VANCOUVER, Wash. — One night in 1994, 11-year-old Mistie May Micheletti went to bed in her Vancouver, Washington home but was not seen alive again. Her body was found days later in the Columbia River.
On Jan. 15, Micheletti and her two stepbrothers were home alone while their mother was working a night shift at a care facility.
The boys told authorities they saw an adult man in Mistie's room that night and thought he was a burglar. The sight of him scared them and they snuck back into their beds. When they woke up the next morning, she was gone.
Micheletti's aunt, Kellie Karlson, said one of the boys called her and told her Mistie was missing.
"We just started going door to door, checking the apartment complex," Karlson said. "Within an hour of not being able to find her, we called the police."
Officers were originally convinced Micheletti was a runaway.
"They were telling us things like, 'Well, she'll probably turn up. She probably ran away'," Karlson said. "Mistie wasn't the kind of child that would've taken off and ran away anyway. She was a very innocent child."
Micheletti's family and community members put up hundreds of flyers and conducted their own searches.
"There was never an answer," said Micheletti's cousin, Nicole Peterson. "It was kind of like the boogeyman. Just coming in the middle of the night and taking your child and having something like this happen."
Two days after she went missing, they turned on the news and saw officials pulling a body out of the Columbia River.
"I remember we were all watching that, and the officers were wearing these reflective jackets and, and pulling the body, and they weren't saying who it was," Karlson said. "And just as this was occurring, we turn and pulled the police into the driveway."
On Sunday, Jan. 17, Micheletti's body was found by two fishermen in the Columbia River off the Interstate 205 bridge on the Oregon side, just five miles from her home.
Karlson went to help identify her body in Multnomah County.
"To this day, I can still remember it like it was yesterday, seeing her tiny little body there," she said.
When Micheletti's body was found, she was only wearing jeans, which were unzipped, and a Chicago Bulls T-shirt. An initial autopsy report says she drowned and there was no damage to her feet. Police searched the shoreline and bridge for shoes and a jacket but found none. All her clothes and DNA evidence were sent to the Vancouver Police Department for testing.
The Multnomah County Medical Examiner's Office ruled the cause of death to be asphyxia by drowning.
It wasn't until one month after she disappeared that her death was ruled a homicide. Lab reports came back and revealed that she was, in fact, sexually assaulted.
"That was absolutely devastating to the family. They always felt that if they were wealthy or had more rapport in the community, maybe they would have been taken more seriously," Peterson said.
They ran the DNA through CODIS, but there has never been a match.
Can the DNA be tested with new technology?
“To get the data file to get into CODIS. You're looking at what's called STR markers, short tandem repeats. The repeated sequence of DNA is unique to you, and they only need to test 20 markers of short tandem repeats to verify that that is you,” Lisa Lewis, a forensic investigative genetic genealogist, said.
“The sample we use for genetic genealogy is a more broad scale. We use what's called SNPs, single-nucleotide polymorphisms. We don't look at how those genetic markers repeat, we look at them together and how they're passed down from generation to generation,” Lewis said.
The way DNA is extracted for CODIS and genetic genealogy is different and genetic genealogy can’t be used on a CODIS sample.
However, once a forensic genealogist believes they have a match and hand their findings to law enforcement, agencies have to continue to investigate and get the STR sample which is the legal standard in court.
“When we have identified someone that we believe is the suspect, or in the realm of close relationship to the sample that law enforcement provided, we give them the name and they do more research on that person. If they believe that they have enough evidence that that person is the same person that committed the crime, they will go and they will get an STR sample from them,” Lewis said.
“With DNA and the advancements that we have and genetic genealogy. We’ve been able to close cases that were not solvable before,” Lewis said.
Forensic DNA testing technology has evolved rapidly over the years.
"In 1994, we were using a technology that required a stain the size of a quarter and it was not good at analyzing degraded DNA. Nowadays, we can use technology to our advantage, and the size of stain we need can be the size of a pinhead," said Kristina Hoffman, a DNA operations manager with the Washington State Patrol.
What is the status of the case?
“We received a lead last year as of December 2022, so leads are still coming in, and those are still always followed up on,” said Kim Kapp, public affairs manager with the Vancouver Police Department.
Kapp said the department will utilize technological developments they have access to.
“With regards to unsolved cases, the detectives become very close to them. They become very tied in with the family and really the empathy of wanting to solve the case and really get that resolution for the family is paramount,” Kapp said.
"Misty May Micheletti deserves justice," Peterson said. "The most important thing is that the case is not forgotten. And that's why I've taken this mantle in supporting our family, to help make sure that never happens."
'The what ifs, to this day, still make me crazy'
Cousins of Micheletti, Brittany Webb and Candace Cooper Carlos, were so close they were practically sisters.
They both described imaginative playtime when they were children, when Micheletti was still alive. She was remembered as fun-loving, incredibly caring and a very happy kid.
"She was unbelievably kind and definitely deserved better than what happened to her," Webb said.
Her death sticks with everyone in the family.
"I remember the adults, all of them talking about, well, you know, the what ifs. What if we would have just had the kids here? Or what if, you know, this, that, the other I mean, you can pretty much wear yourself right into the ground quick with what ifs. what ifs, to this day, still make me crazy," Carlos said.
After 30 years, her family is still hanging on to hope.
"I do still have hope that this case can be solved, I truly believe that it can, Webb said. "Justice for Miste, for me, would be for her to finally be able to be fully put to rest and a name put on who did this to her."
Watch the full interview with Brittany Webb here:
Watch the full interview with Candace Cooper Carlos here:
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