Burch Hinton, now 61, is currently serving a life sentence at the Hays State Prison in Chattooga County, Georgia.
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Hinton is famously known as a convicted felon who was found guilty of killing Shannon Melendi.
At the time, he was working as an umpire at the softball game Melendi was scorekeeping at, according to WKYC, but it took police 10 years to charge him with the murder.
They were able to connect Hinton to the case after receiving an anonymous phone call from a phone booth which is where they found Melendi’s rings wrapped in tape inside a bag.
Traces of cobalt were found on the tape and an aeronautical scientist was able to conclude that it had come from an aircraft manufacturer or an aircraft repair place.
At the time, Hinton worked on airplanes for Delta Airlines in Atlanta.
Following Hinton’s 2005 conviction, he exhausted his appeals and eventually confessed to the crime, that he also raped her twice and burnt her body.
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“She didn’t even try to scratch — no hitting. I kept telling her, ‘As soon as I get your car sold or rid of, I will let you go,’ and she said ‘All right,’” he confessed.
On the night that he decided to kill her, Hinton said that “she didn’t even know I was standing there. I came over on top of her real quick. … I took the tie and put it around her neck. … I think I crossed it, and I strangled her right there.”
He then went on to admit that he had incinerated Melendi’s body and proceeded to take his wife out to dinner at an Olive Garden where he gave her one of the rings he took off of Melendi’s body, but the guilt became too much to bear and his paranoia with police and the FBI began to grow.
Has Shannon Melendi Been Found?
To this day, the remains of Shannon Melendi have never been found.
Shannon Melendi was a Miami native who made headlines in March 1994 after she disappeared from a softball game in Atlanta.
Born October 20, 1974, Melendi was known as a heavily involved Emory University sophomore who had plans to join the Navy and earn a law degree.
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