Written by Jacob Randall
This is the scripted version of an episode of Crime Of Your Life - A True Crime Podcast. The audio version of this episode was published on September 9th, 2020.
Thursday, December 1st, 1994
It was a cold winter evening in the small city of Fort Smith, Arkansas. MaryAnn Witt had just returned to her home after spending a few hours with her women’s bowling league. She had been at Bowling World, one of the two local bowling alleys in the area. It wasn't far from the house she shared with her daughter, Melissa, who was living with her mother at the time while taking classes nearby at Westark community college.
Melissa Witt was 19 years old, known to many of her friends and family as “Missy.” Her parents divorced when she was a child, although both of them would still be a part of her life. She was an honor student, and she hoped to someday become a dental hygienist. In the meantime, she would be working part time at a local dentists office. And her healthy schedule of studies and work made it easy to anticipate where she would be most of the time.
But when MaryAnn arrived home that night, Melissa’s 1995 Mitsubishi Mirage wasn’t parked in the driveway and it wasn’t parked on the street. MaryAnn walked into the house to find it quiet and empty. And Melissa wasn’t home.
MaryAnn hadn’t seen Melissa since earlier that day, in the morning time when they were both about to head off to begin their usual routines. MaryAnn remembered that before Melissa walked out the door, they had a bit of a mother-daughter disagreement. Melissa had asked if she could borrow a little money until her next paycheck arrived, which was just supposed to be on the following day. But MaryAnn declined.
So Melissa went on her way. She had a full day of classes and work ahead of her and MaryAnn figured they would reconvene sometime later. And while the exchange was relatively mundane and normal for the two of them, MaryAnn never could have expected that it would be the last conversation she would ever have with her daughter Melissa.
MaryAnn had left a note at the house for Melissa to see for when she would could home from work that day, telling her that she would be at Bowling Bowl, and that she would buy Melissa a hamburger if she wanted to come join her. And that she loved her. And while Melissa would join her mother for bowling on occasion, she never showed up to watch her bowl that night. MaryAnn didn’t know where Melissa was, and it wasn’t like her daughter to stay out late without saying where she would be or what time she would return. Melissa was responsible and it seemed out of character for her to give her mother any reason to worry.
But as minutes turned into hours, MaryAnn did worry. She found herself feeling both anxious and frustrated, thinking her daughter must be out with some friends and was just neglecting to call home.
As more time went by, MaryAnn started to become deeply concerned. When she first looked around the house, she may not have noticed that Melissa’s work clothes from that day were in a pile on the floor, indicating that she had arrived home from work at some point. But by the time midnight came, there was still no sign of her. No phone calls from Melissa, and no one to explain where she might be.
Finally, around 3:00 am, still with no word from Melissa, MaryAnn did what a lot of parents would do - she got in her car and began searching the streets. It was dark, but maybe she would see Melissa’s car parked at a friends house. Or maybe Melissa was stranded on the side of the road somewhere. Only she wasn’t. She was no where in sight. MaryAnn went back to her house and started calling Melissa’s friends. But one by one, they would all tell her the same thing: that they hadn’t seen Melissa and that they didn’t know where she was.
Shortly before 9am, after hours of worrying, waiting, and searching - Mary Ann made the decision to go to the police and file a missing persons report. Once it was established that Melissa Witt was missing, her family made a $30,000 reward offer in the hopes that it would lead to her safe return. Friends and fellow college students started posting missing persons fliers all over the city. A local Kinko’s Copy Center donated 5,000 free prints of the fliers, many of which were distributed in the community within 24 hours of the disappearance.
The local tv news coverage would follow, and it couldn’t have come soon enough. Melissa went missing on a Thursday evening, but it would actually be a few days before the local news would widely report on the situation. This was before the time of Amber alerts, and although she was still technically a teenager, Melissa was legally an adult. And there wasn’t any reason to think that anything bad had happened to her. No hard evidence had been found to suggest that she was in danger. She was just missing. But even just one day of waiting, and not knowing where Melissa was must have felt like an eternity to MaryAnn. Disappearing for days without any explanation was so far outside of Melissa’s routine, and so far outside of her normal behavior.
In missing persons cases, law enforcement officials always have to consider that the person may be missing by choice. But no one who really knew Melissa could imagine that she would run away for any reason, even for just a few days. It would be a possibility, but not within the realm of things that Melissa was ever likely to do. Early news reports indicate that investigators were treating her disappearance with urgency from day one. But if for any reason they weren’t, then three days after Melissa went missing, they would be.
Because three days after Melissa vanished, investigators would make a discovery that would paint a troubling picture for them. And it would only intensify their search.
On December 4th, investigators found Melissa’s car. Her 1995 Mitsubishi Mirage Coupe was discovered abandoned in a parking lot. But it wasn’t in just any random parking lot. Her car was discovered in the parking lot of Bowling World, the bowling alley where her mother Mary Ann had been with her women’s league just a few days earlier on the evening of Melissa’s disappearance.
When investigators approached Melissa’s car, they noticed a single gold hoop earring lying on the ground, along with a broken hair clip and small pools of blood. It looked as though someone had been injured, perhaps in some kind of accident or struggle. Inside the bowling alley, police would learn that someone had turned in a set of keys to the front desk that were found in the parking lot. It was confirmed that the keys belonged to Melissa. And those keys would later yield another ominous clue: the presence of dried blood.
Everything police were uncovering at the bowling alley indicated that they were looking at a crime scene. With Melissa having gone mysteriously missing - and the discovery of her abandoned vehicle, blood and personal items, and her car keys - multiple pieces of a puzzle were beginning to come together. Her car was in the parking lot at Bowling World most likely because she had seen the note her mother had left for her, and had driven there on Thursday night to watch her bowl with her women’s league. But MaryAnn hadn’t seen her daughter that evening because Melissa never made it inside the building. The clues outside of her abandoned car were suggesting something that couldn’t be downplayed or minimized. And they seemed to confirm the worst fears of Melissa’s family, friends, and law enforcement. Something unthinkably horrible had occurred. To everyone, it looked as though Melissa may have been abducted.
It wasn’t long before the frightening news had circulated all over the state of Arkansas that a young woman named Melissa Witt was not only suddenly missing - but that the police were treating the disappearance as an abduction. Her picture was in the newspapers, and it was shown on television night after night. She was described as being 5’5, 135 lbs with brownish/blondish hair, hazel eyes and a fair complexion.
Images of her would show a young college student with kind eyes and a friendly smile. She could have been anyone’s daughter or sister. And she became a regular topic of discussion for nervous Fort Smith residents and fellow students at Westark Community college. The college newspaper captured the climate of stress and fear around her disappearance. One student told the paper “I really didn’t think that it would be this serious, but now I’m scared that something really bad has happened to her.” Another person quoted in the article suggested that the campus administration should provide drop-in counseling sessions for students to express their feelings on the matter, and an information booth to provide updates that could help dispel any rumors about the case.
Following her disappearance and apparent abduction, Fort Smith police were able to trace Melissa’s steps over the day she vanished. They determined that after attending class that morning at Westark, Melissa had lunch with a friend at Chick-fil-A - which was located at a local shopping mall less than 2 miles from the college campus. After that, she clocked in for a regular work shift at the dentists office on Jenny Lind road.
Nothing really stands out about the kind of day Melissa was having, except for a brief time before she made it home from work. At the end of the day when Melissa ended her shift at work and hopped into her mitsubishi, presumably to head home, with maybe a stop to grab something for dinner on the way, she discovered that her car wouldn’t start. She turned the key in the ignition a few times, but the battery was dead. Because the car was fairly new, it seemed most likely that Melissa had simply left something turned on in the vehicle before heading into work.
A friend waited with Melissa momentarily, while a Good Samaritan gave her car battery the jump it needed to get back on the road. Police were able to confirm that Melissa definitely made it home from work prior to her disappearance. A neighbor told investigators they had seen her come and go. She walked into the house at about 5:45pm…
But it’s what happened to Melissa between (6:30 and 7pm) that left her mother MaryAnn and the rest of her family and friends desperate for answers. It seemed clear that Melissa was having a relatively normal day until the evening time, until she decided to visit her mother at Bowling World. Until she pulled her Mitsubishi Mirage coupe into the parking lot but never made it into the building, and was never seen alive again.
But the questions everyone had about what happened to Melissa wouldn’t even begin to be answered until over a month later.
On January 13th, 1995, a gruesome discovery was made by two trappers who were hunting in the Ozark National Forest about 50 miles away from the site of Melissa’s abduction. While walking in a wooded remote area off of an old logging road, the two men found the decomposing human remains of a nude female. Her body lay face down in the grass, displayed out in the open as though someone wanted her to be discovered. And with the assistance of dental records, it wouldn’t take long for Law Enforcement to announce publicly that the human remains belonged to Melissa Witt. An autopsy would reveal leaves and debris in her airways, indicating that she had died in the forest. She was presumed to be a victim of sexual assault. Her cause of death would be listed as strangulation.
Finally, Melissa had been found. The desperate search for her was over. But it would be a heartbreaking resolution to only one part of this case. The unanswered questions would now only multiply. Who abducted Melissa Witt on the evening of December 1st, 1994? Why did someone end her young life and leave her body in the Ozark National forest? What really happened that night in the parking lot of Bowling world?
There are a few areas in this case that have to be explored further in order for us to have a better understanding of what happened to Melissa. And in this section of the podcast, we’ll be examining witness accounts, clues, and a mysterious event that might hold the key to solving the crime.
So let’s move backwards. Back to the Thursday night in early December when Melissa Witt vanished. It was cold outside that evening. A crescent moon hung overhead. Sometime around 6:30 or 7pm, Melissa pulled her car into the parking lot of Bowling World. The lot was filled with cars because the women’s leagues were competing. But nearly everyone, including Melissa’s mother MaryAnn, would already be inside the building. Melissa was alone when she stepped out of her vehicle - apart from someone who must have been watching her through the darkness.
While Bowling World did employ some security, there were no security guards on or about the premises on this night. There were no security cameras for the parking lot, and cameras from nearby establishments were too far out of reach to record the violent struggle Melissa had with her assailant. No one saw exactly what happened as Melissa was struck, presumably with a blunt object, so forcefully that pools of her blood would be found days later on the concrete.
But someone did report witnessing something that night.
And this is a moment in the case that has become a little confusing for some people. Early news articles from the 1990s indicate that at least two witnesses reported seeing an argument take place in the parking lot that evening between a woman believed to be Melissa and an unidentified male.
But reports state that the witnesses were standing approximately 200 feet away and gave conflicting accounts of what the man was wearing, while it remains unclear as to why they thought the woman was Melissa. The physical descriptions of the man ultimately proved to be unreliable, and the lead itself may have even been erroneous and entirely unrelated to Melissa Witt. In the very least, it would sidetrack the investigation at critical time.
News reports from recent years often do not mention any argument taking place at all, or if any valuable information was ever obtained from these witness accounts. But information has circulated online which indicates that someone reported hearing a woman scream “help me” at around the time Melissa would have been in the Bowling World parking lot. One article mentions that a witness heard the screaming when they went to retrieve something from a vehicle in the parking lot, but they didn’t see anything. The early reporting appears to conflict with the more recent reporting - but what remains consistent is that someone did hear a woman in distress in the parking lot of Bowling world on the night of December 1st, 1994.
Another witness account took place a few days after Melissa disappeared, but would be reported upon after her body was discovered. Near the location of where Melissa’s body would eventually be discovered in the Ozark National Forest, a hunter reported seeing a white male changing clothes outside of a parked vehicle. The vehicle was described as a dark grey or black newer model car. But the man who was changing clothes did not appear to be a hunter. He was described as a white male, 5 feet and 11 inches tall, between 20 and 30 years old, weighing around 180 pounds with curly blonde hair. A composite sketch was released at the time. Police were interested in speaking to the man and wanted to determine why he was in the area.
To this day, it doesn’t appear that law enforcement have ever discovered who this person was. And to be exact, this incident occurred on December 4th, 1994 - which was the last day of hunting season - and also the same day that Melissa’s abandoned vehicle was discovered at Bowling World.
It was determined that on the evening of Melissa’s disappearance, she had arrived home from working at the dentists office and changed out of her work clothes. Multiple reports indicate that she changed into a v-neck sweatshirt and jeans - and that she also would have been wearing a Mickey Mouse wristwatch with a brown band. She also carried a purse - and a set of car keys that were later turned in to the front desk at the bowling alley.
But when her body was discovered near a place called Turner Bend in the Ozark National Forest, all of her clothing had been removed, along with her wristwatch, and the other hoop earring that would match the one found near her abandoned vehicle a few days after she was abducted. Her purse was also missing. And none of these items have ever been recovered.
And while it is possible that by taking these items, Melissa’s killer was making a poor attempt at concealing her identity - it doesn’t seem so likely. It looked as though the items were taken for other undetermined reasons. Because apart from these missing items, the evidence does not seem to indicate that the killer went to any serious lengths to keep the body hidden.
The area where Melissa’s body was discovered is remote. But not so remote that it wasn’t also regularly explored by hunters and occasional hikers. It was the kind of location that a person would be unlikely to stumble upon by mistake. They would need to be familiar with the area. Melissa’s killer was likely more than familiar with the area. It may have even held a certain significance to them. And furthermore, investigators determined that the exact spot where Melissa’s body was found was not the exact spot where it had first been left by her killer. The two trappers who found her body off of an old logging road told investigators that it wasn’t there the day before - because they had traveled the same road the day before and they would have seen it then.
And there were also noticeable signs that the ground had been disturbed, leading detectives on the case to conclude that whoever had disposed of Melissa’s body had originally left it somewhere else. And that somewhere else would be behind a large rock that resembling a tombstone - located uphill and approximately 10 feet away.
Photographs of the rock have circulated on the internet, and indeed - it does look like some kind of grave marker that would be seen in a cemetery. Investigators would have to wonder if this rock held some kind of significance, some special meaning to the person who left Melissa’s body behind it. It’s the kind of rock formation that would arguably stand out. It would quite possibly grab the attention of anyone passing by through the wooded area. And it is widely believed that this may have been exactly what happened the night before the discovery of Melissa’s body. Because on the night before her body was found, a strange phone was made to an Arkansas Police department.
The phone call itself went unanswered, but the caller left behind a message.
On the voice message, two voices could be heard...One voice sounded like an older women, while the other sounded like a much younger man - both with heavy southern accents. Police believe they may have been a grandmother and her grandson. Although the message has never been played publicly, it it suspected that the call may have been from someone attempting to notify police of the discovery of a dead body. According to reports, on the recording, the older women can be heard as she urges the younger man to tell police about what he had found. But the younger man says something to the effect of “I can’t.” And the phone call is then terminated.
Police consider this phone call to be significant. But without having the full transcript or actually hearing the recording, we can’t determine exactly what further insights investigators have gained from it. Did the caller actually discover a body and was it Melissa Witt’s? Was the young man unable to tell police what he had found because he was afraid of somehow being implicated in a murder? Did he know someone who might be responsible for the murder and felt the need to protect them? If the caller did discover Melissa’s body and attempted to do the right thing by reporting it to police, but had a change of heart before following through with it, then it is reasonable to believe that they might have still have held onto a guilty conscious. And that guilty conscious could have led them to revisit the place where Melissa’s body had been left originally and perhaps even move it from that place and out into the open where someone would find it.
This theory would line up with the evidence that suggests Melissa’s body was moved from its original spot behind the rock resembling a tombstone.
But none of this has ever been proven. And police continue to express their interest in speaking with both of the people on the phone call or anyone who might know their identities. Hopefully someday, the recording or at least the transcript is released so that the public can offer some assistance. It remains unclear as to why it hasn’t been released in some form already.
And while the police have been less forthcoming in this aspect of the case, they have informed the public of a number of different people that could possibly be responsible for Melissa Witt’s abduction and murder. We won’t be covering all of them in this podcast, because some of them have been ruled out, some of them have been theorized about endlessly, and some of them we know nothing about. But there are two suspects or persons of interest that law enforcement officials have had their eyes on for many years. Two people who have committed similar crimes to the abduction and murder of Melissa Witt.
Those two people are Travis Crouch and Larry Swearingen.
Travis Crouch is an Arkansas native who came across Police radar because of his history of drug abuse and violence against women. After being released from jail in October of 1994, he traveled to Arkansas for a brief time. Multiple witnesses placed him in the Fort Smith area through mid December, shortly after which he was arrested again in Louisiana.
Investigators also discovered that he lived and worked as a carpenter at a church camp he had attended as a child that was located just a few miles from the site where Melissa Witt’s body was found. He grew up and spent time hunting in the Franklin county area which included Turner Bend and the Ozark National Forest. And according to a 1999 article in the Southwest Times Record, police have stated that Crouch was seen driving a bronze Chevrolet Caprice near Bowling World at the time of Melissa’s disappearance.
Travis Crouch is currently serving time in a Colorado prison for the rape of a young woman he starting talking to in the parking lot of a shopping mall. The woman was forced to go with Travis in her own vehicle to the top of a mountain, where he made her remove all of her clothing before assaulting her. Luckily the woman was able to escape with her life after Crouch had passed out from being so heavily intoxicated. A Boulder, Colorado news article from July of 1998 details a sentencing hearing in which Travis Crouch was given 64 years in Prison for sexual assault - a charge he continued to deny that day.
The article notes that he was 31 years old at the time - which would have made him about 27 years old in December of 1994. He has been found to have had ties to at least 8 different states in addition to Arkansas throughout the 1990s.
To this day, Travis Crouch has never provided an alibi for his whereabouts on December 1st, 1994. He remains a suspect in Melissa Witt’s abduction and murder.
Larry Swearingen was a traveling electrician who moved through the southeast United States and became a person of interest to Arkansas police after they reviewed the Melissa Witt case files in 1999. Swearingen was arrested for the abduction and murder of another young female college student in Texas named Melissa Trotter.
According to investigators, Melissa Trotter met Larry Swearingen at a library, and he is said to have claimed that at one point they were supposed to go on a date together, but allegedly she stood him up. And shortly after that, she disappeared.
The Melissa Trotter case and the Melissa Witt case would have more than just the obvious similarities. In fact, the commonalities are so abundant that it’s difficult to believe that they are all just coincidences. Not only did the victims share the same first name and both attended college, but they were also the same age. And they were both abducted in the same week, during the same month of December, exactly four years apart.
In the Melissa Witt case, cigarette butts were found on the ground near Melissa’s body - which police would test for DNA. Cigarette butts were also found near Melissa Trotter’s body. And both of their bodies were discovered in national forests, each of them about 50 miles from their abduction sites.
Both young women were similar in physical appearance. They had both been strangled. They both had their personal possessions and clothing taken from them upon being murdered, including their jewelry. And police were able to confirm that Swearingen not only had ties to the state, but he was also in Arkansas in November of 1994, just days before Melissa Witt vanished.
Swearingen would have been about 23 years old at the time. And over the years, he fought his conviction for Melissa Trotter’s Murder before he was finally executed by the state of Texas in 2019. His lawyer prevented him from speaking to investigators about Melissa Witt prior to his execution, so if he had any secrets in relation to Melissa Witt, he took them with him to his gave.
Police, victim advocates, online sleuths, and fans of true crime all have different theories about what happened to Melissa. Some believe that she was the victim of a random attack, and that she crossed the path of a stranger who was idling in the parking lot of Bowling World that night. Maybe they saw Melissa as she pulled her vehicle into the lot and began watching her, but she didn’t see them at first. Maybe they approached her and started talking to her. Melissa would likely have rejected their advances, and perhaps they responded with violence. Or maybe they simply walked up to Melissa and immediately incapacitated her before carrying her away into the night.
But then again, some people believe that Melissa must have known her killer, or at the very least, encountered them some time prior to the night of her abduction.
Investigators have suspects. They have clues. They have theories and they have evidence, including DNA evidence - although we don’t know if the DNA is reliable because it has yet to lead to an arrest, even though there are multiple suspects who have not been cleared by police. There is also more advanced technology and there are resources that law enforcement never could have had in 1994. But for some reason, to this day, no one has been held responsible for the death of Melissa Witt. This case is still active and detectives continue to investigate as leads trickle in, hoping that someone can provide the missing piece to the puzzle, the one bit of information or evidence they need to find Melissa’s killer.
There are still many people in the Fort Smith, Arkansas community who remember Melissa. Family and friends are still waiting and searching for answers. And no one deserved to know the truth more than Melissa’s mother MaryAnn. But tragically, MaryAnn passed away in 2011 without ever knowing who took her daughters life, and without ever knowing who was responsible for causing so much pain. Before she died, MaryAnn described her daughter as sweet and loving, and she cherished the memories of Melissa talking with her friends on the telephone, and going to the mall, and just being a happy teenage girl. And while Melissa’s father, Johnnie Witt, and other relatives haven’t really been mentioned in this episode, the loss of Melissa’s life and the grief they have felt is ongoing still today and it is important that justice is served so that their wounds can finally heal.
After all these years, police believe this case can be still solved. Anyone with new information regarding the identity of the person who abducted and murdered Melissa Witt should contact the Fort Smith Police Department. Victim advocates have also created a Facebook page called “Who Killed Missy Witt?” that provides up to date information on the Melissa Witt case - and it has been an excellent resource for this podcast. The creators of the Facebook page have actually been working with Fort Smith police to help solve the case so I highly encourage listeners and readers to follow them.
When I decided to create this show, I knew I wanted to tell the story of what happened to Melissa Witt to the best of my ability. Because even though I never knew her in real life, I did grow up in the Fort Smith Arkansas area and what happened to her is the first true crime I remember hearing about as a kid. It struck fear in our communities and it brought sadness to so many people who genuinely cared about Melissa even though they had never met her. It has stayed with many of us ever since. And I still have hope that the mystery will be solved and that one day Melissa’s family and friends will be able to rest easy knowing that they have won their fight for the truth.
[The End]
This episode was written using information from multiple news sources and online publications.
Source citation:
https://www.swtimes.com/entertainmentlife/20170129/documentary-tells-story-of-melissa-witt
“Documentary crew seeking information In Missy Witt abduction, death” by Scott Smith
Archives - “Sketch drawn in Witt Case” by D.J Peters - December 14th, 1994
“Police ask for help finding Witt witness” by Tom Mashall - May 17th, 1995
https://dosouthmagazine.com/justice-for-missy-witt/ -
“Justice for Missy Witt” by Marla Cantrell
https://www.aymag.com/murder-mystery-mickey-mouse-killer-part-1/
“The Mickey Mouse Killer parts 1 and 2” by Janie Jones
“Murder, Kidnapping Frustrating Cases for Law Office” by Brenda Kilby
Archives - The Student Newspaper of Western Community College (December, 1994 - February, 1995)
Authors: Staci L. Chilcoat, Leanna Humphries, Staff Editorial Board
“Melissa Witt’s Body Found 22 Years Ago; Investigation Still Open” by Jo Ellison
Additional Information:
WhoKilledMelissaWitt.com and the official “Who Killed Missy Witt?” Facebook Page - by Ladonna Humphrey
https://www.leagle.com/decision/19972280954fsupp132612114
Carolyn Sue PARNELL, Administratrix of the Estate of Melissa Ann Witt, Deceased, Plaintiff, v. C & N BOWL CORPORATION, INC. d/b/a Bowling World of Fort Smith, Arkansas, Defendant. (February 4th, 1997)