Melissa was the daughter of Midvale's police chief and was a very cautious girl. Midvale itself was a small Mormon town, very quiet, and though her father worried about his kids and taught them to be safety-aware, Melissa had little to fear in the tiny community. Standing 5 ft 3, Melissa was a small, pretty girl with long dark hair parted in the middle.

October 18th, Melissa had plans to attend a slumber party. She ended up walking to the local pizza parlor to console a friend who'd had a quarrel with her boyfriend. After this, she left to pick her overnight clothes up and go to the party. She never made it home, and she never made it to the party. The teenager who'd gone to comfort a friend in need, was found battered and nude 9 days later, far from the small town she'd grown up in.

Her head had been severely beaten with perhaps a crowbar, and her body had been battered before death.She had been strangled, raped and sodomized. Bundy confessed to her murder before his execution.