Episode 8 - Rachel Skemp

Welcome to Mysteries of the Missing, a podcast and blog about missing person's cases. You can find my podcast, my blog, and my social media pages on my Linktree at: https://linktr.ee/MysteriesoftheMissing.

Keep in mind that I am only reporting the events of what have happened, per my research through various media outlets. I’m not trained in any way in true crime. Instead, I'm a published author who loves to blog. Also, I’m solely a human being that’s trying to do my part to get the message of the story of Rachel Skemp out there so that one day, hopefully, she may be found, and her case may be solved. Join me as I dive into the last day that people saw Rachel and what happened after she was last seen.

Trigger warning: This episode and blog post contains child sexual assault and domestic violence. Listeners and readers be advised.

"Every 40 seconds in America, a child goes missing or is abducted. Children who are missing are at great risk of victimization and exploitation. Many do not perceive the inherent risks or see themselves as potential victims. This is especially true for children who are identified as 'high risk.' Youth aged 12-17 are at higher risk for homelessness than adults." - DCFS Illinois

Top right picture: Rachel with her mom, Amy, and her biological dad, Jeff Skemp.

Rachel Marie Skemp was born on October 1, 1982, and she lived in Bolingbrook, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. Sometimes, she's referred to as Rachel Mellon and other times, she's referred to as Rachel Skemp, but she was never adopted by her stepfather. Her mother is Filipino and her father is white. After her mother immigrated from the Philippines, she married her father, Jeff Kemp, in the early 1980's. In 1985, Rachel's parents divorced, then Amy (Rachel's mom) married her stepfather, Vincent Mellon. Her father, Jeff, moved to Dallas, Texas.

Rachel was described as being bubbly and positive. Her friends remember her as being the life of the party.

At the time of her disappearance, Rachel was in seventh grade at Ward Middle School, where she was an honors student. Her favorite subject was Science and she loved recycling and nature. She played guitar and liked Alanis Morrisette. Sans the playing of the guitar, she sounded just like me. In fact, Rachel is just a little over a year older than me. She was your typical teenager living in the 1990's.

Another similarity to Rachel that I have is that I grew up in Springfield, Illinois. No, Springfield is not Chicago, but Illinois has the every day "small town, midwestern feel" to every single city it hosts. Also, my husband is Filipino, and if you know anything about that community, it's that it is like one big family. Filipinos take care of each other.

Bolingbrook, Illinois had a population of just over 73,000 people as of 2021. Even though it's close to the third biggest city in the United States (Chicago), it has that "small town feel." My hometown in Texas, Baytown, has between 70-80,000 people. That seems like a lot but it's not, in the grand scheme of things. Also, there's only 1-2 crimes per 1,000 people, so not a lot of violent activity is happening in this city. When I looked at a map of Bolingbrook, Illinois, it looked like the most unsafe places are nearest to the highway, I55, which is common in most U.S. cities. This highway transits a long way (about 294 miles), so there is a lot of traffic on it.

Back to the story at hand:

Brrrr...January 31, 1996 was a super cold day, at a nice 0 degrees Fahrenheit, and windy at that. That day, Rachel had a sore throat, so she stayed home from school. Even though she was sick, Rachel decided to call her paternal grandparents in Dallas at 10:45 a.m. to thank them for their Christmas gifts. She indicated to her grandpa that her stepfather was home with her because he was unemployed at the time, so she wasn't alone. After getting quiet, Rachel's grandmother asked if Vincent was there, and Rachel said he was and that she had to get off the phone.

According to Vincent, he and Rachel played video games, Rachel took a nap in her bedroom, then he went to walk the dog at 2:30 p.m. An odd detail that Vincent supplied the police with is that he left the door unlocked when he went to walk the dog. Granted, this was 1996, but by then, we were all locking our doors, at least to my knowledge, at least my family locked our doors. When Rachel's stepfather was walking the dog in freezing temperatures, he said that it got off its leash and ran to chase a rabbit. Apparently, he thought the dog would make its way home, but a neighbor did and took the dog home to the family. Vincent went back home without the dog and said that he did not check on Rachel when he came home...that's strange, considering she was sick that day.

When school was over, Rachel's half siblings (Ashley and Jason) came home to find that Rachel was not home. That was at around 3:15 p.m. They told Vincent, but nothing was done. Hmm...wonder why? Amy came home between 5 to 5:30 p.m, and when she noticed that Rachel was missing, she called the Bolingbrook Police immediately.

Something else that sounds incriminating is that the stepfather had scratches on his body, which he said came from working on his car. When Jason and Ashley came home from school, they said their father was in the garage. However, he could have just been there to establish an alibi, right? I'm just speculating here. As we have seen with other cases I've covered, the local police department dropped the ball on another missing person's case. Why? They did not search the car Vincent said he was working on nor did they search the home garage he was working in. Why not? If the Bolingbrook Police Department even had a glimmer of suspicion in their minds about Vincent doing something to Rachel, their first step after interviewing him should have been to search the garage. Bodies have been put in trunks before, or in back seats. Traumatic things happen in cars. Why oh why didn't the police do their job by looking at the car and garage? This is disheartening! What else disappoints me about this particular police department (but doesn't surprise me because it's been done by other police departments before) is that they posed the suggestion that maybe Rachel ran away.

Yeah, she ran away in frigid cold temperatures when she was sick. That makes sense. Like previous cases I've covered, Rachel's most important items were left at home: a coat (which she would've needed in the freezing weather), clothes (which she would have needed if she knew she was going to run away for a long period of time), her purse and money (which even little kids acknowledge the power of), and her Walkman. If you grew up in the 1980's and 90's like me, you knew a teenager did not go anywhere without their Walkman. It's called "Walk-man" for a reason: we walked everywhere with it. You don't have to be a detective to know that Rachel most certainly did not run away.

However, Rachel did run away for 12 hours about a year prior to this disappearance. When Rachel's siblings broke an item in the home, she was worried about being blamed about their mishap. Tension was obviously brewing in the house before she even went missing. In the Spring of 1995, Rachel left a note and slept outside a friend's house. When she called her step grandparents, they came to take her home. However, she left a note. This tells me she was not intending on being gone long and that she might have wanted to be found.

Authorities searched Jeff Skemp's home in Dallas, as well as his relatives in Mississippi and they even checked with Amy's family in the Philippines, but there was no sign of Rachel. When police conducted searches of the ground, air, and water using geothermal imaging and drones, they did not find Rachel.

Can you guess what was missing from Rachel's bedroom? Her pillows and blankets...what she was most likely laying on as she napped in her bedroom. Suspicious to the core.

After Rachel went missing, her friends came to the police with information: They said that the day before she went missing, Rachel was crying by her locker at school. Her friends asked her what was wrong and she said she had a problem but could take care of it herself. Since she wouldn't give more information, her friends let it go.

Word to the wise: If you are a kid or a teenager and your friend is showing distress about a problem they are not willing to talk about, please tell an adult.

Not shockingly: Vincent has a criminal record of domestic violence. Granted, this guy wasn't charged with things until after Rachel went missing, but I'm willing to bet he abused people before he even got arrested. Abuse has a pattern of history. "In 2003, Vincent was charged with a domestic battery. 2005 brought him a DUI. In August of 2006, Vincent was charged with three counts of domestic battery and one count of battery, to which he pled guilty. Sadly, he only spent 25 days in jail." - Nancy Grace. Surprisingly, Amy said that Vincent pushed her down the stairs and hit her in front of the children, as well as verbally abused Rachel. This happened in 1990, though...when Rachel was 8 years old. This guy had a history.

As someone who was married to an abusive first husband, it isn't always easy to leave an abuser. Not only are you afraid for your life, but you're afraid that all of the things they threaten will come true: They threaten to stalk you, to check up on you. You don't think just leaving them will make you safe. And to make it worse, Amy had children. Maybe she couldn't financially leave Vincent, either, due to having and raising kids with him. Many abusers threaten the ones they abuse with promises of financial problems. It is a hard thing to break free from, and for some, it keeps happening and happening. So much so that it becomes the norm, and you're too far in to break free.

In 1995, Rachel even told her dad, Jeff, that she would like to move to Dallas. She was obviously not okay with living in this household with her mother and stepfather. In January 2000 (4 years after Rachel disappeared), the Bolingbrook Police interrogated Vincent for nine hours at the police station. You won't be shocked to find out that he invoked his fifth amendment rights. Also, they took samples of his DNA, saliva, and hair. Did they have a body? Not that we know of today in 2023, because Rachel is still missing. Vincent and even Amy appeared before a grand jury and claimed that Rachel was abducted. So, her own family didn't even think she ran away. After the grand jury, both Vincent and Amy moved to Tennessee. They were allowed to relocate, and to this day, Vincent is the prime suspect in Rachel's disappearance but he's never been arrested.

What was even more suspicious is the diary entry that authorities found...but it took 4 years to find the diary. In March 2000, when Rachel would have been around 16 year old, the police found Rachel's diary. They didn't tell anyone why it took them 4 years to find it, but what was in the diary was very important: Rachel had written on August 7, 1995 (about six months before she disappeared) that her stepfather, Vincent, had kissed and touched her inappropriately.

The Bolingbrook Police dedicated a tree and a buried time capsule in Rachel's honor in May 2002. That's the year and month that I graduated from high school. Rachel would have been graduated from high school for a year by this time. The tree is right across the street from the house she went missing from.

After the Mellon's relocated to Tennessee for some time, Vincent moved to Chicago. As late as 2017, he pulled out of a bar and hit another car, resulting in being charged with a DUI again. Amy is still living in Tennessee.

Amy and Vincent are not together today. Oddly enough, Amy has stuck up for Vincent and both have remained silent since Rachel disappeared. On the contrary, Rachel's father, Jeff, has done numerous interviews about her and has not stopped looking for his daughter.

What is another strange fact is that Drew Peterson (a former cop from Chicago who was convicted of murdering his wife) worked on Rachel's case. Vincent and he are friends, too. Birds of a feather flock together, huh?

I guess y'all can tell who I suspect, and I hope justice is brought to Rachel one day, hopefully soon.

"Jeff Skemp said if his daughter were around today, amid the pandemic, she would be on the front lines fighting against racial injustice, social injustice, police corruption...doing everything within her power to help those of us who are struggling and suffering.'" - News 7 Chicago

Rachel sounds like my kind of girl, someone I could've been friends with.

At the time of her disappearance in 1996, Rachel was 5 foot tall and 62 to 80 pounds. She is Asian Pacific Islander (Filipino) and white, with black hair and hazel eyes. There's a mole on her upper left side of her lip, and her ears are pierced. Her hair was cut short at the time she disappeared, but she often wore it to her shoulders. Rachel was last seen wearing a pink sweater, yellow sweatpants, and red house slippers.

If you know anything of the disappearance of Rachel Marie Skemp (aka Rachel Mellon), you may call the Bolingbrook Police Department at 630-226-0600, email rachelfind@yahoo.com, or you may contact me at mysteriesofthemissing2023@gmail.com.

Rachel, if you're out there, your dad hasn't stopped looking for you. In fact, he's never changed his number, so that you can hopefully reach him one day. I hope that you can be found and that your case will be solved, so that you and your dad can find peace. Just looking at your pictures makes me so sad. You deserve justice.

This has been another episode/blog post of Mysteries of the Missing. Until next time, stay safe.