Discovering Melissa Tremblay

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. There was a big rail yard there—as many as 8 lines abreast at its widest—where empty boxcars would often sit.

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 60 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 Melissa’s next-of-kin—her desperate mother, Janet Tremblay.

Missy goes 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 empty box cars that sat in the staging areas brought some problems: people who used drugs and the unhoused living in them. 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.

A resident of the area, Lisa, later recalled that Melissa stopped by her home that afternoon looking to play with her 4 children, but she sent her away because the kids were grounded. When reflecting on how she met Melissa, Lisa said that one day the kids had “brought her home to play.” Melissa, she said, would come over about once a week to help look after the younger children and play with the older ones.

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 rail yard that afternoon around 3:00PM. He told her to leave because it was dangerous, and he said that she left.

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.

At 5:30PM, a couple people saw Melissa speaking to a man in a tan van at the nearby intersection of Andover and Parker. They recalled that the van had a lot of rust. They described the man as unkempt and big, with a dark complexion and dark hair. He had heavy facial hair growth, but not a full beard and appeared to be in his mid-30s.

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.

At 8:00AM the next morning, Maryann, who had seen Melissa the previous afternoon, teamed up with Janet to look for her. 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.

Who was Melissa Tremblay?

Melissa Ann Tremblay, who went by ‘Missy,’ was born on March 1st, 1977 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. About a month later she was adopted by Janet and Robert Tremblay.

She grew up in Salem, New Hampshire, a city in the southeast corner of the state that sits right up next to the Massachusetts border. She has just started 6th grade at Lancaster Elementary School.

It’s mostly comprised of neighborhoods and a main drag on which there are many big box retail stores and a big shopping mall — “The Mall at Rockingham Park.”

Melissa was keen on fashion and pocketbooks as a kiddo, so I can imagine her walking the halls of the big mall, browsing the shops while decked out in 80s garb. She liked Madonna and New Kids on the Block, who had just released their self-titled album in 1986 when Melissa was 9 years old. She liked to sing and was part of the school chorus.

Also in 1986, Melissa’s adoptive parents—Janet and Robert—got a divorce. Melissa stayed with her mom.

Melissa was diagnosed as hyperactive and was having behavioral problems at school. Her principal, Robert Chute, said, “Melissa was an energetic girl who eagerly sought the attention of people around her. She expressed herself freely and was honest and outgoing. She had a lot of friends.” The Friday before she was killed, she spoke to Robert at school. He recalled, “She came in to show me her artwork. It was a sock with sewn-on decorations and a draw-string. You could use it to keep change [she said].”

Her schoolmate and close friend Andrea Ganley said, “She touched a lot of lives. Everyone in school knew Missy. She was bubbly. She was fun. She was tough. She had cool hair, cool clothes. I basically looked up to her. I thought she was just beautiful, perfect.” Andrea was just 7 years old when Melissa was killed—a 2nd grader. Others described Melissa as “complex, sweet, difficult, and boisterous” and... “charismatic.” She was full of imagination.

In addition to her outsized role at Lancaster Elementary, she also had a big presence at the local chapter of the Boys & Girls Club of America, which, at that time, was known as the Salem Boys Club. Melissa was at the Boys & Girls Club often—sometimes five nights a week, from the end of the school day until closing time. In fact, her mom, Janet, sometimes failed to arrange transportation for her daughter, and staff would have to track her down to help coordinate the logistics of getting Melissa home.

In addition to that organization, she was also involved with the Haverhill chapter of the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America as a ‘little’ since she was 7 years old. Her “big sister” was Virginia, and she was even listed in Melissa’s obituary. They must have been close.

Melissa’s autopsy

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 medical examiner determined that she had been beaten, stabbed twice, in her chest and her liver, and had her throat slashed. She had a fractured skull and a large bruise on her back. Though she was struck by the train, her left leg severed by the collision, the cause of death was determined to be the stabbing, meaning that she was killed prior to the train strike. Police believed that the killer tried to conceal the murder by staging it as a gruesome accident.

Reactions from the public

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, “Mrs. Tremblay, 43 years old, has been in seclusion since the murder—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 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 “the child was unhappy about it.”

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 the 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 “a crazy person or a drifter.”

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

DNA obtained

In 2014, 26 years after Melissa’s murder, the Essex County District Attorney’s Office took another crucial look at the case. From her fingernail clippings, they were able to develop a DNA profile. The forensic genealogy company Identifinders worked with the genetic information to come up with the possible last name of McClendon. The cops were unable to provide a full SNP profile—the most helpful kind—so the information she was working with was limited.

2021: Marvin “Skip” McClendon, Jr is arrested

In 2021, seven years after the McClendon name surfaced, investigators began interviewing people in a key family—the family of Marvin Carlton McClendon, Jr. Marvin also went by Skip, and was 74-years-old. Lawrence PD spoke to Marvin for the first time on March 15th, 2021. Sometime also in ‘21, Marvin voluntarily provided his DNA to the police.

A year after that first discussion, Massachusetts State Police interviewed Marvin again. He was living in Alabama. He denied that he had anything to do with Melissa’s death. He minimized any connection he might have had to Lawrence, Massachusetts, and he suggested his brother, Timothy, might be the McClendon that the police were looking for.

In the afternoon of April 26th, 2022, Marvin was arrested at his home in Bremen, Alabama for the murder of Melissa Tremblay. He said to a Massachusetts State Trooper who was present at his arrest: “At least I got 20 years of my pension.”

Eagle Tribune reports on 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.”

According to his sister’s husband, Dan, 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 “the biggest shock ever in my life.” 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 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.

Who is Marvin McClendon?

Marvin McClendon was born on July 3rd, 1947. He 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. He then worked as a corrections officer for the Massachusetts jail system on three different stints over the next 32 years.

They had kids right away. His first son was born in 1970, and his second son 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. According to prosecutors, he was known to be an “angry violent drunk” who spent time in strip clubs and had sex with women in the back of his van.

It was this man—Marvin McClendon in 1988—who was accused of killing 11-year-old Melissa Tremblay.

Legal process

On May 13th, 2022, Marvin faced a judge in Lawrence District Court that read the charges against him: first degree murder. His expression was blank and unchanging. He entered a plea of not guilty and was held without bail pending trial.

It was during this hearing that prosecutors revealed that DNA played a major role in the arrest. Also that based upon the wounds it was believed that the killer was left-handed, which Marvin is. Lastly, the van that witnesses saw Melissa near on the day of her death, the one that was tan in color and had significant rust, was similar to one that Marvin drove at the time.

A month later, a grand jury returned an indictment against him and he was arraigned again in Essex County Superior Court in Salem, Massachusetts, on July 7th. Melissa’s cousin, Danielle Root, attended the proceeding and spoke to the press afterwards. She finally had the opportunity to direct the public focus in the right place. In part, she said, “Many people blame my aunt for Missy’s death. While I don’t believe she made the right decision that night, that’s between her and God. Ultimately the only person responsible for Missy’s death is the man we saw in court today, Marvin McClendon.”

Marvin was standing on the opposite side of the steel bars in very correctional system in which he had worked for many years. The judge was aware of this and required that he be kept in protective custody—meaning that he was only allowed to leave his cell with a guard escort. His prior employment put him at an increased risk of violence—not to mention that he stood accused of killing an 11-year-old girl. This meant that Marvin wouldn’t be allowed out of his cell each day until 11:00PM when he would be permitted to shower and have a short recreation period.

The trial begins

Marvin’s trial began on Thursday, December 7th. His defense attorney, in opening arguments, emphasized the fact that the DNA did not uniquely identify Marvin, saying, “He has absolutely no reason to kill an 11-year-old girl ... His crime is his last name: McClendon. He is innocent. He wasn't there.”

The prosecution called retired Massachusetts State Trooper Kenneth Kelleher. He was there the day they discovered Melissa’s body. He presented Melissa’s shirt—a “stained white top with black and gray stars on it” — to the jury, pulling it from a brown paper evidence bag. He had attended Melissa’s autopsy and recalled watching the medical examiner clip her fingernails for DNA evidence. As reported by the Eagle Tribune, “the retired detective paused and seemed to choke up before saying nothing unusual was found in the girl's room.”

More people who were there the day her body was discovered were summoned for the trial: Bruce, a B&M railyard worker; Lisa, the mother of Melissa’s 4 young friends who lived nearby; and Donald Nadeau, the bartender at the LaSalle Social Club.

Lisa remembered the kids making mix-tapes together on cassette. She said that Melissa always wanted to help with her youngest children, who were just 1 and 2 years old. She also recalled that her husband would often walk Melissa back to the bar late at night to return her to her mother.

Donald said that Melissa would often sit at a table in the bar by herself and have a coke and a bag of chips. Sometimes she would be there for 5 or 6 hours at a time. When asked by the defense, he said that he never remembered encountering anyone named Marvin, Skip, or with the last name McClendon.

On day 3, Daniel Hatch, a boy who was 13 years old and unhoused back in 1988, was called to the stand. He said that he would typically spend his days looking for cars to steal, shelters to stay warm, and places to get some food. He would sleep in unlocked vehicles or in railroad boxcars. The night Melissa disappeared, he noticed a man and a girl sitting on the steps outside of the LaSalle Social Club. Daniel was on his way to a friend’s house to get a screwdriver—a tool he used in car thefts. He recognized the man on the stoop as Mike Therrien, someone his family had warned him to avoid. About 10 minutes later, he saw them walking together, away from the club. He saw them join another man—the three of them talking together. The next day, when he heard about the discovery of the body, he asked his brother if he should tell the police what he’d seen. His brother said to stay out of it. It wasn’t until 2013, when Daniel was arrested in Lawrence, that he decided to tell the police what he’d seen 25 years prior.

What doesn’t make sense about Daniel’s testimony is the timing. Her mom last saw Melissa at 2:00PM. They got worried around 4:30PM, when it was still light out. They then spent hours looking around the bar, trying to find her. Numerous people were likely aware of the search including all of the bar staff. He said that he saw a girl, about Melissa’s age, sitting on the steps in front of the bar that night. It wouldn’t have been dark until 7:30PM. If Melissa were sitting on the steps of the bar at 7:30PM, it seems very likely that she would have been noticed and reunited with her mother.

On day 4 of the trial, a supervisor from the Massachusetts State Crime Lab took the stand and explained the DNA testing that was done on the fingernails from 2019 to 2023. The DNA collected did not match the alternative suspects that the defense had put forth, but it was a match to all of the male members of the McClendon family, including Marvin.

On day 5, Marvin’s ex-wife and mother of his children, Patricia, took the stand and confirmed that he was left-handed. Several of Marvin’s male family members took the stand. Four of his cousins who were all from Alabama testified that they weren’t in Massachusetts in 1988. Marvin’s son, Todd, testified that he was not in Massachusetts in September 1988, nor was his brother, Scott. A forensic pathologist and consultant for law enforcement testified that based on his review of the records and photos in the case, he believed that Melissa was attacked from behind by a left-handed person.

On day 7, the prosecution rested.

The defense called an expert witness on day 8—a forensic pathologist named Jennifer Lipman. She had carefully reviewed the autopsy photos and said that she could not determine whether Melissa was attacked from the front or from behind. She said she also had no opinion on the dominant hand of the attacker. The defense also summoned an expert on genetics, Dr. Frederick Beiber. He said that “everyone [sitting] in the courtroom has 800 to 2,000 living relatives” — the implication being that the DNA under Melissa’s fingernails could match hundreds of people. Marvin did not testify in his own defense.

The case was turned over to the jury after 9 days on December 19th, 2023, 5 days before Christmas. Every day through Friday, December 22nd, the jury deliberated for 5 to 7 hours. Court wasn’t in session on Saturday or Sunday, and then Christmas fell on Monday, so the jurors had three days away before returning on Tuesday, the day after Christmas. They deliberated again all day on Tuesday—another 7 hours. On Wednesday, December 27th, at 10:05AM, deliberations ended after 32 hours. A note to the judge indicated that they were deadlocked—they could not unanimously agree on the verdict. The judge declared a mistrial and dismissed the jury.

Mistrial reactions, perseverance

Two days later, the family released a statement. In part it read: “While we would have preferred a guilty verdict, we thank God that it wasn't not guilty and that this isn't the end.” They thanked the many people in law enforcement that were involved in bringing the case all the way to trial. They thanked the witnesses that traveled from all over to testify. They thanked the jurors for spending their Christmas locked in a conference room together.

And they remained steadfast in their belief in Marvin’s guilt, saying, “He has had 35 years that he has gone unpunished, walking free for 33 of those years. [...] Missy would be 46 years old and probably have a family of her own if he hadn't taken her life. We might have got a mistrial but in our hearts we know the right man was on trial and we look forward to seeing him finally punished.” They wondered about the why—why did the killer take Melissa’s life? Motive was never discussed during the trial.

Though there has been no reporting on the reasoning behind the jury’s decision, I believe that the key witness for the defense was the geneticist. If we understand his testimony correctly, the DNA evidence proves that the killer is one of a group of perhaps a thousand male relatives. To narrow it further, the jury must have turned to the other evidence that pointed to Marvin... and found it lacking. Based on the trial reporting, here’s what they could have relied upon: Marvin lived in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, just 20 minutes away, and had a job in Lawrence. He owned a van in 1988 that matched the description of the van seen by an eye witness. He was left-handed, which is estimated to be about 10% of the population, and the state’s forensic expert believed that Melissa was killed by a left-handed man. Lastly there are Marvin’s own words, suggesting a certain resignation or inevitably of his incarceration. He said, “at least I got 20 years out of my retirement pension.”

If that is the extent of the evidence against Marvin, I am not surprised that there were some jurors who didn’t find Marvin guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Marvin’s attorney spoke to the press on his behalf, proclaiming, “Mr. McClendon maintains his innocence. I believe he’s innocent. We appreciate the jury’s diligent and thoughtful deliberations, and we look forward to trying the case again.”

Marvin’s attorney will probably renew his request that he be granted bail, and with the mistrial in the rearview, a judge may allow it. If not, Marvin will likely sit in jail for some time, awaiting a new trial. With Marvin’s poor health, it’s possible he may not survive in jail for very long.

Meanwhile, Melissa’s family and friends will continue to wait. They have already waited for 34 years. They are patient and they are strong. The LaSalle Social Club is long gone—demolished in the early 90s. The train tracks where Melissa was found still remain. So do the memories of the innocent young girl.

 

As of January 2024, Essex County plans to pursue a second trial against Marvin “Skip” McClendon. If you have any information at all on the murder of Melissa Tremblay, now is the time to come forward. Please contact the Lawrence Police Dept at 978-794-5900.

This story will be updated

This text has been adapted from the Murder, She Told podcast episode, “Melissa Tremblay: Cold Case Solved?. 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

NOAA historical weather reports

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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.