Police Get Tip in Teen's 1989 Disappearance

Anonymous tip prompts new search
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 26, 2012 3:12 PM CDT
Police Get Tip in Teen's 1989 Disappearance
Melanie Melanson is seen in this undated photo.   (Middlesex County District Attorney's Office)

Investigators think they may be on the verge of a breakthrough in a 23-year-old mystery. A team of 9-13 cadaver dogs will search a Massachusetts State Park on Saturday in search of the remains of Melanie Melanson, a local girl who went missing in 1989, just five days before her 15th birthday. Police got an anonymous tip from a New Hampshire man telling them to search the park, a source tells Fox News.

Before the tip, Melanson's parents had been planning to dig up a patch of ground near some railroad tracks behind a local McDonald's, where dog teams had detected the scent of human decomposition, WBZ-TV reports. But the tipster told their private investigator that Melanie's body may have been moved to the park. Melanson disappeared after attending a party in the woods with her friends. "We don't believe she ran away," a DA spokesman said, adding, "We know who was with Melanie the night she disappeared." (More Melanie Melanson stories.)

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