Melinda Brown left her parents around 7 p.m. on November 15, 1998, to attend a home party in Simi Valley, California.
Later that night, about 10:30 p.m., local authorities broke up the party due to noise complaints from the neighbors. Brown, 18, and his companions ended up in an apartment complex near the original party location.
“It was a smaller gathering,” Ventura County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Craig Hennes told PEOPLE. “They continued to party for a few more hours there.”
Brown never came home that night. When she failed to show up for her shift at In-N-Out Burger two days later on November 17, a missing person report was filed.
Her remains were discovered 10 days later, next to a shallow grave a few hundred yards off a popular dirt road in the Hungry Valley section of Los Padres National Forest near Gorman.
“There was a lot of animal activity,” explains Hennes. “It looked like some of the wildlife had unearthed her and dragged her out of the shallow grave.”
“She was shot in the back,” he says.
Brown’s last moves have perplexed Ventura County police for the past 27 years.
According to witnesses, Brown was dropped off at a liquor store at 1 a.m., roughly a half mile from her home, following the second party. “But what we can gather is that the liquor store was closed,” says Hennes, who questions whether she was even dropped off there.
“We don’t have any witnesses who actually placed her at that liquor store,” Kathryn Torres, a senior deputy with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office, tells PEOPLE.
Where Brown was killed is also unknown.
“All indications are that she was murdered and then transported and left in Gorman, but we don’t know that,” Hennes adds. “We don’t know where the homicide scene is.”
There is also no evidence that the youngster, who resided with her parents and sister in a tranquil suburban community in Simi Valley, was kidnapped.
“We’re suspicious of the people that last saw her,” Hennes tells me. “And that’s where the original investigation hit a lot of roadblocks.” At the time, there was little information or cooperation among that friend circle.
Detectives hope that advances in DNA testing may provide the break they need to solve the case.
“When the crime scene was being processed, a lot of DNA samples were taken,” Torres recalls. “And we are now beginning to resubmit those for updated processing. We have trace evidence that we are still evaluating, which we believe will lead to a suspect DNA profile.
Who would kill the teen?
“Right now, we believe it was somebody that knew her,” Hennes said. “We don’t think it was a vagrant or a random person who happened to come into town. We believe Melinda knew who killed her, and we’re working to prove it right now.”
Detectives hope that anyone who knows what happened would come forward.
“People didn’t want to talk back then, but maybe, we’re hoping, now 30 years forward … people have lived their life, and they have children of their own that maybe they would feel now is the time to come forward and say something,” according to him.
