Horrible. Poor Ms. Melson. Imagine what was going through that witness's mind.

Guilty verdict in Vanessa Melson case
Pennylynn Webb Aug 25, 2017



A jury found Robert David Mobley Jr., 41, of Elkhart guilty on Friday for first-degree felony aggravated kidnapping in connection with the 2015 death of Vanessa Melson.

The trial began Monday and entered the punishment phase late Friday afternoon. The state and defense rested after lunch on Friday. Just 30 minutes after retiring to the jury room, jurors returned with a guilty verdict.

“I am just extremely happy that the victim's family is beginning to get some closure in this case,” said Houston County District Attorney Donna Gordon Kaspar, who said she would make a formal statement about the trial early next week.

Punishment has been set for 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 28.

The case was tried in the court of the honorable Judge Pam Fletcher in the 349th Judicial District Court in Houston County.

For the state, Kaspar presented witness testimony, audio recordings and photographic evidence.

The photographic evidence included that of a small hand print found on a wall in the Henderson house and of a burn pile, a short distance from the house, where investigators found remnants of the jewelry, a buckle, a cellphone and a glass meth pipe that they believed were on Melson's person before she was killed.

Investigators believe that nunchaku were used in the murder of Melson.

During the trial, Brenna Theuer, who was living with James Henderson, on the property where Melson's body was found in a shallow grave, testified of the events that unfolded before Melson's murder.

Theuer told the courtroom the night that Mobley and Melson came to her home, she got into a heated argument with Mobley, asking him to leave her home and then retreated to a bedroom, where she heard noises, including screaming, and Mobley beating the wall with a nunchaku and later him hitting what sounded like a body with it.

Theuer reported that she tried to call 911, but Henderson took the phone from her.

She said, at one point, she left the bedroom to see Mobley holding the nunchaku and Melson on the floor.

She stated that she later heard what sounded like more of a beating and what sounded like a sexual assault, of Mobley having sex with Melson.

Theuer reported that at some point the screaming stopped.

She reported seeing two area rugs from the home in the back of Mobley's Chevy pickup, with hair coming out of one of them.

She reported that she saw Henderson holding a dirty shovel and that he returned around 9 a.m.

Mobley's trial testimony did not match up to what his previous video-recorded interviews with Houston County law enforcement.

Mobley testified that Vannessa Melson was on drugs the night he picked her up from his father's home, and that he left her at the home of James Henderson and Brenna Theuer and went to his mother's house, returning the next day and finding Melson gone.

Mobley said it wasn't until he was working for MKS Services LLC in North Carolina that he found out that Melson was missing.

Mobley testified that he had never seen the alleged murder weapon, a nunchaku.