When the Flint River Killer’s Daughter Was Murdered, His DNA Helped Break the Case

In the winter of 1998, Melissa Wolfenbarger vanished from her Atlanta home, leaving behind a husband and two young children. Her husband, Christopher, did not report her missing.

Christopher suggested his wife had met a man and moved to California. But Melissa’s mother, Norma, who lived over 32 miles away in Henry County, knew something was wrong. The following year, Melissa’s skull and limbs were found in trash bags in proximity to the glass company where Christopher worked. However, because she had not been declared missing, her remains were misidentified at the time as belonging to a man.

Police quickly suspected Christopher, who possessed tools similar to the ones used to dismember the body and had demonstrated a history of abusive behavior, as evidenced by a temporary protective order Melissa filed against him in July 1998, according to prosecutors. However, there was a lack of physical evidence.

In February 2003, Melissa’s father, Carl Patton, known as the "Flint River Killer," was arrested. His DNA matched that of Melissa's remains, which led to identifying her after four years. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five life sentences plus 20 years for the five murders he committed.

Patton desperately wanted to solve his daughter’s murder from the confines of prison, even though some suspected he’d had a hand in Melissa’s death. (DNA cleared him of her murder.)

Her case had gone cold when, in 2017, Sheryl “Mac” McCollum, a crime scene investigator for the Atlanta Police Department and the director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute and the Wildlife CSI Academy, got involved. Her work on the case has culminated in the new book Swans Don’t Swim in a Sewer.

McCollum—also the host of the Zone 7 podcast that played a role in revitalizing the search into Melissa’s murder—shares with A&E Crime + Investigation why this case intrigued her from the beginning, how she communicated with Patton up until his death in 2024 and how Christopher Wolfenbarger's August 2025 trial, where a jury found him not guilty of all charges, was a “miscarriage of justice.”

Melissa’s mother, Norma, brought this case to your attention?

Right, that was 2017. I was giving a speech at a formal event. I'm at the microphone, and I see this woman out of my peripheral vision, and she looks like she just came off the beach. And I'm like, that's unusual. Then I noticed she's hugging an 8x10 frame. And that's when I knew. She's got to be somebody's mama. So, after I got done, I went up to her, and that's when she said, “My daughter was beheaded in Atlanta, will you help me?” I'm like, “How have I not heard about this?” Not that many Caucasian females at 20-something have been beheaded in Atlanta. There wasn't no way to say no.

Where did the title for Swans Don’t Swim in a Sewer come from?

Nancy Grace and I worked together in our 20s in Fulton County. Once we were looking for a victim—she had been terribly assaulted, she was a prostitute. She did not show up for court. We got it extended, but the judge said if she doesn't show up, I'm going to dismiss it. So, we had to find her. The only places she’d be would be crack houses, trap houses, literally the street, and we had a young rookie driving us around. He thought it was going to be some big, high-profile case. He was getting a little frustrated because we were just going to one horrible location after the other, and he said, “Why are we going to these places?” And Nancy turned to him and said, “Swans don't swim in a sewer.” In other words, “Where do you think I have to go?” That always stuck with me because that is, in fact, part of our gig.

You mention Melissa’s father, Carl. Did you ever have any suspicion about him given his history as the Flint River Killer?

I had to work with Melissa's father. In the beginning, I got a little pushback from people saying, “I can't believe you'd work with a serial killer.” To catch a killer, I'd work with the devil. I mean, let's get a killer off the street. You're going to let a killer go free because of the sins of the father? No.

Here's the reason I never seriously considered Carl: There was no evidence of it. If Carl was going to kill her and throw her across the street from where her husband worked, Carl would have dropped a dime. You can't set her husband up if the police don't even know she's over there dead. Nobody was setting up Christopher. Otherwise, the police would have found her in December. They found her by a fluke.

And if Carl did it, why would Carl keep reaching out to every law enforcement person he could find begging for help? Nobody would have even identified her if Carl had kept his mouth shut. It's because of Carl the skull got identified because originally, she was misidentified as a Caucasian male. Carl is the one that went to the detective that arrested him and said, “Will you please find her?”

You’ve covered many high-profile cases, including The Boston Strangler, Natalee Holloway, Tupac Shakur and the Moore’s Ford Bridge Lynching, which earned you an Emmy on CSI: Atlanta. What is it about this case that stuck with you?

If I get in a room full of 1,000 detectives and I talk about a beheading or I talk about somebody setting on fire or somebody drowning, or stabbed, they're going to say, “Well, I had one similar.” There's not another case like this in history. There has never been a serial killer who had a family member murdered, who reached out to law enforcement for help, who reached out to a nonprofit for help. It's never happened. So that's why I thought, I got to put this on paper because people just don't believe it.

Christopher was arrested in August 2024. Why did it take 25 years?

Remember, we lost four of those years where they didn't even know it was her. I never heard one detective from back then or current, that didn't name him [Christopher]. They just didn't have evidence. In those four years, he had moved out of their house, so it's not like they could even go back and do Luminol [a chemical used to test for blood]. They don't have her torso, so we don't know if she was pregnant. We don't know if that was motive. We tried to get DNA. We tried to do different things like geographical profile and statement analysis. Every avenue we took led to him. So, they built a circumstantial case because that's all they had. But I think it was pretty strong.

I will say this: I don't think he meant to kill her. I think it was an argument, and then he panicked. Although you would think he would put her somewhere a little further away than where they lived and where he worked. But if you look at crimes historically, if they go to the trouble of chopping somebody up, they typically take them somewhere they feel comfortable. They don't think they'll ever be seen. Well, right across the street was a junkyard. That's where he put her.

Do you believe he's still the most credible suspect?

I don't know of another one that's credible. I've been asked, “Don't you think somebody was getting retribution against Carl?” No. The victim's family, the children of Carl's victims? Are you seriously accusing them? That's insane. And why would they pick Melissa? Why wouldn't they kill Carl? They would not do that. And why would they wait 25 years?

Christopher’s verdict was not guilty. Is there any way he can be retried on this?

He could admit it today. Did you know he confessed? I don't want to give everything away, but his mama, while Melissa’s “missing,” tells him to go talk to her preacher, and he confessed to the preacher. He said how he did it when he did it, why he did it. And that is privileged, so they couldn't figure out how to get it in at trial. That was a real shame.

I was subpoenaed by the defense. And they never called me, so I didn't get to sit through the trial. I had to stay out of the courtroom. It just shocked me that the prosecution didn't even subpoena me.

What do you hope readers take away from Swans?

I hope if anybody sees themselves in Melissa, get out. Because he will kill you. I hope that people that maybe sat on this jury are going to question, “Why didn't we see everything? Why didn't we hear from everybody?” To me, if there's 50 people involved, you need to hear from 50 people, not 12.