Nereida ‘Nettie’ Melendez: A Life Stolen
Anticipation for her next chapter in life
Nereida Melendez, who went by “Nettie,” spent the evening of Sunday, June 4, 1989, baking at her home in Worcester, MA. Her graduation ceremony from North High School was set for the next day, and 17-year-old Nettie was making cookies and cupcakes for a party after the event. Monday would be a busy day, with errands and gradua-tion rehearsal in the morning, the ceremony in the evening, and her celebration that night. She called one of her older brothers and his wife asking them to come over and help her out with the baking.
Nettie was excited and proud to graduate high school. She'd insisted that her older sister, Yolanda, come home for the ceremony and party. When Yolanda explained that she couldn’t afford to buy Nettie a present and wasn't go-ing to attend, Nettie insisted that just Yolanda's being there was enough. So she and her newlywed husband headed back to the family home in Worcester from Bristol, Connecticut, to celebrate her youngest sister's accomplishment.
An ambitious teenager
Like many teens on the edge of adulthood, Nettie dreamed of getting out of the neighborhood where she'd grown up. After graduation, she intended to take business classes at nearby Quinsigamond Community College, her first step in pursuing a business career. According to her older brother, Peter, Nettie wanted to become a, quote, “woman of the nineties.” Her entrepreneurial spirit was reflected in the fun ‘class prophecy’ section of her high school year-book, which foretold each student's future. It was predicted that Nettie would run a clothing store with her cousin and close friend, Doris Melendez.
Nettie had a work ethic to match her big dreams. For the past eighteen months, she'd been working after school and on weekends as a receptionist and assistant at Sani-Mate Supply Co, a company that provided commercial clean-ing and supplies to local businesses. She intended to join Sani-Mate's small staff full-time while taking her business classes. To celebrate Nettie's graduation, Sani-Mate president Jay Tivnan purchased a full-page ad in the North High yearbook. It read: “Congratulations Nereida Melendez, graduating senior—Our number one star.” Between the full-time job opportunity and the yearbook ad, Nettie seemed to have been held in high esteem by her employer. In her yearbook dedication, she thanked her friends at Sani-Mate for, quote, “all the support, encouragement, and help for my future.”
This is Nettie’s oldest brother, Peter.
Peter: “In her teenage years, she wanted to make sure that she wasn’t going to be stereotyped as a Latino living off the system. She had plans to go to college and major in business and be a successful woman.”
Adventurous and bold
Nettie wanted freedom and independence and got her license at the earliest opportunity.
Doris: “She had her license at 16. She was very eager to get her license. She would take her father’s car as much as she could. She loved to drive. She just wanted to be driving constantly. Sani-Mate used to trust her to drive their vans! I was impressed.”
Nettie was adventurous and bold, and she encouraged Doris to join her.
Doris: “There used to be a club in the Galleria downtown for kids 13 - 18. She always wanted to go clubbing. My mom was more strict, and Nettie would encourage me to sneak out the window. She influenced me in a negative way, but in a good way, because I got to live my high school life a little bit. I wasn’t so secluded and strict and didn’t feel so left out.”
Flipping through the pages of the North High 1989 yearbook, it's easy to see that Nettie played a vibrant role in her school community. As a member of the Pep Club, she worked to build school spirit amongst her fellow students. She was active in the drama club, and worked on the yearbook staff as well as the school paper. Her US History teacher described Nettie as “outgoing, pleasant, happy, and always cordial.” Her camaraderie for her fellow students was clear in her parting words in the North High yearbook, quote, “Good luck to all my graduating classmates, and congratulations for all the years of work. We're finally here. I hope you all succeed in your goals and future plans.”
Monday, June 5, 1989, Day of graduation
Around 8:00AM on the morning of Monday, June 5, Lily, a classmate, popped by Nettie’s apartment in Plumley Village. They had graduation practice in an hour, and Nettie had an errand she needed to take care of. She had bor-rowed a van from her employer for the weekend to go to the beach with some friends. It was Sani-Mate company policy that employees could use work vehicles after hours. Despite her youth and part-time employment with the company, Nettie enjoyed a position of responsibility and trust, and seemed to have been a full member of Sani-Mate's business family.
Lily and Nettie made a plan. Nettie would drive the van back to Sani-Mate while Lily picked up Doris. Lily and Doris would then drive to Nettie’s work and pick her up. And then, the three of them would head on to graduation practice.
Doris: “I still have the image in my head of her where she passed by in the van, and she looked so little through the window wearing that white and black checkered shirt that I knew was her brother Bennee’s. She had her hair up, and she just drove by. She looked so weird. She’s like, 5FT 3IN. How are you driving [this huge work van]? That was impressive to me.”
The Sani-Mate warehouse was a little less than a mile from Nettie's house, so the drive only took a few minutes. President, Jay Tivnan, was sitting in traffic between 8:05 and 8:10AM on Shrewsbury St when he saw Nettie outside the business. While at work, Nettie made a short phone call to an unknown recipient. It was later revealed that a car was seen following the van at the time Nettie was returning it, and that the man driving the car beeped his horn, and then Nettie beeped the van’s horn in response—in a friendly way, as if the drivers recognized each other.
At 8:35AM, Lily and Doris arrived at the warehouse to pick her up. The van she had borrowed was there, but there was no sign of Nettie. They backtracked by car and looked for her, thinking perhaps she had decided to leave on foot, having grown impatient waiting for them, but couldn’t find her. The girls had graduation rehearsal at North High at 9:00AM, and after searching for a while, Doris and Lily went on without her.
Nettie's older sister, Yolanda, would later reflect that missing an arranged ride was unlike her. She said, “My sis-ter is the type that if her ride were late, she would call and nag.” At North High, graduation practice started and fin-ished without her.
Between 10:30AM and 11:00AM, Nettie was seen at the Sani-Mate warehouse again by her coworkers. She was returning a set of keys that she'd forgotten to drop off with the van earlier that morning. Nettie walked right past Jay and the warehouse manager with the keys in her hand. Jay would later say that he assumed she had been working that day, and only later learned that her supervisor had given her the day off. According to Jay, she appeared to be her usual, happy self.
About an hour later, between 12:30PM and 1:00PM, Nettie bought a soda at Toscano's Market, a deli on Shrewsbury St where she was a regular. Toscano's employees knew Nettie from her daily visits to the market. They said that Nettie was a friendly kid who often made small talk while she waited for her usual—a tuna fish sandwich. One man said that on this visit, “[Nettie] seemed herself. She said ‘Hi’ as she usually did in that big, vibrant voice of hers and that was it.”
As the afternoon of Monday, June 5 wore on, Nettie's family members at home in Plumley Village grew con-cerned. She'd spent the weekend making extensive preparations for graduation, and now she was nowhere to be found.
Peter: “I went to work that day. In the afternoon after work, I stopped by my parent’s house [Nettie’s home], and it was then that my mother mentioned she hadn’t seen or heard from Nettie. And then Doris said that she wasn’t at the rehearsal. It was very uncharacteristic of her
1.) ...not to check in with my parents to let them know where she was and
2.) ...to miss her graduation rehearsal.”
They were expecting her to be home, getting ready for the ceremony. Doris was in her same graduating class, so Doris and the rest of the Melendez family headed to Worcester Auditorium, hoping that Nettie would be there.
Doris: “They called her name. I turned around. She was supposed to be behind me. I looked back and it was empty. I saw her brother, Bennee, step up with some beautiful flowers—some roses. I looked back at Esdras and Lily, and was like ‘Do you know where she is?’ And I just remembered having this feeling that I needed to return to the house. Because that was odd. Strange that she wasn’t there to get her diploma. I was wor-ried. I was kinda panicking.“
Yolanda would later remember, “The whole day my mother had... this feeling,” and Rosa’s intuition that some-thing was wrong would prove to be correct.
A pedestrian discovers Nettie’s purse
At about 6:45PM on Monday evening, as Nettie's family grew increasingly concerned, a man walking in a nearby wooded area found a purse discarded in the brush.
The purse contained an eyeshadow, a blush, a Maybelline Pink Mist lip gloss, and a wallet covered in a pattern of tiny pink hearts. Inside the wallet was Nettie's North High bus pass, some family photos, and twenty dollars. The strap was missing from the purse. The man turned her purse over to the Worcester Police about 45 minutes after finding it, but at that point, Nettie’s family had no idea the purse had been discovered.
Family reports her missing
The Melendez family reported her missing to the Worcester Police Department at 8:00 or 8:30PM Monday night—sources vary on the timing of the report.
Peter: “When we reported her missing, they made a comment about... had she run away? We said, ‘No, absolutely not. That’s not her.’ They said, ‘In order for her to be reported missing, she had to be missing for at least 24 hours.’ We stressed that this was not typical of her not to communicate... not to let her parents know where she was. So they took the report, but there wasn’t much to go on. They told us to let them know if she showed up.”
Nettie's parents also called the local newspaper, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, to spread the news of Net-tie's disappearance and ask the public for any information.
Concerned that police were not taking their report seriously, Nettie's family decided to take matters into their own hands and look for her themselves. They began their search in Plumley Village, the apartment complex where they lived. The complex is made up of an assortment of sprawling three-story units grouped around a central high-rise, bordered on one side by the interstate. The evening chilled and a patchy drizzle set in as they checked the walkways and parking areas between the identical buildings before fanning their search out beyond Plumley Village's monotonous expanse. They crossed a bridge into a residential neighborhood on the other side of the interstate, heading for a large, wooded area. These woods cover several city blocks and contain several parks, sports fields, and recreation areas. The far end of this green space, Bell Pond, is about a mile from Nettie's home. The Melendez family searched along the walking paths and into the wooded area by flashlight late into the night, from one end to the other. Yolanda later reported that she and her husband feared for their own safety as they hunted for Nettie. The dejected searchers returned home at 4:00AM.
Day 2 - A terrible discovery
The next morning was overcast. After a sleepless night, Nettie's family headed out into the gloom to resume their search. They printed flyers with Nettie's picture and posted them all around the city, asking passersby if they had seen their missing loved one.
Meanwhile, at the Worcester Police Department, a records clerk noticed matching names on a lost and found report and a missing persons report. Taking a closer look, he realized that the purse turned in the previous evening belonged to missing girl, Nettie Melendez. Immediately, Worcester Police dispatched two detectives to search Bell Pond, the area where the purse was discovered.
After hearing from the police, the Melendez family decided once again to look for Nettie themselves. Nettie's father, Benito, older brothers, Peter and Bennee, and a family friend went back out to search. As the day wore on, they moved south through the woods, from Bell Pond toward Elliot Steet, a dirt road that ran a half mile into the woods at their southern border. Elliot Street was known as both a lovers' lane and a place where stolen cars were stripped for parts. The searchers poked at the damp underbrush with sticks as they hunted. Although they were not trained searchers, they tried to be thorough. At about 4:00PM, in a hilly wooded area about 40 feet from Elliot St, Nettie's older brother Bennee made a heartbreaking discovery.
On the forest floor, amidst the wet leaves, he recognized the black and white checks of his own shirt. As he started to clear the debris he discovered a body lying face-up. Bennee, stunned, was unable to call out to the others, who were searching only a few feet away. It took only a moment for his brother, Peter, to realize what he had found. When Peter gently swept the leaves away, it was Nettie's eyes staring up at him. She was still wearing the white-flecked black shirt and black skirt she had worn on Monday morning. It was plain to see that she was gone. One of the buttons on her flannel shirt was broken, as well as the plastic clasp of her bra, leaving her breasts exposed. The strap of her purse was wrapped around her neck. Nettie's body was lying among small trees and scrubby ground cover only about 150 feet from where her purse had been found the previous evening.
Worcester Police descended on the crime scene. Her loved ones stayed long enough to positively identify her body. At 5:35PM Tuesday evening, the Medical Examiner arrived and wasted no time in declaring her death a homicide.
Piecing together her final hours
The Worcester Police department dispatched six teams of detectives to scour the city for information and evidence related to Nettie's final hours. Worcester Police shared what they knew about the case with reporters. Because Nettie's purse had been turned in with its contents intact, they did not think that robbery was a motive. They believed that Nettie was killed between 4:00PM and 6:45PM Monday afternoon, roughly an hour before her purse had been found and turned in. Doris, though, wasn’t so sure. She still contests the sightings that happened that day. According to her, “I don’t think they were accurate. I think they were confusing me with her.”
The last reliable sighting of Nettie was at Sani-Mate when she dropped off the van that morning. Doris figures that the second sighting at Sani-Mate at 10:30AM was a case of mistaken identity because Doris went by the business around that time to look for Nettie. And she believes that the workers at Toscano’s Market were mistaken. Nettie was in all the time, and they could’ve mixed up their days. And the sighting that afternoon was discounted by the police. Doris believes that whoever she went with that morning at Sani-Mate was likely the killer.
They had not found any footprints or similar clues at the scene, likely because of rain that had fallen the previous night. Detectives said they were waiting to interview three potential suspects to narrow the focus of the investigation.
A questionable sighting
A former schoolmate of Nettie's, a 22-year-old man named George Maldonado, came forward to say that he had seen Nettie in the hours before her death. George, who was a senior when Nettie was a sophomore, said Nettie had been hanging around outside Worcester City Hall at about 3:00 or 4:00PM with three girls and a guy, all of whom were unknown to him. He said, “[she] didn’t seem like herself. She seemed nervous. I asked her where she was going and she didn’t answer me.” He continued, “It was like she was another person. She wasn't straight, didn't act normal. I asked if she was having a problem, and she says, ‘it's none of your concern’.” The young man she was with called to her and then she walked away. When George left the area an hour or so later, Nettie and the others were gone. Nettie's family was puzzled by this supposed sighting. Yolanda would tell reporters, “We don't even know if it was true that she was seen.” When Worcester police spoke with George a second time, they determined that he had mistaken someone else for Nettie and that his sighting was incorrect.
A heart-breaking funeral
Over 300 people attended Nettie's funeral mass on Saturday, June 10, 1989 at the Roman Catholic Church, Our Lady of Fatima. Nettie, dressed in her white cap and gown, lay in a lilac-colored casket at the church's altar. A red, black and white tassle decorated with a gold ’89 rested next to her face. Her classmates, also wearing their caps and gowns, packed the pews of the church. This heartbreaking sendoff was intended to, quote, “give their friend something she would not see in life—her high school graduation.”
Doris: “It was hard. It broke hard. I didn’t want to believe it was her. I had in my brain that it wasn’t her—I thought she was still alive. She was hiding in the closet. But reality was facing me, and I just played along because I was still lost. It wasn’t hitting me yet. But it was beautiful... We were all lined up. We played a song for her, “Thinking of You” (Sa Fire), as we brought her in and brought her out and put her in the hearse. I don’t remember, but I just remember the picture of me reaching out for her and Esdras holding me back because I wanted to go with her. But I remember turning around and I saw the students there and everyone was crying; everyone was staring; we had her back; we were a family; we were attached; we were all one; we were the North High Polar Bears. That was the day that is etched in our hearts forever and united us forever.”
During the funeral mass, friends honored Nettie with their memories. One friend read a note that she had written, and Doris symbolically presented Nettie with her diploma. Standing beside her cousin's casket, Doris said, “I give you the diploma you never received. I didn't get to see you graduate, so I have it for you here. I love you so much.” Doris then gave it to Nettie's mother, Rosa. One hundred and fifty-six vehicles joined in the funeral procession. Many of the cars had orange and black crepe paper, North High's colors, on their radio antennas. As the procession wound its way to the cemetery, it made a detour to Plumley Village, pausing outside Nettie's building so the family could bring her home, one last time.
Doris: “They threw roses into the grave. And I took my hat off and threw it at her. And my fellow alumni did the same. So she had a layer of dirt, then the roses, then the caps. No one in the year of ’89 has a cap. They were buried with Nettie. It was our tribute to her.”
All eyes on Worcester PD
In the days following Nettie's death, eighteen detectives worked around the clock and interviewed over one hundred people. Although they were looking into three possible suspects at the beginning, their leads soon ran cold. As time passed, the public criticized the police for their handling of the case. Why didn't they look for Nettie on Monday night, when she was reported missing?
Worcester Deputy Chief John Coakley said that due to the high number of missing persons reports they received, it was not the practice of the department to search right away unless it was a young child. When the Melendez family reported Nettie missing, police told them that a person must be missing for 24 hours before a search could begin. This practice, however, went against Massachusetts law. The Missing Children's Act, established in 1984, required an immediate search for any minor reported missing, and Nettie was just 17. Her information should also have been entered into a statewide database established by the Missing Children's Act.
Judith Johnson, one of the crafters of the Missing Children's Act, was frustrated with this misstep by police. “I think our children deserve better than what they're getting,” she said. “If a car goes missing, they run right out and look for it. We're talking about a human life. That little girl is gone.” A Worcester police official argued that “99 times out of 100, the person is not really missing”. One state trooper opined that the Missing Children's Act gave police more responsibility without increasing the resources necessary to get the job done, adding, “I'm not sure it spurred police to do anything more than they had [done] in the past.”
The police hadn’t connected the dots between Nettie's missing persons report and her lost purse that was turned in that same evening. Benito was angry with the police and said that they had everything they needed to find Nettie on Monday night, except a sense of urgency.
Years go by, a family forever changed
Nettie’s loved ones were still processing the fact that she was gone. Doris was changed forever.
Doris: “I was scared. I always wondered why... who could it be? Why would someone want to hurt someone [like Nettie]? She was such a beautiful soul. The fear that I had gave me anxiety... gave me panic attacks... to the point that I did not get my license until I was 28 because I had this fear that if I went out alone, someone was going to abduct me and do the same thing that they did to her. And my dad is the one that encouraged me to do so. If it hadn’t been for him, I might never have gotten my license.”
Peter: “It still affects us all of these years. Our family’s never been the same since. My mother is a shell of herself. Yeah, she laughs... but you can tell isn’t the mother that we used to have. She was always happy and people would always want to come over to our house for gatherings. It took a chunk out of her.”
2009 - A review of the case
Worcester Police approached Nettie's case with renewed vigor in 2009, telling Peter that they hoped to investigate her death, quote, “as if it happened yesterday.” The cold case unit assigned multiple detectives to reinterview every witness. They identified a couple of suspects still living in the Worcester area. The pieces of evidence that had waited for so long in police storage were sent away for extensive forensic testing. They also presented the case to the VIDOCQ Society, a prestigious group of forensic experts and investigators who lent a hand on cold cases.
Peter: “So they told us at one point that they had presented her case to the VIDOCQ Society in Philadelphia to get a profile of a person who would’ve done this. When they came back, they all felt that it was someone that she had to have known and trusted, and that the person felt remorse—[because of] the fact that that she was laid on the ground carefully and covered with leaves.”
2014 - Present, Charges forthcoming?
In 2014, the Worcester DA said that progress in Nettie's case could lead to a resolution “within months.” Although the DA could not give specific information due to the ongoing investigation, Worcester Police confirmed that the case was still active and a high priority. In 2019, Nettie's sister-in-law, Margie Vasquez, shared that police had told her that DNA had been found and a person of interest identified.
Peter: “The family and the police have a strong suspicion of one person. But lack of evidence is [what’s holding them back] from holding this person accountable.”
Peter: “In the fall of 2019, the detectives came to us and told us that they were looking at the possibility of the DA’s office presenting the case to a grand jury. But then COVID happened... And as you can imagine everything closed down. And that was the last time we heard from the detective’s office. We’ve never heard from the DA’s office.”
Peter: “If they’re being tight-lipped about it, that’s fine! If they feel like they got something... I’m fine with that. But don’t lead us on for the next five years! I know we have one bite at the apple. I want to make sure that if they have a case, it’s a tight case, to make sure that the son of a bitch is held accountable for what he did. So if they have a case built, I hope it’s a strong one.”
Despite the retesting of evidence and the hope for a speedy resolution, there is still no answer for Nettie's loved ones. In the years since she was killed, Rosa has dreamed of her daughter visiting her. In these dreams, Nettie holds an infant with thick, wavy hair. She tells her, “Mama, I'm not dead. I'm alive, I've just been hiding.” The happy mother is radiant, ageless. Rosa, who was finally able to visit her daughter’s grave in 2010, said, “I lost my mind when she was killed. I take the pain with me wherever I go.” Yet, through decades of grief, hope remains. Nettie's brother, Peter, has a message for her killer:
Peter: “Why’d you have to destroy our family? You taking our sister away. Taking my father’s daughter away from him. Why?? It just doesn’t make any sense. She was just so beautiful. It was just senseless. So the big question is why. Because you’ve ruined all of our lives.”
Peter: “I’m just hoping that one day our family will get the justice we deserve. And have this person stand accountable for what they did.”
If you have any information about the murder of Nettie Melendez from June of 1989, please call the Worcester Police Dept at (508) 799-8466, or text TIPWPD to CRIMES (274637).
This text has been adapted from a portion of the Murder, She Told podcast episode, Nereida ‘Nettie’ Melendez: A Life Stolen. To hear the full episode with the family interviews, find Murder, She Told on your favorite podcast platform.
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Left: Doris Martinez (Nettie’s cousin); Right: Nettie Melendez
Esdras Oliveras (left), Nettie Melendez (right)
Doris Martinez (left), Nettie Melendez (right)
Nettie Melendez (left), Lisa Taylor Martinez (center), Esdras Oliveras (right)
Nettie Melendez (left), Esdras Oliveras (right)
Nereida “Nettie” Melendez
Nereida “Nettie” Melendez, Esdras Oliveras, at North High Prom ‘89
Nettie Melendez at prom
Nereida “Nettie” Melendez, in the middle with the distinctive black and white check shawl
North High Yearbook, 1989, Worcester, MA; Nettie’s employer took out a full page ad for her.
The inscription in Doris’ yearbook from Nettie
Location off of Elliott Street where Nettie’s body discovered
Location off of Elliott Street where Nettie’s body discovered
Plumley Village, where Nettie Melendez grew up in Worcester, MA via Unsolved Worcester
Chandler Hill Park (Nettie’s body discovered in the woods nearby), Worcester, MA via Unsolved Worccester
Bell Pond (Nettie’s body discovered in the woods nearby), Worcester, MA via Unsolved Worcester
Doris Martinez, reaching out to the hearse carrying Nettie’s coffin.
Peter Vasquez (Nettie’s oldest brother), Margie Vasquez (his wife)
Sources For This Episode
Newspaper articles
Various articles from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and the Boston Globe, here.
Written by various authors including Bob Morin, Chris Echegaray, Dianne Williamson, Fred Kardon, George B. Griffin, John J. Monahan, Lee Hammel, Lynne Tolman, Madeline Patton, Mark Sullivan, Mary Frain, Matthew Brelis, Rick Agajanian, Roscoe C. Blunt, Scott J. Croteau, and Thomas Caywood.
Online written sources
'Family Still Searching For Teen's Killer After 30 Years' (CBS Boston), 6/5/2019, by Anaridis Rodriguez
'Killer still unknown years after teen dies' (Telegram & Gazette), 4/27/2008, by Thomas Caywood
Video sources
'We're Going To Be Her Voice: Family Searches For Teen's Killer 30 Years Later' (YouTube), 6/5/2019
'Unsolved: Worcester - Season 1, Episode 9: The Mysterious Murder of Nereida Melendez - Part 1' (YouTube), 11/15/2022
'Unsolved: Worcester - Season 1, Episode 10: The Mysterious Murder of Nereida Melendez - Part 2' (YouTube), 11/17/2022
Photos
Photos from the family, North High’s 1989 yearbook, various newspaper articles, and stills from video sources above.
Interviews
Special thanks to Peter Vasquez, Margie Vasquez, Doris Martinez, and Yolanda Melendez for sharing their memories.
Credits
Vocal performance, audio editing, and research by Kristen Seavey
Writing support, research, and photo editing by Byron Willis
Research by Samantha Coltart
Written by Meg Kuker
Murder, She Told is created by Kristen Seavey