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There’s something especially disturbing about a person’s safety being compromised in their own home, especially when it involves a child. Home is supposed to be the place where we can truly be ourselves, let our guards down & feel the safest.
Yet, when 13-year-old Rachel Mellon-Skemp stayed home from school with a sore throat on a bitterly cold day in January 1996, she seemingly vanished from her bed without a trace. 30 years have gone by & not only has Rachel never been found, but no one has ever been charged in connection with her disappearance, which investigators believe is a homicide.
Did Rachel somehow leave in the middle of winter without proper clothing, did someone enter her home without leaving any obvious evidence behind & take her while she napped or is the answer much closer to home?
Wednesday, January 31, 1996 was a bitterly frigid day in Bolingbrook, Illinois; the type of cold that shocks your throat & lungs when you inhale a breath while exposed skin feels a sharp, stinging pain like pinpricks of ice. That morning, 13-year-old Rachel Mellon-Skemp woke up with a sore throat. Unable to leave the comfort of her bed to face the -20℉ weather, she decided to stay home sick from Ward Middle School where she was a 7th grade honor student.
When her mom, Amy Mellon, left the house early that morning for work, she kissed her daughter goodbye, never realizing it would be the last time she would ever see her.
Rachel Marie Mellon-Skemp was born on October 13, 1982 to parents Jeff Skemp & Amy Mellon, who was from the Philippines. Rachel’s friends knew her as a perpetually happy, bubbly young girl despite the turbulence of her home life. After her parents divorced when she was three, Jeff moved to the Dallas, Texas area while Amy stayed in Illinois & began a relationship with a man named Vince Mellon.
After the couple got married, they had two more children together; Jason, who was born in 1988 & Ashley in 1990. In 1996, the family of five were living at 612 Melissa Drive in Bolingbrook, Illinois, about 30 miles southwest of Chicago.
Rachel was a gorgeous young girl with a cheerful disposition who brought fun to any friend gathering. She was social, popular at school where her favorite subject was science. She was said to be an old soul who was very interested in recycling & nature.
Now onto her second marriage, things sadly remained very tumultuous & unstable in Amy & her children’s lives. Through it all, Rachel kept on smiling, never one to bring others down. When Rachel was 8-years-old, Amy filed a restraining order against Vince after he hit her, pushed her down the stairs & made verbal threats towards Rachel.
Although the restraining order was dropped & Amy & Vince eventually got back together, the police were still periodically called back to the Mellon home for domestic violence incidents that were happening in front of the children.
During the spring of 1995, less than one year before Rachel vanished, she ran away from home, but left a note behind. She wrote that she was leaving because she was afraid that she would be blamed for something her younger siblings broke. After she slept outside her friend’s house that night, she called her step-grandparents in the morning & they brought her back home.
Moving forward to 1996, Rachel woke up with a sore throat on Wednesday, January 31 & decided to stay home from school. After Jason & Ashley left for school & Amy headed to work, Rachel was left at home alone with Vince, who was unemployed at the time.
When Amy came home from work at 5 pm, she headed to her daughter’s room to check on her & let her know that dinner was ready, which was when she realized that Rachel was gone. Knowing Vince had been home with her daughter, Amy came back out feeling alarmed, but Vince claimed that he had no idea that she wasn’t there.
Not only had she been feeling poorly that day, but it was also miserably cold outside so Amy couldn’t imagine where Rachel could be. When she called around to all of her friends, no one had seen her since school the day before. Not to mention, her coat, hat, gloves, shoes, purse & Walkman were still there while two pillows from her bed as well as her blue blanket were gone.
Amy contacted the Bolingbrook police at 6 pm to report her daughter missing.
When officers responded to the 1,800 square foot, 4 bedroom, 2 bath home on Melissa Drive, they found no sign of forced entry or a struggle. Since Vince had been home with Rachel that day, officers spoke with him in hopes of establishing a timeline.
According to Vince, he & Rachel played Nintendo in the living room until she fell asleep on the couch wrapped up in her blue blanket at about 2:30 pm. He decided to take their German Shepherd, Duke, for a walk despite the fact that temperatures reached a high in the single digits during the day & dropped to subzero at night with the windchill making it as cold as -20℉. When he left, Vince said he didn’t lock the door behind him.
While they were out, Duke slipped out of his leash to chase a rabbit so he ended up being gone longer than he intended. When he came back thirty minutes later without Duke, assuming the dog would make his way back home on his own, he saw that Rachel was no longer asleep on the couch with her blanket & assumed she had moved to her room while he was gone.
Duke remained missing until a local real estate broker returned him to their house with the help of a neighbor sometime between 4:30-5 pm.
Rachel had spoken with her paternal grandma, Lucy Skemp, at about 10:45 am that morning to thank her for a card she sent. During their five minute conversation, Lucy indicated that nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but when Rachel suddenly got very quiet, in reference to Vince, Lucy asked, is he there? Rachel said yes & then told her that she needed to go.
According to Rachel’s father, Jeff Skemp, who was living in Texas at the time, this in itself was highly unusual since Rachel wasn’t allowed to talk to her grandmother. Other than Vince, Lucy had been the last person to have spoken with Rachel.
When Rachel’s 6-year-old sister Ashley came home from school at about 3:15 pm, right around the time Vince said he came back without the dog, she immediately ran to her sister’s room & realized that Rachel wasn’t there.
When Ashley was questioned by Cindy Georgantas, the private investigator who worked on Rachel’s case, she indicated that she told her dad, who was working out in the garage, that Rachel wasn’t there, but nothing was done. Yet when Vince spoke with police officers, he claimed to have no idea that Rachel was gone.
It wasn’t until Amy & Jason came home at 5 pm that Amy realized her daughter was gone & contacted the police at 6 pm.
Rachel was last seen wearing a pink top, yellow sweatpants & red slippers. Despite the fact that all of her winter gear as well as her shoes had been left behind, investigators initially treated her case as a runaway rather than a missing persons case since Rachel had run away the year before.
Jeff Skemp flew back to Chicago that weekend to help with his daughter’s search, spending much of his time with Amy & Vince. They all passed out fliers & walked through the open grassy areas near their home in search of Rachel.
Extensive searches were done of the area on the ground, air & water with the use of geothermal images & drones, but there was absolutely no sign of Rachel. Since it was so cold outside, they knew that time was of the essence as she would die of exposure if she was out in the elements.
There were questions if she possibly went to live with relatives on her mom’s side in the Philippines, but after an extensive investigation into this theory, the idea was abandoned. Not only was Rachel’s bank account untouched, but there was also no evidence to support her having bought a bus or plane ticket to go anywhere.
When Jeff spoke with Vince about that day, he said he believed that Rachel must have been kidnapped from the house during the time that he was out with Duke since he left the door unlocked.
Shortly after his daughter vanished, Jeff permanently moved back to Illinois to live & work in Forest Park so he could be close to the investigation & keep Rachel’s case in the public eye.
Everything seemed to be pointing at Vince, who was the top suspect & was questioned by police a number of times. Not only was he alone with Rachel that day & had been the last person to have seen her, but officers noted scratches on his arms. When asked about them, he claimed it happened while he was working on his car. Vince also had a long history of domestic violence as well as verbal threats toward Rachel & he also failed parts of his polygraph test regarding Rachel’s whereabouts.
Reports indicate that Vince also refused to voluntarily provide detectives with DNA samples & other forensic evidence. It wasn’t until four years after Rachel’s disappearance when authorities served Vince Mellon a warrant for his DNA on January 29, 2000. This came after a grand jury was convened to investigate what the police were calling a first-degree murder investigation.
Days later, the grand jury proceedings took place on February 2, 2000. Both Vince & Amy appeared before a Will County grand jury. Amy spent two hours in the grand jury room & her attorney indicated that she did not invoke her 5th amendment rights against self-incrimination nor did she invoke a claim of spousal privilege, meaning, she didn’t refuse to testify against Vince.
Vince, on the other hand, was inside the room for only about five minutes after he pleaded the fifth to all questions asked of him on the advice of his attorney & no indictments were handed down.
Evidence presented painted a grim picture of Rachel’s home life. During the search of the Mellon home, authorities had found Rachel’s diary hidden under her bed. According to an entry from August 7, 1995, nearly six months before she vanished, Rachel wrote about how Vince, her stepfather since she’d been a toddler, had kissed her on the mouth & touched her inappropriately in order to warn her how predators behave as a ploy to keep her safe.
Investigators also found a steak knife under her bed as well as the children’s book, Daddy Kisses, while some report the book being Kiss Daddy Goodnight by Louise Armstrong, which is a collection of personal narratives of women who survived incest.
When Rachel’s friends came forward after she disappeared, they told authorities that one day before she vanished, they saw her crying at her locker. This caught them off guard since she was normally so upbeat. When they asked her what was wrong, she said that she had a problem, but she would take care of it herself.
According to Jeff, he often checked in with his daughter, asking her if everything was okay at home, specifically with Vince & she always said yes. He indicated that Rachel was a people pleaser who wanted to say yes whenever possible. She was always smiling & happy & wanted everyone else to be happy too.
Nine years after Rachel vanished, Vince had a warrant out for his arrest in 2005 for a drunk driving crash that happened in Romeoville, Illinois when he was pulling out of a strip club & crashed into another car. He pleaded guilty to the charge, but failed to comply with the terms of his sentence.
Vince & Amy separated for a short period of time after Rachel went missing, but they later got back together & relocated from Illinois to Tennessee right around 2006.
Many have wondered why Amy would stay with someone who physically abused her in the presence of her children, someone who also happened to be the prime suspect in her daughter’s disappearance. Vince failed his polygraph test & most concerning, according to her daughter’s diary entries, he had been kissing her & touching her inappropriately.
According to psychologist Michelle Golland, based on Rachel’s diary entries, the fact that she ran away from home the year before & had a knife hidden under her bed, something was clearly happening at home that made her feel very unsafe. She sees Amy as a co-dependent woman who views her marriage as primary, even over the safety of her children.
When Jeff Skemp spoke with the media, he voiced his belief that his daughter was met with foul play & he believes that Vince is responsible for her disappearance. He went on to say that he clearly did a thorough job of covering up his crime, but Jeff believes that had the police searched the Mellon’s garage the night his daughter disappeared & opened the trunk of the car that wasn’t functioning, his daughter would have likely been found there.
When he was interviewed in 2012, nearly 17 years after Rachel went missing, Jeff said he vividly remembers the day his daughter was born, describing it as the happiest day of his life by far. He’s accepted the fact that his daughter is likely no longer alive, but he’s been trying to move on with his life since. He holds onto hope that justice for his daughter will come in the form of an arrest & a conviction for the person who abducted & murdered her.
Jeff has kept the same phone number in the small chance that his daughter is still out there. In 2006, he held a memorial service for Rachel.
On the other hand, phone numbers for Vince & Amy are disconnected at their address in Tennessee & media outlets have been unable to reach them.
On May 25, 2002, the city of Bolingbrook dedicated a tree to Rachel with a plaque directly across the street from the house she vanished at Wiplfer Park. They also buried a time capsule in her memory.
Despite the passage of 30 years, as well as the fact that no arrests have been made in Rachel’s case, police maintain that her case remains active. Each year, crime labs examine preserved evidence to see if new technology can unearth some answers while private investigators are still following the case. Although they fully believe that Vince is responsible for Rachel’s murder, they’re unable to prosecute him due to a lack of evidence.
Over the years, there have been suspicions, allegations, searches & interviews, but there are still no answers, no justice & no Rachel. She didn’t vanish from a dark road in the middle of night or in a dangerous situation, she disappeared from her home where she should have been completely safe.
Rachel would be 44-years-old this year, yet she never had the opportunity to graduate from middle school much less high school or college. She never had the chance to fall in love, get married or start a family, had she chosen to. And all the while, the person responsible for erasing her from this world, has been able to continue living their life as if nothing happened.
Someone knows exactly what happened inside that Bolingbrook home on that frigid day in January 1996 & that person needs to be held responsible. It pains Rachel’s best friend, Carrie Scaglione, to think that her children have lived a longer life than her friend ever had the chance to do. Each year on the anniversary of Rachel’s disappearance, she thinks this will be the year that answers will come.
References:
- USLegal: What is spousal privilege? A comprehensive legal overview
- Patch: Missing teen’s case gone cold?
- True Case Files: The disappearance of Rachel Mellon Skemp
- The Charley Project: Rachel Marie Mellon
- Find a Grave: Rachel Marie Mellon Skemp
- Chicago Tribune: Fresh look at Mellon case
- Medium: Rachel Marie Mellon Skemp: Missing since 1996
- Medium: Teen disappears, leaves behind disturbing journal entry
- 5 Chicago: Friend of Bolingbrook teen who disappeared holds out hope for answers – 30 years later
- YouTube: WGN News: 25 years later, questions linger over Bolingbrook girls’ disappearance
- Transcripts: Nancy Grace: 13-year-old stays home sick from school, mysteriously vanishes
- ABC 7: Bolingbrook teen’s disappearance remains unsolved
- The Guardian: Obituary: Louise Armstrong
