On a weekend in late January 1981, twelve-year-old Melanie Sue Polk was looking forward to a sleepover with her cousin and close friend, thirteen-year-old Amanda Joy Neal. On the evening of Saturday, January 24th, Amanda's father, Bobby Neal, picked up Melanie from her aunt's home. The three then headed back to Bobby's farm near Monticello in Lawrence County, Mississippi, for what should have been a night of youthful fun. It was the last time any of them were seen alive.
Concern grew the following evening when Melanie did not return home. Her mother, Betty Sue Langston, went to Bobby Neal's house to investigate. She found his truck in the driveway and the house unlocked, but there was no sign of Bobby or the two girls. An unsettling discovery of Bobby's glasses, which he always wore, lying on a table in his room, prompted a call to the Lawrence County Sheriff's office, launching a frantic search for the missing trio. For ten long days, there was no trace of them.
The grim truth began to unfold when a fisherman discovered the bodies of Amanda and Melanie in a wooded area. The subsequent investigation quickly focused on a family member, Howard Monteville Neal, who was Bobby Neal's half-brother and the girls' cousin. Neal had been laid off from his job in Texas and had traveled to Mississippi with his wife and child, leaving them in a motel room while he visited his brother.
Howard Monteville Neal was apprehended on March 6, 1981, in Stockton, California, for shoplifting. A routine check revealed he was wanted for questioning in the Mississippi homicides. During interrogation, Neal confessed to the horrific crimes. He admitted to taking Bobby and the two girls from the farm. He first led his half-brother into the woods and fatally shot him. He then drove the young girls to a separate location, where he sexually assaulted Amanda and attempted to assault Melanie before shooting them both and leaving them for dead.
Neal was convicted for the capital murder of Amanda Joy Neal and sentenced to death. He was also given a life sentence for the death of his brother, Bobby. However, he was never formally tried for the rape and murder of Melanie Sue Polk. After decades on death row, during which his attorneys argued he was intellectually disabled, Howard Monteville Neal's death sentence was commuted. In 2008, he was resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, ensuring he would remain incarcerated for the devastating crimes that cut short the lives of Melanie, Amanda, and Bobby.
