Discovery on the railroad tracks

On Monday, September 12th, 1988, sometime around 4pm, Detective Thomas Murphy with the Lawrence, Massachusetts PD got a call over the radio from his boss while he was sitting at the public library. Details were scant, but it sounded urgent. He just told him to get over to the rail yard to speak with a man. He hurried to his cruiser and crossed the Merrimack River, driving the 2 miles quickly to southern Lawrence, arriving at the intersection of Andover Street and the B&M railroad.

He had no idea what he was walking into.

He could see some people gathered near tracks in the distance. Two trains, sitting next to each other on parallel tracks, concealed from view the gruesome discovery that a B&M rail worker had made while making a routine walk of the area.

11-year-old Melissa Ann Tremblay was laying face down on the tracks. Her left leg was severed by the train near her hip. Her dark brown hair was matted. Her hands were caked with dry mud. She was fully clothed. She wore high-top sneakers, and a white shirt with black and gray stars. There were other wounds to her head and torso, including a “gaping incision” in her lower neck. It was not immediately clear if she had died from a train strike or if her body was placed there in an attempt to conceal a murder.

About 70 feet away from the location of Melissa’s body, Detective Murphy found a small denim purse that contained coins, a candy wrapper, a ‘bank slip’ from an institution in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, sparkle makeup, and an ID card for the Boys & Girls Club. Police later described this secondary location as showing, “evidence of a struggle.” Murder was looking more likely. If it were an accident, why wouldn’t her purse be with her...

It’s not clear who, but one of the Lawrence Police Detectives had the grim task of contacting the girl’s desperate mother, Janet Tremblay. They had found her daughter, Melissa.

Melissa Tremblay is missing

The day prior, on Sunday, September 11th, 1988, Janet and Melissa had driven the 20 minutes from their home in Salem, New Hampshire, to a haunt in Lawrence, Massachusetts, called the “LaSalle Social Club.” Though it had a fancy name, it was really just a dark bar and dance club in a nondescript building in the center of Lawrence. Janet met up with her boyfriend, Ronald, at the bar. Janet had been hanging at the bar regularly, and her daughter often came with her.

As usual, Melissa was given free reign to wander the streets of downtown Lawrence. The bar was in a bustling and loud part of town. The main streets, like Andover, had strip malls and businesses. The side streets were dense with apartment houses and parked cars. There was a major intersection of the B&M rail lines and Andover Street just a block away. The tracks were a seedy place, but that didn’t stop local children from playing on them. Melissa had gotten to know some of them.

The bartender at the LaSalle Social Club made Melissa some popcorn. She told him she would be right back, but she never returned. It was common for Melissa to sleep in her mom’s car, and that’s what they figured she had done.

A railroad employee named Bruce said that he remembered her hanging around the railyard that afternoon around 3:00PM. He told her to leave because it was dangerous, and he said that she did.

Around 4:00PM, her mom started to worry because she hadn’t returned. They started looking around, checking the railroad tracks but couldn’t find her.

As the clock in the bar counted the passing minutes, Janet grew more and more concerned. At 9:00PM, she called the police and filed a missing person report.

Though we have no record of what Janet did that night, she surely was distraught and searched for Melissa at all her usual spots. Her friend later said that she didn’t sleep all night.

At 8:00AM the next morning, Maryann, who had seen Melissa the previous afternoon, teamed up with Janet to look for her. Maryann later said, “We looked in empty cabooses. We called the police, the hospital, her school, her friends... We did everything—even if it seemed stupid.” They xeroxed a photo of Melissa and distributed it to the neighborhoods surrounding the LaSalle Social Club. Maryann considered the possibility that Melissa had run away, but then dismissed it, saying, “It wasn’t in her character. She was afraid to be alone. She was afraid of the dark.”

At 5:00PM they had their answer. There were cops arriving in droves. Word spread quickly. Her daughter had been found.

Autopsy, early investigation

The day after Melissa’s body was discovered, on Tuesday, September 13th, an autopsy was done at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester.

The police had found Melissa’s body face down on the tracks. The most obvious injuries were that her left leg had been severed near the hip joint along with part of her right foot. It was determined that she had been struck by a train post-mortem. Police believed that the killer tried to conceal the murder by staging it as a gruesome accident. The police, prior to transporting her body and in an effort to preserve forensic evidence, had placed evidence bags around her extremities and wrapped her in a clean white sheet.

At the hospital, the medical examiner discovered that she had been stabbed three times—the first was in the center of her abdomen just above the belly button, the second was a stab to her lower ribs on her right side, and the third wound was just behind the second on her side. There were defensive wounds on her third, fourth, and fifth fingers of her right hand. On her head, there were two deep lacerations—lacerations are tears in the skin caused by blunt force trauma. Her skull was fractured. Near her body at the crime scene, a 10-pound bloody rock was discovered that investigators believed could have been used to bludgeon her head.

There were numerous bruises to her face and back. There was a foot mark on her back suggesting she had been “stomped.” It’s unclear if the footprint was on her skin or her clothing. She was fully clothed when she was found. Her hands were caked with soil. The medical examiner who conducted the autopsy ruled that she had died from the injuries to her head and the stab wounds.

Also found at the scene were seventy-one feet of drag marks and a blood trail from where the victim was found to a point of origin where there was evidence of a struggle in the dirt. Plaster casts were taken of two distinct tire marks in the location of the struggle.

The ME did not believe she had been sexually assaulted.

Assistant Essex County District Attorney, Fred McAlary said, “This is a brutal murder. It’s brutal because of the circumstances around the scene and the victim’s age. No stone will be left unturned.”

On the day of the discovery, police had collected footprint evidence and blood. It was sent to the FBI laboratory in DC for analysis. One officer went to the Tremblay home and looked around her room, but didn’t find anything unusual. Police interviewed railroad workers and residents near the railyard. A police sergeant told the press, “They’re all out on the street, knocking on doors, just beating the bushes. It’s kind of tough right now.”

Reactions

Lou DiGlorio was the head of security for B&M Railroad in Lawrence, and he told the Eagle Tribune, “This is such a dangerous place to be for anyone, especially children. No child should be here.”

Public attention shifted to Janet Tremblay. It was rumored that Janet began drinking in the fallout from her divorce from Robert. People wanted to understand how she could have left Melissa alone for so many hours in the streets of Lawrence while she was at the LaSalle Social Club with her boyfriend. But Janet was nowhere to be found. According to both the Boston Globe and the Eagle Tribune, quote, “Mrs. Tremblay, 43 years old, has been in seclusion since the murder—and unavailable for comment.”

Without answers from Janet, people wanted to know what role child protective services had played in keeping Melissa safe.

The Assistant Director of the Boys and Girls Club in Salem, Jerry Kayo, said, “It was well-known that Melissa and her mother needed outside assistance and that the little girl was reaching out for help. It was state officials who failed Melissa most, because they should have done more to get her out of her situation until her mother got help for herself.”

The Division of Children and Youth Services, DCYS, is the name of the child protective service in New Hampshire. It is funded by taxpayers to help, quote, “abused, neglected, troubled, and delinquent” children. Officials with DCYS were contacted by the Eagle Tribune, but they clammed up, citing confidentiality requirements, saying “It's very easy to be a Monday morning quarterback and say that if we had done this or that, this thing might not have happened.” The Eagle Tribune wasn’t satisfied, though, and through the tenacity of their reporters, they got some answers.

Melissa’s case was initiated in April 1988, five months before her death, because of reports of neglect. She was assigned at least two social workers during that time, the last of which was a woman named Barbara working out of the Salem department.

The Eagle Tribune spoke to her school guidance counselor and staff at the Boys and Girls Club, and they described Janet as an absent parent. A guidance counselor said that Melissa was left home alone a lot at night during the school year, and quote, “the child was unhappy about it.”

Staff at the Boys and Girls Club in Salem also reported to DCYS that Melissa was usually the last child to leave the club at night because no one came to get her. According to the aquatics program director, a worker often had to stay late to be with Melissa past closing time at 9:00PM until someone came for her. At DCYS’s request, the club kept records of when Melissa was picked up and by whom.

Janet and her daughter were doing family counseling with DCYS officials, but some people felt that was not enough, including Robert Dombraski, a foster parent who was also an employee of Health and Human Services in New Hampshire. He said, “It is clear to me the state did little for Melissa. The whole thing turns my stomach. Melissa should have been in a foster home. Social workers knew about Melissa’s need for parenting—about her need for being cared for properly. By neglecting that, they allowed this to happen.”

Maryann Campbell, who lived in Lawrence and whose children sometimes played with Melissa, said, “I felt bad for her. She would end up by herself with no place to go while her mother was inside the club.”

An administrator of DCYS responded to the public pressure with generalities, saying, “If we feel the child is at risk, then we protect that child. A lack of parental guidance is not a severe case of neglect, and it is the most difficult kind of neglect to prove in court. In these situations, we are obligated to try and change the parent's behavior and apply reasonable effort to maintain the child in the home by working with the family... We don't have the power to force a parent to pay attention to their child.”

A hot tip

Police continued asking for help from the public. They were stuck. The clue that they focused in on was the description of a vehicle Melissa was last seen at—a tan van with significant body rust. It was sitting in a surface parking lot at a strip mall at the corner of Parker and Andover Streets, just a block from where her body was ultimately discovered.

Investigators speculated that the perpetrator was, quote, “a crazy person or a drifter.”

And that’s where the case sat, dormant, for eleven years.

Tommy Lynn Sells

On Friday, March 10th, 2000, Lawrence PD announced a possible suspect: a man named Tommy Lynn Sells.

He certainly fit the profile. A couple months prior he was charged in Texas with capital murder for the killing of a 13-year-old girl and the attempted murder of a 10-year-old girl. He slit both of their throats—knife attacks, just like in Melissa’s case. In the 80s and the 90s, he often hung around railyards and hopped trains. Sound familiar?

Lawrence Detective John McDonald learned about Tommy Lynn Sells from the popular national TV news show, “Good Morning America,” and he was struck by similarities to Melissa’s case.

Tommy was a drifter and a carnival worker who had confessed to 13 murders in 7 states since he was arrested in January of 2000, including Arkansas, California, and Arizona. He claimed to have used different weapons—guns, knives, an ice pick, and a shovel. The Texas Rangers believed him, saying, “He knows details about the crime scenes that have never been reported. And for whatever reason, he’s cooperating.”

Since his arrest in January he said he had found God and spent his days talking with the chaplain.

But he didn’t quite fit the profile of the man seen at the tan van. That man was described as being in his mid-30s, but Tommy was born in 1965, making him just 23 years old in 1988.

It turns out, Tommy wasn’t our man. He was later cleared of Melissa’s murder.

But he was put to death by lethal injection in 2014 for his other crimes.

DNA

In 2014, 26 years after Melissa’s murder, the Essex County District Attorney’s Office took another crucial look at the case.

According to prosecutor Jessica Strasnick, quote, “a swab of three fingernail clippings and debris from Melissa’s right hand generated a Y-STR DNA profile.” We’ll refer to this as the “fingernail profile.” Investigators believed that this profile belonged to Melissa’s killer.

The fact that a Y-STR profile was developed meant that the killer was male, but it wasn’t precise enough to identify a single person. The gold standard for forensic identification is a 13-STR DNA profile—which can be used to identify anyone on the planet. Y-STR profile development is often done in cases where labs fail to get a full 13-STR DNA profile.

In the years immediately following 2014, it’s not clear how the fingernail profile was utilized by investigators, but it certainly could have been used to eliminate suspects. All that would be necessary is to collect a sample from a suspect or someone in their paternal line, and then compare their Y-STR profile to the fingernail profile—all men who share a common paternal ancestor have the same Y-STR profile.

Narrowing in on a killer

 In 2019, investigators had the physical evidence tested again for DNA. From an area on Melissa’s shirt that was near a knife stab hole, the lab was able to generate a Y-STR profile. Curiously, this Y-STR profile did not match the fingernail profile. We’ll refer to this profile as the “shirt profile.”

This meant that investigators had two different profiles to which they could compare suspects for potential matches.

Forensic genealogy made a big national splash in April of 2018 when Joseph DeAngelo, dubbed “The Golden State Killer,” was caught using this new technique, which was made possible by the increasing size and accessibility of large DNA databases.

In late 2019 or early 2020, investigators contracted a company called Identifinders to work with the fingernail profile and the shirt profile, to see what could be done using genetic genealogy.

Though we’ll discuss this in greater detail later, the fingernail profile led investigators to a particular family with the last name McClendon.

Investigation into the McClendon family

The report, which was issued on February 16th, 2020, kicked the investigation into high gear. Police began tracking down anyone with the last name McClendon that had a connection to Lawrence—especially those with a criminal history.

In June of 2020, a Massachusetts state trooper traveled to a town called Athol and spoke to a man named Timothy McClendon. He had received a speeding ticket in Lawrence in 1989. He was initially unwilling to provide a DNA sample, but when he was sent a grand jury summons, he later agreed. In October of 2020, investigators got results back from the lab that his Y-STR profile matched the fingernail profile. This, in turn, meant that all of Timothy’s male relatives that shared a common ancestor would match the fingernail profile as well.

To this point, the McClendon family name hadn’t appeared in any of the police’s files. There was no previous connection to the case, and there was nobody in the McClendon family who had been investigated.

Cops started to build out his family tree and asked about other male members of his family who may have had a connection to Lawrence, and that’s how they learned about Marvin McClendon, Timothy’s older brother. Marvin also went by Skip, but we’ll be using his legal first name. Timothy recalled that both Marvin and his father bought wood and construction supplies from a distributor called Jackson Lumber in Lawrence. They also went to a church in Lawrence. Though his father had passed away, he said that his brother was living in Alabama. Timothy said he, himself, had grown up in Tewksbury, a town about 8 miles southwest of Lawrence.

Police traveled to Alabama and spoke to Marvin for the first time on March 15th, 2021. He was cooperative, agreeing to speak to investigators and to provide a DNA sample. He denied that he had anything to do with Melissa’s death. He said that his brother, Timothy, might be the McClendon that they were looking for.

He was interviewed a second time on November 30th, 2021, and a third time on April 26th, 2022.

Marvin McClendon arrested

On the afternoon of April 26th, 2022, Marvin was arrested at his home in Bremen, Alabama for the murder of Melissa Tremblay.

Marvin was 41 years old at the time of Melissa’s murder, and police believed that he was the perpetrator.

He was taken to the county lockup and the now-74-year-old man was thrown in jail. His family came to the jail to deliver the 11 prescription medications that he was on. Marvin was not a well man—he was sick with diabetes and heart disease and suffered from sleep apnea. He had just undergone a massive open-heart surgery in 2019.

The next day, the Essex County District Attorney told the world that after 34 years, an arrest had been made in Melissa’s case. Andrea Ganley spoke to WMUR, The Eagle Tribune, and CBS Boston in the media blitz that followed the announcement. She said, “This is a pleasant surprise. I am beyond shocked. I think about it every day. I was starting to feel like it might not [happen], but I still had some hope... I always had hope.” When asked if the name Marvin McClendon meant anything to her, she said no—she’d never heard of him.

A victim advocate from Essex County contacted Melissa’s family and informed them of the arrest. They said that they were “happy and relieved.”

Marvin appeared in court in Cullman County, Alabama, and waived his right to challenge extradition, and he would be promptly transferred to Essex County.

Reporter’s impressions of Marvin’s life in Alabama

Jill Harmacinski, who had been writing about Melissa’s case for the Eagle Tribune for 13 years, traveled to Bremen, Alabama to learn about Marvin’s life.

Bremen is in north-central Alabama, about an hour away from the nearest major city—Birmingham. Marvin lived on a family plot of land (80 acres) surrounded by 2-lane country roads. His rusted mailbox was hand-painted with the words, “M.C. McClendon, Jr.” Jill noted that his “small, wood-framed house with a porch stood in front of a much-larger metal barn. A variety of vehicles—a Lincoln Town Car, a vintage El Camino, a white van, a four-wheeler, and a full-sized pickup truck—were all parked in the yard.”

She spoke to relatives to learn about his life in Alabama. Family members said they didn’t think the 74-year-old was employed. They figured he lived off his pension ($35,000/year) and his Social Security benefits.

According to his sister’s husband, Dan Greenwood, he had lived in Alabama for decades. Dan and he had been friends since childhood. They went to Tewksbury High School together in Massachusetts and had known each other for as long as he could remember. His arrest was quote, “the biggest shock ever in my life.” Dan described him as a good friend, but “He had his life, and I had mine.” They saw each other on special occasions like Christmas. He thought of Marvin as someone he could depend on—he would be there for him if he needed help. Regarding the crime, both he and his sister said they only knew what had been printed in the newspapers, but Dan insisted that if he were guilty, he should pay for his crime.

Other relatives didn’t paint so rosy a picture. He evidently had children with ex-wife, Doreen, but he was estranged from them. Some said he was “just a grumpy old man who sometimes shouted at children playing nearby [for being loud or making noise on their four-wheelers].” Some said he was “not a nice man,” and another said, “we just avoided him.”

Jill Harmacinski got his criminal record from Cullman County Court. It was pretty clean other than repeated traffic violations for not wearing a seatbelt—there were many from 2007 to 2016.

But the question that many wanted to know was who was Marvin McClendon 34 years prior in 1988, not 2022. And to answer that question, we’ll start from the beginning.

Marvin McClendon’s life

Marvin McClendon was born on July 3rd, 1947.

Marvin went to Tewksbury High School, graduating in 1965. In 1966, he enlisted in the armed forces at Boston Army Base, which was a major recruitment office, and served four years in the Air Force. During that stint, he met his future wife, Patricia, in California. When he got out in 1970, they got a place together back in his hometown of Tewksbury.

They had kids right away. His first son, Scott, was born in 1970, and his second son, Todd, was born in 1971. He and Patricia remained married for 13 years, and when they split up in 1983, she moved away to Utah.

Marvin married again in 1985 to woman named Doreen. They remained legally married for 18 years, but split after a short time. It was around the time of this split, in 1988, that Marvin was living in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, about 20 minutes away from where Melissa was murdered. He was 41 years old and worked as a handyman and a carpenter for a Seventh Day Adventist church in Lawrence. That church was only a quarter-mile from where Melissa’s body was discovered.

Marvin worked as a carpenter both independently and with his father. He worked off and on for the Massachusetts prison system as a corrections officer and eventually accrued 20 years of service. He even said to a Massachusetts State Trooper who was present at his arrest: “At least I got 20 years of my pension.”

Who is Marvin McClendon?

Marvin was married at the time of his arrest, and though we would have assumed that his wife was home, too, his attorney later said at trial that he was living alone, suggesting that his 4th marriage had ended as well.

Marvin is 6 foot tall and weighs 280 pounds. He has small, close-set, blue eyes. He is mostly bald with a short ring of silver hair encircling his head. His skin hangs from his face and transforms his downturned lips into a sour, almost angry-looking frown. Faint dark-brown eyebrows in tall arches frame his menacing gaze.

Marvin still owned a home, and he knew he was in for a lengthy and expensive legal process, so he tried to sign over the deed to his sister, Rebecca Greenwood, and gave her power of attorney over his affairs. Her husband, Dan, started cleaning up the home, getting it ready for Marvin’s anticipated long absence.

Many people imagined that the person that killed Melissa was a drifter—a “transient” (as it was called back in the papers in 1988). Back when Marvin was 41 years old, he was a father, had been twice married, and he was a local. Melissa’s friend, Andrea, said, “It is shocking that he was a churchgoing correctional officer. The fact that he was a member of law enforcement never occurred to any of us.” She continued, “How did she cross his path? Was he watching her? Did he stumble upon her that day? Are there other families out there waiting for closure? There are a lot of questions yet to be answered.”

 

Part 2 of this story will be released on February 11th.

If you have any information at all on the murder of Melissa Tremblay, please contact the Lawrence Police Dept at 978-794-5900.

This text has been adapted from the Murder, She Told podcast episode, “Melissa Tremblay: Inside the Investigation. To hear Melissa’s full story, find Murder, She Told on your favorite podcast platform.

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Sources For This Episode

Newspaper articles

Various articles from Berkshire Eagle, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Eagle Tribune, Montgomery Advisor, New Hampshire Union Leader, Salem Observer, Sentinel and Enterprise, Transcript Telegram, and the Valley News, here.

Written by various authors including Anjali Huynh, Nick Stoico, Chris Mclaughlin, Diana Brown, Donna Thornton, Emily Sweeney, Nick Stoico, Erin Tiernan, Flint McColgan, JM Lawrence, John Basilesco, Jonathan Phelps, Julie Manganis, Magella Cantara, Maria Alvarez, Monique Duhamel, Paul Freely, Susan Forrest, and Travis Andersen.

Special thanks to the extensive coverage by print reporter Jill Harmacinksi.

Official documents

Essex County Superior Court, Docket Record, as of 1/5/2024

Various court records, 42 in total, between June 2022 and December 2023, as outlined here.

Courtroom audio from Essex Superior Court

NOAA historical weather reports

Interviews

Special thanks to Nicole and Andrea for speaking with us for this episode.

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Photos

Photos from WHNT, Patch.com, WMUR, WCVB, Google Maps, FindaGrave, Tewksbury yearbook, Salem Times, and the Eagle Tribune.

Credits

Vocal performance, research, and audio editing by Kristen Seavey

Writing, research, and photo editing by Byron Willis

Additional research by Chelsea Hanrahan and Ericka Pierce

Murder, She Told is created by Kristen Seavey.