Eventually someone came forward.
An informant contacted police.
Now detectives finally had a lead pointing toward people who fit the known abduction.
Three young men entered the investigation.
Spencer Tyrone Nelson, twenty-one.
Louis Carnell Morgan, twenty.
Norman Willis, seventeen.
The arrests began on December 21 and continued into December 22.
What Really Happened at the Red Light
Years later, the California Court of Appeal summarized testimony about what happened on December 15.
Morgan and Willis had been together in Pacoima.
Spencer Nelson joined them.
According to Morgan's preliminary-hearing account, the men discussed committing a robbery.
They went toward the intersection of Foothill and Arroyo.
Morgan and Willis waited near a wall.
Nelson manipulated the pedestrian signal so the traffic light would turn red.
Then Melanie Uribe's Chevrolet LUV pickup arrived.
The truck stopped for the light.
The men converged on it.
Morgan's account said Nelson broke into the vehicle.
Willis later differed on exactly who broke the window, but the important facts remained largely consistent:
The men forced themselves into Melanie's truck.
They took control of it.
Melanie was crying.
The witness nearby heard her scream.
Then the truck disappeared into the night.
The Name That Changed Everything
After taking Melanie, the group stopped on Eustes Street.
At some point, someone passing nearby called out Spencer Nelson's name.
This detail became crucial.
Someone had recognized him.
According to Morgan's testimony, Nelson became concerned.
Melanie had now heard his name.
A crime initially conceived as robbery had become far more dangerous for the perpetrators.
She could identify him.
Morgan later testified that when the group reached Lopez Canyon, Nelson said Melanie would have to be killed because someone had called his name earlier in the evening.
That one accidental moment may have sealed Melanie's fate.
A person on the street recognized the wrong man at the worst possible time.
Lopez Canyon
The same canyon Etta would somehow describe two days later.
The group drove Melanie there.
Testimony differed about some of what each participant personally did, but the core sequence was established in court.
Melanie was taken up a path.
The men discussed restraining her.
Morgan testified that he turned away briefly.
Then he heard an impact.
He turned around.
Nelson was attacking Melanie with a large rock.
The medical examiner later concluded that the injuries were consistent with an object of that size and weight.
The group returned to the truck.
But they did something that would eventually help destroy any chance of keeping the crime secret.
They kept talking.
Melanie's Money
The appellate record describes the men leaving Lopez Canyon in Melanie's truck.
Money had been taken from her purse.
The group stopped at a 7-Eleven and bought sodas and cigarettes using money taken from Melanie.
Her purse and blanket were discarded.
Some belongings went into a drain or trash container.
Police would later recover an address book and a crescent wrench belonging to Melanie from a sewer along Lopez Canyon Road.
Those ordinary objects corroborated the accomplices' accounts.
The crime was leaving a trail.
The Rock
The most extraordinary mistake came next.
The rock associated with Melanie's death was carried away from the canyon.
The group drove toward Sproul Street.
The rock was placed near the home of a woman named Velma Ford.
The following day, Louis Morgan went to see her.
He told her he had a secret.
Then he told her about the robbery and murder.
He mentioned Spencer Nelson.
And he took Velma outside.
There, he showed her the rock.
Then he covered it with leaves.
Think about how different this is from Etta's situation.
Police were interrogating a woman because they could not understand how she knew where the body was.
Meanwhile, an actual participant had taken the murder weapon to a residential street and was showing it to a neighbor.
That conversation would become part of the evidence presented against Nelson.
They Tried Another Robbery
The crime did not even immediately end the group's activity.
According to testimony, after leaving the canyon they drove toward downtown Los Angeles looking for another person to rob.
They failed to find a suitable target.
Then they returned toward the Valley.
Eventually Melanie's truck was driven behind Fillmore Street School.
Paper was placed inside and near the fuel system.
The truck was set on fire.
That was the burned vehicle investigators found the next morning.
By then Melanie's body was still undiscovered in Lopez Canyon.
Until Etta Smith went looking.
December 21
The neighborhood information finally reached authorities.
An informant told police about one of the men bragging.
Investigators moved quickly.
Morgan and the juvenile Willis were taken into custody.
Nelson was arrested shortly afterward.
One suspect confessed and implicated the others.
Police now had statements that fit physical evidence.
The pickup.
The canyon.
The discarded belongings.
The rock.
The witness at the intersection.
The burned vehicle.
And none of it connected to Etta Smith.
On December 21, after nearly four days in custody, Etta was released.
No murder charge was ever filed against her.
No Apology
According to Etta's attorney, there was no meaningful apology when she left.
No ceremony.
No recognition that she had helped police locate a missing woman.
She simply walked out.
She had entered the case voluntarily as a citizen trying to help.
She left jail having been treated as a possible killer.
The experience stayed with her.
And years later, Etta decided to take the city to court.
The Criminal Case
Spencer Nelson became the principal defendant whose case later produced a detailed appellate record.
He was convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances, robbery, rape and kidnapping for robbery.
He received life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for the murder count, with an additional consecutive sentence associated with the kidnapping count.
Louis Morgan had entered into an agreement with prosecutors involving first-degree murder and rape in exchange for truthful testimony.
The criminal proceedings became complicated because Morgan and Willis later invoked their Fifth Amendment rights at Nelson's trial, forcing portions of their earlier preliminary-hearing testimony to be read to jurors.
Nelson appealed.
In 1984, the California Court of Appeal concluded that although the trial court had made an error involving Morgan's testimony, the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt given the other evidence supporting Nelson's conviction.
The murder was legally solved.
The strange Etta Smith question was not.
Six Years Later
Etta Smith was now thirty-nine.
More than six years had passed since her arrest.
She sued the City of Los Angeles.
Her claim was straightforward.
Police had arrested her without probable cause.