Sheriff's Office Admits It Failed To Inform Family Of Woman's Death

LINDEN (CBS13) — The remains of a Stockton woman missing since 1998 were positively identified last April but the woman's family wasn't notified until Wednesday because her case "fell through the cracks," the sheriff's office said.

According to a San Joaquin County Sheriff's Department spokesman, investigators met with the family of Tracy Melton late Wednesday and informed them that a bone fragment submitted to the Department of Justice in 2003 had been positively identified as being the partial remains of Melton.

Investigators received the information in April 2011 but failed to inform the Melton family until now.

"Unfortunately, this fell through the cracks. We have taken the appropriate steps to assure this will never happen again," spokesman Deputy Les Garcia said.

Her sister, Sharon Melton, has long suspected Tracy Melton was murdered by serial killers Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog in 1998, but her remains had never been recovered nor her identity confirmed, or so her sister thought until Wednesday.

"There's got to be something done about this. They can't do this," Sharon Melton told CBS13's Koula Gianulias. "It's wrong."

Although the sheriff's office has not said if it suspects Melton was one of Shermantine's and Herzog's victims from their killing spree in the 1990s, they are holding on to her remains because it's an open homicide investigation.

Melton's remains were found by a road crew in Linden.

Sheriff Steve Moore, who wasn't available for comment on Thursday, announced last week that a new search for victim's bodies would be performed with the assistance of Shermantine, who is on death row.

Moore didn't say when the search would be performed and Garcia said Thursday there was no update as to when it might take place.

Herzog, who was released on parole, committed suicide at his trailer outside the High Desert State Prison in Susanville last week.

Bounty hunter Leonard Padilla, who has been active in the case, said he suspects Herzog took his own life after learning from Padilla that Shermantine was willing to share new information on the victims with investigators, including the location of a "bone yard" where victims' remains are buried.

After Herzog's death, Sharon Melton started calling a detective on the case but still didn't learn of the DNA results until Wednesday.

"I was literally in tears crying to hear, telling her how hard it's been on our family, my sister's children," she said of her conversations with the detective. "She knew deeply how I felt about this. Not a word."

Melton, 32 when she disappeared, was last seen at a methadone clinic in Stockton in June 1998, according to the sheriff's office.