Who Killed Melissa Witt? Hulu Documentary Uncovers 1994 Cold Case Murder

It was December 1, 1994.

Nineteen-year-old Melissa Witt was planning to surprise her mom at an Arkansas bowling alley but never made it inside the building because she was abducted, and then murdered.

Nearly 30 years later, Witt's killer has yet to be found.

Her gripping story is now at the center of executive producer Ridley Scott and ABC Studios' Hulu documentary At Witt's End – The Hunt for a Killer, which hits the streamer on Tuesday.

Detectives said Witt was going to surprise her mom, who was in a bowling league at Bowling World, on the day of her abduction. Instead, investigators found blood in the alley's parking lot, in Witt's car, and apparent signs of a struggle.

Over a month later, two hunters found her naked body in the Ozark National Forest on Jan. 13, 1995. Officials said Witt had been strangled and robbed of her clothes, shoes, and jewelry, including a Mickey Mouse watch – all of which were never found.

Author LaDonna Humphrey has dedicated nearly a decade to this case, accumulating three books. She told Newsweek on Monday that she's interviewed hundreds of people and worked closely with JC Rider, the lead detective of the Fort Smith Police Department at the time of Witt's murder, but was not contacted to participate in the Hulu documentary.

Newsweek has also contacted Rider for comment.

Humphrey and her small team worked on their own documentary Uneven Ground: The Melissa Witt Story for eight years and finally released it in 2023. She says her doc goes in a "different direction" than Hulu's. Humphrey believes a yet-to-be-publicly identified man who Witt had a romantic relationship with and wrote about in her diary killed her whereas the Hulu doc focuses points to local serial killer Charles Ray Vine.

The author tells Newsweek the man she believes to be Witt's killer had a criminal history but does not think he is currently behind bars. Careful not to disclose too much information, Humphrey did say, "It's not somebody that was 10 years older than her."

Even though the two documentaries look at the case differently, Humphrey is still "really excited and hopeful" that the mass Hulu exposure will "bring more eyes and more awareness to Melissa's case."

"I have carried this torch for a very long time, kind of on my own with the small little team that I had assembled, so it's exciting and interesting for me to see somebody else come out here and say, 'I care about this case too. Let's put it on this global platform.' So, I'm hopeful. I really, really want to see justice for Melissa."

Humphrey stressed the importance of viewers contacting Fort Smith Arkansas Police if they have any information on Witt's case.

"It's just going to take that one little piece of information that might seem insignificant to someone to break the case wide open," she told Newsweek. "I'm kind of sitting here on the edge of my seat knowing that you know we're on the cusp of this coming out. It could change the trajectory of the case."

Humphrey's years of investigation led her to speak with a man who claimed to be the alleged killer's former roommate. The author called him "brave" in her conversation with Newsweek, adding, "He could hold the key to this case. I think that's definitely possible."

Under the pseudonym Nixon O'Neil, the man told Humphrey that he noticed a Mickey Mouse watch hanging on the wall while the duo was playing XBOX in 2004, The Sun reports.

The alleged killer reportedly asked O'Neil if he'd ever heard of Witt and claimed he had bought her and him Mickey Mouse watches. Nixon was familiar with Witt's case but didn't know about the watch connection.

"For some reason, I had this unsettling, eerie feeling, something just didn't sit right," Nixon told The Sun.

The roommate allegedly told Nixon that he had been introduced to Witt through a friend and had gone out with her.

"He said she was a really good girl, sweet, nice," Nixon added. He said that she hadn't wanted to have sex with him and that he had even considered marrying her.

But Nixon also claimed his roommate would "flip and he became this very different personality" and also "had some weird sexual fetishes and he was very, very misogynistic."

Nixon claimed the roommate once lost his job and when he got to the apartment, "basically destroyed the place, punched holes in the walls, busted out the windshield on his vehicle. He went ballistic."

The roommate allegedly choked a girl he was seeing at the time and pushed her down the stairs.

"After that, I knew a couple other girls he dated after that, and started asking around, and I started hearing more and more stories," Nixon said.

Nixon said his friends and family who met his roommate thought he could be "charming" when sober, but "kind of crazy," when he was drunk or high.

"When he's on drugs or he's deep into the bottle, he's a whole different person," he claimed.

The pair lived together for a year and a half until the roommate got into legal trouble for drugs.

Nixon first went to the police with his info on the roommate in about 2007 or 2008 after his wife at the time convinced him to speak up.

"She had gotten to know him real well, and seen some of the craziness," he said.

Nixon claims the last time he saw the roommate was a year ago after speaking to Humphrey when he urged the alleged killer, who allegedly has local power and connections, to speak to the cops.

"Melissa didn't have anything, she had good people around her, a working mom, she was trying to do everything she could, she was doing the right thing going to school and working," Nixon said about the power dynamic between the victim and her alleged killer.

"It's just so damn sad," he added.

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