By Bryan Robinson - CourtTV.com
No one has seen Melissa Yon since she vanished in
November 1995. Her body has never been found. The only trace of her
remains are blood stains in a car trunk.
Now prosecutors must use this limited evidence to
prove that Melissa is dead and that her common-law husband, Jack
Stephenson, killed her. The prosecution claims that the couple was
having relationship problems and that Stephenson violently killed
Melissa during a heated argument.
Stephenson insists that his wife is not dead. He
claims that she ran away after he accused her of having an affair.
Melissa, a nursing assistant, vanished during the
week of Nov. 13, 1995. She last talked to her sister, Chandra Yon-Corley,
and her mother, Nollie Yon, on Nov. 15. When she did not show up to work
at the Lowman Retirement Home in Lexington, S.C. for two days, her
supervisor became concerned and called Nollie.
Melissa's relatives were worried: Stephenson had
repeatedly told them that she had been at work on those days. Chandra
says that Stephenson called her around midnight on Nov. 15 and asked her
to take his three-year-old son Jeffrey to daycare the next morning
because Melissa was working "around the clock." Chandra said it was
unusual for Stephenson to make the daycare arrangements.
Chandra also remembered that Jeffrey was hysterical
when Stephenson dropped him off at her house at 4 am. She was not able
to calm Jeffrey down until it was time to take him to daycare. Later,
Chandra tried to reach her sister both at work and at her home but was
unsuccessful.
On the night of Nov. 16, Stephenson called Nollie and
told her that Melissa would not need a lift to work the next morning. (Melissa
had arranged for her mother to drive her to work Friday because of car
trouble.) Nollie claims that Stephenson said Melissa was working.
The next night, Stephenson dropped Jeffrey off at his
grandmother's home and told Nollie that Melissa was still working. Hours
later Melissa's employers called Nollie and asked her about her
daughter's whereabouts. Melissa's co-worker, Jill Ray, says Stephenson
called and told her that Melissa was very ill and would not return to
work until after Thanksgiving. Ray told Stephenson that he would have to
speak to Melissa's supervisor. He never did.
Realizing that Melissa was missing, Nollie and
Chandra contacted the Lexington County Sheriff's Department. When police
questioned Stephenson that night, he told them that he last saw Melissa
going to work that morning. Two days later, on Nov. 19, Stephenson
changed his story, saying that he had seen Melissa twice on Friday
morning in Columbia, S.C. When police searched his home, they did not
find any evidence of a murder.
Police did not find any evidence implicating
Stephenson in Melissa's disappearance until he abandoned his half
brother Dan Mivens' car in Sumter, S.C. weeks later. A small blood spot
was found on the rug of the car's trunk, and DNA tests revealed that the
blood most likely came from Melissa. The odds that the blood belonged to
someone else were 58,000-to-1.
A few weeks before Melissa's disappearance,
Stephenson had borrowed Mivens' 1968 Chevrolet Caprice. On Nov. 17, the
car got stuck in a mud patch near an isolated alligator-infested swamp.
Mivens says Stephenson asked him to help extricate the car. He claims
that Stephenson then confessed to killing Melissa, saying that he hid
the body underneath their mobile home. However, Mivens says, Stephenson
immediately retracted his statement, saying that he was only joking.
Weeks later, Mivens and Stephenson met at a motel in
the southern part of the state. Mivens says that a nervous Stephenson
had cut his hair short and told him that he was on the run from police
for delinquent child support payments. Over the next year, Stephenson
lived like a vagabond, sleeping in the woods and in motels. Mivens tried
to help Stephenson by lending him clothes, money and food.
In the fall of 1996, Mivens unknowingly helped
authorities find and arrest Stephenson. While he signed a complaint
alleging that Stephenson had not been authorized to use his car, Mivens
now claims police tricked him. He says he did not know he was signing an
arrest warrant for his half-brother.
The prosecutors believe that Stephenson's domestic
problems with Melissa drove him to murder. Two weeks before she
disappeared, Stephenson had found love letters and motel receipts in one
of her outfits. Suspecting that Melissa was having an affair, Stephenson
allegedly called Mivens and told him he planned to kill her. Mivens was
so concerned that he drove to Stephenson's home to calm him down.
Stephenson was not home, and Mivens believed the couple's problems would
defuse.
On Nov. 15, the day of her disappearance, Melissa
went to the hospital, where she discovered she had chlamydia. It is not
clear whether Stephenson had the sexually transmitted disease at the
time, but the state suspects that the revelation drove him to murder
Melissa. (The jury will not hear any evidence about Melissa's chlamydia
until the state's rebuttal case.) After killing Melissa, prosecutors say,
Stephenson loaded Melissa's body in Mivens's car trunk, drove to an
alligator-infested swamp and buried the body.
Without her body, prosecutors acknowledge that they
will have a difficult time proving that Melissa is dead in addition to
convincing jurors that Stephenson is her killer. If convicted,
Stephenson faces life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20
years.
