Support truly
independent journalism
Atlanta police have arrested a woman’s husband for her murder, 25 years after her remains were found dumped in a trash bag.
Melissa Wolfenbarger’s family last heard from her on Thanksgiving Day in 1998 when the 21-year-old called her mother, Norma Patton, from her husband’s grandparents’ home. But no one reported the woman missing until January 2000, when her mother filed a report.
Decades later, her husband, Christopher Wolfenbarger, was arrested for murder after being a person of interest in the case for years, police said at a Wednesday press conference. The arresting officers found Wolfenbarger hiding behind a dryer at his Atlanta home on Tuesday.
“Christopher Wolfenbarger knowingly and intentionally killed Melissa Dawn Wolfenbarger and dismembered her body,” read an arrest warrant obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The deceased woman’s mother and her sister, Tina Patton, attended the press conference wearing shirts with photos of Melissa.
In April 1999, police found human remains in a trash bag dumped in an Atlanta neighborhood. At the time, officials misidentified those remains as belonging to another missing person. Additional human remains were found in another bag, two months later.
DNA testing in 2003, three years after Wolfenbarger was reported missing, confirmed that both sets of remains belonged to the Atlanta woman. Police have been hunting for her killer ever since.
Melissa’s father, Carl Patton, was the reason police investigated the remains again in 2003, her sister previously revealed. Carl Patton was arrested and convicted that same year for five murders across Georgia from 1973 to 1977.
“My mom was able to convince him to say something about my sister,” Tina said, according to local outlet 11Alive. “And somebody in Atlanta saw it in the paper the next day and said, ‘Wait a minute, there’s some remains over here in the morgue. And the address, the vicinities are kind of close to where this girl lived. So let’s go get DNA.’”
Tina said her father would have never hurt Melissa, according to 11Alive. “Dad loved us,” she said. “He was devastated. Just like us. He broke down and cried.”
But her husband was a long-time suspect in Melissa’s disappearance, Tina Patton said at the Wednesday press conference.
“From day one, we knew it was Christopher,” she told reporters. “There was never, ever any doubt in our minds, who did this. My mom has said, ‘I don’t know how many times, that when she first met him, there was just evil in his eyes,’” she continued.
Both Norma and Tina said they never heard from Christopher again after Melissa’s disappearance.
Wolfenbarger had left her husband the summer before she disappeared, according to her sister, after saying her husband hit her and dragged her by the hair down a sidewalk.
“But when [Christopher] went in front of the judge, he asked the judge to let him talk to her alone, and she went back to him,” her sister said.
The Atlanta Police Department is transferring the case to the attorney general’s office.
Norma recalled her last words to her daughter: “I love you, and you know where I am if you need me.”
“Melissa was very loving, if she loved you, you would know it,” the mother continued. “She loved her kids, and there’s no way on this Earth that she would have left him, because she wanted her kids.”
