The Murder of Melody Starr Derosia Waters (New Hampshire)

She was ready to reinvent her life and just one flight stood between her and a new beginning…But when that plane took off, the 19-year old expectant mother wasn’t on board. Three months later, her family learned the devastating truth. A suspect confessed to the killing soon after, but his defense raised eyebrows.

Melody is Missing

It was January 11, 1991 and Carla McMillion checked her watch for what felt like the hundredth time. Her daughter, 19-year old Melody Starr Derosia Waters was supposed to be on a flight out of Manchester, New Hampshire at 3:25 p.m. that day, but even though the arrivals board showed that her plane touched down, there was no Melody making her way up the jet bridge. 

According to Deborah Snyder’s reporting for the Concord Monitor, the conversations Carla had with her daughter in the days leading up the flight were both heavy and hopeful. Melody was struggling…With money, with substance use, but she’d just found out she was pregnant, just about four weeks along, and she was so excited to be a mom. She wanted to be the best mother she could be for her baby, and Melody was ready to turn her life around.

Melody called her mother from New Hampshire to share the news and ask for help. Melody wanted to pursue her high school equivalency certificate and enter a substance use treatment program. Though their mother-daughter relationship had faced its share of trials, Carla wanted to help her daughter and her future grandchild so she got her a plane ticket home to West Virginia.

As Carla recalled it, Melody had been near begging when she asked her mother for help, so it didn’t make sense that she apparently didn’t get on the plane that day. Carla tried to contact Melody after the missed flight to no avail, and then called police in New Hampshire to see if they could track her daughter down. What they learned was only more concerning.

Chuck Young reports for the Concord Monitor that when police checked Melody’s apartment in Concord, they found it still full of her personal belongings, including her suitcases that appeared to have been packed and ready to go for her trip, but no Melody.

Carla knew that Melody had a boyfriend at the time, 18-year old Shayne Pitts. Police checked with Shayne to see if he had any ideas where Melody could have gone, and he seemed just as confused as anyone that Melody didn’t make her flight. He had driven Melody to the airport himself, he said.

Shayne told police that he and Melody had spent the previous day, January 10th, driving around town so Melody could say her goodbyes to friends before leaving for West Virginia and then they decided to stay at Shayne’s parents’ home in Hopkinton that night. His mother and stepfather were going through a divorce, and neither parent permanently lived in the house anymore, so Melody and Shayne had the place to themselves. 

According to Shayne, he and Melody woke up the next day in a bit of a rush. Realizing they’d overslept by a lot, Shayne said they ate a super fast and super late breakfast before jumping in the car to head to Manchester. They were so pressed for time that they didn’t even bother stopping at her apartment for her luggage. He dropped Melody off at the airport around 2 p.m. and that was the last time he saw her.

Circumstances of Melody’s Life

According to reporting by Paula Tracy for the New Hampshire Sunday News, Melody Starr grew up in Sutton, New Hampshire and lived there until she was about 13-years old. Her childhood and teenage years were tumultuous. She and her mother moved around a lot after Melody’s biological father left and her mother remarried. Melody’s step-father became an influential presence in her life and Melody eventually took his last name.

After relocating to Vermont and then New Mexico, Melody and her family put down roots in West Virginia….And Melody didn’t seem happy there. When she was 16-years old, Melody ran away and was missing for three months. Carla eventually found Melody living with a boyfriend and his family.

Melody spent the next few years between West Virginia with her mother and step-father and New Hampshire, where she stayed with friends and sometimes her aunt Nancy, in Concord.

Melody had a serious boyfriend for a while during her teenage years. Andrew Galarneau reports for the Concord Monitor that Melody and her boyfriend were basically childhood sweethearts. As Carla described it, that boyfriend was the love of Melody’s life, even after they broke up. One report indicates that Melody and this boyfriend were engaged at one point, but when Melody started using drugs, the relationship fell apart.

It was relatively easy for teenagers in the greater Concord area to access drugs in the late 80s and early 90s, particularly the hallucinogenic substance known as LSD. Jim Graham of the Concord Monitor reports that it was cheap, and because of that, LSD was rising in popularity. In fact, the same year Melody disappeared (1991), police would make the largest LSD bust in state history at the time, confiscating 13,000 single doses. The street value was about $5 per dose.

Melody was known to use LSD. Melody’s mother said that the last time she visited Melody’s apartment in Concord, it was apparent that she reached a point in her substance use that required help, but Melody was surrounded by it. The drug had infiltrated her social circle. At least one report indicates that as Melody began to struggle to pay her bills, she may have turned to selling small quantities of the drug to get by.

But that all changed when Melody found out she was pregnant. Melody had previously suffered a miscarriage, and she wanted to turn things around for her baby. She’d already started taking classes with the Project Second Start program in Concord to work towards her high school diploma before calling her mom about a plane ticket. It was Carla’s understanding that Melody had also stopped using drugs when she found out she was pregnant, and hadn’t used in the weeks leading up to her scheduled flight to West Virginia.

Melody had also met Shayne Pitts through mutual friends in the weeks before she decided to move back to West Virginia. Friends of Shayne’s were in a band and the band practices often became parties, and Melody was at one of those parties in November of 1990. They hung out as friends for a few weeks – Melody still had a boyfriend when she met Shayne – but when things ended with that boyfriend, Melody spent more and more time with Shayne until the friendship turned into a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship.

The paternity of Melody’s baby has never been conclusively determined, or if it has, it has not been publicly disclosed. Friends of Shayne’s and Melody’s said that Shayne was not the father. However, Carla said Melody told her that Shayne was the baby’s father.

There were plenty of reasons for investigators to keep their eyes on Shayne Pitts as the days passed without Melody’s return. So, a little over two weeks after Carla reported her daughter missing, local police caught up with Shayne for a second interview. It turned out that Melody’s pregnancy was a topic of conversation before she disappeared.

Melody’s story continues on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.