6-year-old Girl Goes Missing
Lake Lucerne, WI-Saturday September 17th Mrs. Chambers Edison notified the police of the disappearance of her daughter Melinda. The 6-year-old attends first grade at Star Center Elementary School. Her mother said she last saw her playing in the yard around 3 p.m. on Friday September 16th. By 6 p.m. the mother became alarmed and alerted the neighborhood, then police. Mr. Edison is away on business.
The neighbors describe Melinda as a very friendly girl who talks to everyone she meets. Mrs. Breston, 946 George Street, told authorities that she saw the girl around 3:30 walking north on Center Street with a tall blonde woman smoking a cigarette. Police and a neighborhood search team combed the town looking for the child. The girl’s panties were found in the rustic bathroom of Beacon Hill Cemetery three blocks north of the child’s home on George Street.
Evidence Photo 1A
Evidence Photo 1B
Evidence Photo 1C
Lance Gulling, groundskeeper at the cemetery, stated he observed a tall blonde smoking woman over in section Z near the crypts. There was no sign of the child.
Evidence Photo 2A
Mr. Gulling did find a spent purple lighter at the section “G” marker.
Evidence Photo 3A
And there was also a strange bouquet of silk daffodils placed on one of the crypts near the bathroom facility. According to Lance this family left Wisconsin over 30 years ago and haven’t made and flower commitments since that time. A cigarette butt with red lipstick has been sent to the State Police Laboratory for analysis.
If anyone has any information regarding this situation…the smoking woman, or Melinda…please contact Jim Edmond at City Hall.
UPDATE: Melinda Edison is now safe at home with her parents. She told her mother that she went to the cemetery to see all of the flowers. She left her wet panties in the bathroom because she had an accident. No, she did not run away, she was on an adventure, but as she wandered the 37-acre cemetery she could not locate the front gate and it had become dark, so she fell asleep under a shrub beside the Columbarium, a building that stores cremation urns.
The blonde woman is Martha Goodson, a 1968 graduate of Central High School. She was in town to visit her parent’s graves at Beacon Hill. She gave authorities the key information to focus their search in the cemetery since Melinda had told her, “The prettiest flowers are in the gates with the dead people.”
