Pauline Lorraine Klumpp

• Missing Since 07/02/1988
• Missing From Port Arthur, Texas
• Classification Endangered Missing
• Sex Female
• Race White
• Date of Birth 01/18/1937 (87)
• Age 51 years old
• Height and Weight 5'4, 165 pounds
• Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian female. Brown hair, brown eyes. Klumpp has a scar six inches in length on her right arm starting at her armpit. She may use the last name Reed.

Details of Disappearance

Klumpp was last seen in Port Arthur, Texas on July 2, 1988. She has not been heard from since that date. Foul play is suspected in her disappearance.

Roy Allen Melanson is a possible suspect in Klumpp's disappearance. He is a career criminal was first arrested in 1956, when he was in his teens, and has traveled to many states throughout the country.

Melanson has spent more than half his life in prison for crimes including burglary, rape and murder, and committed many violent acts against women. Photos of him are posted with this case summary.

In 1988, Melanson was living with his ex-wife and her new boyfriend in Port Arthur. They were renting their house from Klumpp, and they were the last people to see her before she disappeared. She came to their house to pick up a television set she'd loaned them, and she supposedly asked Melanson to come and help her with her air conditioner. They left together and Klumpp was never seen again.

Four days later, her car was found in a grocery store parking lot. The television set was still inside it, but there were no indications of Klumpp's whereabouts.

A man who traveled with Melanson after Klumpp went missing later told investigators that Melanson had told him he'd killed women and dumped their bodies in a swampy area near Fort Worth, Texas.

Melanson was convicted of weapons and stolen property charges in Kentucky in 1990. While he was incarcerated, police interviewed him about Klumpp's disappearance and he said she was alive and well when he'd last seen her. He was released from custody later in 1990, but arrested again in 1991.

In 1993, he was convicted of killing a woman in Colorado in 1974. He was transferred to a Colorado prison after serving his sentence in Kentucky, and he is still there.

Melanson is a suspect in some other deaths and, in 2010, police announced they had DNA evidence linking him to the homicide of a woman in Napa, California; she'd been killed just two months before his Colorado victim. He was convicted of the California woman's murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Since he is already serving time for the other murder case, and since he is now in his seventies, it is certain that Melanson will never be released from custody. Had he not been convicted in the second homicide he could have been released on parole as early as 2012.

Melanson has not been charged in Klumpp's disappearance; her case remains unsolved.