Town note
Settlers started coming to the area in the 1830s and 1840s.
about 0:03:39The story
Melinda Renee Snyder was 22 in January 1990. Born on 15 September 1967, she grew up in Rock Hill, South Carolina, graduated from Winthrop University with a degree in elementary education and on 2 January 1990 began work as a teaching assistant at Northside Elementary School, teaching kindergarten through third grade. A former beauty queen and a devout Christian, she was active in her church's singles group. Money was tight, and she had decided to move to Ohio in the middle of February to live with her parents, who had moved there after her father's transfer in 1984. She shared a rented house in Rock Hill with another young woman, Felicia Shepard Kirk, whom she had known for six months. The house was for sale and had a real estate lock box on it. Six days before the murder, Melinda's boyfriend, the local lawyer Jim Reno, broke up with her.
In the early hours of 23 January 1990, Felicia woke at about four in the morning to a rubbing noise through the wall she shared with Melinda's bedroom. She heard someone walk down the hall to the bathroom and back, then a loud bang. She thought Melinda was working on her loose bed frame, then that a door had slammed. Then she heard moaning, got up, opened her door and smelled gunpowder. Melinda's door was open. She was lying on her bed with her nightgown pulled up above her breasts. Felicia looked out of the window and saw a white car with black moulding and a brake light in the back window driving away. She called 911 and said her roommate had shot herself. The dispatcher asked her several times to go in and check for vital signs and she refused. She also telephoned her brother Michael Shepherd and Melinda's boyfriend before police arrived.
Police and paramedics found Melinda still alive, with a gunshot wound to the left side of her head just behind the temple, fired at close range. Her underwear was off and on the floor. She died about two hours later. A spent .22 cartridge was found but no gun, and there was no forced entry. The autopsy recovered a .22 bullet that entered at the left temple, travelled back and upward and stopped half an inch in without exiting. A rape examination found no visible signs of assault at first, but further testing found semen, and the pathologist concluded intercourse may not have been completed.
Reno cooperated, gave blood and was cleared. Shepherd, who was separated from his wife and had been seen to be attracted to Melinda, handed over his shoes, refused a polygraph and took a lawyer. Shoe prints at the scene matched his shoes, but a later blood sample did not match the semen. He first said nobody was home when he showed it, then admitted talking to the women. He said he was at a bachelor party at a strip club until about 4.30 a.m., got into a fight, was thrown into rubbish bins and went to hospital for stitches, but no hospital had a record of him. A 17-year-old neighbour reported the white car in the driveway on 15 January and again on the night before the murder.
Police needed his blood. In 1992 seven officers searched his father's home and found three .22 firearms, none of which was the murder weapon.
His defence attacked the police handling of the scene and the credibility of Felicia Kirk, and argued that hundreds of other agents had keys to the lock box.
The outcome is not described. That same year Jim Reno was elected to the Rock Hill City Council. He was denied again in 2016, shortly after an Investigation Discovery documentary about the case, and again in 2018.