Pauline Klumpp, a 51-year-old woman from Port Arthur, Texas, disappeared on July 2, 1988. She was last seen checking on her rental property in Port Acres. At the time, her air conditioning was not working, and witnesses reported that Roy Melanson, a man with experience fixing air conditioners, offered to help. Klumpp and Melanson left together, but she was never seen alive again.
The next day, Klumpp’s truck was found abandoned in a grocery store parking lot just a few miles away.
Authorities launched an extensive investigation, enlisting the help of the Texas Rangers and interviewing hundreds of people. Despite their efforts, her body was never found. However, law enforcement strongly suspected Melanson’s involvement in her disappearance and presumed murder.
Roy Melanson was a lifelong criminal with a history of violent offenses, including rape and other crimes. He had been released from the Texas prison system just three months before Klumpp vanished. At the time of the investigation, Melanson was already serving a sentence for the murder of a woman in Colorado. Although authorities were convinced of his guilt in Klumpp’s case, they lacked the physical evidence necessary to formally charge him with her murder.
Decades later, Sgt. Scott Gaspard of the Port Arthur Police Department, who was a rookie officer when Klumpp went missing, renewed efforts to locate her remains. He remained convinced that Melanson was responsible for her death and hoped that new information would emerge to finally solve the cold case. Authorities continued to urge anyone with knowledge of Melanson’s activities in southeast Texas to come forward.
