A Tuesday plea hearing for a man charged with killing his wife, who was found decapitated more than a quarter-century ago, has been canceled, according to court officials.
The morning hearing had been planned in Fulton County Superior Court, and records show another hearing has not been scheduled. An attorney for the defendant, Christopher Wolfenbarger, could not be immediately reached for comment.
In early August, Wolfenbarger was booked into the Fulton jail on one count of murder in the death of Melissa Dawn Wolfenbarger, a 21-year-old mother of two who disappeared in 1998. Atlanta police announced Christopher Wolfenbarger’s arrest at a news conference last month but did not disclose what new evidence they had uncovered.
Christopher Wolfenbarger had been a person of interest from the beginning of the case, according to Detective Jarion Shepard. The cause of death was not released.
Melissa Wolfenbarger’s family last heard from her on Thanksgiving 1998 when she called from her husband’s grandparents’ home, according to a police report at the time.
In April of the following year, a severed head was found in a wooded area near her home in southwest Atlanta, and more severed remains were found nearby in June. However, they were initially misidentified as belonging to a man. In 2003, the Fulton Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed them to be Wolfenbarger.
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Christopher Wolfenbarger did not report his wife missing or tell her family of her disappearance, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported. Instead, her mother, Norma Patton, filed the report in January 2000.
Early in the investigation, police learned that Melissa Wolfenbarger hadn’t been in contact with her husband since December 1998. It wasn’t until 2000 that he told investigators that he “saw her walking down the street near their home in March or April of 1999,” a police report stated.
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