The daughter of slain Georgia woman, Melissa Wolfenbarger, took the stand this week during her father’s murder trial, and testified that he made alarming statements while they discussed true crime.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Christopher Wolfenberger is on trial in Atlanta. He stands accused of murdering his wife, Melissa.
In 1999, investigators found a human head, soaked in bleach in a black trash bag, off of Avon Avenue in Atlanta, The head was in an area behind a glass company where Christopher Wolfenbarger once worked.
Police said he didn’t report his wife missing until 2000, claiming that she left voluntarily and never returned. Christopher Wolfenbarger was indicted in 2024.
At the time of her disappearance, Melissa was married to the defendant and had two children.
Her oldest child, Christina Garrett, 30, testified that she had no memories of her mother and grew up thinking that her paternal grandparents, who raised her, were her biological parents.
When she found photos of her mother and started asking questions, she was met with reluctance from paternal family members, according to testimony.
Garrett said she was discouraged from asking questions because of the case surrounding her maternal grandfather, Carl Patton.
Carl Patton, notoriously known as the “Flint River Killer,” was serving time in prison for a string of murders in the 1970s. Police arrested him in 2003.
“We were told they were bad people, and we didn’t want to talk to them,” she said.
During Melissa’s funeral in 2003, Garrett said she recognized Melissa’s mother, Norma Patton, who came to her home a few times over the years, standing in the yard and asking where her daughter was.
“That was essentially when we pieced together that the woman from the front yard was our grandmother, and the woman she had been talking to [about] was our mom,” Garrett testified.
Garrett reached out to her mother’s family and, by 2013, stopped speaking to her father. She began searching online for information regarding her mother, and has since lost contact with the defendant’s side of the family.
Garrett said she never really had much of a relationship with Christopher Wolfenbarger, who told her that her mother “ran off” to California.
When she became interested in true crime, however, she began watching shows and discussing the cases with her father.
In one instance, Christopher Wolfenbarger allegedly said that a killer should have hidden a body under a house, recalling a true crime case they had been discussing.
“It was a murder case and the person had been free several times,” Garrett testified. “Like it was a very old murder case that he had been found on.”
“Chris said that wasn’t the way he should have hit the body to begin with: ‘If you go out there when they’re about to build a new house and put it under where the foundation of the house is gonna go. And so when the crew comes back to lay the foundation the next morning, they’re just gonna continue building the house.’”
Garrett said the information caught her off guard. She said she confronted Christopher Wolfenbarger and said, “it sounds like you’re talking about my mom.”
“That’s when he told me he didn’t know where my mom was. He didn’t know if she was in Heaven, hell, Stockbridge, but he wished that he did.”
She also recalled how the defendant claimed he could “get away” “if they come looking” for him.
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[Feature Photo: Family Handout]
