Family of West Virginia mom Melanie Metheny, who vanished 19 years ago, works to change how missing persons cases are handled

NBC News

a day ago

In 2005, Catherine Moles hosted a family cookout. Her niece, Melanie Metheny, brought her 3-year-old son Ryan. Catherine remembers Melanie trailing after him around the event and 'doting' on him. 'She followed him everywhere,' Catherine told Dateline. 'She was just very, very watchful of him. She was very protective.'
That was one of the last times Catherine ever saw her niece.
The 21-year-old vanished on July 19, 2006.
Catherine remembers Melanie as the cautious, animal-loving mom whose kids were her entire world. So when Melanie disappeared about a year later and people started to wonder if she had just run off, Catherine says she knew better.
'There's no way that that lady would have left any of her children,' she said.
In March of 2006, Melanie wrote a tribute to her children that was later found among her belongings. Titled 'The Best Things in My Life,' the opening line reads, 'My whole life revolves around my three kids.' She then gushes about Ryan and his younger brother and sister, Nathan and Hannah, individually. 'Being a single mom is not easy at all but watching my kids grow up and watching them learn new things for the first time is the greatest feeling I've ever had,' she closed in the tribute. 'I would not change them for the world and I don't know where I'd be right now if I didn't have them but I know my life wouldn't have as much meaning.'
Debi told Dateline Melanie wanted to give her kids the best childhood they could have, because hers had been tumultuous, bouncing back and forth between her divorced parents' homes. She had run away multiple times as a teenager, but would always come back. According to her mother, Melanie turned her life around when she got pregnant with Ryan at 16.
While Catherine remembers Melanie as a quiet girl, Debi saw a different side of her. She says Melanie was outgoing, loved to be the center of attention, and would always sing and dance. She fondly remembers a 5-year-old Melanie working hard to learn the lyrics to 'Three Little Fishies' so she could perform it for her grandfather. While Debi and Catherine may have seen different parts of Melanie's personality, the sisters agree she never would have run off and left her children behind. 'Once she had those kids, she wasn't going anywhere,' Debi said.
July 19, 2006, began like any other day for Melanie. She dropped off her two youngest children at Country Kids Daycare in Belle, West Virginia. Ryan spent that day with his paternal grandparents.
Dateline spoke with Larry Dodson, a retired captain of the Kanawha County Sheriff's Office, who still works part-time at its detective bureau. He says that after dropping off her kids, Melanie drove to a friend's house nearby, and then allegedly planned to head to Garnet Career Center to pick up some transcripts to bring to West Virginia State University.
'She wanted to be a nurse, or OB-GYN, or something to do with kids. That's just pretty much who she was,' Debi Daniel said.
Melanie never made it to the career center, nor did she return to the daycare to pick up her children.
'To my knowledge, that was Melanie who was supposed to pick them up, and when she didn't, that initiated all this,' Dodson told Dateline. He says Melanie was reported missing by her father at 11:18 p.m.
The Kanawha County Sheriff's Office began searching for Melanie immediately, and a BOLO for her van was issued to local departments.
Tips began flooding in. Dodson says they received so many tips that he 'doesn't have a clue' as to the full amount, but says investigators pursued each one.
Four days into the investigation, a tip came in to police that a vehicle had been found on the West Side of Charleston, West Virginia, where it had been parked for several days. It was Melanie's van.
'There was no indication of anything out of the ordinary in the van, and we took it into custody,' Dodson said. He also told Dateline that the only fingerprints on the van were Melanie's and her boyfriend's, both of whom used it regularly.
Dodson says the location of Melanie's car sparked some interest for the police. 'We were kind of like, 'Why in the world would her van be where it was?'' he said.
Ultimately, the van didn't give the police much to go on, so they focused on other tips.
Bill Daniel, Melanie's stepfather, told Dateline the police have been extremely dedicated to Melanie's case. 'They've been fantastic,' he said. 'They follow up on every lead that comes in and everything.'
Larry Dodson elaborated on some of the investigative efforts. 'We've pursued leads about possible drug involvement, we pursued leads with local people that she was involved with, we pursued leads to the state of Maryland and up to D.C.,' he said. 'They even pursued leads on several states along the East Coast, about alleged sightings, and all of them — nothing.'
Dodson says several persons of interest have been investigated. 'Some of them were cleared and some of them could possibly still be persons of interest.' He would not comment further on potential persons of interest but did confirm that foul play is suspected in Melanie's disappearance. 'We're still getting tips and getting calls on to check here, to check there,' Dodson said. 'I mean, it's not an everyday thing, but we still get tips to follow up on.'
The department does not consider Melanie's case to be cold and is still hoping to provide her family the answers they need. 'I don't know if you can give closure where you can't even tell what happened or where they are or if they're still alive,' Dodson said. 'The family's always going to wonder.'
Debi Daniel says that wondering — that not knowing — has created a great deal of stress. 'It just deteriorates your health — your mental health, your physical health.' She told Dateline that before her daughter disappeared, people always remarked on her smile. 'I would be the person that people would say, 'I want to smack you because you're always smiling,'' she said. 'Now I hardly smile anymore.'
Debi still has a hard time talking about what happened to Melanie, which is why she rarely agrees to be interviewed about it. 'My mind just totally goes blank when it comes to talking about it. I don't know if it's a survival mechanism, or something,' she said. 'My mind just totally goes blank.'
Of course, that doesn't mean she has forgotten Melanie. And the community hasn't either.
Melanie's is the oldest missing persons case in Kanawha County.
In 2016 — one decade after her disappearance — a tree was planted in Melanie's honor at Coonskin Park in Charleston. It is an Autumn Gold Ginkgo Biloba, which is known for its strength and resilience and has come to symbolize hope. It is also known for its brilliant yellow leaves. 'Yellow is the color for missing persons,' Debi explained. 'And so we chose that tree mainly because of what it represented — the different representations of the tree — but also that in fall, the leaves are yellow.'
Melissa's aunt, Catherine Moles, lives near the park and frequently visits the tree to take care of it. 'Every time I'm around the tree, I think of Melanie,' she said. 'There's just probably just too much to really remember — every time I visit, something new comes to mind.'
Catherine is the administrator of a Facebook group called ' West Virginia Missing ' that she updates regularly with information on local missing persons.
Inspired to help the families of other missing persons, in 2014 she began working to create a bill that was eventually sponsored by State Senator Glenn Jeffries. In 2019, the West Virginia Missing Persons Act became law.
'It basically defines what role, what information is needed to be collected, if possible,' Catherine said. 'And the most important thing was that a missing person's information was to be entered into the [National Missing and Unidentified Person System] database. That was my main goal.'
The bill also advocated for stronger police-to-family communication during a missing persons investigation.
Catherine told Dateline that Melanie was with her every step of the way through the bill's creation. Now she's working on drafting a new piece of legislation that protects the property of missing persons so they don't lose their property because of missed payments while they were missing.
'Sometimes these missing people are found and they don't want to come back to find out that they're homeless because their home was repo-ed,' Catherine said, adding that she wants to protect their estate for the missing and their heirs.
She is hopeful that legislation of this kind will help locate some of the missing and provide some measure of peace to other families. Peace their family is still waiting for.
Melanie's children are now in their early twenties, roughly the same age their mother was when she disappeared in 2006. Hannah has a little girl of her own now. The 1-year-old has strawberry-blonde hair just like her mother — and just like the grandmother she never met.
At the time of her disappearance, Melanie Metheny was 5'3' and weighed 100 lbs., with strawberry-blonde hair and brown eyes. She would be 40 years old today.
Anyone with information regarding the case is asked to contact the Kanawha County Sheriff's Office at 304-357-0200.