The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts.
All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages.
Listener discretion is advised.
I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski.
And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski.
And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases and missing person cases.
Hello everyone and welcome back to Cold and Missing.
I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski, and it will just be me coming to you this week.
Well, actually, in this episode, you will have the opportunity to hear from the family
of a missing person, the brother and sister-in-law of the person we are covering today, who
is Melissa Crabtree.
So I think we should just go ahead and just get right into this because there's a lot
to cover here.
Just as a quick content warning at the top, the case we are covering today does have brief
mentions of death by suicide.
If you or someone you love is struggling with thoughts of suicide, you can dial 988 if you're
in the United States, or you can visit 988lifeline.org to speak with somebody.
Today we are covering the missing person case of Melissa Crabtree, and this takes place
in March of 2020 in Taos, New Mexico.
And also throughout the timeline today, you will be hearing from Peter, this is Melissa's
brother, and Paige, Melissa's sister-in-law.
Peter and Paige are married.
First things first, a little bit about Melissa.
Melissa is 51 years old in 2020.
She would be 55 years old today.
Melissa is legendary.
Her brother Peter had this to say about her.
She was always the best at everything.
And I both glorified her as a sister.
I was four years younger.
So it was tough to follow in her footsteps in elementary school back then because she
had set the bar so high, both athletically and academically.
And that really came through sheer determination and hard work, especially with her grades.
She worked her butt off studying and training for anything that was her goal at the time.
Yeah, she always had a big personality.
And she was funny.
Her top choice for college was actually Dartmouth.
And she applied early admission for her college essay and instead of doing a traditional
Essay, she puts together a rap using the background music of the Chicago superbowl shuffle.
And she could be really intense when she got angry, her anger could be just as intense.
One thing throughout it was she always had very unhealthy relationships.
And she ultimately often remained friends with her old partners, many of whom I'm in
touch with today.
And they all admit it was very unhealthy relationships.
But like I said, they get very, very, very loud and just a lot of screaming.
Yeah.
Well, as far as the sister in law, I knew Melissa as sort of a legend before I even knew her
because of the veggie band thing.
And she put together this vegetable band tour based out of Berkeley in the late 90s.
It's like one of the first people to bring mass attention to the ability to use cooking
oil as a source for youth in a combustion engine.
Yeah.
So she went around the country, doing this veggie band tour.
Melissa excelled at what she put her mind to and was passionate and had strong convictions.
From being a star athlete who just missed the Olympics by a hair to a white water and
ocean kayaking guide and excelling in folk music that she wrote herself.
I'm going to include links to Melissa's music in the show notes and I highly recommend that
you check it out.
She's an incredible artist and especially if you like folk music, which I do, I really
enjoyed it.
So please check it out.
Everything started to slow down a bit for Melissa when she was diagnosed with Lyme disease.
The disease had been slowly taking over her body and by the time she caught up with it,
she was in the clutches of it.
She was supported in part by Sweet Relief, an organization that helps support musicians.
And she also had friends in her life that would support her financially.
But still she struggled with facing houselessness.
She jumped from place to place and because of her Lyme disease, it was difficult to find
accommodations that suited everything she needed or required.
And now a timeline of events.
On February 6th, 2020, Melissa had been going through a mental health crisis.
She was sick with her Lyme disease, facing houselessness, had been going through a tough
breakup and had lost her father.
Were all kind of things leading up to this event.
She drives a car to the Taos Gorge Bridge with the intention of jumping off of it.
However, at the bridge, she calls her ex girlfriend and asks for help.
When Melissa's ex comes and picks her up from the bridge, she takes Melissa to a psychiatric
hospital where Melissa voluntarily checks in for the next five days.
On February 9th, Melissa's car is still in the Gorge Bridge parking lot and has been
sitting there for around three days.
So it's tagged to be towed if it's not moved.
Upon her release from the hospital, Melissa is still working the sedation medication out
of her system when she calls her brother, Peter, using somebody else's phone.
Here's how Peter remembers this phone call.
Yeah, the last time I talked to her was the day after she got released from psychiatric
hospital, which she had checked into on her own.
And she was still really drugged up from whatever they put her on.
She was not happy about it.
She was hard to understand.
And she knew she knew it.
She was hard to understand.
Like her awareness was fully there.
She knew that she was like, she's like, yeah, and she listed the drugs that they had put
her on and I was like, wow.
Yeah, like, yeah, they were giving her psychotropic medicine that was meant to like knock
you out and shit.
Right.
So yeah, she was just really desperately asking if I knew anywhere for her.
She tried to shelter and she's like, people were openly doing drunks and bad stuff going on and she just feels unsafe there.
Right.
She had a place that she was saying in the actual house.
Okay.
And she got freaked out there because according to her and the person whose house it was also
said that most of us made these same claims to her was that a pickup truck kept driving
by and I was like, call the police.
And she's like, I can't call the police.
They're in on it.
And like everything she was saying was paranoid and delusional.
Sure.
But I had lived in New Mexico for several years and graduated nursing school in Albuquerque
and I can tell you, I've seen and heard things that maybe someone's not paranoid when they
say that about that happening in New Mexico because I've experienced things happening
to people I knew that would sound insane and paranoid to other people too.
But it's really happening.
It's not paranoia.
So I was like, it scared me when he told me that.
On February 13th, Melissa's car is towed from the parking lot.
Her phone was found in the car.
Family didn't necessarily find it odd that she left her cell phone behind since this
is something that she would often do when she wanted to unplug or get away.
On February 23rd, a good friend of Melissa sees her at the Hanuman temple in Taos.
The Hanuman temple is open to all people and will provide meals.
Later, when this friend spoke to Peter and Paige, she is sure that she saw Melissa there
and said that they spent hours together talking.
She even says that later that evening, Melissa and her talked on the phone.
Melissa was calling from an unknown number.
On February 29th, after not being able to get a hold of his sister, and after her not
contacting him, Peter reports her missing.
Peter and Paige begin making plans to get to Taos, but COVID shutdowns are starting
up and this complicates their travel.
On March 3rd, the under sheriff, Steve Mira, does conduct a search focusing on the area
where her car was last seen.
He says, quote, we are in the process of exhausting all means to pursue leads, one of which is
because her vehicle was found at the bridge, the probability that she may have jumped,
unquote.
Peter and Paige arrive in Taos just as the COVID shutdowns are beginning to take effect.
Here's Peter and Paige.
We got there, we were able to get there.
We just had to secure a place.
Unfortunately, we had an acquaintance at a place out there that they usually rented out
as a B&B, but it was COVID.
So, right, they just, fortunately, they let us stay there.
So once we secured a place to stay, we laid for a week, we flew out and did as much stuff
as we could on foot, talking to people, got to the sheriff's office just in time as they
were putting the COVID signage on the bus.
Oh.
And getting ready to close for the day.
That was the first place we went.
To find out that the detective had been handling Melissa's case, they promised it to pass on,
pass the information and file onto the next oncoming person assigned to that duty.
And done so, and so her file had just been sitting there in the week or so before we
got there, just sitting there and nobody working on it.
Gotcha.
So we were at least able to like prompt them to get started on it, but the vibe wasn't
like super friendly.
Peter and Paige scramble to talk to everyone that knows Melissa, and again and again, they
talk to folks that swear they have seen her within the last week or few days.
Here's Peter and Paige with more.
Numerous people that had spotted her at a supermarket.
Yeah, we went to that supermarket and asked for video.
And by the time that we were able on our own to work up the chain of command, it had already
restarted itself.
Right, like we recorded over itself.
Yeah.
Do you know when it was after you last talked to her when she was seen at the supermarket
or between the we had an exact date and time at the time and it was the same week that
we were down there.
Okay.
So it was in March sometime.
And it was like a supermarket in Taos right there.
Yeah.
Okay.
So people at the ashram so they feed her at a few different places.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Hmm.
So, oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.
There were multiple sightings in the weeks after, but none from people that I had known
or knew how well they knew Melissa.
So that they were numerous, I'd say probably 25.
Oh, wow.
In that month.
On March 5, 2020, investigators searched the rim of the canyon and scan the river and the
banks below to search for any sign of Melissa.
The local rafters in the area show up in droves since they all knew Melissa.
Rafters with experience in search and rescue volunteered their time searching the river
and there was no sign of Melissa, nor has any sign of Melissa turned up in the river.
Investigators do go back to the home where she was staying.
They don't process anything in the home evidence wise, according to family, but they do take
a look at the room that Melissa was staying in.
Inside the bedside table, they find her wallet.
They also noted that a Native American artifact was left in disarray.
According to everyone that knows Melissa, she would have never left this particular
item in disarray or mess.
Melissa was not an organized person with her items necessarily, but with this artifact,
she was always very careful and tidy.
So this is something that is strange to those that know Melissa.
At the beginning of this case, everything is not only complicated by COVID and shutdowns,
but it's also complicated by the fact that police believe that Melissa jumped off of
the bridge and for weeks this is the theory that they work off of and they believe they
will find her body when the water levels change.
However, as the weeks creep on and the rafters in the community still find no trace of Melissa
and even though her family is finding more and more people who have seen her, police
still rely on this theory.
Rafters in the community still find no trace of Melissa and the river reaches historic
lows and still no sign of Melissa is found.
Search and rescue have concluded, she absolutely did not jump from the bridge.
Over the next several months in 2020, Peter and Paige will work to track down all of Melissa's
personal items.
Melissa had put a bunch of her stuff into a storage unit before going on tour a while
before she went missing in 2020.
But Peter and Paige also discover that just weeks before she went missing in March of
2020, she put most of the items she had with her in a storage unit.
As Peter and Paige worked their way through all of Melissa's belongings looking for
any clue of what might have happened to her or where she might have gone, one thing they
do take note of is that all of her outdoor gear, her best outdoor gear, is missing.
Here's Peter.
What's still saying something to me is all her best gear is not with any of her stuff.
Does that lead you to believe that she has it with her?
Yeah, either.
Yeah.
It's possible the police have it and she had multiple units of, you know, the top equipment
and I don't see any of it.
And I'm sure her friends wouldn't have taken it.
Around March 2021, so Melissa has been missing for a full year.
Someone that knew Melissa very well was in Pueblo, Colorado, when she believes, 99% sure,
that she sees Melissa.
About a year after she disappeared, a person that knew Melissa well said they were 99%
they saw her leaving in a soup kitchen and then cross the street and disappear into the
woods by a river and go back in Pueblo, Colorado.
Yeah.
In Pueblo?
Yeah, about five from Taos, you know.
Yeah.
Hmm.
And this was a year, you said?
Yeah.
Okay.
So like March 2021 ish?
Yeah.
Okay.
She, she talked to Peter on speakerphone and she said that she was so sure it was her
that she went around the block.
But she didn't want to go after her and scare her.
So she asked me what I thought she should do.
I said, just keep your eyes.
I said, I thought she was right.
If it was her and she's safe, he probably shouldn't scare her.
Right.
And to keep her eyes open and you know, around the soup truck and if he stood around to,
you know, approach her carefully and lovingly.
I wouldn't go after her because if she's safe, she doesn't want to be found and it could
just put her in more danger.
And right.
And you know, that's at least that would be a good sign that she's safe and being taken
care of.
And I mean, that's something that I think regardless of whatever mental state Melissa
is in or innate ability or just primal instinct to survive is in her knowledge of all these
different environments is one that she can survive pretty much anywhere in any environment.
So Melissa has all that knowledge and I think regardless of what mental state she's in,
she'd be able to use that.
So yeah, I mean, I think that that is that's a plausible theory that she disappeared.
I think it's plausible that she got taken.
I think it's plausible that she she killed herself.
Yeah.
And there's also there's also the thing where, you know, even though she's one of those experienced
outdoors women in North America, people still can break their ankle.
Totally.
Yeah.
It's such a long time to go on.
I was from someone who had known her for years, wouldn't call you to just be scandalous or
stir up some drama that could be the center.
She's not that type of person.
Right.
And she didn't she say, I want to make sure I get this right.
She went around the block and saw her a second time and said her name.
And when she said her name, the woman turned or the pressure to say the person with long
hair that looks like Melissa.
Wearing gear, tight and stacked like Melissa would have the gear.
Right.
And she under the bridge and to the by the river and to the woods, which would also be
on Melissa move.
And then she come from an area where people were getting food.
Right.
That adds up in a geographical area.
Not too far.
That actually gives me a lot of hope.
Melissa's family has searched other areas that were meaningful to Melissa for any sign
of her and nothing has come up to date.
The family acknowledges that everything is on the table until it's proven otherwise.
They know she did not jump from the bridge.
So what did happen to Melissa?
When I asked what people should do if they believe they see her, this is what they had
to say.
I think just really just approach her slowly and just casually as they would ordinarily
as if she hasn't been missing.
Like they would see her every day.
Yeah.
And then just say to let her know that her brother's got all her stuff safely stored
at home and has a clean room for her to live in anytime she wants.
You know, without any allergies and other specs.
And if she just wants to go away, that's fine too.
Just right now that she's alive.
Yeah.
And then just let people know that anywhere that there might be in any part of the country,
that Melissa loved, which could be anywhere in the Rockies, the Canyon Islands, in Utah,
in Mexico, that she could look completely different.
Her hair could be short, her hair could be dark.
She could be dirty.
She could be cut up.
So don't be scared to look in the eyes of homeless people or people that appear homeless.
And my opinion was so.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
As far as any foul play, I mean, I think that's is strong a possibility as any to, I mean,
I think it's quite equal between doing something to herself or disappearing or foul play.
And I think they're all pretty equal.
But of course, if you know that Melissa Crabtree was met with foul play or something bad has
happened to Melissa, please call the Taos police at 575-758-3361.
The sources for the timeline today come from Taos News, KRQE News, and Melissa's family.
So that is the case of Melissa Crabtree.
And hopefully, if you've listened to last week's episode in this one, you see why I
wanted to tell these two with each other.
And I don't tell them necessarily because I think they're related to each other.
There doesn't appear to be any like strong patterns between the two.
But just because of the location, I think with Melissa's case, what seems very obvious
is that police dropped the ball.
And maybe if we didn't see like kind of a history of this with Holly's case as well,
we could chalk it up to COVID because, you know, just as Melissa goes missing and is
reported missing, the COVID shutdown start happening.
And that was like a very chaotic time for everybody.
So maybe you could chalk it up to that.
But the fact is, we know that this is kind of a history for them that if they have any
reason to believe that somebody jumped from the Gorge Bridge, then they'll simply kind
of give themselves six months before they start looking or considering anything else
because that will just be like the most likely.
And yeah, there were searches done, you know, of the river of the canyon kind of immediately
afterwards.
But there was no proof that that had that's what had happened.
In fact, there was a lot of evidence against that because she had been seen in like very
reputable and checkable places since her car had been parked in the parking lot.
Melissa's car is tagged on the ninth.
So that means it had been sitting there for a while already.
But it's like she was, you know, in a hospital.
There are records like those are things that police can check.
And so maybe if they had done that, they would have done things like, you know, take a little
closer look at her room.
It was common for Melissa to kind of have a messy room.
But for this, you know, kind of sacred object to her to be left in a disarray, that was
weird to everyone who knew her.
Everyone said that that was something that was weird.
It just feels like the police really put themselves at a disadvantage when they just kind of lean
on a theory that's like kind of thin, especially in this case where there are known instances
of Melissa being seen after her car is like ditched in this parking lot, essentially.
So it's like always frustrating, you know, when you're looking at it years later to just
like, just like want to like be like, why didn't police do more in those weeks following
to like, maybe they could have tracked her down.
And she would have said, hey, like, I, I want to be missing, I want to be gone, like, I
don't, I don't need to be found.
And then they would have said, like, okay, and communicated that to, you know, her family.
And then she could go live off of the grid, which could be a possibility.
I think it's always like a beautiful reminder.
Something that Peter said is like, you know, look at people who are facing houselessness
in the eyes, like you just like, don't really know who they are.
And like, maybe it's somebody who is missing and is having like a really tough time.
So just like, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, I assume like you are interested
in missing person advocacy.
So like, that's just such a great reminder that like, there are people, you know, living
on the fringes of society that like a lot of the times we don't want to look at.
But like, that might be where a lot of missing folks are.
I do hope that, you know, in the future, someone can get the message to Melissa that, you know,
she is loved, her brother has a place ready for her whenever she wants to come home, like,
she can come home.
I hope that message gets to her.
And I hope she really hears that message and feels that and even if that's not what she
wants to be doing, like I hope she I just like really want Melissa to get that message
and just know that she is deeply loved by her family and is thought about and, you know,
talked about like very highly and I hope that message gets to her.
I do agree with the family that it's like, everything is equally possible right now.
Like maybe she did want to completely disappear and go live off of the grid.
Maybe there is a foul play element here.
Or maybe she did want to die by suicide.
All of those things are possible, but until something is completely ruled out with evidence,
like everything has to be considered right now.
It's almost like if you pick up Melissa's case and kind of look at it from one angle,
you can you see her gear is missing.
You hear her paranoia and in the days leading up to her disappearance, she's kind of moving
around a lot.
And then in the weeks after she's hopping around and calling from people that she knows
from different numbers, so maybe she wants to disappear and cover her tracks and like
get off the grid and go.
And then if you look at it from another angle, you know, you can see that she was struggling
with mental health, that, you know, she initially drove to the bridge to die by suicide.
So maybe it wasn't the bridge, maybe she found another way to do it.
And then you turn the case another way.
And there's also a possibility of like maybe she was met with foul play.
You know, she was hopping around from place to place.
Maybe somebody took advantage of the vulnerable state that she was in.
You know, you hear Paige's fear of New Mexico and of the strangeness that's happening in
Taos.
You hear Melissa talking about a pickup truck and that's, you know, really what is making
her nervous and the police even being in on it.
And then the police kind of having this delayed response to her case and to searching for
her and all of that.
And then the artifacts left in disarray in her room, like, you know, then you see all
those things and think, well, maybe that's a possibility too.
So really it's like everything is on the table until it's off.
And, and I really hope that as this case progresses, that we can get some of these things off the
table one way or the other for Peter and Paige.
And for those who knew and loved Melissa, so many people have been reaching out to Peter
and Paige.
Somebody reached out to me on this case and then put me into contact with Peter.
So Melissa is deeply loved by a community and people who want the best for her and want
answers as to what happened to her because she's a part of their lives still.
So yeah, when this case came to me, you know, through an email, I knew it was something
that I had to cover and couldn't just be written off as like the police kind of wanted to do.
They wanted to like write it off as that, you know, she jumped off of the bridge, but
like we can't let that happen here.
We'll be posting pictures of Melissa throughout the week on our Instagram.
So you can follow us there at Cold and Missing to get an idea of what she looks like and
what she could be looking like if she is living off of the grid.
If you could just take a moment before you move on to your next podcast or the next thing
you're doing around your house, if you could just review us, if you're an Apple podcast,
you can leave us a written review or you can leave us a five star, a thumbs up, a heart,
whatever the whatever the metric is in your podcast player is perfectly fine.
And we appreciate every single one we get.
So thank you if you've already done that.
And we will have transcripts of this episode and the rest of our episodes on our website
www.coldandmissing.com and you can go there and find all our past episodes along with
transcripts for all of those episodes.
But that's all that I have for this week.
I just want to give a quick thank you again so much to Peter and Paige who carved some
time out of their week to sit down with me and tell me more about Melissa and their memories
of her which was so fun to hear about and then also to go through the painful memories
of what those days were like realizing that she was missing.
So thank you again to Peter and Paige.
Thank you for listening to Cold and Missing.
I'm your host Allie.
Have a good week and stay safe y'all.