Husband Found Not Guilty in Murder Case Involving Wife, Daughter of a Serial Killer

A Georgia man leaned back in his wheelchair and breathed a sigh of relief after a jury acquitted Friday for the 1998 murder of his wife.

Christopher Wolfenbarger was found not guilty of Melissa Wolfenbarger after jurors in Fulton County deliberated for just two hours. He was charged with his wife”s murder last year thanks to a task force that believed it had enough evidence to convict him of the crime.

The victim’s family last heard from her on Thanksgiving 1998. But the family’s alarm bells went off when she missed her mom’s birthday a few months later. Investigators found a severed head in a black trash bag in April 1999 in the back of Christopher Wolfenbarger’s workplace Atlanta, and more remains were located about a month later.

But the remains were misidentified as a missing man. They weren’t identified as hers until 2003 when investigators identified them as thanks to her father Carl Patton’s arrest in a series of killings known as the Flint River Murders that occurred in the 1970s. He’s now serving a life sentence.

Investigators believe the homicide occurred sometime between Dec. 10, 1998, and April 29, 1999. When questioned, Christopher Wolfenbarger said he believed his wife had moved to California for a new life. He has always maintained his innocence.

“Yeah, I have a criminal history. But I’m not a murderer,” he told Dateline in 2021.

But prosecutors believed he killed her because of their rocky relationship. Her sister said the summer before her disappearance, Christopher Wolfenbarger had allegedly assaulted his wife and dragged her by the hair down a sidewalk.

By being acquitted, the defendant avoided a life sentence.