Bolingbrook Teen Rachel Mellon Now Missing 15 Years

For a long time Rachel Mellon was Bolingbrook’s most notable missing person.

She’s not anymore, having lost that honor to Stacy Peterson, the fourth wife of a local cop 30 years her senior, a man who started romancing her when she was at most 17, then claimed she ran out on him six years later to take up with another man.

The cops don’t buy Peterson’s story, believing instead that his missing wife, who would be 27 now, was the victim of a “potential homicide.” State police Capt. Carl Dobrich named Stacy’s husband, retired Bolingbrook cop Drew Peterson, the lone suspect in an investigation that follows the theory that, more likely than not, he killed her.

Rachel Mellon is even older than Stacy Peterson, or would be, if either one of them is still alive. Rachel would be 28 now, and today is the 15th anniversary of her disappearance.

On that day 15 years ago, she stayed home from school with a sore throat and was alone with her unemployed stepfather, Vince Mellon. The first time anyone realized Rachel was not sleeping off her illness in her room was when her mother, Amy Mellon, arrived home from work that evening and went to get her daughter for dinner.

The stepfather told the police he last saw Rachel about 2:30 p.m., just before he took the family dog out for a walk.

The dog got loose, he told the law, and ran off after a rabbit. Vince Mellon made an effort to catch the German shepherd but gave up and went home. Later in the day, a real estate appraiser in the area on business stopped by the house and returned the dog, Vince Mellon claimed to the cops.

All the while, Vince Mellon's story went, he presumed Rachel was in her room asleep.

In the first years following Rachel’s disappearance, her mother complained of the way the police handled the case. Amy Mellon claimed it took the cops an hour to show up to her house after she called, and then told her they could take no action for 24 hours after the initial report.

Even after the police got around to searching the Mellons’ house, officers found no sign of foul play. For a full two days after Rachel’s disappearance, the police considered the matter a missing person or runaway case, despite freezing temperatures and snow on the ground the day she disappeared, and evidence that the teen took nothing with her – if she did leave voluntarily -- but slippers, the sweats she had been wearing in bed, and a blue blanket.

Rachel’s case languished for nearly four years. Then, on Jan. 29, 2000, the cops picked up Vince Mellon from his home on Joliet’s west side, right outside Shorewood, and held him for nine hours at the Bolingbrook police station.

During that time, they served him with a warrant ordering him to surrender samples of his blood, saliva and hair as part of a first-degree murder investigation.

Four days later, Vince and Amy Mellon were hauled before a grand jury, and the police revealed they had made “significant developments” in the case through the use of “technical advances.”

That was two days less than 11 years ago. The police have never revealed what the significant developments were that prompted them to pull the Mellons in front of a grand jury, or what technical advances brought these developments to light. And Rachel Mellon is still missing with no indication she is any closer to being found.

Since that time, Drew Peterson, the former Bolingbrook cop with his own missing woman, confirmed he played a role in the renewed investigation of Rachel’s disappearance in 2000. He would not go into specifics about his work on her case, other than to say he was involved.

To speak with Peterson about the Mellon case now, one would have to visit him in the Will County jail, where he has been held since May 2009 on charges he murdered not Stacy, but the wife before her, Kathleen Savio, who was found drowned in a dry bathtub in March 2004.

Peterson is waiting on the start of his murder trial, which has been held up since the summer by a prosecution appeal of what hearsay evidence can be used against him.

Vince Mellon has had legal trouble of his own in the years after Rachel’s disappearance. He has been arrested on charges of theft, battery, drunken driving and domestic battery. None of his cases were related to the disappearance of Rachel.

According to the Will County Sheriff's Department, Vince Mellon is a wanted man right now. There is an active warrant for his arrest relating to his 2005 driving under the influence case.

Several years ago, Amy and Vince Mellon left Illinois and moved to Cleveland, TN. It is not known if they remain there or have moved again.

Rachel’s father, Jeff Skemp, was divorced from Amy and living in Texas when his daughter disappeared. In the past, he has been a vocal critic of the manner in which the Bolingbrook police handled Rachel’s case but could not be reached for comment on the advent of yet another anniversary of her vanishing into thin air.

Skemp was quoted in a statement recently released by the Website www.rachelfind.com.

“Rachel's case has never gotten the national exposure that she deserves and now is the time for that to happen,” Skemp said in the statement.