Melanie Jo Melanson was a 14 year old girl from Woburn, Massachusetts, whose disappearance became one of the most haunting unsolved cases in the area. She was a teenager with her whole life ahead of her, a freshman who should have been thinking about school, friends, birthdays, music, and the normal growing pains of adolescence. Instead, her name became tied to a mystery that has lasted for decades.
Melanie lived with her grandmother at the time of her disappearance. Like many young teenagers, she wanted freedom, wanted to be around friends, and wanted to be included in the social world around her. She was still very young, but she was at the age where independence starts to feel important. That desire to be part of something bigger than home and school appears to have played a role in the events that led to her vanishing.
On October 27, 1989, Melanie told her grandmother she was going to spend the night at a friend’s house. That explanation sounded ordinary enough. Teenagers often sleep over at friends’ homes, especially on weekends. But Melanie did not go where her grandmother believed she was going. Instead, she went to a party in a wooded area near an industrial park around the Woburn and Stoneham line…