Welcome back to the Pathwayed Chili for the concluding chapter of our three part series
of episodes about the disappearance of Melanie Flynn. Robin, do you want to
catch everyone up on what we've discussed during our last two episodes. Well,
Melanie Flynn was twenty four years old and went missing in Lexington, Kentucky,
in February of nineteen seventy seven. She hailed from a very prominent family as
her father was a former state senator, and after a seemingly ordinary day she
was working her job as a secretary and told her family she was going to
be home in time for dinner. But she never showed up, and she
never called to say that she was going to be late, and they would
eventually find her abandoned car at an apartment complex where she used to live,
as well as her purse in the Kentucky River. Of course, the original
investigation, they checked into some sightings of her, saying that she was living
in Florida at a hotel. That lead detective from the Lexington med said that
he checked it out, became convinced that the girl these witnesses saw was Melanie
and closed the investigation, even though did not actually meet this girl and positively
identify her as being Melanie, so of course her family was not happy with
that ruling. Then a bunch of other stuff would come out that an officer
for the Lexington PD in the Narcotic Squad named Bill Canan claimed that Melanie had
acted as an informant for him years earlier and pushed forward the idea that she
might have skipped down because she was in fear for her life about being labeled
as a snitch. But of course her family did not understand this as well.
They believed that she was in a relationship with Knan, but he denied,
disclaiming that he was already married at the time, so there was nothing
between him and Melanie. And there was another cop with the Narcotic Squad named
Drew Thornton who was a rumored to be involved with Melanie as well, and
rumors also started circulating that both these officers were responsible for Melanie's disappearance. And
then several years later Thornton, after he resigned from the Lexington BAD started a
drug smuggling operation called The Company and wound up being killed while he was trying
to smuggle drugs from Colombia. Into the US, and while he was being
chased by the authorities, he decided to dump his cocaine shipment from his plane
and parachute out, but because his shoot didn't open, he wound up being
killed after a free fall. And many years later Bill Canan he would also
go to prison for his role in drug trafficking and received an eighteen year since
and was released after US spending I think fifteen years behind bars, and he
passed away in twenty twenty. And in recent years, the authorities have been
acting on a tip that Melanie's remains were found in a septic tank located just
outside of a Lexington but they were unable to find her remains or any evidence
to support this story. So after all these years, she's still a missing
person. So now we're going to discuss what we considered to be one of
the most troubling aspects of this story, and that's the half assed investigation performed
by Lexington Police detective John Bizak, who claimed that Melanie had been seen at
the Texas Hotel and Daytona Beach in the months following your disappearance. According to
Bizac, he spoke with no less than nine Alley witnesses who positively identified Melanie
from her photograph and the various timelines they provided suggested that Melanie had been staying
at the same hotel for three months. These witnesses also apparently provided specific details
about Melanie to suggest that they really interacted with her and did not mistake her
for another woman. So Bizac came to the conclusion that Melanie took off all
entarily and was still alive, which is why he decided to close the investigation.
But the big issue is that he did not actually confirm with one and
percent certainty that she was alive. Yes, there are other documented cases where
missing people do disappear of their own accord, and after they're found, they
will sometimes tell law enforcement that they have no desire to reconnect with their family.
If they are a legal adult, they do have the right to make
this decision, so if this ever happens, law enforcement will often respect the
missing person's privacy. Well, they won't disclose the location they were found.
They will at least confirm to the public that the person is still alive and
the case is now closed. However, before they do this, they're supposed
to make actual contact with the missing individual and verify their identity. But this
is not what detective Bizac did, as he just seemed to take people's word
that Melanie was still alive, but did not actually tracker down himself to confirm
this. I mean, I know that missing person's investigations were handled much differently
during the nineteen seventies, and they've come a long way since then, but
this sounds ridiculously irresponsible. It is ridiculously irresponsible. I mean, when you
were describing the way that detectives will handle a missing person's case when they identify
and reach an adult who says, I don't want to go home to my
family, Melanie didn't do that. People told this detective supposedly that they had
seen her right, that they had made contact with her, and that they
knew information like she lived in Kentucky. But I really struggled with the idea
that there could have been confirmation bias, which we talked about in another episode
where Detective Bizac gave too much information. He showed a picture, he said
things like, you know she's from Kentucky, her parents are very concerned she
was last seen here, and they're able to then regurgitate similar information and link
someone's face that they loosely know to this girl in the picture. So there's
a lot of things that I think Detective Bizzack did in a very just kind
of sloppy way or lazy way, and then said I have enough information to
say case closed. He didn't. He never put hands on Melanie, ever
put eyes on Melanie, And therefore I don't trust that investigation whatsoever. I
can only manage the backlash if something like this happened today, because I know
that because of the Internet and social media, people follow missing persons cases so
closely. So if the law enforcement officer said, we found this person,
we think she's alive, but I didn't actually see her the confirm it was
her, you can only imagine the huge fear of that would happen over the
internet. We're in like a whole new era of law enforcement where there's this
like level of accountability that just wasn't there before. Because of the Internet,
we're aware of people who are working these cases. And when people make major
missteps or they don't investigate leads, or they try to take credit where credit
isn't due, they get called out. And I mean there's also body cans
and things like that. But I also think back in the day, there
was very little that the public could do to kind of breach that wall to
get that information. The only information we knew was what they released, Whereas
now it's like we've got instant access to what the family is saying, to
what friends are saying, and it's all out there. So if something like
that happened today, he absolutely would get raked over the coals. So at
best, Bizek was not performing his due diligence, but at worst, he
could have made the decision to close the investigation due to internal pressure from the
Lexington PD. Unlike many of the other law enforcement figures in this story,
it doesn't sound like Bizik was ever implicated in any serious scandals, but he
had a pretty successful career, publishing a number of police manuals and serving as
commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Criminal Justice Training following his retirement from the force.
But after he was promoted a captain, Bizik would face heavy criticism from
Melanie's mother, Ella Ritchie Flynn, after she supposedly provided him with some records
to assist the department with the investigation, and they were mysteriously stolen under his
watch. So whatever successes Bizak might have achieved in his police career, working
on Melanie's case was not one of them exactly. I mean, Ella erg
Flynn, she's an amazing human being in this case, Melanie's mama not only
it was an advocate for her daughter, but she also went as almost her
own detective and gathered information. She delivered it to the law enforcement agency that's
supposed to be working in her daughter's case. And not only do they not
pay attention, it's stolen, like they lose the information that she and her
family deem important in the case. And then remember Ella's also the one that's
listening to the radio, and here's that the chief of police is saying,
Hey, we really pay attention to this case, we're really working at and
they're really using it as a publicity stunt to say, hey, we're this
great law enforcement agency, we're pro cold cases. And Ella Colson and says
basically, you're a liar, which is awesome. She's so brave to do
that. I think it's super sketchy and like sus that he gets given this
information and it mysteriously goes missing, and it's like these are the sins of
his past. I'm thinking, even if he himself isn't complicit in any drug
trafficking or any misdeeds, the fact that he's linked to the whole mess in
the disappearance of Melanie and all of the individuals like Canan and Thornton, and
who knows, we only know those who were convicted of crimes. He may
have done things in his past that he doesn't want dredged up, And if
her case is getting closer to being solved, people might come out of the
woodwork to implicate him. We just don't know all of the circumstances surrounding it.
But I do find it highly suspicious that he doesn't seem to be working
that hard, and he goes so far as to let that information slip through
his fingers. And it's like another person who seemed to fall upwards, like
we talked about every day, Like you got fired from the police force for
forging a share of signature, and he wound up working for the governor's office.
And here Bizzac goes from being a detective to become a captain. Like
my god, I know, I would I say he failed on that case.
It just feels like white male mediocrity falling upwards again. So now I
think would be an appropriate time to talk about another colorful character in this story
who has a connection to Florida. We mentioned in our first episode that Melanie
had a short lived marriage during the nineteen seventies which ended in divorce, but
she followed it up by meeting a wealthy Cuban born horse breeder named Mario Crespo,
who ran a prominent horse farm in Lexington and was involved in producing bemis.
Crespo also reportedly ran an escort service in which he would videotape his women
in compromising positions with state government officials for the purposes of extortion and blackmail.
Melanie often traveled with Cressboe and worked a few jobs for him, such as
appearing at some of his horse events, but it was never officially confirmed if
they were romantically involved, and Melanie always maintained that the relationship was purely professional.
Cressbo did have connections with the Lexington PD as Drew Thornton and other off
duty police officers would sometimes moonlight by providing security for his horse farm. Again,
I wonder his us part of that circle that I was talking about in
our last episode where men will literally form this kind of wolfpack predatory behavior where
they talk about their relationships with a female. Right they're bragging about this pursuit
or that they have this goal to conquer some woman, and then they continue
to talk and it becomes this excitement where each man is going to go out
and pursue this same girl or try to manipulate this girl to be with them
or to check her off their list. Well, now Cressbo's added to these
two detectives who are already in cahoots with each other. Do you guys think
he could have been involved with something like that too, where Melanie's like just
the target of their kind of braggadocious behavior. Yes, and I think he's
okay. He's a wealthy Cuban born horse breeder. We know that, like
so often, drug cartels will tie up their money in horses. So I
think the fact that he's associated with all of these people, it seems likely
that all of these men are trying to conquer Melanie in this creepy kind of
way. And also the fact that I'm sure he used the fact that other
people other men bragged about their conquest with women to his advantage because like he
said he would videotape women in compromising positions with these high level officials. So
I think he would probably befriend these people, set them up with women,
and then videotape them for the purposes of a blackmail. So he was even
a higher level than the men in the Lexington PD by how he used women.
It also opens up the possibility that doing these jobs or being involved somehow
with Cresbo, the Melanie might have known too much information about certain high level
individuals. Oh yeah, exactly. So that's why he's looked at as a
potentially being involved or having knowledge of Melanie's disappearance. Around the time Melanie went
missing, Cresbo and six other women traveled down to Florida to film some commercials,
and while Melanie was apparently supposed to join them at some point, she
never showed up. We're not saying that Cresbo had any involvement in Melanie's disappearance,
but it is interesting that she was apparently planning to take a trip to
Florida at some point. So if you believe the eyewitness sightings of her at
the Texas hotel are accurate, then perhaps she went there because she was scheduled
to do some work with Cresbo. I mean, if the rumors are true
the Cresbo used his escorts to blackmail the powerful figures, and Melanie became involved
in that, there's a potential motive for why she was made to disappear.
But again, it really doesn't make much sense for Melanie to abandon her car
in a rough neighborhood and toss her person to a river if she was planning
to leave the state. It seems like this whole lead with Florida started because
Melanie's mother received a tip from a woman who claimed her nephew had seen Melanie
in Daytona Beach. So if the Lexington PD had a vested interest in giving
off the false impression that she was still alive somewhere, then they could have
twisted the facts about these eyewitness sightings in order to fit their narrative. Oh
for sure they could have. I also wonder if the escorts could have been
involved in this where they befriended Melanie and they made it seem like they were
just girlfriends, that we're going to hang out with her, and then they
actually helped apprehend her as well. That's possible because we see that all the
time with sex trafficking, right, is like somebody will be sex traffic and
then they then kind of like recruit them to take on a more managerial position.
We're there then recruiting other growth or like they then become the abusers.
But before we start talking about potential foul play scenarios, I do have to
acknowledge that it's not completely impossible that Melanie's disappearance could have been the result of
some sort of mental breakdown. After all, she did experience a very serious
head injury after a horse riding accident years earlier, and well, this did
not prevent Melanie from living a fully functional life. It does sound like the
injury changed her personality at the outset her own family. Even lead towards the
possibility that Melanie had lost her memory, as she did once go through about
a partial amnesia, reportedly because her ex husband struck her and exacerbated her head
injury. If something happened to Melanie shortly she left her workplace, which somehow
triggered this again, then yes, I suppose she could have developed amnesia and
wandered up. This could provide a potential explanation for why her car was parked
at her former apartment complex, as she could have forgotten her identity but still
had vague memories of having lived there years earlier. Maybe the reason her purse
was found in the Kentucky River was because she leaped in there herself and they
just never found her body. Oh, I don't buy it. I think
that again, the amnesia thing was something where her parents went. What if
that's it. Maybe that's what happened to her because she was really nervous before
all of this, And if she has amnesia, we can find her,
we can go discover where she's at. Yes, Melanie had had some head
injuries. Yes, she had been abused by her spouse. She had been
through a lot of trauma. So the nerves before her disappearance I think were
more trauma PTSD or perhaps active issues she was having with Let's say these two
detectives. But I just don't think that they triggered amnesia case sticks at all.
I mean, if there were no other leads in this case, I
might be willing to give it a shot. But there's so much other suspicious
and shady stoff involving the Lexington PD that it would be hell of a coincidence
that they were not involved and Melanie's death was related to amnesia, and usually
when bodies are put into a river like how big is this river? It
seems likely that they would have found her body if they found her purse.
All that being said, I don't believe the amnesia scenario is very likely,
and given the amount of shady characters Melanie seemed to hang around with, I'm
inclined to believe she got herself mixed up in something which led to her becoming
a victim of foul play. By the sound of things. The first time
the Flynn family started becoming really suspicious of the Lexington p D was when Bill
Canan publicly stated that Melanie had once worked as an undercover informant for the Narcotic
Squad. Up until this point, they just assumed she was romantically involved with
Cannon and were taken by surprise when he totally downplayed their relationship. Remember when
Bbby Flynn officially reported Melanie missing, the first copy spoke to was Kanan,
who was quick to apply that Melanie had a problem with drugs and alcohol and
seemed to want to quell Bobby's expectations that he would ever see her again.
It sounds like Kanan was trying to plant the seeds in her family's heads that
she took off on her own, and since they believed he had a close
relationship with Melanie, they were surprised by how unconcerned Kadan seemed to be when
she went missing. Well, remember, Jules, you kind of put it
in my head too, because I said, well, maybe he's being forthcoming
right off the bat, and then you're like, Ash, was he right?
It's very sudden, a lot of details in his story to kind of
shape a narrative, and then we both went, aha, I guarantee you.
Also, let's say Cannon wasn't just covering for his own criminal behavior,
but he also had a wife, and it sounds like he might have crossed
the line and had a highly inappropriate relationship with Melanie as well. Absolutely,
I think that had to be a major consideration for him, especially if he
wanted to preserve his relationship, because her parents believed that she was in a
relationship with Kanan, and also her friends did as well, So personally,
I think that he was in some kind of sexual relationship with her, and
possibly Thornton was at some point too, so that could have proved to be
a major problem, especially if her feelings were as deep as she'd said that
she wanted to marry him, like, dude's already married, and if she
said to him, hey, I'm going to tell your wife you're going to
be with me, something like that could provide a motivation for him to then
act and to choose to end Melanie's life. Oh yeah, that would make
perfect sense. And you'll you'll remember his lame excuse when there are a lot
of people saying that, well, they introduced each other as boyfriend and girlfriend
at parties, and he said, oh, that was just us working undercover
when she was an informant pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend. It's like,
come on, like, dude, no, that just didn't happen. Like
that is inaccurate, and you're trying to cover your butt with your wife.
For sure. I find it very interesting that Kanan went public with the INFRA
Nation about Melanie being a drug informant immediately after her purse was found near the
Kentucky River. Before this, the lexanianped had essentially closed the investigation because they
were certain Melanie was alive in Florida. But now that evidence was found to
contradict this idea. Canan started pushing forward the idea that Melanie ran away because
she was facing heat over being an informant. But that doesn't make much sense
because, by Canan's own admission, Melanie had not done any undercover work for
about two years. A few weeks after Canand made this announcement, Melanie's brother,
Doug Flynn, did an interview in the newspapers in which he publicly expressed
his skepticism about Canan's claims. As far as Doug knew, Melanie did feed
Canand tempts from time to time because she was an act of socialite who was
friends with a number of people. She wanted to help Canan out because she
was dating him. But Doug did not believe that Melanie ever worked for the
police in an official capacity. Indeed, from what I read, they never
found a ual documentation such as court records or police expense reports to verify the
claims that Melanie was an informant. For what I read about Canan, since
he was the first person to ever work as an undercover narcotics agent with the
Lexington BD, he was pretty much given free reign to do whatever he wanted
under the guise of maintaining his cover, so this probably explains why he and
other narcotics agents like Drew Thornton were able to get away with selling off the
drugs they seized at a profit. It seems plausible that if Canand became romantically
involved with Melanie, used her social connections to meet prominent figures on the drug
scene, which would help him expand his own drug dealing operations. After all,
when Melanie went missing, she left behind a black book containing the names
of over two hundred friends, so she definitely knew a lot of people.
I also think not only did he use her social clout really, but I
also think he used his power and kind of his position as an authority figure
in Melanie's life to manipulate her. And if he was making promises to her
about like helping her stay out of trouble and protecting her, and you know,
maybe he even said things like I'm going to leave my wife for you,
I love you, all this stuff. I could see Melanie doing anything
to please him, right, She's already been in an abusive relationship. She
doesn't seem to have very good luck with people. You know, I think
that he definitely said, this is somebody who's got connections, she's got money,
she's got friends, and I have power and authority, and I'm going
to use it against her. So tragic because Melanie's just this young, twenty
four year old woman who's already dealt with an abusive relationship that resulted in this
exacerbation of this previous head injury from horseback riding, and so she's dealing with
a lot of things and her personalities change and she seems to be partying or
so to take that and kind of exploit those weak points that he probably liked
the canon saw, and that she wants to be loved like everybody does,
and that she seems to be working out some things through partying. She didn't
have the opportunity to stop and to evolve and to maybe do less drugs or
drink less and meet somebody that you know, she truly cared about. Cannon
used that and like weaponized those insecurities that she had in order to get close
to her and kind of exploit that. It's just so yucky and I just
really can't stand him. Oh yeah, Like it sounds like she was kind
of an unofficial drug informant. Where like he didn't use her an official capacity,
there was no paper trail. He just used her as part of a
relationship or a sexual partner so that she would feed him intel to help his
own drug activity. And it's a lot like he's using in an informant to
make bus which he's supposed to do as a police officer. It's just maybe
she'll introduce me to more people that I can sell drugs too. Like,
if we're even to believe that she even operated in an unofficial capacity, I
think it's just as likely that he met her at some party, he thought
she was cute, and they started carrying on some type of relationship behind his
wife's back while he was under cover, and then he quickly needed to come
up with a cover because some of these people are going to be questioned about
Melanie's disappearance, and whof his name is going to come up again and again,
because her parents believed that he was dating her, and he was the
first officer that they talked to, and he's like, well, you're probably
never going to see her daughter again. Big problem with drugs and alcohol.
I just don't believe that we can trust anything that comes out of his mouth.
Especially since there isn't paperwork to support that she was ever inn informant.
So now we want to discuss one more colorful figure in this saga, a
prominent wealthy Lexington socialite named Anita Madden aka the Bluegrass Baroness. Both Anita and
her husband Preston Madden lived at a two thousand acre horse farm called Hamburg Place,
which was the home to a number of prize thoroughbreds, many of which
one races, such as the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes. The couple
was known for hosting lavish parties at Hamburg Place, and every year before the
Kentucky Derby, it became a tradition for them to host the annual Madden Derby
Party, which was often attended by famous celebrities and some of the area's wealthy
of citizens. Melanie was reportedly close friends with Anita and attended her parties,
which may have paved the way for her introducing Bill Canan into their inner circle.
It's been rumored the Madden's parties often got pretty wild, and they Drew
Thornton and the company helped supply them and their wealthy guests with cocaine. During
the late nineteen seventies and early eighties. But while a number of people maintain
that Melanie and Anita were friends, Anita completely downplayed their relationship following Melanie's disappearance.
She said she barely knew Melanie and did not cooperate very much with the
investigation. According to Sally Denton, when she first started reporting on this story,
Anita picketed the television station were Denton worked and demanded that she be fired
for spreading false information. Anyway, Anita passed away in twenty eighteen, and
in another odd twist of fate, Preston Madden died on May fifth, twenty
twenty, less than two months after the deaths of Bill Canan and Henry Vance.
Why would Anita deny her friendship with Melanie? Is it because she did
know of these connections with these officers and she's trying to distance herself as much
as possible. It seems really sad, like this family's already experiencing the trauma
of Melanie going missing, and then Anita's like, ah, I'm not her
for like, I don't know her. She probably doesn't want anybody asking any
more questions than necessary, disclosing any depth to their friendship could just lead to
more questions, especially if they're involved in any illicit activities, and often where
there's horses, especially during this time period there was drug cartel money. Oh
definitely. And I was reading a bit about these parties and they got some
pretty prominent celebrities there, like I heard Muhammad Ali attended once and Burt Reynolds
that they would just go to the Kentucky Derby and then we'd be told,
hey, you know this woman named Anita Man, she holds the greatest party.
So I can only imagine that for someone like Bill Canan and Drew Thornton,
who were trying to expand their drug trade, that this would be like
a gold mine. All these wealthy celebrities, they can supply them with cocaine.
And while Anita may not have had any like direct involvement or knowledge of
Melanie's disappearance, I'm sure she didn't want to talk to police because they'll say,
hey, what's going on with these parties here and all this cocaine thing.
She just wanted to keep all this stuff away, which is why she's
totally downplayed the situation. It definitely sounds like Canan and Thornton may have used
Melanie to help them expand their operations involving drugs, though there are still conflicting
reports about whether Melanie was romantically involved with either of them. I do find
it to be interesting timing that Melanie's disappearance took place only two weeks after Thornton
resigned from the Lexington PD. One of the most prominent theories in this case
is that Thornton or Canan, or both of them found out that Melanie had
been talking openly about their illegal activities, and since they believed she knew too
much and was a liability, they decided to murder her. But it's also
possible that the crime was more personal, as Another theory which was pushed around,
is that Kenan got rid of Melody because she threatened to expose their affair
to his wife. When Kenan was indicted on federal drug charges in nineteen ninety
three, a couple of witnesses testified that they had heard Canan and Thornton imply
they were responsible for killing Melanie. But this was technically nothing more than hearsay
evidence. You can't really charge a guy with murder just because someone else said
he smiled and kind of nodded when they asked if he did it. Yeah,
And it's kind of hard to think that these two killers are going to
be like, yeah, I did it, smile, smile, Like I
think they were pretty high level criminals. They're obviously running these drug enterprises and
skimming money off the top and you know, getting caught for doing dirty deeds
at the law enforcement agency. So I don't know that they would really so
openly act in that way. The information was coming from people in prison.
You did have the FBI agent who said that there was some kind of information
that she received about the fact that they said they'd never find Melanie's body,
but again, everything's kind of this third party hearsay information, so it's very
hard to really pin that on Thornton and Cannon. But I do think the
affair, or having abused his power and holding kind of something kind of sexual
dominance over Melanie would have definitely caused Cannon to be very very purposeful in the
way he tried to control her, and if that led to her death,
I wouldn't be shocked. I just don't see Melanie, given that she spent
all this time with people who are involved in this drug world, she knows
that silence is golden, that snitches get stitches. So do I believe that
she was out there openly talking about how she was going to expose them.
No, I do not believe that. I just think that is really unlikely.
She isn't a eighteen year old kid. She's twenty four years old.
She spent a lot of years around these type of people. She knows that
there could be serious ramifications for exposing people like this. And also if she
went and did that, it would alienate her from her entire friend group,
because if you're known to be a snitch, none of these people are going
to want to be involved with you. So why would she purposefully go out
and just start talking about how she was going to expose them. I just
don't believe that that happened. I think she pushed him and said, I
want to take this further. You need to tell your wife or I'm going
to tell her. And if you don't, then you know, I'm going
to show up at your door and I'm going to make it known who I
am and what's been going on. And then I think Nan who knows what
he said to Thornton, but he could have just said, hey, she's
become a problem and we need to deal with this type of a thing.
And you mentioned like Melody like how it seems very unlikely that you would have
tried to expose the operation because not only would have alienated her from her friends,
but it would have done damage to her family's reputation because her father was
a former state senator, her mother was a respected pillar of the community,
and her brother was a Major League baseball player. And if she just exposes
all all this information and becomes an informant, even though her family did nothing
wrong, it's going to harm them through guilt by association because they know that
this member of her family was hanging out with people who were involved in drugs.
So that's yet another reason why it seems unlikely that she was going to
expose the operation. But do you remember that quote from the informant who said
that deec Thorne once told him that Kennon had said that he killed Melody because
he loved her too much. Yeah, doesn't that kind of sound like a
line that a narcissistic person like that would say that he's justifying it, saying
that, oh, I had to get rid of her because I loved her
too much, and she wouldn't do what I say, like as if they're
justifying their actions. Oh, I did it for your own good, like
pure abuse. It sounds like the most promising lead during the past four decades
has been the dig which took place to search for Melanie's remains at Murphy's Landing
during the summer of twenty nineteen. I find it very interesting that two completely
separate eyewitnesses advised police to dig at that location, and they both specifically mentioned
a sceptical and this is definitely not the first time anyone's name Murphy's Landing is
a possible burial location. In twenty twelve, a local news station produced a
segment about this case with Melanie's younger brother, Brad, and it featured him
taking a trip to Murphy's Landing as he claimed that multiple people have mentioned this
spot to him over the years. Brad even pointed towards a cave he searched
through containing a large hole covered by a heavy metal plate which he was unable
to move. However, it's unclear if the authorities that ever made any additional
attempts to search in there. Again, how sad is this? You have?
Brad You've already seen this with the poor mom right. Ella has already
taken on the role of investigator. Now Brad, her younger brother is doing
the same thing where he's saying, listen, no one's paying attention to her
case. I've heard all of these rumors. I've heard this information. So
here I am at the spot looking for her body, trying to financers in
her case. I mean, it's incredibly brave and powerful, but it's also
incredibly traumatizing. Is enraging to me when I watched families have to take on
the role of spokesperson, detective, moral support and emotional support for everyone around
them, and then they're left with no one professionally holding their hand. So
do we think that Preston and Madden are the ones that are responsible for these
later tips about Murphy's landing. It's possible, Like Preston, I know that
Anita Madden was already deceased by twenty and eighteen, but Preston Madden passed away
in twenty twenty, and they mentioned that one of the tipsters in two and
nineteen was on his deathbed when he made the confession, And you look at
the timing, it's possible that he could have been one of the people feeding
the information. That he may not have been directly involved in Melanie's disappearance,
but he was associated with all these people, so he might have had some
knowledge that he just felt he needed to get off his chest. So Murphy's
Landing is also located next to the Kentucky River, and it sounds like it's
not too far from the location where Melanie's purse was found, So you have
to think this area has some significance. While the police have never disclosed the
identities of the two elderly individuals who provided them with the information which compelled them
to perform the dig, it was stated that one of them was on their
deathbed, and like we said, Bill Canan, Henry Vance, and Preston
Madden, three individuals who may have had knowledge about what happened, all passed
away in close proximity to each other. During the first half of twenty twenty.
It was also confirmed that Canan was re interviewed by investigators, and I
am intrigued by the choice of words they used. Quote we left the interview
believing that he did not know the location of her body. Now, that
might not necessarily mean that they believe Canan is innocent. He may very well
have been complicit or at full knowledge of what happened to Melody, but if
someone else was responsible for disposing of her body, he may legitimately not know
where it is. That's what I was thinking when you said, like he
didn't know where it was, I was like, well, that doesn't mean
he wasn't involved in killing her or helping with this conspiracy to cover it up.
Because this is a group of active criminals. I mean, we see
each one of them kind of take their own fall and prove that they're actually
way beyond any kind of moral compass. So I don't think I'm convinced that
just because he wouldn't know where her body was that he didn't have something to
do with it. And it's also possible he could have forgotten, because we've
actually seen a lot of missing persons cases where the killer actually makes a full
confession and says that I did this, I disposed of their body at this
location, and then they searched for it and they can't find anything, and
they say, well, my memory is kind of hazy. Maybe this isn't
the right place, especially when you're talking about like rural remote locations. So
maybe they got the impression that Canand did know where Melanie's body was, that
he could have disposed of it, but because of his advanced age, he
would not be able to find it if he tried. And landscape changes over
time too, so things that maybe identifying markers might not be there anymore.
So certain things like that coupled with advanced age and like a hazy memory.
We know that. We talk about I witness identification all the time. I
think, if you're going to a remote rural location, you're disposing of a
body, and so many you know, years later you go back and are
like trying to find it, what are the chances you're able to pinpoint that
location without some kind of marker, oh exactly. And I think that might
be the case with Canan. And I should clarified that of all the people
who died in twenty twenty, Canan is the least likely to have made the
deathbed confession. He does not strike me as anyone who would admit to what
he did, oh one hundred percent. That's why I didn't even bring him
up when I knew it was like Vance, Preston and Canan, it all
died within that time period, and like, there's no way the Canan was
the one that did it. He's just not our guy. If Melanie was
killed because she knew too much, then how exactly would these events have played
out. It really did not appear that there was anything out of the ordinary
on the day Melanie went missing as she was heading to an appointment with her
psychiatrist and told her family she was planning to join them for dinner, but
something obviously happened after she left her office. I think this case might hinge
on the accuracy of the sighting of Melanie talking to someone in a blue van.
Did this person compel Melanie to stop and pull over? Since her car
was ultimately found at another location. Did the person in the van convince Melanie
to drive somewhere where she was subsequently set up and killed. I would be
curious to know if there was anyone from Melanie's life, such as Canan or
Thornton, who could have been linked to a blue van during that time period.
I'd also be interested to know if the guy who did the adult videos,
if he had anybody involved in that. I still believe that it's possible
either he or his girls were involved in trying to lure her or get her
involved. Maybe there had been a demand for her. I think that was
definitely a possibility as well. Oh yeah, it just says something when there
are so many shady characters in the story that you could just say, well,
it could be this person or it could be that person. And it's
possible that all these people we mentioned are involved in some capacity. Even if
they didn't directly kill her, they do know what happened to her and have
remained silent all these years. It's literally like the Boys on the Track case,
where it's so hard to keep track of all these characters in all their
illicit activities that they're up to, because it's just so twisted, right,
It's almost like Tommy Ziegler, Yeah, in the sense that there's just so
many different moving parts and these big personalities all involved exactly. And that's what
it was like with the Boys in the Track, all these personalities and criminal
figures, and of course the allegations that Bill Clint was involved. And then
many years later we have this professional wrestler, Billy Jack Haynes, coming forward
with a confession saying that he was involved. So now one of these days
I'm expecting a wrestler to come forward and say that they were present when Melody
Flint was killed, So mark my words, that will happen. So I
have heard rumors that during this time period what happened to Melanie may have been
an open secret among many people, including members of a Lexington PD, but
no one wanted to talk. And what ass to the tragedy is that it
seems like fewer and fewer people who might know the truth about Melanie's disappearance are
still with us. Even if the two men who provided the tips about Murphy's
landing are telling the truth, the passage of time and the loss of memories
may make it difficult to find the exact location where Melanie's remains are buried.
However, over the years, it's been said countless times that all it might
take to crack this case is for the right person to come forward, and
there might still be people out there who have the necessary information for a resolution.
So if you happen to know anything about the unsolved disappearance of Melanie Flynn,
please contact the appropriate authorities. Jewels Ashley, any final thoughts in this
case, I'll tell you this one is one of those where you know why
people didn't come forward. You have a lot of law enforcement agents who are
involved in this case or at least have connections to Melanie. You also watch
as these powerful men make mistakes, they purposely break the law, and instead
of getting punished, they're rewarded, they're promoted, they're overlooked, right,
They're allowed to behave the way they want, which emboldens them, which makes
them more and more dangerous. So I think anyone who's interacting with people on
that level, they start to realize, like, this person's dangerous, which
would make it very scary to ever come forward and say something. I hate
that so much time has passed, We've seen almost every main character and villain
in this case pass away, her parents have passed away. And yet all
you see, all the good you see in this case is again the family
who's saying, look, if the police aren't going to act, we're going
to act. We're going to hire people above and beyond the local law enforcement
agents to see if we can get answers for our sister to bring our daughter
home. And so far that hasn't resulted in anything for them. But I
have so much respect for this family. It is a very disturbing case because
there's no sign of Melanie. There's no concept of no what happened when she
left work that day, And it's in Melanie's case like she's a kid,
like any of us were right. She had every opportunity before her, She
had a supportive family, she had plans for the evening to go home,
and she never made it. Incredibly tragic and sad. This case really breaks
my heart. I mean every case we cover breaks my heart. But poor
Melanie. She grew up with this privilege and these people who are highly educated
in positions of power, who were incredible athletes, and she seemed like a
wonderful young woman, but then having this head injury, having this young marriage
where she was nineteen years old, she marries this horse breeder's son, and
he obviously is abusive and he strikes her in the head, and this exacerbates
her head injury, and she deals with some amnesia. So I can't imagine
what ramifications this head injury had. Perhaps it could have led to some impulsivity
issues, which could explain the drugs and alcohol and some of the issues she
may have been having. But I just think that this entrance of Canan,
that he's such an insidious and malignant figure for Melanie and that he is the
one who is responsible, in my personal opinion, for whatever happened to her.
And I think the most likely theory is that he was having an affair
with her and she probably said that she was going to expose it because she
had genuine feelings for him. She was telling people she wanted to marry him,
and he clearly wasn't on the same page because he was already married.
And I just find it like a gross kind of subtext that we've also got
Thornton who and on a couple quote unquote dates with her. It just feels
like Ashley had said like they're like wolf packing her. Feels like Cresbow may
have been as well. So we've got all of these characters in there that
seemed to be taking advantage of women and seemed to be exploiting them, and
there's this really skewed power dynamic, and Melanie seemed to be a victim of
that. And I'm not sure the exact people that were involved, but I
think that it is very likely that both Thornton and Canan were involved, and
Bizarc whether or not he knew he's never been implicated in anything. He didn't
do a good job with Melanie's disappearance. He didn't cross his teas and dot
his eyes, and we saw him get huge promotions and like writing all these
police manuals, and then we also saw that with vance Right he gets to
work for a governor and then he spies for the drug organization. So it's
just a story of like male privilege being taken too far and these really unhealthy
power dynamics, and it is just it's unfortunate that Ella and Bobby, Doug
and Brad never got to see what happened to their daughter and their sister,
because they deserve that. But I mean, Doug and Brad still have the
opportunity to find out what did happen. So if anybody is still alive,
or anybody has any even second hand information, please come forward and share it
because Melanie's family and friends deserve to know what happened to her. Yeah.
I remember when I covered this case on the Trail when Cold. I mainly
did it because it was a listener's suggestion, so I looked it up on
the Charlie Project. I looked at Melanie's profile page, and I said,
oh, this looks pretty interesting. I might cover it. But I didn't
realize what a rabbit hole it was because I at the time I was not
yet aware of the blue Grass Conspiracy and the entire book and all this stuff
about the drug trafficking and all the corruption going on. So I started reading
and it's like, Wow, what have I got myself into. It just
seemed like Melanie Flynn's disappearance was just to the tip of the iceberg that whence
she went missing. This kind of shone a spotlight on all this terrible corruption
that was going on in the Lexington Police Department at that time. And even
though the corrupt cops on there wound up leaving, they went on to do
bigger things in more elaborate drug trafficking operations and pretty much used their power to
harm a lot of people. And yeah, I do agree that Bill Can
and Drew Thorn were most likely involved and directly responsible for what happened to Melanie.
We may never know the motive, We may never know if it's related
to drug trafficking, or it might just simply because Kenan was having an affair
with her and she was threatening to expose the affair to his wife, so
he decided to kill her. But we knew that the police department did like
a terrible disservice by not properly investigating her disappearance and just assuming that she ran
off and that she was alive without actually finding her and confirming that she was
alive. I mean, we still don't know if this was just laziness and
her competence, or if there was like a conspiracy to just try to make
her disappearance go away, because there was just so much corruption going on in
the department at that time. But it is just a major same that Melanie's
parents lived to the age of ninety five but then both passed away without learning
the truth about what happened. It does seem that there are a lot of
people out there who do have information about what happened, because we had a
couple of deathbed confessions in recent years which didn't lead to a resolution. But
at the very least, it shows that the case is still active and that
a lot of the key figures like Kenan and Thornton since passed away, that
there's still a chance that because they no longer fear the perpetrators, that someone
will come forward and finally have the courage to share the full truth about what
happened and give information that will lead to the recovery of Melanie's remains. So
that's why we urge anyone out there to come forward, because it's been forty
six years now and her family, her surviving family, are still waiting for
answers. Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit about the
Trail Went Cold Patreon? Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for
three years now, and we offer the standard bonus features like early ad free
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root up the original unsaw Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it
with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide trivia and
factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very first
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So if you want to download a commentary track in which I make more smartass
remarks about Juel Kaylor than be sure to join Tier three. So I want
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