Three years ago, prosecutor John Petrey locked himself away with only two dozen binders of evidence and the memory of a dead Emory student to keep him company. He found a vacant room near the top of the DeKalb County courthouse building, changed the locks, and bolted himself inside. On the door, he hung a sign that read "Shannon Melendi Case Room: Do Not Enter."



Melendi had been a sophomore at Emory until she vanished on March 26, 1994. She was working as a scorekeeper at a now-closed softball field on North Decatur Road and never returned from her lunch break.



For months after her disappearance, DeKalb County police and the FBI investigated the suspected kidnapping and murder, garnering 24-hour coverage from the local and national media. But despite a phone call from former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and ceaseless prodding from the Melendi family, investigators never advanced the case beyond the naming of a lead suspect, Colvin "Butch" Hinton. Police could not find Shannon's body, and no charges were ever filed. And when Hinton went to jail on a separate charge in 1996, the Melendi files began to gather dust in the Atlanta U.S. Attorney's office.



Almost a decade after Shannon disappeared, around Thanksgiving 2003, those files landed on Petrey's desk. The evidence ran deep: background research on Shannon, transcripts of witness interviews, and pictures of her car, which was abandoned at a nearby gas station. Later Petrey obtained physical evidence gathered years before, including dirt from Hinton's backyard and floor mats from Shannon's car.



But the piece of evidence Petrey needed most had never been found: Shannon's body. Whatever had happened to her, no remains existed. Even after three searches of Hinton's house, police had not found a single strand of hair or drop of blood. That meant, technically, there wasn't even a crime scene. Nor was there a murder weapon. With almost no hard evidence, police could barely prove a crime had occurred, much less link Hinton to Shannon's disappearance. In the history of Georgia law, no one had ever won a case without a body, a crime scene or a murder weapon.



But Petrey wasn't one to fear leaving the beaten path. As a teenager, he departed Alexander City, Ala. - population 12,000 and dominated by the Russell Athletic Company - to attend Harvard, and then earned his law degree at Emory in 1977. Petrey started working in the DeKalb District Attorney's office in 1980. Some years later he took the step, unprecedented in Georgia, of prosecuting the owner of a pitbull for involuntary manslaughter after the dog killed a child. "That's why I went to law school," he says. "To do challenging cases."



Petrey began to spend his days sorting evidence, undoing the chaos previous investigators had left behind. "The FBI would put a 30-page document in six different places," Petrey says. He placed sticky notes on important documents, weighing the pros and cons of each witness. After a month of research, he began to think the case was winnable. At the end of January he picked up the phone and called Shannon's father, Luis Melendi.



"I said, 'I'm John Petrey. I'm with the DeKalb District Attorney's office. I've started reviewing Shannon's case and I'd like to come to Florida to meet with you,'" Petrey says. Melendi paused and said, "I've been waiting 10 years for this phone call."



Right around Valentine's Day 2004, Petrey took an early flight to Miami. Melendi picked him up at the airport and they spent the day reviewing the case. Although the 10-year anniversary of his daughter's disappearance was approaching, Melendi had still not given up the hope of prosecuting Hinton for murder.



That afternoon the two men went to Melendi's photography studio. On the wall was a 2-foot by 3-foot picture of Shannon at age 3. She was dressed in a pink and white blouse, seated in a rocking chair, cradling her head in her hand.



"Just looking at that picture - it was a huge picture - it was just heartbreaking to see that and see Luis tearing up as he showed me that picture," Petrey says. "This was not just a 19-year-old girl who had gone missing. This was the light of his life."



When he saw the photo, Petrey, the father of four children including a daughter close to Shannon's age, internalized the case. That evening, he flew back to Atlanta, and he went right back to work that night. Says Petrey, "I became obsessed at that point."



He began to devote more and more time to the case, and his wife and children learned to expect him around the house less and less. "At best, I was a warm body at the house for a couple of hours a day," he says.



Hinton, who became a free man on Dec. 18, 2003 after serving seven years for arson and fraud, was still the primary suspect. But to bring the case to trial, Petrey was going to need to reconstruct the entire decade-old investigation - starting with the day Shannon disappeared from the softball fields.



The day after Shannon disappeared, her roommate, Athena Perez ('96C), and two friends had gone looking for her. Shannon wasn't the type of person to leave and not say why, and they were worried.



After accidentally passing the softball fields, the girls pulled into a gas station to turn around. There, in the corner of the parking lot, Perez spotted Shannon's car. The black two-door Nissan squatted like a tombstone in the parking lot, the doors unlocked, the keys hanging in the ignition.



"As soon as I saw that car ... I just knew, at that moment, something wasn't right," Perez says. The car was Shannon's most prized possession - she would wash it once a week and only park it in certain places. There was no way she would have left it like that, Perez says.



But DeKalb police reacted with much less urgency than did Perez. The reporting officer took down a report and allowed one of Shannon's friends to drive the car - and all the evidence it possibly contained - back to campus. Says Perez, "From day one, it was screw-up after screw-up after screw-up."



Shannon was treated as missing, not kidnapped, and the initial investigation focused on her social life. "We were all accused that we were hiding her," Perez says. Investigators wasted valuable time hunting down Shannon's old boyfriends and spring break flings. And FBI Special Agent Pat Johnson concluded in a March 31 report that Shannon had probably run away. "There is a possibility that Shannon was depressed and confused concerning her life at this time," Johnson wrote.



The Melendis arrived in Atlanta days after their daughter's disappearance to find the DeKalb police not taking the case as seriously as they wanted. "They were a very good-old-boys club when we got here," Luis Melendi says. "It was like a redneck club."



Shannon - an aspiring Supreme Court justice, the captain of her high school debate team, a member of the National Honor Society, winner of a scholarship to Emory - was being treated like a troubled, runaway college student. For her father, a firecracker of a man devoted to family, dignity and honor, it was unbearable. "It just killed Luis," Petrey says.



If the DeKalb police weren't going to find his daughter, Melendi was going to find someone who would. He called The Carter Center, where Shannon worked, to get former U.S. President Jimmy Carter involved. On March 30, Carter called the Atlanta office of the FBI to ask them to aid the investigation. That same day, Melendi had U.S. Attorney Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh call the same office.



Emory General Counsel Kent Alexander, who was the U.S. Attorney in Atlanta at the time, says Luis Melendi was tenacious about keeping the case in the spotlight. Shortly after Shannon's disappearance, more than 10,000 signs and 60 billboards with her face went up around Atlanta and Decatur. "That picture of her was just everywhere," Alexander says. "It was ubiquitous."



Melendi asked family friend and Hollywood actor Andy Garcia - "His parents and my parents used to go dancing together in Cuba in the old days," he says - to record public service announcements.



The FBI had since joined the hunt, but having two agencies work on the same case created a series of miscommunications that hampered the investigation. Occasionally one agency would find evidence and not inform the other, creating a sort of "turf war," Petrey says.



When digging through Shannon's social life proved fruitless, new investigators refocused the case and began questioning people at the softball fields. One of the players, pitcher Jerry Chastain, told police that the umpire, 33-year-old Colvin "Butch" Hinton, couldn't keep his eyes off Shannon, even missing calls during the game.



But before police had an opportunity to question Hinton, they got their first big break in the case.



On April 6, 10 days after Shannon disappeared, someone placed a call to the Emory Counseling Center. Emory employee Judy Focht picked up the phone. The caller said he had Shannon, that she was fine and that he would make demands later. Focht told police she thought the caller said something about a ring taped to the phone.



Caller ID led the FBI to a phone booth on Highway 20 in McDonough. Agents rushed to the booth and found a small cloth bag wrapped in masking tape. Inside the bag was Shannon's ring - gold with a light blue stone.



Eleven years later, the bag and the tape would become the most important physical evidence in the case.







On April 8, investigators found Hinton's criminal record. The contents of the record were so damning, he became the lead suspect that same day.



Hinton was born on Sept. 18, 1960 in Somerset, Ky. He grew up as the oldest of three brothers under the overbearing watch of his father, an insurance salesman and Baptist preacher.



Hinton's home life was stable until his mother died when he was 14 and his 43-year-old father remarried to a 19-year-old girl.



Trouble began soon afterward. When he was 16, Hinton attempted to rape his boss' 30-year-old wife. Because of his youth, Hinton avoided jail time and received psychiatric treatment.



Three years later, Hinton became engaged to an 18-year-old girl. But his father took an interest in the same girl, and the two began an affair. Eventually Hinton's father ended his relationship with his second wife and married the 18-year-old girl. And Hinton's world turned upside-down as his fiancee became his stepmother.



Hinton dropped out of college and moved to Kewanee, Ill., working at a cemetery before moving on to become the manager of a furniture store. In Kewanee, Hinton married a 19-year-old woman. And when his wife was nine months pregnant, he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl on Aug. 20, 1982. He pleaded guilty and served less than two years in jail. While imprisoned, Hinton was evaluated by psychiatrist Werner Tuteur.



"There is the greatest of remorse about the allegations," Tuteur wrote in his report. "His fingernails are chewed to the quick, a sign of extreme anxiety. This is a very insecure and inadequate person."



In his troubled patient, Tuteur saw a chance for reform. "This is a very religious person and an individual who is very community conscious. Under competent treatment, it is unlikely that the incident that occurred during August, 1982, will repeat itself. The Defendant has the best of intentions to control his behavior in the future."



Despite Hinton's past, police couldn't find enough evidence to arrest him. Police obtained warrants for three separate searches of Hinton's house. On their third try they used search dogs and a bulldozer to dig up Hinton's yard, where neighbors reported him building a bonfire the night of Shannon's disappearance. But nothing was found.



Even though the investigation was faltering, Hinton began to get nervous and stopped showing up to work at Delta Airlines. On Sept. 8, 1994, he burned down his house in what prosecutors call an attempt to cover up any remaining evidence. When he tried to collect the insurance, Hinton was arrested for arson and fraud.



Alexander says everyone in the U.S. Attorney's office was convinced Hinton had murdered Shannon. But nobody had pieced together enough evidence to arrest him for murder - insurance fraud was the best they could do. "We thought it may be the only crack at justice for Shannon Melendi," Alexander says.



Media attention made a fair trial in Atlanta impossible, and the trial was moved to Panama City, Fla. Alexander sent Bryan Farrell and Gentry Shelnutt to prosecute Hinton in Panama City. They argued for the toughest sentence they could, but were barred from mentioning anything about the Melendi case because of a lack of evidence.



Farrell and Shelnutt won Hinton's conviction in federal court, and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.



But although Hinton was behind bars, the question of what happened to Shannon remained unanswered. To the Melendis, Hinton was still a free man.



Alexander says he saw Hinton only once, during the initial hearing in Atlanta. "He just had that look like he was going to have the last laugh."







For years afterward, Luis Melendi methodically marked each painful anniversary of his daughter's disappearance. The case was featured on "America's Most Wanted" four times, and on "Inside Edition" and "The Maury Povich Show" twice each. Although the FBI conducted interviews with inmates that knew Hinton in 1996 and 2001, the case files sat mostly untouched. By the time Petrey began looking at the files, some people in the district attorney's office had been kids when Shannon disappeared.



In February 2004, the DeKalb District Attorney J. Tom Morgan resigned, and Gov. Sonny Perdue appointed Jeff Brickman ('89L) in his place. An aggressive trial lawyer, Brickman saw the importance of the Melendi case and gave Petrey enough breathing room to pursue it. "If it wasn't us, nobody was going to do it," Brickman says. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime case."



Sometimes Petrey would split his time between the Melendi case and his managerial duties as chief assistant district attorney. Other times he would disappear into the "Shannon Melendi Case Room" for hours at a time. "I was relentless," Petrey says.



Brickman describes Petrey as a "walking library" of legal know-how, not a person to pass up on a good challenge. "He didn't have to work on this case," Brickman says. "But he took it head on, and did not give up."



About a month after meeting with Luis Melendi, Petrey became more confident with the case. "By that point, I was convinced [Hinton] was guilty," he says. "We had to fine-tune the evidence to prove his guilt."



As spring 2004 began, Petrey formed a team to assist him with the investigation. DeKalb County Assistant District Attorney Tom Clegg helped Petrey assemble the case, while DeKalb County Cold Case investigator Dave Fonseca and FBI agent Joe Fonseca - no relation and different pronunciations - donned latex gloves and helped Petrey sift through the physical evidence. With Brickman's support, the case was in full swing. "We had an incredible group of talented lawyers that were passionate about taking on the responsibilities of the investigation," Brickman says.



In March, Petrey and his team began tracking down inmates who had previously told the FBI that Hinton had made incriminating statements to them.



They found Ronson Westmoreland, who shared a cell with Hinton at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary while Hinton was awaiting trial. "The girl was a tease, all she did was tease me," he reportedly told Westmoreland. Hinton allegedly added that "they will never find her because she is scattered to the wind."



Investigators found more and more inmates with similar stories. Johnny Pleasants told investigators that Hinton said his weakness was young girls. Anthony Olivaria claimed Hinton said that if Moses could be forgiven for murder, so could he.



Dave Fonseca began to criss-cross Georgia to find other incidental witnesses. He found someone who could testify to seeing Shannon's car in the gas station parking lot and another person to say Hinton was a regular customer at a restaurant near pay phone where Shannon's ring was found..



While Petrey worked on the case, Brickman says the office was careful to keep the investigation under wraps. Even as the evidence mounted and the prosecutors became more excited, only a handful of people were allowed to know what was going on to avoid any media leaks. "Anytime you're making a decision to bring formal charges against someone, you don't want anyone making rash decisions," Brickman says.



The tape and the bag found in the phone booth 10 years before were sent about 20 miles away to MVA Scientific Consultants in Duluth for analysis. After an examination of the thread count, weave construction and fiber type, the simple cloth bag was found to be more unique than it appeared - Hinton's former employer Delta was the only purchaser of the bag in the state. And the tape was the same as tape found in Hinton's car and house. In fact, Hinton's job at Delta was to wrap airplane parts in masking tape in preparation for sanding or painting.



Finally, armed with statements from inmates and witnesses at the softball fields and the physical evidence, Petrey and Brickman moved forward with the indictment. "All of this, when put together, made a very compelling series of evidence," Brickman says.



Brickman called a press conference in August 2004 to announce an indictment charging Hinton with the kidnapping and malice murder of Shannon Melendi. That day both Fonsecas participated in the arrest of Hinton as he left his job as a butcher at an Atlanta-area grocery store.



But despite the arrest, the biggest hole in the case still stood between Petrey and a conviction - Shannon's remains still had not been found. Even the wording of the indictment, which stated that Hinton murdered Shannon "in a manner unknown to the Grand Jury at this time," reflected this weakness.



Petrey and Brickman weren't deterred. "This case needed to be prosecuted," Brickman says. "Even if we weren't successful, we could feel good about having done the right thing."



Shortly after the indictment, Brickman was voted out of office, replaced by another Emory graduate, Gwen Keys Fleming ('93L). Despite issuing the landmark charges against Hinton, Brickman would not be able to sit by Petrey's side at the prosecutor's table during the trial.



After the indictment, prosecutors secured even more evidence as other inmates came forward to discuss their interactions with Hinton. Petrey flew to Tennessee and Mississippi to meet with them and confirm their statements.



One inmate who shared a cell with Hinton in an Alabama prison, Adonis Cornwell, told investigators he was awakened one night by Hinton's cries. "I said, 'Butch, are you OK?' Then he looked at me and said, 'I didn't kill her, the demon inside me did.'"



Early in summer 2005, Petrey received more masking tape from the FBI, which he quickly sent to MVA for analysis. The new tests revealed several unique metals embedded in the tape. Petrey had metallurgist Raymond Hart analyze the metals. Hart concluded that the metals - lead bismuth, tungsten, cobalt, molybdenum - are only found in two places: aircraft engine manufacturing and aircraft engine repair. And Hinton's unit in Delta worked on repairing aircraft engines.



The case had become expensive, and the district attorney's office had to secure more than $100,000 from the DeKalb Board of Commissioners to fund the costs of travel and scientific analysis.



One last hurdle remained before the trial began. In July, Petrey had to argue that one of the most daming pieces of evidence - Hinton's history of sexual assault - was relevant and substantial enough to present to a jury.



Of the five prior incidents presented by prosecutors, two were judged relevant enough to include in the trial: Hinton's attempted rape of a 30-year-old woman when he was 16 and his sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl when he was 22. But the similar transaction evidence became a crucial part of the case against Hinton.



In the run-up to the trial, the prosecution team was using three different rooms to study and assemble the Melendi case. Assistant district attorneys Mike McDaniel and Jennifer Thomas replaced Tom Clegg and prepared to argue alongside Petrey in the trial. They knew their case relied almost entirely on circumstantial evidence, and they would have to work extra hard to nail every point. "I was so paranoid," Petrey says. "It scares you so much, you realize that every witness is important."







The trial began on Aug. 22, 2005, and defense lawyer B.J. Bernstein started off attacking the soft underbelly of the case - the lack of a body or crime scene. "The evidence in this case does not and cannot show you beyond a reasonable doubt what happened to Shannon Melendi," she said in her opening statement, arguing that Hinton had become a target because of his past.



And while cross-examining Shannon's classmate Jennifer Davis ('96C), Bernstein began to make Shannon's own past an issue in the case. Information from the initial investigation in spring 1994 - Shannon's alleged marijuana use and promiscuity, her credit card debt, her failing grades, her Honor Code violation - were laid bare before the jury.



Petrey objected to what he saw as character assassination, but Bernstein countered by arguing that she was merely showing how Shannon's lifestyle placed her "in harm's way."



Bernstein ('84C) declined to comment for this article, citing attorney-client priviledge. "As a criminal defense attorney, I have taken on the role as advocate for a client's position and not as the judge or jury," she wrote in an e-mail to The Hub. "Although difficult and emotional when dealing with such a sad case, I did the only thing I must do and required to do with my job and that was zealously representing my client at trial and on appeal."



Petrey's objection was overruled by the judge and the Melendi family spent the rest of the day listening to scandalous details about their daughter as Bernstein continued her line of questioning. "That was our worst day in court," Petrey says.



After leaving the courtroom, Petrey and his team spent hours compiling an argument for why questioning Shannon's character was irrelevant. Petrey didn't want the failures of the initial investigation more than a decade ago to hurt his case. The next day he repeated his objection.



"I challenge the defense to come up with a good faith basis for showing that marijuana use has anything to do with her disappearance," Petrey said. "It is just a smokescreen."



Bernstein protested, saying, "When you come in here and you can't tell the jury anything other than she's gone ... the defense is allowed alternative theories to show how she went missing."



Judge Workman pondered the arguments for the objection most of the day, finally siding with Petrey, handing him a major victory in the trial.



Bernstein fired back in her closing statement, repeating her concerns about the use of circumstantial evidence. "No body, no crime scene, nothing tangible to the whereabouts of Shannon Melendi after 1:20 p.m. March 26, 1994," she said. "I'm not asking you to like [Hinton]. But under the law, your suspicion, your feeling can not be the basis of the conviction."



Petrey got the last word in the case.



"Shannon Melendi's luck ran out on March 26, when just completely at random she was assigned to the same field as that man" - he pointed directly at Hinton - "that sadistic pervert whose lust had led him to a pattern of attacking and sexually assaulting women."



"There's no law that says a murderer who successfully hides his handiwork escapes the law," Petrey said. As he took his seat at the end of his closing statement, Petrey had spoken the last words he ever would on behalf of Shannon. The rest was out of his hands.



After about 10 hours of deliberations over the course of three days, the jury finally presented the verdict: guilty of kidnapping and murder. Shannon's parents, Luis and Yvonne, and her younger sister, Monique, held hands and wept as the verdict was read. A stone-faced Hinton was sentenced to life in prison.



Says Petrey, the verdict brought him relief but not joy. "It was like, wow, I didn't realize how tired I was." Almost two years had passed since he began working on the case.



Hinton appealed the conviction to the Georgia Supreme Court on grounds that the trial was unfair and that faulty evidence was presented. But the Supreme Court upheld the conviction in June of this year.



Five days later, Hinton confessed publicly to police and an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter, admitting everything in excruciating detail. He described how he lured Shannon to go on a lunch break with him, then took a "wrong turn" onto Interstate 285. Once on the highway, he faked a leg cramp and asked her to drive. When Shannon climbed into the driver's seat, Hinton said he pulled a knife on her and ordered her to drive back to his house.



He tied her to a bed at his house and raped her. He left the house to drop Shannon's car at the gas station and go to the movies with his family to establish an alibi. He returned to his home and raped her again. Then he strangled her with a necktie.



Hinton burned Shannon's body in the fire pit that police had searched to no avail. To make sure there was no evidence left, he raked the yard everyday for the next two weeks.



The Melendi family has found little closure in the conviction. "Everything was cut down by this monster," Luis Melendi says. "And it destroyed my family, period. We will do the best we can with what we've got now." Melendi's portrait studio business suffered because of his trips to Atlanta and his focus on finding his daughter. His younger daughter, Monique, chose to stay close to home, working and attending school at Miami Dade College. "She refused to go away," Melendi says.



Hinton is eligible for parole in 2011. The Melendis are nervous about him being released from jail, but Petrey feels the battle is over. "I'm confident as long as there's one free bed, Butch Hinton will be in prison," he says.



For Petrey, the Melendi case brought closure to a 26-year-long career in the DeKalb County district attorney's office. "I pretty much had the realization that I wasn't going to have another case like that," Petrey says. Nothing was going to match the challenge, the complexity and the emotion of prosecuting the only case in Georgia history without a body or crime scene. "You will not find a case, anywhere at all close to the emotion, the history, the personas," Brickman says. "It will never be duplicated."



So earlier this year, Petrey joined two friends from the district attorney's office in private practice in Decatur and began working as a criminal defense lawyer. It's taken some getting used to - sometimes he slips up in court and says "the state objects" instead of "I object."



Soon after the trial ended, Petrey called Melendi to ask him a favor. Petrey had remembered the photo of 3-year-old Shannon - dressed in a pink and white blouse, seated in a rocking chair, cradling her head in her hand - he had seen in Melendi's studio.



"I told him I thought it was just a beautiful picture," Petrey says. "And said if he thought it was appropriate, could he please send me a small copy of it."



Melendi obliged and mailed him the photo. Petrey keeps it in his desk drawer as he waits to move into his new office.



Then Shannon can grace his wall as well.