About the time a man was attacking two women in their beach condo Tuesday, 13-year-old Melinda Denise Hinson was readying to take her neighbor’s dog for a walk at the Valu-Lodge on the west end of U.S. 98.
There are two things we know that happened before Tuesday turned to Wednesday: Matthew Lee Caylor, 33, was arrested on a charge of assaulting the beach women, and Melinda was murdered, her body hidden in Caylor’s room at the Valu-Lodge until a maid found it Thursday morning.
All of this was reported in Friday’s News Herald, along with a story about death row inmate James Card’s latest appeal on a brutal Panama City murder he committed 27 years ago.
You can only pray that if Caylor is held responsible for Melinda’s murder, her family doesn’t have to agonize for 27 years as the man who took their child plays our judicial system.
Sheriff’s deputies said two women were attacked in their Beach condo around 4 p.m. Tuesday. Police said Caylor was invited inside. We don’t know if the women knew Caylor long, or at all, but likely did not know he was a convicted sex offender from Georgia.
Caylor tried to lure one of the women to a back bedroom. She refused, and he attacked.
Caylor, armed with an 8-inch knife, attempted to bind the women with duct tape and demanded money, deputies said. The women yelled for help, and Caylor fled.
It’s not hard to imagine that their condo was a hive of law enforcement activity as Melinda prepared to walk a neighbor’s dog at the Valu-Lodge just a few miles to the east to earn a few dollars.
Whatever the circumstances that led to Melinda living at the Valu-Lodge with her parents, they likely were not pleasant. It is not where you would aim to get in life, and it’s not what you would consider pleasant, but it is what people have to do to survive and do the best they can to provide for their children.
Panama City police are familiar with the west U.S. 98 location, having handled knifings and fights and various other nefarious activities that are more indicative of that general area than the Valu-Lodge in particular.
Melinda made the best of it and found particular joy in walking the dog and taking advantage of the pool.
Caylor moved in about two weeks ago.
Everything else is supposition as this is written, but the mind heads down frightening paths, picturing an agitated sex offender fleeing a failed attack and arriving home to find Melinda out and about. She was reported missing at 6 p.m. Tuesday, about two hours after the attack on the beach.
Police were at the hotel around 7 p.m. taking a report that is all too common: A young teen wasn’t where she was supposed to be.
The area was searched. A check of the hotel’s registration, one presumes, would have shown Caylor’s name, and a check of that would’ve shown he was a sex offender and a wanted felon in Georgia. We don’t know, as of now, if Melinda was already dead at that point, her body hidden in the room, or if that would come later.
We do know that sheriff’s deputies investigating the condo attack were able, with help from one of the victims, to lure Caylor to a local supermarket. When deputies tried to arrest him, he fled in a car that was later learned to be stolen out of Georgia.
Investigators learned he was staying at the Value-Lodge, but this was early Wednesday morning and a bulletin about the missing girl from the same hotel had not yet been issued.
So Caylor sat in jail, Melinda’s family wondered where their little girl was, and a trucker was checking into the room at the Valu-Lodge where Melinda’s body had been hidden. He slept through the night and checked out, with no idea.
Around 1 a.m. Thursday, Panama City police issued a news release about the missing girl to get it on the early morning TV news and online. Later that morning, a maid went into the trucker’s room to prepare it for the next guest.
Neighbors heard the maid scream.
For today, Card and Caylor sit in the Bay County Jail, the same place Card arrived at 27 years ago after robbing, kidnapping and murdering Janis Franklin at a Western Union office.
Franklin was 41, Card was 35. He has grown old on Death Row, and is now 61.
He deserves no such stay, and neither does Melinda’s killer.
