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Good evening Connected by Fate, unfolds against the haunting backdrop of the Ozark National Forest, where the unresolved murder of Melissa Witt has cast a long shadow over the dense woodlands for almost three decades. The mystery woven into the fabric of the remote mountaintop has become part of the lore of the land, with the true identity of the murderer eluding capture concealed by the forest's imposing presence, enter Lodonna Humphrey. Driven by a profound sense of justice and
a personal commitment to uncovering the truth. Despite never having met Melissa Witt, La Donna's connection to the case transcends the ordinary, fueling her with a relentless determination that has defined her life for almost a decade. Loadonna's investigation is a riveting narrative of courage, resilience, and an unwavering pursuit
of truth in the face of overwhelming odds. Each breakthrough and set back, each clue onearthed and lead followed, draws her deeper into a web of intrigue that extends far beyond the crime. Connected by Fate is more than a true crime story. It's a testament to the power of human spirit and determination, fueled by the knowledge that solving Melissa's murder is not just about bringing a killer to justice.
It's about restoring dignity to a life cut tragically short, and offering closure to a community haunted by the specter of an unsolved crime. The book that we're featuring this evening is Connected by Fate Who Killed Melissa Wit Book two, with my special guest, investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker, and author, the Donna Humphrey. Good evening and welcome back to the program. Thank you very much for this interview, the Donna Humphrey.
Well, thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to be a guest on your show.
Well, thank you so much, and congrats on this Connected by Fate.
Thank you. I'm really proud of this particular book and I'm really proud of the work that's been done to get us to this place. So I'm excited to talk to you about it today.
Absolutely, as you do in the forward, by Seeking Justice co host Lexi Cacus, we emailed you first in April twenty twenty one, and she had started at Uncovered, a crowdsource cold case database with a true crime community, and you met up with her at Crime Con in Las Vegas. Tell us what Lexi Cacus has to say in the ford about this book and your work.
Lexi, as you mentioned, she and I we originally met through an email and just really could see the passion that she had for cold cases. But she was particularly intrigued about the Melissa Wit case, and so you know,
she did reach out to me. We met up at Crime Con and then we continued to build a relationship, and really through the forward she really touches on my work on the Wit case, how it's inspired her work on cold cases, but then the work that you know then she's also contributed to the Wit case, and so
I was really proud of her. I've really watched her kind of grow up in her own investigative right since we first met, and I was really honored that she was willing to write the forward and to kind of touch on all of the hard work and the things that she has seen take place over the years that I've tackled the Wit case. So that's really kind of the gist of the of the forward, and I'm just I'm honored by it just thinking about it now.
Right away, you take us to Bowling World parking lot with retired detectives J. C Ryder and Chris Boyd. Tell us what this significance of this location is and what are you doing there and what you trying to ascertain? What are you trying to learn?
So the Bowling World parking lot is the last known place that Melissa ever was seen alive. That's where the blitz attack took place when she was attacked and kidnapped, And we revisited that scene on that afternoon as we're taking a deeper dive looking back at the case. What clues could we have missed? Really, they wanted to teach me a little bit about the crime scene as well and get a real feel for really how close she was to the building, how close she was to safety,
how brazen this attacker was. So that was really like the point of it, that particular day was just like a lesson in this is what happened and how it happened, to help kind of further my own personal investigation into the case and to kind of reignite what they were trying to do with the case as well.
You talk about you could take us back to December one, nineteen ninety four. You take note of your notebook and you have a crude outline of events from that December first, and one of those is from six thirty to six forty pm, a witness here's a woman shouting in the parking lot. Take us to what that witness hears.
It's believed that that was Melissa Witt, and that the witness hears her yelling helped me. And you know, that's pretty pivotal for the case because we know there was an altercation in the parking lot, you know, and it also gives us the ability to kind of set a timeline. So that's incredibly important to the case, and it's one of the reasons why I wanted to include it in the book, so people can really understand how a timeline is constructed in a case like this and how few
people actually witnessed the actual abduction. I mean, it's a crowded parking lot, but everybody was inside, and so I just I wanted people to maybe be as haunted by that fact as I am that even though you know, somebody actually heard this take place in the parking lot, there was little anything anybody could do to help her
at that point. And so there was a lot of reasons why I included it, And there's just so many more reasons why it's really important to the case, and so it's a good starting point, especially for those people who are just now learning about the Wick case and what happened to her and how it transpired.
You include one more important point that Melissa's car keys were found in the parking lot around seven forty five and turned into the front desk. But no one, you say, notice the blood on Melissa's keys.
Yeah, that's a real unfortunate part of the investigation. You know, these keys were probably in that parking lot for about an hour before they were picked up by a good Samaritan that you know, he was coming with his family and they picked up the keys. You know, they were there for quite some time, and when they were turned in, nobody saw these you know, these blood flakes that were drying on the keys, and had they known or had they seen it, it might have sped things up quite
a bit. But at that point, nobody knew Melissa was missing. And again, I think this is just a lesson in how these kind of crimes can take place, and how bits of this information really individually doesn't mean anything, or people don't pay close enough attention to things. We've got to be more aware of our surroundings. I'd like to believe had some of these clues been picked up earlier, that maybe there would have been a different outcome in this case. But you know, nobody knows that for sure.
But I think it's a good example of just not paying close enough attention to what seems like something that's ordinary. I hope people will kind of take note of that, and if you find keys in a parking lot, pay close attention.
Again, speaking of paying close attention, it was a different time and when they asked Melissa's mother, mary Anne, about her day, they asked. One of the first questions they asked when she filed the missing person's report was that if they had an argument, so tell us about Melissa's day. She spent the morning with her mom, mary Anne, but tell us about the day, the argument, and then reaching out to police finally, So it.
Was just an ordinary day, you know. They got up
that morning, Melissa asked her mom for some money. That's pretty typical with teenagers and their parents, and Melissa's mom said no, you know, no, she was aware that Melissa was going to get paid that next day, which was Friday, and she was really trying to teach Melissa money management, and so she left to go on to work, and mary Anne felt bad, as sometimes moms do when you have to teach your kid a lesson, and left her a note that said, Hey, I'm going to be a
Bowling World after work. It's my league night. Come see me and I'll buy you a burger. So they both went about their day, and then obviously it ended up in tragedy. You know, Melissa never made it inside to Bowling World when she did go visit her mom after she found the note, and you know, right away, Marianne Whitt knew that there was something tragically wrong because her daughter had never just not come home, and she began to drive the streets that evening looking for her daughter.
She never went to Bowling World to look for her car, because Melissa never showed up that night in her mind, so she didn't think Melissa was ever there. You know, this was not an event that had ever really happened before in the River Valley. And you know, we don't have access to like true crime stories like we do now. Think about it. You know, her mom wouldn't have thought, oh, well, I need to go see if you know, something happened
to her. And she never made it inside the you know, the Bowling World, and so she when ahead and went back home, started calling friends and Melissa's nobody knew where Melissa was. You know, she waited until the next morning, and she called a patrolman, and when the patrolman came out. You know, Melissa was nineteen, and there's no law about going missing when you're over eighteen, you know, you're an adult.
And this was before the National Center for Missing Unexploited Children had extended their services to kids that were aged twenty one. Nobody knew there was a crime. This patrolman actually just thought that she was angry and didn't come home, and that she would come home when she cooled down. And she did this. You know, let me rephrase that a little bit, not she did this, He did this, and kind of chalked it up to, well, she was
a runaway because he sees this hundreds of times. Departments see this hundreds of times a week, right the people are reported missing or they run away and then they just end up coming right back home. And that's really what he thought was happening. And so that report didn't go to the major crimes unit. It really just sat on a desk and that, you know, for a couple of days, and that was pretty unfortunate. I think it hurt the case.
Now, despite what the police believe, Mary Anne and family and friends believe there's no way that she would have ran away, and they think something's up. And so by this happens Thursday. By Saturday, they were already organized and
have six thousand flyers. They're trying to get everybody. They're blanketing the River Valley with over six thousand pleas for help finding Melissa's help finding the missing team, and the news stations pick up on the story on the search as well, along with the Fort Smith Police Major Crimes Unit, which you say is led by j c Ryder. So tell us more about this search and the police undertaking.
So the you know, Melissa's family and friends knew something was wrong. As I mentioned, Melissa had never done anything like this before. She was a really good kid, never had any issues with her, and so they knew, and I say to her family and friends, they all knew something was wrong. So as you mentioned, they banded together. They get flyers and they're going to get out there and they're going to find Melissa. They needed people to know that she hadn't come home and that something was wrong.
So the media did pick it up immediately, because again you've got this nineteen year old college student that just vanishes into thin air. This was new. These kind of things don't happen in small town Fort Smith at the time. And when the Major Crimes unit caught wind of this on television, they went back in to the department, said, let me see this file of this girl. You know what's going on here, you know. They they demanded to look at it, and once they had it, of course,
they jump in. They realized that this is something they need to look at, and so they get boots on the ground and they do the first thing that an investigator should, and they went to Bowling World and that's where they found her car. And when they find her car there, they know, now this is a crime scene because they find crushed hair clip, they find spots of blood. It's just very clear that something tragic has happened in that parking lot. And that's really kind of what kicks
this entire investigation off. So thank goodness the friends and the family had the forethought to get out there and pass those flyers out because that made all the difference. But this was Sunday, you know, she went missing on a Thursday night. This was Sunday before they were able to get involved.
Yes, you also talk about I mentioned that the car keys were turned in, but nobody realizes the significance of this and also the significance of the key chain leading to an incredible clue of the identity of the missing keys.
It was it was later before somebody called in. You know, they see all the news coverage and they realized that, hey, these car keys they say Missy on them, and you know, they're seeing this missing girl that's you know, all over the news, and that's when you know, they call police and say we have these keys. The police go and get the keys and then they realize that there's dried blood on the keys, and it just continues to escalate the situation. You know, now it's a it's not just
a girl that's run away or didn't come home. Now it looks like a crime has been committed. You know, that's when you know J. C Ryder and his team really put everything into full speed ahead. They knew the clock was ticking and they had already lost time because this is Sunday and Monday before you know, these things are being uncovered, and so you know, they're having to make up for lost time to be able to find this girl what happened to Melissa Witt.
So they conduct a search, but what initial clues, if any, do they have as to who this perpetrator might be.
In the beginning, they don't. They start interviewing local known sex offenders. You know, they're interviewing people that were in bowling world. You know, A red herring crops up pretty early. Somebody reported seeing a Caucasian woman arguing with an African American male, and so of course that gets blown up all over the media, and that's how they start looking for They get a sketch. It turns out that that
guy and that woman that argued were a couple. It had nothing to do with the wit case, but it cost the WIT case more time, and there were quite a few red herrings that popped up immediately in the case. But they did everything they could defind her. And then forty five days into this, you know, everything came to a screeching halt, and that's when the trappers found a body in the Ozark National Forest.
What can be determined once the medical examiner or the coroner examined the body doing the autopsy, a.
Lot of important things were found. What I can talk about is that they know that her body was out in the elements pretty much the entire time. They were able to tell that she had not been held. There were no ligature marks. They know that she was strangled, manually strangled at broke her hyoid bone. They know she was strangled face down because as she was strangled, she and held dirt and other debrison leaves that were way down in her airway, and that that was material that
was native to the Ozark National Forest. So they're, you know, confident that the murder actually took place there. They were not able to determine definitively that she had been sexually assaulted. They did believe it could have been sexually motivated though, though, because they believe it could have been sexually motivated, because she was found nude, her killer stole her clothing, her shoes, and her jewelry and her beloved Mickey Mouse watch that
she always wore. So, you know, there was a lot of interesting things to really kind of compare at the crime scene because there's two crime scenes. Right There's where she was abducted and then where she was actually murdered. And where she was abducted was very disorganized. It's a busy parking lot, it's a blitz attack. He leaves, you know, there's keys left behind and earring, blood pools, all of that.
But then you get to the other crime scene, the secondary scene, where she's actually murdered and they find her body and you know, she's stripped clean of anything. You know, the killer has had time to be more organized and decide what he's got to do, you know, to hide his crime. And I think that's an interesting aspect of
the case. And you know, it's important to note that where Bowling World is and where her body was found was an hour drive, so he had lots of time to think about what was going to happen next, what he needed to do, and to kind of calm down and to plan out, you know, the next series of events. It's tragic and it's horrible, but I think it's also something really important to point out.
What did j c Ryder and Chris Boyd, or at least police at that time, what did they believe in terms of his relationship to Melissa Wit This perpetrator and also relationship to the area.
Always been believed by local law enforcement and even the FBI that Melissa knew her killer, that this was somebody that she knew in some context in her life, especially how things went down in the Bowling World parking lot. So they believe it was someone that she had had
a relationship with before or knew in some capacity. And they also believe and as per the FBI profile, that her killer was someone that was local to the area or at least traveled to the Ozark National Forest to hunt, fish, hike, swim, whatever, Because the place where her body was found is really really pretty remote compared to some of the other areas
where people would go to do those things. You would have had to have been there before, and to go there under the cover of night, you know, on that Thursday night, he would have had to have known where he was going and how to get back out again. It's not an easy location and very accessible. So you know that in itself spoke volumes about the killer. You know, police take it a step further, and I agree with them her you know, her Melissa's killer's name is in
that diary she left behind. It was someone that she knew, and she knew fairly well.
I was going to ask, I was just going to ask about this diary. What when do police find this diary and what is contained in there that leads them to believe that their suspect is named in this diary.
You know, they look at the diary really early on, because you start you have to start looking at everybody that's close to the victim once her body is found, you know, and they had seen the diary even before her body was found, like where could she have gone? Who would she have gone off off with? But then you know, when she's found murdered, of course, then this becomes critical and so you know they're reading through it and it's the musings of a nineteen year old girl.
I mean, I remember being nineteen. You write about cute boys, and you know what your troubles are of the day, and you know things that you're doing and your hopes and your dreams. But there are there's a name or two that come up repeatedly in the diary and without giving a lot away. You know, it became something that after her body was found and there was a series of events surrounding one of these people in the diary, it became clear that he needed to be looked at closer.
And you know, by the time I came on the scene in twenty fifteen, you know that was not something that they had shared with me in the beginning. They may never have shared with me. Hey, that this guy is being looked at closely. That came about because he contacted me himself. And we can talk about that more later. But when you go back now and you read the diary knowing everything I know now, I mean, his name
just pops. It's like how can you miss it? Like he should have been suspect number one the entire time.
Let's talk about your relationship with the retired JC Ryder and Chris Boyd tell us how this happens, and tell us more about this growing relationship and your team.
You know, when I first got involved, you know, it was very arms length type of relationship. You know, they wanted to see the documentary happen. You know, I met them under the guise of I was doing this documentary. You know, they were sharing information with me. But you know, I wasn't part of the team, and I wasn't going to be somebody that they were going to work closely with. I'm an investigative reporter, you know, just tell the story.
You know, that's really kind of where we were. But you know, Jac and I ended up giving an interview together early on with the newspaper. We had asked the newspaper not to include a lot of idea identifying information about me, if any I wanted to be basically this person who was doing a documentary but not really be named, just for my own protection. And after the article ran, Jac called me and he said, did you see the article.
You know they included your name and your photo, and that's important part of the story because not long after that article ran, this man called me in the middle of the night and he was crying and he asked if I was the girl from the newspaper article, and he wanted to talk to me about Melissa Whitt and he wanted to know if I would take him to Melissa's grave. And it was just a really bizarre conversation
and it gave me a lot of red flags. I mean, I was just really taken aback by this and immediately contact Jace Ryder. And when I gave him the name of the person that called me, it took his breath away, like you could hear a pin drop on the other end of the call, and he said, you need to come in and talk to us. Is important, And so I did. I went into the department and talked to them, and they let me know that this could be our guy.
We think this is the guy. He won't talk to us, but he's reached out to you, and we could really use this to our advantage. And so there had to be a trust relationship built pretty quickly. That's really how it came about. They learned that they could trust me, and I've learned I could trust them, and I've not compromised, you know, sensitive information in the case. And through that partnership, we've all become very good friends. They're some of my
closest friends. But that's really kind of how it was all forged because of that one phone call by a guy that they would have never named or told me otherwise because they needed to keep that information to themselves. But I then went on a seven year journey pretending to be this guy's friend, collecting information along the way.
That's an incredible journey. You put his quotes in this book. The things that you talk about in this book tell us about some of the things that he imparts to you, the kinds of questions you ask him, the kinds of confrontations that you eventually have with him.
You know, my entire relationship with him was frightening because there are things I know about him that I can't disclose, right, I know what he's capable of outside of the wit murder, there's other things, And so it was always real cat and mouse with me because I knew why he was contacting me. It was it's that age old, let's stay as close to the investigation as we can. I want to see what she can tell me about the investigation,
which was pretty obvious to me. But he, you know, he started, you know, sharing how upset that he was that she had died. He started, you know, telling me that he was going to marry her, things that I knew were not true. I mean, because they didn't know each other, but they were not on the level where they were going to get married. Okay, So that's a red flag, like we're over inflating, you know how much
she cared about him. I also knew from the diary that she was pretty much done with this guy towards the end of her life, which was another red flag. You know, she didn't want him innut. But he also told me that he was just horrified that she'd been raped and murdered. And I know from the autopsy report and the medical examiner report and from law enforcement, it's impossible to know for sure that she was raped. That only the killer would know that, and most people don't
assume that. And I've just not seen that in my line of work. I'm not saying it's impossible, but that's a big leap to make, and it bothered me. It just it's sort of nagged at me because, you know, I also know that he had expressed frustration to other people that she was a virgin and all the things that go with that, and so it was just a really big statement for him to make, and it really
kind of incensed me. And later as our relationship became more volatile, because one I just could got to the place where I could almost not tolerate him in some of his stories anymore, about how much he loved Melissa, about how upset he was, and it made no sense that he wanted to build a relationship with me, And so I really got up in his business, so to speak, and I wanted to know, have you been violent with
other girlfriends? I mean, I was asking him really hard questions that I already knew the answer to, and I think he already knew I knew the answer to this, and he would become angry with me, and really this sort of culminated into me I asking him. I eventually asked him if he killed Melissa. As you can imagine, you know, that pretty much ended our faux relationship, whatever you want to call it, because he was so angry and I didn't hear from him for a very long
time until just before this book came out. And on Easter Sunday he texted me and said Happy Easter, Leadana, Wow, And it was unnerving to me because he knew the book was coming out. And you know, I've heard from him since the book has come out, so it's a continual game with him. He's a dangerous individual, but that's really kind of been the crux of our relationship. I think he wants to know how close we are, and I think I made it pretty apparent in my book just how much we do know.
You talk about the calls, the phone calls, but also along this seven year journey, there are have been times where there is some major intimidation, and you note one where your husband gets a call. Danny gets a call, and he races back home and then finds Polica at your house. Tell us what happens with this intimidating phone call?
That was incredibly frightening because he's contacted, and you know, he's told in this message, I'm sorry what I did? You know to your family, and then he can't get a hold of me, and so you know, he's at a basketball game with my son, and he did he has to get my son and and race back, as
you mentioned, but what he doesn't know. Meanwhile, I'm here with my girls and we've got somebody that's outside revving the engine of a truck and they keep leaving and coming back and doing that, and then they finally get out of their vehicle and they're wearing masks. And this this was frightening for us because we you know, we're kind of isolated where we live. It didn't seem like a prank, like a Halloween prank, you know. It seemed
like it was much more sinister. And that culminated into them coming and banging on my side door, my deck door so hard that the house shook and I thought they were going to come in through that door. So I sent my children. I have a three story home. I sent my children to the top level. I told them take the you know, take your phone. One of them has a cell phone. You aren't to come down for any reason, no matter what you hear. And you know, I've called the police, and I take out the shotgun
and I'm ready to defend my home. And they end up leaving. They bang bang, bang bang, and then they end up leaving. Police end up coming. And it was incredibly frightening to me. It's still frightening to even think about it. It scared my children. It felt like a message of some sort, you know, I don't. I can't explain why it happened or who did it. Police took it very very seriously, especially because of my work in the case. Yes, and so you know, they watched my house.
They actually, you know, stayed quite a while. They went around the house looking for footprints. They did everything that they could, and you know, they still check in on me because that's that's not a good thing to have happened. And it was just it was bizarre to me. And you know, there's been a lot of build up to the book that's coming out, and I just continue to believe that it was related. I've not had anything like
that happened since, thank goodness. But I think it just kind of goes to show the danger that's involved in this level of work that I've embarked on. It's not been you know, I think people mistake it is Oh it's it's fun. It's it's really not. I mean, this is this is life and death. A nineteen year old girl died and her murderer has a lot to lose
if he's caught. So yeah, I felt like it was important to write about one to kind of take back my h you know, take back the narrative from whoever did it and let them know that you know, I'm going to keep on keeping on and I'm going to expose you for what you did to me.
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slash murder. Start Ritual or add Symbodic Plus to your subscription today. That's Ritual dot com slash Murder or twenty five percent off. Now you talk about this seven year phone relationship, but meanwhile you're not just making and accepting phone calls. You are doing something to try to gain their evidence for who you believe is as you name that.
You call them the unnamed, unnamed suspect. Now, with that, you have a strategy, You have a team, You have these dedicated retired detectives with you helping you, and you're privy to information now more than ever. So what is the strategy that you employ using social media, billboards, the press, What are all the things that you do to employ to try to reach people and to gather information.
Well, first, first off, we launched a Facebook page called who Killed Missy Witt? And I could have never dreamed like the type of following that would happen with that case. You know, right now we have over twenty five thousand people that actually follow the page, but we have millions of shares over the you know, course of like eight years of our information, which is really important because you got to get that story out. But we knew that
also wasn't enough. You know, we were filming the documentary COVID happened. It slowed everybody down. I don't like to feel stagnant, but so I ended up writing a book, obviously a series of books. And then we employed an eight hundred number that people can call and no you know, it's a no Cops tip line. It's anonymous. If you've got information, you can leave it. We share it with the authorities, of course, and if you want to have a callback you know, of course we can call you back.
That's been a huge tool. We've gotten a lot of information there. We put up over a dozen billboards in the River Valley area in Arkansas simply saying who killed Melissa Wit That was hugely successful. It really rattled a lot of people to know that one, hey, her case still isn't solved, but it also rattled people that had information, and so that was good. You know, we got some
phone calls from that. You know, we've offered rewards. Our latest reward was centered around the twenty ninth and versary. We offered twenty nine thousand dollars people to come forward with information, and that really brought a lot of people out of the woodwork. But the other strategy that we've really employed that's been really successful outside of those things, is that we have really gotten to know our unnamed suspect,
probably better than he knows himself. We've gone back all the way to grade school to get to know people that knew him, and I have spent years of my life collecting information for law enforcement about him so we can construct a timeline of who this person is and decisions that he's made, and all of those things that really have helped the investigation along into this guy. And so I feel like that our team has done some phenomenal work that really could be replicated in other cold cases.
It's really made all the difference in Melissa's case. It's really easy to do. I mean, you know, putting together social media that's easy. Anybody. They could do that in a cold case, and I don't want people to dismiss it. There's a lot of power there. We've received thousands and thousands of pieces of information from that Facebook page since its inception in twenty fifteen. So you know, I've also
employed really getting involved in podcasts. You know, one of the first podcasts that really told the story and interviewed me was True Crime Garage, and you know, they they helped kind of propel stuff for us for social media. And then since then, other people like yourself who have a huge following have taken an interest and you talk about the books and so those things have been critical.
I mean, I can't thank you enough. It's you know, the last time when we were on your show, we had people call in, and so there's a lot of power in getting out there and networking with people like yourself that care about these cases and can get the information out on a big level.
Now you say you your efforts elicited information, crucial information, and you write about this Nixon O'Neill supposedly the roommate of your unnamed suspect.
Yes Nixon O'Neill. I was real leery of Nixon in the beginning. You know, I try not to meet with people in person, if at all possible, because, as you can imagine, people have all kinds of motives to want to meet. But he was really convincing, and so I did meet him in a hotel bar. And I just want to give a disclaimer. I would not suggest that other advocates make some of the decisions that I've made.
I'm not saying that they were the smartest. But I did meet with him, and he was just it was very intimidating, and it was very frightening, and I tried to make that come across in that particular chapter because I felt like a sitting duck and I just wasn't sure what was going to happen. But when he gave me information, he gave me the name of our unnamed suspect, right, and it was just lightning hit me. I don't know how to explain it. It was frightening and exhilarating all
at the same time. And spent a lot of time really fleshing out his story, and it turns out it was true. He really did live with this guy, and what was intriguing is that he had seen a female Mickey Mouse watch in their apartment, right, And so of course I immediately, you know, work through all the details with him and get him to go and interview with police. Of course that's important, It's more important than him telling me.
And so after he gave the interview, then I spent a lot of time picking Nixon O'Neill's mind, you know, just questioning him on this unnamed suspect's past. And that connected me with a lot of other people who were able to talk to me about other crimes that this guy had committed. And it just really kind of started constructing this like storyline that we had no idea, and some of it I can't talk about, but some of it I can say is that he's a very abusive
man who likes to hurt women. And I've continued a relationship with Nixon. You know, Nixon agreed to me writing about him in my book, which is a big deal because obviously the suspect is going to know who Nixon is. You know, I can say, I can call him Nixon O'Neill all day long. That's not his real name, but the suspect is going to know because he knows, you know,
he knows I'm writing about him. And I was really impressed by Nixon because that's a very scary thing to do, and he's gone on to give some national interviews lately. And I think this is going to turn the case upside down.
I really do.
And I knew the book could and the things that were coming from it, and I think it's important that the world understands that Nixon is real and he's a hero in this story because you know, he's he's come forward and said, I've seen this watch I've got this story.
You know, I need somebody to hear me. I think this guy is responsible, and you know, I attribute him coming forward to all of this other work that we put into play, through social media and those things that we did that gave him the courage to say, I can I need to say something. This is what I saw and that's all we had ever hoped that it happened, and he really opened the floodgates for us.
You also, this information elicited responses from other people. Women actually that were right away said they were really afraid coming forward and want to be anonymous, but they had some crucial information that definitely seemed to corroborate what the roommate was saying about relationships with women.
Absolutely. I mean, I spent years building relationships with these women. That's I need to I'm not sure if I did a good job imparting that in the book, but years to gain their trust, and some of them talked to me immediately, and some of them it took a little bit longer. But I mean they've been beaten held at gunpoint. Almost every one of them. He tried to strangle. Some of the stories are more horrific than others. It's the
most frightening thing ever. And I've met with almost all of the women in person at least and talk to their family, and I can see the fear. We've had women that have talked to us that have ended up fleeing the state of Arkansas because they're so afraid of this guy. And this guy is seriously dangerous. And you know, that's been something that's been part of this effort. That
is something that I'm particularly proud of. And I say that because these women lived right, They're lucky and their voices need to be heard because what happened to them was terrible and they need justice in their own way.
And each of these women want justice from Melissa Witt because they know that could have been them, And it's just really important for me to advocate for them and to really just say how proud I am that they came forward, because what they did was incredibly, incredibly brave, and you know, there as much a hero in the story as anybody else's. But they have all bravely spoken to law enforcement, which I felt like really needed to happen.
That was good.
I mean, police needed to be able to have on record this idea of who this unnamed suspect really was and what he was capable of, and the best way to do that was to talk to these women, and they did. And I'm glad.
We won't talk so much about because it would it would take quite a while to explain, but the monkey wrench efforts of Sandy Jones and the willingness by some law enforcement to go along with some of her ideas about the perpetrator. But you point out that she had that the four different people that she pointed the finger at. We won't talk about that. I think what's more interesting again is to get back to this roommate, Nixon O'Neil.
But also, like you say, he certainly this person, the perpetrator that you believe is the killer, knows of this betrayal. I could, he must see it as But also Nixon is still in correspondence with this person and then conveying that information to you and your team.
Absolutely right before this interview, I was getting messages from Nixon. This unnamed suspect is trying to lure him into a meeting like they're good friends. I mean, we have no doubt that the suspect has read the book. There's been, like I said, national media that Nixon O'Neill has given lately. I mean, he had two huge articles out there, and
so we're questioning his motives. I mean, he's still it's that narcissistic, psycho pathic personality, whatever you want to call it, sociopath who even though he knows that we're on to him, he just can't walk away. He still has to be a part. He still has to see what's going on. He still wants to play the game. And now the stakes are really high because he knows that we know, and we know that he knows. We know, you know, as complicated as that gets. So I'm interested to see
what happens. I mean, I know that law enforcement are really really close to, you know, the next chain of events that are going to happen in this case. But between now and then, it's pretty frightening because he continues to want to befriend Nixon. For whatever reason, it concerns me a great deal.
Frankly, let's Jesus as an opportunity to stop you hear these messages. Now you talk about Nixon O'Neil, but you also talk about some of the detectives that you've contacted, like Dale Best, who was there right at the crime scene and said it was one of the worst days of his career. And when you said to him that he had contacted you, what was his response.
It's almost like everybody else's. I mean, it's like shock and awe, honestly, I mean, people are are surprised, and then they're worried for my safety. But at the same time, you know, they're trying to catch a killer, and so there's this intrigue. You know, how brave is the donna going to be? You know, it's a little bit of all of that, and so Dale was always very supportive. You know, God rest his soul that he's passed away.
But I think that there was concern that he had for my safety and also that desire to see me push this to the finish line. So you know, I'm forever grateful for the support that he gave me and the knowledge that he imparted on me. You know, kind of the same with j c Ryder and Chris Boyd. I mean, you know, del Best was one of the good guys who wanted to see closure in this case.
I'm thankful I had that opportunity to know him, and I hope, I hope that you know, we do get to see closure very soon, because he'll be one of the reasons why this case came to you know, fruition. But you know, back to your question, I mean, he's just he was just really concerned, and I think in all that the suspects would be that foolish. I mean, think about it, why would you contact an investigative reporter.
Sure, you write about Melissa's mother and their daily torment for sixteen years after this, After Melissa's death, Mary Anne Wit and the stories in the newspapers Slain woman's mother keeps hope Alive July two thousand and two. Melissa fought very hard, but there was a you say that your team and yourself are fulfilling a vow made to Melissa's mother. What is that vow made?
I have promised Melissa and her mother that I'm going to see this through for justice. Melissa's mother wanted justice. She said that multiple times to detective Writer. She wanted to see her killers, her daughter's killer brought to justice. It wouldn't It was not going to bring Melissa back. It will not bring Melissa back, but it would stop him from hurting anybody else. And I have just made that vow as a mom, as a reporter, as a
human being, I can't look away from it. And you know, what started out as me just being able to tell the story became this passion for me that I never thought would happen. I mean, you know, I make a joke that you know I've been doing this for almost a decade. Sometimes marriages don't last that long. Sure, you know it's it's because of that promise that I made.
I feel like, as a mom of five girls, myself, I would want somebody to do this for my girls, and you know her mom is gone and so I'm I'm going to keep fighting until we see justice, and I believe we will. I do. I believe that we're closer than we've ever been and it's something that I'm really hopeful for and we'll be really proud of when we can see kuff slapped on the guy that did this.
You write about the value of reaching as many people as you can and in as many ways as you can, and that is evidenced by crime con UK in Great Britain twenty twenty two, but also you call it the crime con Catalyst. Tell us about the success of crime con.
Both my experience, you know, my experience with crime con UK and crime con US has made a huge impact in this case. I mean, you know, crime con UK is a little bit smaller than crime cons Crime con US has, you know, thousands of people that attend, but between the two of them, you know, you've got thousands of people who are interested in cold cases for whatever reason,
whether it's you know, entertainment. I'm not saying that I agree with that, but it's a reality in that genre entertainment, they care about cold cases, their advocates, whatever the reason being able to take that message and give it to those people who are going to be the people who spread it out there like wildfire, makes a huge impact
in a case. And when I was invited to speak at Crime con US in Florida, I was incredibly honored and nervous, but pretty convinced that I was only going to have a handful of people that cared about the case. I'm not a known name, don't work for dateline, you know, I'm not a big headliner. I'm just a girl from Arkansas. And I remember being backstage and they were getting ready to send me out, and I peeked behind the curtain and I looked at the stage manager and I said,
you've got me in the wrong place. He said, you're the Donna Humphrey, right, And I said yes, And so he sent me on my way, and I remember walking out to start my talk and there were hundreds of people, maybe six hundred people there.
Wow.
And I can't even talk about it without getting emotional because I knew what that was going to mean for Melissa's case, and that these people were going to take this story back into their communities and share it on social media, and that's what they did, and it turned
into the most amazing thing for the Wit case. I mean, it culminated in more interviews, which is always important, not just for me, but for law enforcement, you know, retired detectives, and it culminated into thousands and thousands and thousands of shares on social media of our hashtag Justice for Melissa Wit.
You know, we had almost within the first month of me speaking at crime Con, I had sixty thousand more unique visitors to my website than we'd ever had in the whole history of, you know, working on the Wit case. And so that, to me, that's a catalyst that lit a fire that I think forever changed the Wit case.
And I'm very, very grateful to Crime Con for that, because again, I'm just a girl from Arkansas with a passion for this cold case, you know, and they cared about it and they allowed me to talk about it, and I think that's going to help get us closer to justice because we actually had some tips come out of that. So it's just it's just amazing. You just never know what those kind of opportunities are going to bring.
You read about your film Uneven Ground, which premiered in May twenty twenty three at the True Crime Festival in Rogers, Arkansas. You say that you've entered into seventy five film festivals and won awards at twenty five and again, reaching more people, raising more awareness, speaking to people, resonating with people.
It's been an amazing experience. I mean, as a first time filmmaker for an independent doc, you don't expect to. I mean, the win rate in a festival is less than ten percent, and so to experience what our team has experienced is one and where we're just blown away, honored that people cared about the film and it did so well and people appreciated it. You know, as an independent filmmaker, thank you. You know it's tough to do that.
But more than that, it's like we were stunned when we had a distributor pick it up that just never happens, not typically for an independent doc. And then Amazon Prime picked it up, and then to Be picked it up, and then other platforms picked it up. And the film has been seen millions of times now and we neverticipated that. I thought maybe one hundred people on YouTube would watch it, and so to be able to have that kind of platform to tell Melissa's story has been beyond amazing. I'm
so grateful. I'm very grateful because this nineteen year old girl deserves to have her story told, and she deserves to be remembered, and I feel like we accomplished that, and so I hope that it helps contribute to closing the case. It's definitely helped make the phones ring. I mean for sure when it came out initially, the phones were ringing off the hook.
You described this bit of a book where you say that it's a delicate dance between presence and absence, between the tangible and the ethereal. And what we're talking about is when you went with your team and you went to the Melissa WIT's gravesite and you found a drawing and what was that drawing up? Exactly?
It was a butterfly. And I never dreamed how much meaning this would end up having in my life. You know, I'm big into signs. You know, it's motivating for me, and so that really kind of culminated into if it's okay if I jump ahead a little bit, but just from seeing that too, you know, had spent some time filming in those Ark National Forest and a butterfly landed on me. It had been circling and landing and it
was my whole team was in awe. It just felt like Melissa was there and saying thank you, you know, and it felt it felt good to feel, you know, feel that maybe we were on the right track, because this kind of work is really dark and hard and sad, and to have anything positive happening, I really have to hold onto that with both hands because I don't want to say it's been a negative experience, but it's been
a dangerous experience. It's been you know, my life is forever altered and I made that choice, but I can't. I don't get to live my life the same way that I used to. And no regrets, you know, none. But it's those type of instances that happen that I have to see the beauty and that find some hope in the work that we're doing and believe that Melissa feels that way too. It really, I know that sounds naive, sounds,
you know, saying it out loud. I'm being a little bit vulnerable here, but it's something that we choose to believe because it brings us happiness and hope in something else in something that is really just filled with sadness and it's something that we need.
In this book. You close it with a message from j. C. Ryder and also yourself. Tell us what these messages contain and to who.
The messages are for Melissa's killer directly to a name suspect. And you know what, when when J C. And Chris asked if they could be included in some sort of you know, closing statement to her killer in this book, I was all about it. But their message is so powerful. They want the killer to know. You know, lots of time has passed, you know, thirty years, Yeah, but neither the time that has passed nor their old age because they're you know, one is in their seventies, others in
his late sixties. You know, it's not changing anything. And we're still here, they said, and we're still coming for you. And I loved that because and I echoed those sentiments I want most importantly, you know, I wanted to leave the killer with this message, and I want your listeners to feel the importance of that too, is that, you know, he never counted on a mom of seven getting involved. He never counted the power of somebody who's going to say,
not one more girl, are you gonna hurt? He never thought that anybody would find him, and my message to him was, but I have indeed found you, and you know that I have. And I hope that he's unable to sleep at night because of that. There's just some power in that in reminding him that Melissa is not forgotten. She's not. And I'm given, as I'm given this interview
with you, I'm looking on my wall. I had somebody paint me a portrait of Melissa, and it's hanging in here in my office, and I'm reminded of that of those words like she's worth it, And I want him to understand that she's worth it to me, and that he just wasn't counting on this, and I think that that's I think that's really important for him to understand that he underestimated the power of people continuing to care, that this case.
Wasn't solved, and also that you have stressed over and over again, all of you that you will not give up in this pursuit of justice at all. No.
I mean, I'm ten years in it, well, not quiet, but almost there. I would think that if I was going to give up I would have done it already, and I'm not going to I'm going to be standing there in that courtroom, sitting there in that courtroom every single day when they bring him in and they put him on trial for what he did front row. It's a promise. I'm going to make sure we get to that point. It's important to me, it's important to everybody that loved her. You know, she still has family out
there that care very much about this case. She still has friends that think about her all the time. I'm just the one that carrying the torch, and I'm going to keep carrying that torch until we can say that Melissa Witt has justice.
Absolutely, I applaud you for your extraordinary work and this book connected by fate. I want to thank you very much for this interview. For those people that might want to find out more information or find out more about this book, tell us about your website and social media.
Absolutely, so, there's two ways to find me. I have two websites. One is Whokilledmissywit dot com. We urge people to go there. There's a lot of information. You can buy the books, you can click on links to go watch the film, and you can learn more about Melissa and find photos of her. If you want to know more about me and you're interested in the work I've done and any other work I'm going to do, you
can go to La Donna Humphrey dot com. There's a lot of stuff on there about Melissa Witt too, of course, since that's a case that's so important to me. And then we really really just invite people at me than so much to us if you will follow who killed Missy Wit on Facebook? We get about, you know, ten between ten and one hundred new follows a day, and we just want to continue that trend. It's really important and we just encourage people to share the information. If
we put it on Facebook, it's important, right. We don't do it for no reason. We just ask people to share it. It's really you know, how people can jump in and do their part in a cold case.
Absolutely, thank you so much, Ladna Humphrey connected by fate who killed Melissa Witt. It's been an absolute pleasure of speaking with you, and you have a great evening and good night.
Thank you.