Melanie Hall’s parents could be closer to finding her killer after 20 years
Melanie Hall vanished 20 years ago. Now her parents believe they are close to finding her killer. Margarette Driscoll meets them
Patricia Hall can still recall her daughter’s laughter as she got dressed for a night out just before she disappeared. Melanie was “15 minutes late, borrowing tights, losing her shoes, but looking lovely…”
Pat gave her a lift into town, dropping her at the home of her new boyfriend, a doctor at Bath United Hospital. They talked all the way, Melanie giggling and shuffling around in her seat, as she couldn’t get those tights quite right. It is a comfort to Pat to think those last moments together were so happy: her final memory is of Melanie smiling and waving goodbye.
That was June 1996. The following evening Melanie, 25, went to a nightclub with friends and was last seen by the dancefloor just after 1am. Then she vanished. A huge search of Bath and the surrounding area proved fruitless: it was 13 years later, in 2009, that her remains were found by chance in black bin bags, dumped by a slip road off the M5 motorway.
“There have been leads but never enough evidence to put anyone in the dock,” says her father Steve, a former chairman of Bath United Football Club. “We are hopeful – quietly hopeful – that may change now.”
As part of a renewed appeal for information on June 8, exactly 20 years after Melanie’s disappearance, police revealed that a forensics team is developing a DNA profile of her murderer, using traces left at the site where her body was discovered.
DNA evidence is becoming increasingly important in solving “cold cases”: just last month, Christopher Hampton was sentenced to life for the murder of 17-year-old Melanie Road, who was killed in Bath in 1984. That conviction, said DS Andy Bevan of Avon and Somerset Police, “justifies our belief that crimes can be solved no matter how long ago they were committed.”
Pat and Steve have offered £50,000 of their own money as a reward for information, believing they are at last within “touching distance” of a breakthrough. A recent item on BBC’s Crimewatch Roadshow yielded a “promising” response.
Last week, a 45-year-old man was arrested and questioned for 48 hours over the murder. He has since been released on police bail.
“We’re trying to keep it in perspective,” says Steve. “We’ve learnt that if you get passionately excited about any new lead, you’re probably in for disappointment, but the mood music is optimistic.”
Over the years there have been many dashed hopes. Police have taken 1,600 statements and completed more than 5,700 “investigate actions”. Nine people have been arrested in connection with the case but none charged. Police once “dug up half a farm on the edge of Bath” but found nothing. In 2009 a man confessed to the murder to police in Greater Manchester, but was released after psychiatric tests. So Pat, 71, and Steve, 72, try to keep busy at their converted barn in Bradford on Avon, filled with paintings and family photographs, knowing that the next phone call or unfamiliar car could bring the answers they both hope for and dread. “We’d like to see someone behind bars because Melanie can’t find her killer and identify him, so we feel we must pursue justice in her place,” says Steve. “But we know that also we might have to face up to what actually happened to her. We know she was viciously beaten about the head. It may be she was raped. It’s possible a lot more detail will come out and we’ll have to deal with it.” So far they have striven to keep their grief and anger in check. They decided right from the start that Melanie “would be the only victim of this crime”, and that their family life would not be torn apart. Their home remains much as it was when Melanie lived there. Her bedroom is intact, though not a shrine, just “Melanie’s room”, used by their three granddaughters (the children of Melanie’s older sister, Dominique) when they come to stay. “We all talk about Melanie very naturally but we’ve coped – the two of us, anyway – by never discussing our grief,” says Steve. “There’s so much horror and anguish and bitterness toward the perpetrator and, if you don’t watch it, that can drive a wedge between you. We may be hurting inside but we have tried to live a normal life and maintain a happy home.”
The superhuman effort involved is evident, though, in Pat’s emaciated frame. Since Melanie was killed, she has almost wasted away, losing five stone. Twenty years ago, she was a senior nurse at Bath United Hospital. Melanie also took a job there, after studying at the city’s university, doing clerical work in orthopaedics. She made many friends – “all the porters would shout ‘Hello Melanie’, everyone knew her” – and had just started dating Philip Karlbaum, a German doctor.
On the Friday evening, Pat dropped Melanie at his flat. She was to spend the evening with him. Next day, they were going to a barbecue with another doctor and a hospital manager. When her parents didn’t hear from her over the weekend, they assumed she was simply having a good time. “I knew all the people she was with,” says Pat. “Why would I not think she was safe?”
It was only on Monday morning, when a colleague rang from Melanie’s department to ask if she was ill, because she hadn’t turned up for work, that Pat realised she was missing. A few hours later, Steve was already convinced she was dead: “I knew she would never have just gone off. Something terrible must have happened.”
Through talking to the police and Melanie’s friends, they began to piece together what had happened. The barbecue had finished unexpectedly early, so someone suggested they go clubbing. Her boyfriend was reluctant and inside the club he and Melanie had an argument. He left. The other couple left, too.
Pat was surprised that Melanie had been in a nightclub: “She was a lively, lovely girl, but very homely,” she says. “She chose to stay here while she was at university. When she was here the house was full of energy. After she had gone, it seemed so quiet.”
That first winter was torture, waiting for news. Philip Karlbaum was interviewed by the police but eliminated as a suspect.
Police traced 800 people who had been in and around the club, but it seemed no one had seen or heard anything. Pat continued working full-time, while Steve, a teacher and college inspector, had just retired: “If I was at work one of us would always be beside a phone,” she says. “The police would know where to find us.”
Steve, who had painted in watercolours as a hobby, began to paint in earnest to fill the hours. He has since become a professional artist and written several art books. He likes to think of this second career as “a little gift from Melanie”.
Pat wears and cherishes a gold ring engraved with ivy leaves that was on Melanie’s finger the night she vanished – another gift, but one that arrived in the saddest way. “The police asked us to identify it when they found her. We knew in our hearts Melanie was dead, but we had no proof. This was our confirmation.”
Afterwards, they held a funeral service at Bath Abbey, attended by 1,200 people. “It was a funeral but also a celebration,” says Steve. “It felt good to be able to say goodbye to her. In many ways it was a happy day.”
Perhaps now they are nearing an answer to what happened, at last.
‘We want justice – but we know we might have to face up to what happened to her’ ‘Melanie’s room is still intact, though not a shrine’