, said, I lost my mind when she was killed. I take the pain with me wherever I go. Yet through the decades of grief, hope remains. Nettie's brother, Peter, has a message for her killer. Why did you have to destroy our family? You're taking our sister away, taking my mother's daughter, my father's daughter away from them. Why?
It just doesn't make any sense. She was so beautiful. It was just senseless. So the big question is why? Because you ruined all of our lives. You know, just hoping that one day our family will get justice that we deserve and have this person stand accountable for what they did.
If you have any information about the murder of Nettie Melendez from June 1989, I encourage you to call the Worcester Police Department at 508-799-8466 or submit an anonymous tip online at the link in the show notes.
I want to thank you so much for listening. I am so grateful that you chose to tune in and I couldn't be here without you. Thank you. If you would like to support the show, there's a link in the show notes with options. Another way to support is telling a friend, sharing on social media, or leaving a review.
A very special thank you to Nettie's family, Peter and Margie Vasquez, Doris Martinez, and Yolanda Melendez for sharing their memories and trusting me with Nettie's story. A detailed list of sources and photos can be found at MurderSheTold.com. Thank you to Meg Hooker for her writing and to Samantha Coulthard and Byron Willis for their research support.
If you have a story that needs to be told or a correction, I would love to hear from you. My only hope is that I've kept the memories of your loved ones alive. I'm Kristen Sevey, and this is Murder, She Told. Thank you for listening. We all belong outside. We're drawn to nature. Whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to, or the succulents that adorn our homes, nature makes all of our lives, well, better. Despite all this, we often go about our busy lives removed from it.
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