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1994 Sloan, Melissa 5-1-1994; Orlando
Topic Started: Sep 24 2007, 06:41 AM (639 Views)
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Melissa Sloan was last seen on May 1, 1994 at her apartment at 1921 South Kirkman Road, apartment 211, in Orlando, Florida. She has not been seen or heard from since.

If you have any information, please call CrimeLine at 407-423-8477 or the Orlando Police Department at 407-246-2470.

http://www.cityoforlando.net/police/unsolved/sloan.htm

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http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.d...464/1008/NEWS01

Sunday, January 13, 2008 E-mail this | Print page



After 14 years, clues sought to woman's dissapearance

By Charlie White
cwhite@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal



For almost 14 years, the Kentucky family of Melisa Maureen Brady-Sloan has hoped and prayed she would be found after mysteriously disappearing from her Orlando, Fla., home in 1994 at the age of 23.

Now her relatives are simply hoping that the new DNA samples they've provided might find a match on a database of unidentified bodies discovered throughout the United States.



"It was just as if she dropped off the face of the earth," said her 72-year-old mother, Merle Brady, of Bardstown.

Brady said her worry over the years has been overwhelming. If it rains at night, she sometimes lies awake wondering if her youngest daughter is "standing somewhere under a stoop out of the rain."

"Does she have food? Does she have a place to sleep?" she said, recounting her worries in a recent interview. "Here I have a warm bed. I got food. Does Melisa have all of this?"

Having lost another family member to violence -- the family patriarch, Francis "Frank" Brady, who was kidnapped from a Hardin County truck stop and murdered in Bullitt County less than three years before Melisa disappeared -- the family realizes that learning what happened to Melisa might not be easy to accept.

But their hope, they said, is to get answers, which is why Brady and one of Melisa's sisters, who lives in Cincinnati, traveled to Louisville recently to talk with The Courier-Journal. Her other sister joined in the discussion via conference call from her home in Nashville.

No one has ever been charged in Melisa's disappearance, although Orlando police say they've not ruled out foul play.

Melisa's Social Security number, credit cards and nursing license have not been used since she went missing.

"She's just gone," said Detective Andre Boren of the Orlando Police Department, who took over the case last summer.

Police have not named any suspects.

John Stewart Sloan, Melisa's husband at the time of her disappearance, has remarried and now lives in Bellingham, Wash.

Boren said they would like to talk with Sloan more about the disappearance, but that he hasn't cooperated during the recent review of the investigation.

Sloan could not be reached for comment. His father in Louisville did not reply to interview requests.

Before the disappearance
Melisa was born on the Fourth of July 1970 in Bardstown and graduated from Bardstown High School in 1988 and from Spencerian College in Louisville two years later.

Her mother and two sisters said she loved her work as a licensed practical nurse, especially when it came to older patients.

"She really connected with elderly folks, and they absolutely adored her," said the middle Brady sister, Melanie Drury, who now lives in Cincinnati.

Melisa's mother recalls her youngest daughter's concern for her future. "She told me, 'Mom, I'll never let you go to a nursing home. I'll take care of you,' " Merle Brady said.

In 1993, Melisa met and married Sloan in Louisville. They'd met while both worked nights at Tri-County Community Hospital, now Baptist Hospital Northeast, in La Grange, her family said.

He was a security guard, but soon after they married they moved to Florida, where he planned to study motorcycle mechanics.

Melisa's family said she had a sense of adventure -- she loved to travel, and she never met a stranger.

But she always kept in contact with her family, Drury said, especially after her marriage became difficult.

Boren said police were called to Melisa and John Sloan's home twice while they were in Florida for domestic disturbances.

During a subsequent visit by police, John Sloan told police that Melisa had packed her belongings and left him for another man, and that he last saw her on May 1. Boren said Sloan told police he didn't know the identity of the other man or how Melisa could be contacted.

The Bradys filed a missing persons report with Bardstown police, which faxed a copy to Orlando police.

While most of Melisa's possessions were gone from the apartment, Boren said "she didn't take her car and she didn't take her cat," which makes him question whether she left on her own.

John Sloan filed for divorce eight months after the Brady family reported Melisa missing, Boren said.

In November, Boren said he and another Orlando detective, Patrick Schneider, traveled across the country to the Washington home that Sloan shares with a new wife, but Sloan refused to speak with them.

Her father's murder
Less than three years before Melisa's disappearance, two jail escapees from Oklahoma kidnapped her father from a truck stop off I-65 in Hardin County and took him to the woods in southern Bullitt County. They shot Frank Brady twice and left him to bleed to death.

Michael St. Clair, one of 40 inmates on Kentucky's death row, has been sentenced to death three times for Brady's kidnapping and murder, but he will get a new kidnapping trial in September.

After two Hardin Circuit Court judges recused themselves in December, the state appointed Jefferson Circuit Judge Ann O'Malley Shake to the case.

St. Clair's accomplice, Dennis Reese, testified against him and is now serving life in prison without parole after pleading guilty to Brady's murder.

The Bradys have attended both men's trials to make sure justice is handed down to Frank's killers.

Michele Walker, the oldest Brady sister, said it's difficult to explain to others what their family has been through over the past two decades.

"I'll tell them my father was murdered in 1991, but the story gets worse -- my sister went missing in 1994," Walker said.

Drury said the family has "never really come up for air."

"It steals a part of you and it makes you ask, 'Why were we chosen?' " Despite that, she and other family members say the events have not shaken their belief in God.

"There's evil in this world," Merle Brady said, "but it's not God doing it."

Reporter Charlie White can be reached at (502) 582-4653.
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http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/s/sloan_melissa.html

Melissa Maureen Sloan


Above: Sloan, circa 1994


Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance

Missing Since: May 1, 1994 from Orlando, Florida
Classification: Endangered Missing
Date of Birth: July 4, 1970
Age: 23 years old
Height and Weight: 5'4, 130 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Blonde hair, blue or brown eyes. Sloan may spell her first name "Melisa" and may use the last name Brady.


Details of Disappearance

Sloan was last seen at her apartment in the 1900 block of south Kirkman Road in Orlando, Florida on May 1, 1994. She has never been heard from again. Sloan was employed as a nurse at the time of her disappearance. Few details are available in her case. Foul play is suspected.


Investigating Agency
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Orlando Police Department
407-246-2909



Source Information
Orlando Police Department
Florida Department of Law Enforcement
The National Center for Missing Adults



Updated 2 times since October 12, 2004.

Last updated September 6, 2007; middle name added, distinguishing characteristics updated.

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http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/07/grace.coldcase.sloan/

Nurse vanished 10 days before domestic violence hearing

* Story Highlights
* Melisa Brady Sloan vanished in 1994, leaving her cat behind
* She was scheduled to testify at a domestic violence hearing
* Her husband has not been cooperating with police, investigators say
* Know something? Call Orlando police at 321-235-5300

updated 3 hours, 33 minutes ago
By Rupa Mikkilineni
Nancy Grace Producer

(CNN) -- She was 24, a newlywed who moved to Orlando, Florida, with her husband just a few months before she vanished in May 1994. In the 15 years since, there have been no clues or signs of Melisa Brady Sloan, despite periodic searches.

The native of Louisville, Kentucky, was close to her family and a devoted nurse working long hours at Orlando Regional Hospital. She disappeared just 10 days before she was due in court to testify against her husband in a domestic violence case.

"She loved him and wanted to work things out with him," says Melanie Brady Drury, Sloan's sister.

It was a whirlwind romance, Drury said. The two met in Louisville, where Melisa was a nurse and John Sloan was a night security guard at the same hospital. He said he had just been discharged from the Army Special Forces.

They dated only a few months before marrying quickly. Within weeks of the wedding, they moved to Orlando. Her family was concerned about the move because they barely knew this new man in Melisa's life.

"He was very controlling of her, and that's when the physical violence between them began," Drury said.

In early spring 1994, Melisa Sloan called police, saying her husband had beaten her up at their home. According to Drury, Melisa left him and went back to her family in Louisville, but returned a couple of weeks later hoping to work things out.

The first week of May, her mother tried calling Sloan but could not reach her for days. On May 7, she finally spoke with her daughter's husband, who said, "She'll call you when she's ready," Drury said. It was then that the family grew worried and reported Sloan missing to police.

According to police, Melisa Sloan was with a good friend when she was last seen by anyone other than her husband. She and the friend, a paramedic who worked at the hospital, left work together to go to a street fair, and Sloan did not return home until 2:30 a.m., police said.

The next afternoon, she was captured on a video surveillance camera withdrawing $20 from an ATM.

At the Sloans' apartment, police found none of Melisa's personal items, clothes or shoes. The apartment looked as if she had never lived there. All that was left was an old bathrobe, hung on the back of the bathroom door, and her beloved cat, police said.

"She would never leave that cat behind, that cat was like her baby," said her sister, Drury. As police searched the home, they found that one of the bedrooms was unfurnished, with only a rifle and knife propped against a wall, said Detective Andre Boren of the Orlando Police.

"We searched for days in the woods behind their apartment," Boren said. Three searches have been conducted over the years on the land behind the Sloans' home. The 1-square-mile parcel is federal property. Nearly 75 percent of the property has been searched, Boren said.

According to investigators, there was no activity on Melisa Sloan's credit cards, bank accounts, Social Security number or driver's license. Her car was left parked in front of their home.

Police quickly focused on John Sloan and named him a person of interest in his wife's disappearance.

The phone listed in Sloan's name has been disconnected. He did not respond to e-mails from CNN, or to messages sent through his father.

Police say John Sloan has not cooperated with them since the initial questioning. When police first came to the Sloan's home when she was reported missing by her family, he told police his wife had packed up and left with another man. Since then he has refused to speak with police.

Last year, homicide detectives attempted to question Sloan in Bellingham, Washington, a city near the Canadian border where he now resides with his new wife and family, but he walked away without answering questions from police.

Forensic tests on the Sloan home and Melisa Sloan's car were completed, but police found no evidence of foul play in the car. However, they did find small blood stains in the Sloan home. Investigators have requested DNA samples from Melisa Sloan's family.

"We are not resting until we solve this case, and I believe the key to this case is her husband," Boren said. "We've made contact with his current wife, who is now aware of the situation, and we hope she will shed some light for us."

Anyone with information about the whereabouts of Melisa Brady Sloan is asked to call the Orlando Police Department at 321-235-5300.

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http://www.wesh.com/news/15296432/detail.html



Investigators Revisit 14-Year-Old Missing Woman Case

February 13, 2008

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Cases of missing women captivate attention across the nation.

Melisa Sloan, a young nurse at Orlando Regional Medical Center, disappeared and the last person to see her won't answer police questions.

Police hope to use new scientific tools will help solve the missing person cases that most people have probably never heard of.

It was no surprise to those who loved Sloan that she became a nurse. She loved taking care of people.

"She told me, she said, 'Mom, you don't have to worry about when you get old, I'll never let you go to a nursing home,'" Sloan's mother, Merle Brady, said.

Sloan disappeared from her West Orlando apartment in May 1994.

Investigators have been trying to determine for 14 years whether Sloan left town on her own if she was forced.

"If an adult just wanted to start a new life, you would see some evidence pop up and Melisa Sloan was entirely too close to her family. She disappeared under suspicious circumstances, but what those are, I couldn't tell you," original case detective Barbara Bergin said.

Sloan was last seen at a downtown ATM withdrawing money. Police said she withdrew $20 -- not enough for someone looking to disappear for a long period of time.

Investigators are still looking for answers. They picked up her case again in August.

Detectives started collecting DNA samples from Sloan's family. They will compare them with the DNA from unidentified remains across the country. They are also trying to re-interview the people who last saw her.

"Everyday when I go to the hospital, I have her picture up in my locker and I look at it and wonder where she's at, what happened to her," Sloan's co-worker Mike Moss said.

Moss worked with Sloan at ORMC. The night before she vanished, Moss said Sloan told him she was planning to leave her husband, John Sloan. The two had a whirlwind courtship and marriage. Moss said things had gone bad.

"The whirlwind had turned in to a tornado that turned in to a disaster with that relationship," Moss said.

The cold case detectives now assigned to Sloan's disappearance said twice in the nine months before she vanished, police responded to domestic violence at the couple's home. The second time police said Sloan was physically abused.

Police said Sloan was arrested and those two incidents are documented. They said that second case was pending at the time Sloan vanished.

A week after she disappeared, Sloan's family in Kentucky called OPD to report her missing. Police contacted her husband.

"His statement at the time was she left me for another man about a week ago, she's avoiding me. I have no idea how to get in touch with her," one detective said.

Eight months later, John Sloan divorced his still-missing wife.

Detectives have been trying to get in touch with him again. In November, detectives flew to his new home in Seattle where Sloan is remarried and working as an art photographer.

Police said Sloan isn't helping to find the woman he once married.

Detectives identify John Sloan as a person of interest in her disappearance. They said he has information they need to move forward in the investigation.

Sloan's mother can only wait and hope.

Police said Moss has cooperated from the beginning and took and passed a lie detector test. They do not consider him a suspect in Sloan's disappearance.
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« Reply #3 on: March 02, 2009, 12:36:32 PM » Quote

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/17...rns-to-dna.html

(Older Story)

Missing woman's family turns to DNA

1/14/08

BULLITT, Ky., Jan. 13 The family of a missing Kentucky woman will provide DNA samples to see if she has turned up in a national unidentified body database.

Melisa Maureen Brady-Sloan was 23 when disappeared 14 years ago, about a year after she and her husband John Sloan moved to Orlando, Fla. John Sloan told police his wife left with another man, but her family did not believe she would have left behind her car and her cat, The Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal reported Sunday.

Her Social Security card, credit cards and nursing license have not been used since she went missing, the newspaper said.

John Sloan, who divorced his wife eight months after she disappeared, is remarried and lives in Bellingham, Wash.

The Bradys say they have long held out hope Melisa would return, but more than anything they just want answers. Providing their DNA will allow authorities to ascertain whether any of the unidentified bodies recorded in a national registry is Melisa's.

Orlando police have not ruled out foul play in the disappearance.

Melisa's father, Frank Brady, was killed less than three years before she disappeared.


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http://www.lcni5.com/cgi-bin/c2.cgi?091+ar...174335091091042

Missing 15 years later
Bardstown mom refuses to give up

3/17/09

By STEPHANIE HORNBACK

When Merle Brady’s husband, Frank Brady, was murdered in 1991, his body wasn’t discovered for several days. So when her youngest daughter uncharacteristically didn’t answer her phone less than three years later, Brady didn’t waste any time. She went to the police after just two days.

Now, 15 years later, Melisa Brady Sloan, a 1988 graduate of Bardstown High School, is still missing, and Brady is still determined to find her.

“With Frank, I know that he’s not coming back. With Melisa, I still have hope that she’s still alive, somewhere, someplace,” Brady said.

She hopes the latest effort to locate her daughter will provide the missing piece to the puzzle. A video about Sloan premiered on www.themissingtv.com last week. Also on YouTube, it has gotten some hits from Washington state.

That’s where the “person of interest” in Sloan’s disappearance lives, said Detective Andre Boren with the Orlando, Fla., Police Department. Boren revisited some cold cases and reopened Sloan’s file in 2007. He contacted her mother and sisters, Michele Walker and Melanie Drury, encouraging them to contact media outlets and start Web sites to get Sloan’s name back on the public conscience. He also met them in Louisville to get DNA samples, which were entered in the FBI’s missing-persons database, and hear their story in person.

Brady is used to telling it.

On a spring Saturday in 1994, Brady called Sloan, as she did every Saturday. But on this one, Brady couldn’t reach her.

“I kept calling Melisa’s number and calling and calling, and finally, John Sloan answered,” Brady said.

John Sloan was Melisa’s husband. They met in 1993 at Tri-County Hospital outside Louisville, where they worked. She was a nurse, he a security guard. They dated briefly before marrying and moving to Orlando so John Sloan could attend a motorcycle mechanic school.

Melisa Sloan’s family was “extremely suspect” of the quick romance, Drury wrote in an e-mail to CNN’s “Nancy Grace Show,” which they hope will air their story. Their suspicions were confirmed when Melisa Sloan filed domestic abuse charges against her husband. He was arrested, and she moved back to Kentucky. She eventually returned, however, and when she didn’t answer the phone on Derby Day, 1994, her family feared the worst.

John Sloan told them Melisa would call them when she was ready. When they still hadn’t heard from her the following Monday, Brady and Walker filed a missing-person’s report at Bardstown Police Department. Officers contacted the Orlando Police Department, which sent detectives to the Sloans’ apartment. The only evidence they found that a female had ever lived there was a bathrobe hanging on the bathroom door, Boren said. All of Melisa Sloan’s possessions, other than her cat and car, were gone.

John Sloan told investigators his wife had left him for another man, Boren said. She was scheduled to testify against him on the domestic abuse charge the following month.

Officers with cadaver dogs searched the wooded area behind the Sloans’ apartment complex, but found nothing. There has been no activity on Melisa Sloan’s driver’s license, Social Security number or nursing license since her disappearance, Boren said.

It’s as though she vanished off the face of the Earth, Brady said.

Her daughter went missing two-and-a-half years after Brady’s husband was kidnapped at a Sonora truck stop and shot, execution style, in Bullitt County by Michael Dale St. Clair, who had escaped from an Oklahoma prison along with his accomplice, Dennis Gene Reese. Reese pleaded guilty to his involvement and is serving a life sentence. In 1998, a Bullitt County jury convicted St. Clair of Frank Brady’s murder, and in 2005, another Bullitt County jury sentenced St. Clair to death. The case against him is not over, however.

A Hardin County jury convicted St. Clair of kidnapping in 2001 and sentenced him to death. But because of problems created by his wife’s testimony — a person cannot be forced to testify against his or her spouse — the verdict was overturned. After several delays, the trial should resume in June. Brady is putting her family vacation on hold so she can attend.

The frustration of life interrupted has become commonplace for Brady, but it isn’t as acute as it was shortly after Melisa disappeared.

“I would lay in the bed at night and I would cry, I couldn’t sleep, and I would beat the wall,” Brady said. “That was the only means I had of getting out my frustration, because I’d cried ’til I couldn’t cry.”

Along with Drury and Walker, Brady is channeling those feelings into action. They are trying to get Melisa’s story on “America’s Most Wanted,” which helped St. Clair to be captured, and they maintain a Web presence with faith they’ll eventually reach the person who can break the case.

Boren hopes “America’s Most Wanted” will help solve Melisa’s mystery.

“She deserves more than a Web site,” he said.

Boren said John Sloan was granted a divorce two months after Melisa Sloan disappeared. The couple had no children.

Sloan remarried about two years later. His second wife was found dead in front of an Orlando hotel, her death ruled the result of a drug/alcohol overdose. John Sloan now lives in Washington with his wife and children and is a photography consultant for a university, Boren said. Before he married Melisa Sloan, he served in the Gulf War in a Marine reconnaissance unit.

Sloan could not be reached for comment.

Boren said his gut feeling is that Melisa is dead and her remains have not been recovered, but “you still can’t take away Mom’s hope that she might be alive somewhere. I will never take the hope away.”

Brady said she doesn’t know if she could take it if she were to learn that Melisa is dead. She wonders if Melisa has never called because she was abused to the point that she doesn’t know who she is.

She wonders many things.

“I can’t pretend to tell you all the thoughts I have had,” she said. “Is she out there somewhere? Is she still alive? What can I do that I haven’t done?”

Brady has resumed as normal a life as possible since she lost her husband and daughter. She retired from American Greetings in 2007 after 23 years. A member of the Democratic Women’s Club, she enjoys politics, writing and her six grandchildren. She is also active in the Red Hat Society and church, attending the Basilica of St. Joseph Proto-Cathedral. Brady said she never got angry at God, because she believes it is the evil in the world that took her loved ones away, not Him.

“I don’t say, ‘Why me, God,’ because Frank lost his life and we don’t know what has happened to Melisa,” she said. “I’m still here trying to survive.”

Her memories of Melisa help. She recalled with a laugh a vacation to Myrtle Beach, S.C., when Melisa was a little girl. It was the Fourth of July, Melisa’s birthday, and she always thought the fireworks were for her. She could swim like a fish, Brady said.

“She would swim out in the ocean so far, I couldn’t even see the child. And I’d say, ‘Frank, do something!’” she said.

“She was a beautiful girl.”


Bob White, The News-

Enterprise, contributed information to this article about Frank Brady’s murder.

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orlandosentinel.com/orl-bk-missing-15yo-cold-case-102709,0,2683481.story

OrlandoSentinel.com
Orlando cold case: Reward raised to $10,000 for nurse missing 15 years
Henry Pierson Curtis

Sentinel Staff Writer

4:33 PM EDT, October 27, 2009

An anonymous donor posted a $10,000 reward this week for information to solve the 1994 disappearance of Orlando nurse Melisa Sloan, according to the Orlando Police Department.

The reward offered by Crimeline follows national attention brought to the missing person case last month by CNN.com and the Nancy Grace TV talk show.

Sloan was last seen on May 1, 1994 after returning to her apartment on South Kirkman Road. Then 24, she shared the apartment with her husband, John Sloan, who was identified Tuesday by Orlando police Detective Andre Boren as "a person of interest" who has not assisted the 15-year-old investigation.

Her disappearance was not reported until nine days after she was last seen when her family in Kentucky told Orlando police they could not contact her. Her husband told police at the time that all of her belongings except her cat and a bathrobe were missing when he had returned home on May 1, according to press accounts at the time.

Anyone with information about what happened to Sloan is asked to contact Crimeline at 407-423-8477.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-bk-miss...968,print.story
Copyright © 2009, Orlando Sentinel

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http://www.kirotv.com/news/21711659/detail.html
Bellingham Man Person Of Interest In Ex-Wife's 1994 Disappearance
Chris Egert
KIRO 7 Eyewitness News

Posted: 9:37 am PST November 24, 2009
Updated: 10:38 am PST November 24, 2009

Comment On This Story ››

SEATTLE -- A Bellingham man is a person of interest in the disappearance of his ex-wife, who vanished in Florida in 1994, KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reported.

Over the weekend, detectives in Orlando searched for the woman, Melisa Sloan, who was 23 years old when she disappeared.

Sloan's mother, Merle Brady, said she has lived with great pain ever since.

"(It was) like the earth had just, just opened up and swallowed her," Brady said. "It is just hard to live this life and not know where she is."

Sloan was last seen in surveillance images, withdrawing $20 from an ATM in Florida.

Police questioned her husband at the time. He currently lives with a new wife and children in Bellingham.

"His statement at the time was, 'She left me for another man, about a week ago,'" said Andre Boren, an Orlando police detective.

Orlando police said there's no evidence of that and that two weeks after the woman disappeared, her husband divorced her. Sloan disappeared at the same time she was scheduled to testify against him in a domestic battery case.

Orlando Police confirmed to KIRO 7 on Monday that the missing woman's former husband, who graduated from Western Washington University in 2008, has yet to cooperate with them.

Police identify him as a person if interest. KIRO 7 is not revealing his identity because he's not a suspect.

Detectives from Orlando traveled to Bellingham in the past year to question him. They said he avoided contact with them, saying he couldn't afford a lawyer, and that "You know what has to happen for me to get a court-appointed attorney."

By phone, detectives in Orlando told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News anchor Chris Egert that the weekend search turned up no new clues.

An e-mail to the man was not returned on Monday.

There is a $10,000 reward in the case.

Copyright 2009 by KIROTV.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2010-0...-jennifer-kesse
Orlando police announce missing-person tip line
Police hope to generate new tips on open missing-person cases.

April 14, 2010|By Bianca Prieto, Orlando Sentinel

Melanie Drury yearns for the day when she'll be able to bring her missing sister home.

It's been almost 16 years since anyone has heard from Melisa Brady Sloan — a pretty, 23-year-old newlywed who disappeared in Orlando in May 1994. Her husband, Gulf War veteran John Sloan, was the last person to see her alive.


Melisa Sloan's unsolved disappearance is one of Orlando Police Department's 16 open, missing-person cases that date back as far as 1982. Half of the missing people are thought to be dead, or foul play is suspected, but police said investigators can't close the case until it's solved.

On Wednesday, Orlando police announced its new Missing Persons Tip Line — a 24-hour phone line dedicated solely to receiving tips in cases like Sloan's.

"Every family needs closure, but closure is not the primary motive for the work that we do," said Chief Val Demings, who was flanked by investigators and officers. "The driving force behind the work that we do is the victim."

The announcement came a day after missing 11-year-old Winter Springs girl Nadia Bloom was found, four days after wandering away from home and into the woods. Orlando police did not investigate her case.

But it also came just days after detectives revealed that they had no further leads in the case of missing Orlando woman Jennifer Kesse. The 24-year-old woman disappeared from her condo near the Mall at Millenia in January 2006.

Until just a few weeks ago, a detective worked full time on the Kesse case. Demings met with Kesse's parents and told them there were no more viable leads.

Homicide detectives Andre Boren, Patrick Schneider and Joel Wright on Wednesday highlighted the department's 16 open cases. They start with that of Gwendelyn K. Goode, who was reported missing in February 1982 and represents the department's oldest missing-person case. The 39-year-old woman was a heavy drinker and may have walked away from her life to become a transient, police said.

Investigators believe she is dead.

Another case involves 80-year-old Rayfield Crume, who suffered from the onset of Alzheimer's disease. He never showed up to meet his wife at a store in June 2004. His truck was later found abandoned and stuck in the mud near Fort Myers at the edge of a swamp.

Searches turned up nothing, but he is believed to be dead, Boren said.

Investigators think the Missing Person Tip Line will generate more leads and help close some cases. Detectives urge anyone with information about missing people to call the tip line at 407-246-2916.

For Drury, the tip line renews her hope that her sister's body will be found.

Detectives said they think Sloan was murdered and her body dumped, likely somewhere near her apartment on Kirkman Road in west Orlando. Search crews have combed the woods on several occasions in recent years, but nothing has turned up.


Melisa Sloan was set to testify against her husband in a domestic violence case the week she went missing. Investigators said her husband John Sloan, who now lives in Bellingham, Wash., is a person of interest in the case. He has refused to cooperate with the investigation, officers said.

John Sloan told investigators his wife ran off with another man. He divorced her shortly after she disappeared.

"The truth with come out, it will," Drury said. "We have to play the game, be patient and let miracles happen."

Bianca Prieto can be reached at bprieto@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5620.
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$10,000 MISSING PERSON REWARD
Posted by Max Cannon in Kentucky, Local MugSHOTS, Missing Persons, tags: CrimePAY$, Local MugSHOTS, Melissa Sloan, Missing Persons, reward, RewardsTV, SafeCITY Publishing, Unsolved Crimes

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It’s a mystery that’s haunted a Bardstown woman for more than a decade.
Her 23-year-old daughter vanished without a trace. Now a $10,000 reward is being offered in the cold case.
Melissa Sloan disappeared in 1994, just a few years after her father was kidnapped and murdered. Sloan was 23 years old.
Her mother said she has spent every day of the past 17 years trying to find her daughter and answers.
“God gives me what I need, when I need it,” Merle Brady said. “It’s just heartbreaking to live this life and not know where she is.”
After Brady filed a missing persons report, police checked the Orlando apartment Sloan had been living in and found very little.
“(It was) like the earth just opened up and swallowed her,” Brady said.
Sloan was last seen in ATM surveillance images taken when she withdrew $20 from a Florida ATM.
Melisa Brady Sloan disappeared just 10 days before she was supposed to go to court to testify against her husband in a domestic violence case.
According to Melisa’s husband, John Sloan, she packed up her belongings and left. Her family reported her missing after not hearing from her. She has not been seen or heard from since. At the time of her disappearance, Melisa was working as a nurse in Orlando, Florida.
Investigators said they questioned Sloan’s husband, John Sloan, who they now call a person of interest in the case.
“His statement at the time was, ‘She left me for another man about a week ago,’” Orlando Police Detective Andre Boren said.
However, police said there’s no evidence of that.
Two weeks after Sloan disappeared, her husband divorced her.
Now, 17 years later, there is still no sign of her.
“You just imagine – ‘Was she beaten senseless? Is she walking the streets and doesn’t know who she is? Does she have a bed to sleep on? Does she have food?’” Brady said.
Sloan’s disappearance came two years after her father was kidnapped and shot to death — execution style.
His body was found at a Shepherdsville farm in October 1991. Two Oklahoma fugitives were convicted in the killing.
Brady said she says she knows she can’t bring her husband back but hopes that her daughter will still come home.
“Surely somebody someplace knows something. I have not given up hope,” Brady said. “I just wish we could find Melissa. I love her so much and I miss her so much.”
Orlando police said they do suspect foul play. They say about a year ago they made contact with John Sloan — who’s now living in Washington State. However, they said he’s refusing to cooperate in the investigation.
Anyone with information about the case is asked to call the anonymous Orlando Crimeline at 407-423-TIPS. A $10,000 reward will be given to anyone with information that leads to Sloan’s whereabouts.
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