For seven years, Mel Wiley served the people of Hinckley County, Ohio, a community of approximately seven-thousand people twenty-five miles south of Cleveland. After stints with Army Intelligence, the FBI, and the Defense Department, he joined the Hinckley Township Police Department in 1978 and became Police Chief in 1982. Though a little rumpled, the forty-seven-year-old lawman was considered a dedicated cop who did his job well.

By 1985, however, Mel appeared to tire of clamping the cuffs on criminals; his real passion seemed to be putting pencil to paper. He had written a book of poetry and had recently told friends and colleagues he had started writing a novel entitled Harvest of Madness, a murder mystery set in Burnt Cabins, Pennsylvania, an unincorporated community in the south-central part of the Keystone State, approximately two-hundred-seventy miles from Mel’s Medina, Ohio, home.

No one knows if Mel Wiley completed his novel because he is not here to tell.  The small town police chief may have written a great fictional mystery, but he has also been starring in a real life mystery. Unlike most of the missing people I have written about, his disappearance may be of his own choosing.

Mel Wiley

Hinckley County Ohio Police Chief

On the morning of July 28, 1985, Mel entered Hinckley’s K&K Doughnuts and ordered his usual sinkers and coffee. After jokingly grumbling to owner Ann Kirby about how awful the doughnuts were and warning other customers not to eat them, he gobbled them down and went on his way.

The following day, a Monday, Mel inexplicably did not arrive for work and did not provide anyone with an explanation for his absence. He did, however, contact a woman he had recently begun dating.

A Typical Sunday . . .

But A No-Show On Monday

Identified in newspapers only as “Judy,” Mel’s new girlfriend was the former wife of a fellow police officer. The relationship was not well received by several people in the police department.

Judy found it odd when Mel told her that he was going to buy a bathing suit at Walmart and that he and an out-of-town friend, whom he did not name, were going to go swimming along the Lake Erie shore. Mel did not like swimming or any outdoor activities due to his sensitive skim. He was uncomfortable being in the sun for an extended length due to an accident he had incurred at an atomic testing site while in the Army that resulted in noticeable radiation burns on his arms and torso, of which he was most sensitive. Judy, despite finding Mel’s plans out of character, did not press him.

Swimming did not seem like an activity Mel would chose for an afternoon of leisure, but he was confirmed to have purchased a swimsuit.

Going For A Swim Seems Strange

At 4:00 the following morning, a park ranger found Mel’s locked car, a tan 1980 Toyota station wagon, abandoned in Lake Erie’s Lakefront State Park in Cleveland. Inside the vehicle were most of his pertinent belongings including his wallet holding $15 in cash, credit cards, watch, and his police badge. Also found were several items of clothing, suntan lotion, a beach towel, and a pack of Salem cigarettes. The vehicle showed no signs of a struggle; the only oddity was that the seat was pulled forward much farther than would have been comfortable for the nearly six-foot-tall Mel to operate.

The park ranger believed the car had been parked there no earlier than the previous morning because he had not seen it during his weekend patrols of the area.

A search of the area involving Mel’s colleagues and surrounding departments turned up no trace of the police chief. He also failed to show for a scheduled date with Judy that evening.

The Chief Disappears

Being the police chief, it was naturally wondered if someone Mel had previously arrested had done him in. During his seven-year tenure with the department, however, the small Hinckley community had experienced few crimes of significance and no instances of major crimes.

Investigators could find no one with an obvious motive to harm Mel.

No Obvious Suspects

A search of Mel’s apartment found nearly all of his clothes were gone. A large amount of water and food had been left for his two cats.  The only item in his refrigerator was a jar of mayonnaise.

Mel’s beloved model train set was left behind. His manuscript for Harvest of Darkness was not found nor were his two guns, a .38 Smith & Wesson Special and a .38 snub nose revolver.

No Chief

Mel Wiley’s trail ended in Cleveland, the “Mistake by the Lake,” but investigators came to believe it a mistake to believe he lay in the lake. His body had not surfaced following extensive searches by the Cleveland Police Department’s Ports & Harbors Unit, Ohio State Parks & Watercraft, and the United States Coast Guard. Subsequent findings suggested Mel may have engineered his own disappearance.

In addition to writing a murder mystery, Mel was apparently trying his hand at romance writing as well. While still married, he had previously had an affair with an unmarried woman who had ultimately ended the relationship. Mel apparently still had feelings for her as he had recently written her a letter saying that ever since the affair ended, he was frustrated with his life and fantasized about running away from it.

Discoveries made by a colleague of another form of Mel’s writing, raised further questions.  .  and eyebrows.

For the past year, Hinckley Township Police Department Dispatcher Virginia Yates had pulled roughly two-hundred drafts of erotic stories from her boss’ office trash can. The writings consisted of lewd drawings and letters of sexually-laden references to excretion and described sex acts involving her boss and several female members of his Medina’s St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, of which he was a largely inactive member. All of the writings appeared to have been typed on his office typewriter.

Virginia also found a signed order form indicating that Mel had ordered, or at least considered ordering, $28 worth of pornographic incest stories from the San Diego publishing house Library Service Inc.

None of the women mentioned by Mel in his discarded writings claimed any sort of sexual relationship with him. They are believed merely to be Mel’s fantasies.

An analysis of the ribbon on Mel’s office typewriter showed he had recently written a letter addressed to a friend in which he made vague allusions to a woman he called “Nancy Morgan.” He had written, “Already I should be well on my way to having become history to her. And because of the particular circumstances behind that event, there will be no way I can ever communicate with her in any manner ever again.”

The name Nancy Morgan was a pseudonym. It is unclear if she is the woman with whom Mel had had an affair or of a woman he was fantasizing about.

In another portion of the letter, Mel had written he would be 2,500 miles away by the time his friend received the letter. Similar to the letter to his former lover, Mel had written he was tired of his life and wanted to disappear. One portion was found to have read, “I will have, in one sense of the word, gone away. It’s a one-way trip, so I’m told, with no option of ever returning and perhaps that’s just as well for any and all concerned.”

Mel’s friend never received the letter, and the actual hard copy of it has never been found.

Part Of The Writing Found

On The Typewriter Ribbon

While in the Army in the early 1960s, Mel had been stationed at California’s Fort Ord and developed a love of nearby San Francisco. Investigators found, written in Mel’s handwriting, a Greyhound bus schedule from Cleveland to San Francisco, a distance of roughly 2,500 miles.

Young Mel

An Amtrak train schedule had been found in Mel’s apartment. Perhaps finding nonfiction preferable to fiction, the police chief decided to concoct his own mystery.

As police chief, Mel had access to materials such as fingerprints and Social Security information which would aid him in assuming another identity. With his law enforcement background, he would know how to stay off the radar.

Did Wiley Mel Intentionally Disappear?

The year-and-a-half prior to his disappearance had been particularly rough for Mel. His thirty-eight-year old brother Clark, to whom he was extremely close, died of cancer in October 1983. A month later, Cindy, Mel’s wife of seventeen years, filed for divorce after learning of his affair.

Mel and Cindy had no children. Following the divorce, Cindy moved to New York. She is not considered a suspect in the disappearance of her former husband.

Mel And Cindy’s Wedding Picture

Many believe Mel Wiley, frustrated with the recent developments in his life, said the hell with Hinckley and everything associated with it, and willingly left for a new life, perhaps near the city by the bay. Had he done so, however, it seems odd that he withdrew only $2,000 in the days before he was last seen, but left nearly $16,000.

Mel’s mother, Doris, also believed her son would not have left behind his beloved car, which had been given to him to by Clark shortly before his death.

Was It Willingly?

Sergeant David Yates, Virginia’s husband, became the Hinckley Township Department Police Chief following Mel Wiley’s disappearance. Ten days after writing his account of the saga that was published in local newspapers, David received an unsigned postcard from Canada reading, “Your editorial ‘Wiley’s Mystery’ was elementary. Try to improve.”

Some believe the card was mailed from the aspiring mystery writer Mel Wiley.

A Message From Mel?

Melvin Lee “Mel” Wiley has been missing since July 28, 1985. At the time of his disappearance, he was forty-seven-years-old, stood five-feet-eleven-inches tall, and weighed one-hundred-sixty-five pounds. He was balding and had a wart on his nose. Because of previous exposure to radiation, Mel had a skin condition that irritated him after prolonged periods in the sun and also produced patches of pale skin on his neck and arms.  Because of this, he always wore long-sleeved shirts. He smoked Salem cigarettes, liked to write, collected classical, jazz, and big band records, and also collected model trains.

No evidence has been found suggesting the long gone lawman was murdered or committed suicide. There has been no activity on his bank account or any of his credit cards since his disappearance.

Mel Wiley would today be eighty-six-years-old. If you have any information relating to his disappearance, please contact the Medina, Ohio, County Sheriff’s Department at 330-725-9116.

The Long Gone Lawman

Mel Wiley was declared legally dead in 1993, eight years after his disappearance. He is the first police chief to ever be listed as a missing person by the FBI, his former employer.

A Unique Distinction

Is the former police chief living his golden years in splendid isolation from society?

Perhaps Mel will one day return to write the final chapter to his own mystery. More likely, though, the former police chief will leave us to ponder the fate of the long gone lawman.

Will Mel Return To Tell?

SOURCES:

• Akron Beacon Journal
• The Bryan Times
• The Charley Project
• Cleveland Plain Dealer
• The Doe Network
• Los Angeles Times
• The Medina, Ohio Gazette
• Time Magazine

If you happen to come across this post, Mel, shoot me a message. I would like to read Harvest of Madness if you have completed it, but even more I would be interested in a wiley lawman’s opinions on my writings, including your own case.

Every mystery deserves a good ending, Mel. I would love the opportunity, if you would give me the privilege, to write the conclusion to the tail of “The Long Gone Lawman”. . .  on your terms and conditions of course.

Message Me, Mel