Brother Says “Hairy Armed” Intruder Abducted His Sister During The Night

Mistie May Micheletti was an 11-year-old girl from Vancouver, Washington. The fifth-grader had been through a lot in her short life. Her father, Don Micheletti, died by suicide when she was eight. He had jumped off the I-205 bridge. Around the same time, Mistie’s stepfather was convicted of sexually abusing her.

Despite the hardships, Mistie was a happy child who liked make-up and fairy books. Her grandmother recalled,

“That little thing loved fairy tales, anything that was sweet and kind. She always wanted to just be a princess and be happy.”

Mistie’s mother, Shellie May Prichard, worked at a care facility. The single mother struggled financially and couldn’t afford to pay someone to watch Mistie and her brothers, John Gleave and Joshua Young, while she worked.

Shellie worked the night shift on January 14, 1994. When she left home around 10 PM, Mistie and her brothers were tucked into bed.

14-year-old John awoke around 5:30 AM to find a man in the bedroom. He was scared and didn’t know what to do, so he kept quiet and eventually fell back asleep. When the boy woke up three hours later, he realized Mistie was gone.

The family couldn’t afford a phone at home, so John ran outside to a payphone and called his grandmother. According to Yvonne Sluder,

“He said, ‘Grandma, Mistie is gone and I heard somebody talking. Somebody has taken her.’”

John described the intruder as a “hairy armed man” wearing Adidas shoes. The family says the man entered the apartment through the bathroom window and that there was a large shoeprint in the bathtub. He’s believed to have left through a sliding glass door.

Mistie’s relatives immediately began searching for her. Despite the serious allegations made by John, authorities leaned toward the theory she had run away. According to Vancouver Police Sergeant Bruce Hall, there was no evidence of someone taking her,

“We don’t have anything to indicate there was an abduction, but we’re keeping our mind open. We want to find her pretty bad.”

On January 16, just a day after Mistie vanished, two fishermen found a young girl’s body in the Columbia River near the I-205 bridge.

According to medical examiners, Mistie had drowned, and there was no trauma to the body or signs of sexual abuse. Authorities, still reluctant to believe she had been abducted and murdered, pondered the possibility of her having died by suicide, much like her father had done on the same bridge.

However, a big flaw with this theory is that the bridge was five miles from the apartment, and Mistie had not taken a jacket or shoes. Her bare feet showed no signs of having walked several miles. Authorities suggested she had ridden her bicycle to the bridge, but after searching the area, they couldn’t find it.

Several weeks later, lab tests based on swabs taken of Mistie’s body revealed sperm. Forced to accept foul play had been involved in the girl’s disappearance, Vancouver Police Captain Bob Kanekoa stated,

“With the presence of the sperm and/or semen, that leads us to believe more on the other side of the coin, that there might have been some foul play involved. It’s still a mystery.

We’re still not sure she was abducted. Until we get that missing piece, I hate to speculate on what occured. The main change now is that we are treating it as if it is a homicide.”

This discovery led to dozens of DNA tests, but unfortunately, no suspects were identified.

Mistie May Micheletti’s murder has been unsolved for 28 years. Her death deeply affected the family. Yvonne explained,

“It destroyed [her mother], she just more or less went into a shell. My grandsons, John and Josh, have nearly gone crazy and now they are just shut away.”

The grandmother, who has since passed away, once said her faith had kept her going and believed Mistie was at peace,

“I think she’s at peace, I get that feeling. I’ve prayed and prayed and prayed that she’s at peace and I feel she is, and to me that’s really important.”