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DNA Helps ID Bones Of St. Pete Woman Killed During 1980s
News Channel 8 photo by WALLY PATANOW
This poster shows an age-progressed image of Melinda Harder, who disappeared in 1980.
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Published: October 15, 2008
Updated: 10/15/2008 04:18 pm
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ST. PETERSBURG - If a civilian investigator had not stopped by a gas station one day last year, authorities might never have learned what happened to a 20-year-old single mother who vanished 28 years ago.
At the station, the investigator, Brenda Stevenson, spotted a poster put up by the friends and family of Melinda Harder, who disappeared while walking the few blocks from her home to her boyfriend's place in July of 1980.
Stevenson said she noticed an uncanny resemblance between the picture on the poster and a clay sculpture fashioned after a skull that was found eight years later in a park miles away. The skeletal remains were found March 2, 1989, in Maximo Park, wrapped up in carpet.
Stevenson knew DNA from the bones had been sent to the FBI, and she knew DNA from Harder's mother and daughter had been sent to the FBI. She called the FBI in June of last year, when she saw the poster, and she's been calling them once a month ever since, asking that they compare the two DNA samples.
On Thursday, she was told there was a match.
Harder was living at 2136 23rd Ave. N. when she was reported missing on July 27, 1980, police said.
The night before, she and her sister-in-law decided to go out while Harder's ex-husband watched over her three young children, police said. Later on, the pair returned, but Harder decided to walk by herself from her home to her boyfriend's home at 17th Street and 20th Avenue North, police said.
She never made it there.
Her remains were found at the park at 6500 34th St. S., which is at the other end of town, police said. A bulldozer clearing heavy brush from an area in the park uncovered a carpet rolled up containing skeletal remains of a woman, police said.
Although there were no signs of trauma to the remains, the medical examiner's office concluded the cause of death to be homicidal violence, police said. The manner of death was undetermined.
Before she went to the gas station, Stevenson, who started working cold cases at the police department two years ago, had asked for a list of women reported missing in Pinellas County for the 10-year period leading up to the discovery of the bones. Harder's name wasn't on the list.
The poster Stevenson saw had been put together by Harder's children and a friend, Monica Caison, who, as the result of Harder's disappearance, had founded the Cue Center for Missing Persons, based in Wilmington, N.C.
Caison said hundreds of posters had been plastered throughout St. Petersburg last June, as part of an effort to bring some newfound awareness to Harder's disappearance. There was also a candlelight vigil to that end at Crescent Lake Park in St. Petersburg in June, the same month Stevenson saw the poster.
Last week, Harder's daughter had just returned from the same park with her own daughter when investigators came to her door, to tell her the news, Caison said. The woman, who was 5 when her mother disappeared, is reluctant to talk to the media because her mother was erroneously portrayed as a party-animal who had abandoned her children the night she vanished, Caison said.
"Awareness and technology solved this case," said Caison. "Families should never give up and continue awareness. And get your case up to date."
By that, she said, she means the DNA of missing people should be entered into the FBI's DNA database. Harder's DNA had been compared with one other person's before last week's match.
There are no suspects. St. Petersburg police are asking that anyone with information on Harder's death to call them at (727) 893-7780 or the confidential tip line at (727) 892-5000. The ex-husband and boyfriend have been ruled out as suspects, Stevenson said.
Reporter Stephen Thompson can be reached at (727) 451-2336 or spthompson@tampatrib.com.
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