"Charlotte Observer," November 20, 1981, via Newspapers.com

With some missing-persons cases, it is clear that they were victims of an abduction.  With others, it seems likely that they disappeared voluntarily, either to start a new life or commit suicide.  Sometimes, especially when they were last seen in the wilderness, it is easy to guess that they suffered some sort of catastrophic accident.  What makes the following disappearance intriguing is that there are a number of clues suggesting that any of those scenarios may be correct.

Thelma Pauline “Polly” Melton was born in 1923.  In 1975 the twice-widowed woman married 72-year-old Bob Melton.  Polly had no children of her own, but Bob had two adult sons from a previous union.  Although their home was in Jacksonville, Florida, every summer the Meltons lived a nomadic existence in their Airstream trailer.  During their travels, they usually stayed at the Deep Creek Campground, located next to North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Due to health issues (she took medications for high blood pressure and regular bouts of nausea) Polly did not drive.  Polly’s mother died in 1978.  The loss sent her into a deep depression, but of late she seemed to finally regain her normally high spirits.  Polly had no job, but every year when the Meltons stayed at the campground, she did volunteer work every morning at the Presbyterian Nutritional Center.

During their months at the campground, Polly loved to hike every day the weather permitted it.  Because of her fragile health, she never walked alone, and always stuck to the easier trails.

At about 3 p.m. on Friday, September 25, 1981, Polly and two friends, Trula Gudger and Red Cannon, set out on the Deep Creek Trail.  For most of the hike, Polly lagged behind the others, which they mildly teased her about.  An hour later, the trio started back from the campground.  After a short time, Polly suddenly accelerated her pace.  She dashed past her friends, rounded a bend in the trail, and disappeared from their view.

When Trula and Red reached Polly's trailer, they found that Bob was still alone.  He hadn’t seen Polly since she left for her hike, and had no idea where she might have gone.

The three of them, along with two other friends, went back down the trail looking for Polly.  None of the hikers they met along the way had seen her.  After two hours of fruitless searching, they contacted park rangers, who brought in the police.  Officers were able to track Polly’s footprints for a while (the sole of one of her shoes had a distinctive crack across it,) but before long they were lost among the prints of other hikers.  All they could say was that there was no evidence she left the trail.

The trail was immediately closed to the public while some 150 volunteers and nine search dogs scoured the area.  The dogs picked up Polly’s scent at the site where she was last seen, but nowhere else.  Polly’s sister Kit Postell commented, “When the dogs got to the place where Polly disappeared, they howled and turned ‘round and ‘round, but they wouldn’t go left or right.  It was eerie.”  Four days of hunting failed to find any sign of Polly.  The official search ended on October 2.

To date, Polly Melton has never been seen again, and her fate remains an utter mystery.  Those who have studied this case have developed several different theories:

Did she willingly leave her old life, in order to start a new one?  After she vanished, Polly’s minister revealed that he suspected that she was having an extramarital affair, and was feeling deeply guilty about it.  None of Polly’s friends had any idea she might have been seeing another man, and his identity--if he did indeed exist--remains unknown.  Did she run off with a lover?  

Another possible clue that Polly left voluntarily is that on the day she disappeared, she did not do her usual work at the Nutritional Center.  The practice at the Center was for the workers to leave a written notice if they would be coming in the following day.  On Thursday, the 24th, Polly did not leave this notice, suggesting that she knew she would not be working on Friday.

Polly’s supervisor said that in the four years Mrs. Melton had worked at the Center, she had never once used their telephone.  However, on the day before she disappeared, Polly called someone--no one knows whom--on the Center’s phone.  

And then there was Polly’s odd behavior on the trail.  Did she speed past her friends at the end of the hike in order to meet her alleged “mystery man?”  (It is perhaps significant that there was a parking lot near the Melton trailer.)  However, Polly left her needed medications and ID behind, and her bank account was never touched after her disappearance, all of which would seem to refute the “left willingly” scenario.  For what it’s worth, Polly’s friends and family vehemently rejected the idea that she would have abandoned her husband, particularly since Bob was suffering from heart trouble.

It is possible that a stranger abducted Polly along the trail, but her friends and nearby hikers saw or heard nothing that would suggest such a thing.  Also, Polly was a formidable-looking woman--she was nearly six feet tall and weighed 180 pounds.  In other words, she was not an easy person to kidnap.  Authorities found the “kidnapping” theory highly unlikely, although not impossible.  On the other hand, some of Polly’s relatives were of the opinion that someone attacked her in order to steal the three expensive diamond rings she was wearing.

Could she have suffered a fatal accident?  It was pointed out that the area where she was last seen was unfamiliar to her.  It took her past several small side trails that she could conceivably have taken by mistake.  Trula Grudger speculated that--perhaps after a small, disorienting stroke--Polly accidentally took the wrong path and just kept walking, lost and bewildered, until she dropped.  It is frighteningly easy to disappear in the woods.

Suicide?  Did her mother’s death three years earlier leave her even more shattered than anyone had thought?  One of the many curious aspects about this case is that Bob’s prescription bottle of Valium mysteriously vanished the same day that Polly did.  Although a Valium overdose is a difficult way to kill yourself, some have tried, and a few, sadly, have succeeded.

Polly's disappearance--under whatever circumstances--had a tragic sequel.  When Bob Melton learned his wife was missing, the shock caused him to suffer a stroke, and he spent the short remaining period of his life in a nursing home.

[Note: A couple of accounts of this case state that in April 1982, a check in Polly’s name was cashed in Birmingham, Alabama, and that the signature appeared to be genuine.  Polly’s only known bank account was in Jacksonville, but she was born in Alabama and still had relatives there.

I don’t know the original source for this claim, and it’s lacking in details.  There was no mention of this alleged cashed check in any of the numerous newspaper reports I found about Polly’s disappearance.  A 1991 story commemorating the 10th anniversary of her vanishing quoted her surviving relatives--who had recently put up a memorial gravestone for her in an Alabama cemetery--and they all seemed genuinely convinced that she died soon after she was last seen.  If this cashed check had indeed turned up, I assume that would have been addressed.

I'm unsure if this check story is true, or one of those erroneous details that often creep into true-crime cases.  Or perhaps the check was for another Pauline Melton.]