Investigators have identified the skeletal remains found in January in rural Lancaster County as a 15-year-old Lincoln girl who has been missing for 11 years.
LORI PILGER and MARGARET REIST / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Thursday, March 22, 2007 7:00 pm
Finally, Missy is home.
It’s not the way her family hoped, not a call saying “I’m OK,” not a knock on the door, not a young woman walking into the house, a grown-up version of her 15-year-old self.
But home, nonetheless.
“People keep asking, ‘is it a relief?’” said her aunt Barb Stone. “It’s better. It’s better to know than not know. But it doesn’t feel as good as relief.”
In 1995, Melissa Schmidt-Maser locked up her Schwinn in front of the green apartment house near 12th and D she shared with her mom and sister, dropped her purse and shoes inside the door — and vanished.
For nearly 12 years, there was nothing.
Then, on Jan. 26, police found her, and say they have a suspect in her death, a man in custody on another case.
“The skeletal remains are who we believed they were throughout the investigation,” Police Chief Tom Casady said at a press conference Friday morning.
“They are Melissa Ann Schmidt.”
On Jan. 26, police told Shelly Schmidt, Missy’s mom, they’d found human remains in a ditch along Southwest 112th Street between West Van Dorn Street and Pioneers Boulevard, and they wanted a DNA sample to see if it was her daughter.
It had happened before, a body being found, a phone call from police. And so Shelly and her family waited. Again.
“Since we’ve known (about the remains being found) your head just runs in circles, you’re in the air, knowing you’re going to crash,” said Elizabeth Schmidt-Maser, who was 11 when her sister disappeared. “You don’t know how to act when you find out.”
On Tuesday, Police Sgt. Luke Wilke came to Shelly Schmidt’s job, pulled her aside and told her they were sure it was Missy.
Police believe Missy was the victim of a homicide that occurred around the same time she was reported missing.
“Although it’s incredibly sad that she appears to have been the victim of a homicide, in a way it’s good that after all these years, her family can know the truth and have the remains returned,” Casady said.
Shelly Schmidt said that’s important to the family.
“It’s been 12 years of looking for her and just hoping she’d walk through the door. We brought her home. That’s all I can say,” Schmidt said. “It’s a lot.”
And no matter what happened to her, her family’s love for her outweighs whatever evil is responsible for her death, she said.
Police developed a suspect in her death in the past year, though no one has been arrested or charged yet, Casady said. He doubted it would happen soon. The suspect already is in custody, so time is on the side of investigators and prosecutors, he said.
“The reason I wanted to tell you that there is a suspect … is that I don’t want the public to be concerned that we believe there is a murderer at large in this case,” he said.
Police haven’t publicly identified the suspect, but they’re still asking for help finding a gray 1979 Chrysler Newport.
The car belonged to Todd Baker in 1995, according to Baker’s ex-wife, Angela Hecox.
Baker was arrested March 3, 2005, in Florida in the 1996 murder of Anne True.
On Sept. 20, 2006, a jury convicted the 43-year-old of first-degree murder in True’s death and he’s since been sentenced to life in prison. He’s in custody at the Lincoln Correctional Center.
“The car does figure into the investigation. … If it’s still around, we’d like to do some forensic examination of the car,” Casady said Friday.
He said police have more information about the case, but none he could discuss at this point.
About a week before her remains were found, Casady said, investigators started looking for her in the area west of Lincoln.
“Obviously we had something that pointed us in that direction. We had some information that we were following up on,” he said.
“A lot of work by a lot of people, by a lot of different people has gone into trying to determine what happened to Melissa Schmidt,” he said.
He said she’d run away before, but investigators quickly found she didn’t fit the normal profile. None of her friends had heard from her. No one had seen her around town.
Numerous officers have worked on Missy’s case, but two years ago Wilke, who periodically reviews missing person cases, thought Missy’s could benefit from new technology.
He ran her name and Social Security number through new databases. He got a DNA sample from her mom and submitted it to a Texas lab that uses an FBI DNA index system to match DNA from missing people to a growing bank of unidentified human remains.
He tracked down old leads and kept in close contact with her family.
On Friday, standing on Missy’s stepfather’s front lawn, her family said they were grateful for Wilke’s diligence.
“He’ll be sitting with the family at the memorial service,” said Dave Maser, Missy’s stepfather.
Over the years, Maser said he never gave up hope completely, though it was hard.
“There were times reality would hit you in the face,” he said.
On Sept. 5, 1995, Missy went to the Nebraska State Fair and hung out at a friend’s house. She came home sometime that evening and dropped off her bike. Often, her sister Elizabeth said, she would sneak out and run across the street and through some apartment houses to a Gas ‘N Shop to use the phone.
And sometimes, Elizabeth would try to follow her.
Missy would tell her to go back.
Today, Elizabeth is 23, and has a 3-year-old son. Mary Rose, the 6-year-old sister Missy called “monkey” is about to graduate from high school. Breanna, the 2-month-old baby in the hospital with spinal meningitis the night Missy disappeared, is 11 years old. She’s healthy. And angry about the loss of a sister she never knew.
“The hardest part for them,” Elizabeth said, “is they didn’t remember, or know her. How do you tell them?”
That she loved to write poetry and dance. That she was feisty, like her baby sister.
“Bre’s the spitting image of Missy,” said Elizabeth.
There’s a song, by Martina McBride, that reminds Shelly of both her girls: her youngest and her oldest.
It’s about chasing dreams and living life, despite uncertainty.
That was Missy.
“She was an angel,” Shelly Schmidt said. “That’s why God took her, I think.”
Reach Lori Pilger at 473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com. Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com.