GREEN COVE SPRINGS, Fla. — To understand Melinda Holder’s case, you have go back more than three decades to 1989.

“It is a massive puzzle with one piece being slowly put in at a time,” Detective Cora Milliken with the Green Cove Springs Police Department said.

It’s a puzzle she is working to complete.

It begins in January of 1989. Holder, a mother of five, was living in Green Cove Springs. After she wasn’t seen for several days, her mother told officers she was worried and said she was last seen at her apartment on Love Drive.

After a brief search, officers didn’t find her. Her mother pulled back on the missing person’s report saying she heard her daughter may have gone with some friends to St. Petersburg. But then days turned into months and there was still no sign of Holder.

“So from that January to June time frame, nobody had seen her. So that was very unusual and concerning to the family, which is why they decided to file that missing persons report in June,” Milliken explained. 

Melinda Holder was officially reported as missing in June of 1989.

There had been a report of a possible sighting of Holder at the Mall Grove Hotel, located just down the road from her apartment, but that sighting was unconfirmed. 

It was as if Holder had vanished, then came back in Dec. 10, 1989.

“Just seeing the emptiness speaks volumes, you know something terrible happened here,” said Milliken as she looked over the vacant lot at 404 Harrison St.

It’s an empty, tree-grown lot today, but more than three decades ago it was the site of an intense house fire. The home was abandoned at the time in 1989, but neighbors did report seeing people come and go from it.

The next day, Dec. 11, 1989 as the Fire Marshal was investigating, he found human bones and what appeared to be signs of gasoline.

“The way it [the gasoline] was used was that it was in the room where Mrs. Holder’s body was recovered,” explained Milliken, “That’s where that fire had started.”

At the time, investigators had no way to determine whose remains were found. No ID and the remains were heavily damaged by the fire. There wasn’t much that could be done to identify the body, until 30 years later, in 2019 with advancements in mitochondrial DNA testing detectives were finally able to get a definitive ID, determining that the body in the house was Holder. 

“She didn’t have any enemies, she was too kind to have enemies,” said Glenda Pierre, Holder’s daughter.

She said her mother was very social, loved to cook and had a lot of friends. 

“Every bone in her body was kind and that was the type of person that she was,” she said. 

Her mother loved her family, a family that has grown extensively over the years. Melinda Holder was a mother to five children, and a grandmother to 19 grandchildren and 38 great-grandchildren, all of whom want to know what happened.

“She lives through all of us and through all of them as well,” Pierre said. 

Milliken said she is determined to get Holder’s family those answers, going through thousands of pages of documents from the case.

Holder was dead likely a few days before the fire, Milliken said, but the medical examiner could not determine a cause of death due to the fire damage to the remains. Though her death is not being deemed a murder, it is listed as a suspicious death.

“Somebody, somewhere knows something,” Milliken said. “That is not a question, that is a fact.”

She said she has developed persons of interest in investigating this case, but is looking for more from the community, especially from those who can fill in the timeline in the year of 1989. Where was Holder and who was she with from that last time she was seen in January, until her body was found in December?

Green Cove Springs is a small town, even smaller in 1989, and Milliken said someone must have seen her.

Her children say it’s time for the truth. The questions have lingered for too long.

“I hope God puts it on your heart to come forward and tell whatever it is you know, and it has been long enough,” Pierre said. “We loved our mother, our grandkids and great grandkids love her and she was somebody.”

If you know anything about the death of Melinda Holder in 1989, contact the Green Cove Springs Police Department or CrimeStoppers at 1-866-845-TIPS(8477).