Family desperate for answers after daughter ‘left to rot’ next to M5

The family of Melanie Hall say they are desperate to know what happened to their loved one after she was "left to rot" next to the M5. A new Channel 5 documentary will explore the unsolved murder of the 25-year-old as police launch a fresh appeal for information.

Melanie's body was discovered by a workman next to the northbound slip road of the M5 at junction 14 (Thornbury) in 2009. She was last seen alive in 1996 in Cadillacs nightclub, in Bath.

The upcoming documentary, The Body in the Bag: The Murder of Melanie Hall, features heartfelt interviews with her father Steve and sister Dominique. As reported by The Mirror^[1], Steve and Dominique are desperate to find out what happened to Melanie, who worked in the clerical department at the Royal United Hospital in Bath.

When her body was found in 2009, her family's anger at the casual way it had been dumped was almost matched by relief it had finally been discovered.

Steve said: “We’ve always believed there is more than one person out there who knows what happened, and for whatever reason they haven’t yet come forward. It may be fear, it may be displaced loyalty or they may not have even connected their knowledge to this crime, but we know somebody is out there who can give us a lead. We know eventually we can solve this, so this is another appeal to anyone who can help with any information, however minor or irrelevant.”

Dominique added: “She was a very homely girl - she liked her creature comforts. She was a very attractive girl, when she disappeared she had that bold blonde haircut, which made her stand out from the crowd.

"She loved her nice clothes and nice shoes. She was very kind, very gentle, didn’t have a bad word about anybody. Very loving and kind. Initially I thought her kindness may have led to her demise, if she’d gone off with someone that night thinking they needed help.”

Steve agreed: “She was so caring. That’s why it hurt even more. The way I feel is that care was badly betrayed.”

Avon and Somerset Police interviewed around 800 people in the first few weeks after her disappearance. Melanie had reportedly been with her boyfriend Philip Karlbaum that Saturday at a friend’s barbecue, and the couple decided to go out that warm summer night with two other friends.

However, when Philip spotted her dancing with another man on his return to the toilet, the pair had a row and he left her at the club. Her friends, not realising the boyfriend had stormed out, also said their goodbyes to her, and Melanie was last seen sitting on a stool at the edge of the dancefloor at 1.10am on the Sunday.

Of the hundreds of statements police took down, two flagged up potential later sightings: one fellow clubber described seeing a woman matching Melanie’s description talking to a dark-haired man on a sofa inside Cadillacs - now Walcot House - and a second believed they saw her having an animated conversation with a man outside the venue at around 2am, both of which were used in a Crimewatch reconstruction that aired in October 1996 and in an e-fit picture that is being recirculated now.

A trawl through 96 hours of CCTV footage showed no trace of Melanie leaving Cadillacs or anyone walking with her in the streets around Bath covered by cameras. She had vanished.

Melanie's family didn't know she was missing until they found out she hadn't turned up for work the following Monday morning. When they went to report her disappearance at the police station that evening, the alarm was raised and a full-scale manhunt was launched.

Steve recalled: “We put all of our trust in the police. It was a surreal situation - I would actually drive home from work each night and see officers searching the hedges. To get my head around the fact that it was my daughter they were looking for was very difficult.”

Despite a number of arrests in the coming weeks, months and years, no charges were ever brought. Meanwhile, Melanie's family tried to get back to their normal lives.

Steve said: “Within five days my hope had faded. We knew Melanie well, it was completely out of character for her to have run away from home, because she’d have been running from a life she loved. And so within a week, I think we feared the worst.”

Dominique agreed: “For me it was when the police said she hadn’t touched her bank account. That was the moment I knew, ‘this is not good’.”

When the call came 13 years later to say Melanie’s pelvis, skull and thigh bones had been found on the very slip road that Steve himself had driven past “probably 20 times since she’d been missing”, the mixture of shock and relief was overwhelming.

For Dominique, grief was quickly overtaken by anger. “What upset me was the disregard in the way she was just dumped,” she says. “I don’t know why that upsets me the most, given whoever did it also murdered her, but it’s the lack of any compassion to dump her next to that motorway. The thought of all those years of cars zooming past her, millions and millions of cars, while she lay there rotting, it’s horrible.”

Forensic analysis of the bones revealed Melanie had likely been killed by a blunt force trauma to her head, which had fractured her skull. She also had a broken jaw and a fractured cheekbone, leading police to suspect whoever killed her had done so in a violent and brutal rage.

The remains were naked, and to this day none of her clothes - a pale blue silk dress, black suede open-toed mule shoes and a cream single-breasted, long-sleeved jacket - have ever been found. Also still missing is her black satchel-type handbag, which contained makeup, a Midland cheque book and bank card.

The only piece of jewellery found in the bin liners was a distinctive gold ring with an ivy pattern, given to Melanie by her grandmother. Close to her body was a set of three rusty car keys to a Ford vehicle, likely either a Transit, Fiesta or Escort, and a fresh appeal was launched on Crimewatch.

Unfortunately the keys were never traced, and despite 200 calls made by the public in the wake of the Crimewatch episode, no new leads were uncovered.

The Body in the Bag: The Murder of Melanie Hall will air at 9pm tomorrow (September 28).

References

1. ^{^} The Mirror (www.mirror.co.uk)