A Las Vegas woman was found strangled to death in 1994. Decades later, a nonprofit group helped identify her killer

When someone is murdered, they leave behind heartbroken families desperate for answers. As months, years, and decades pass, the heartbreak – and desire for justice – doesn’t fade.

Melonie White was a young mother of a baby boy, a stylish lover of fashion and on an inspired search for a new career when her body was found strangled and lifeless. White was 27 years old when hikers found her body near Lake Mead National Recreation Area, around 10 miles east of Las Vegas, on August 27, 1994. Nearly 30 years to the day she was killed, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department identified White’s suspected killer as Arthur Joseph Lavery using DNA testing and forensic genetic genealogy. He died in 2021, according to police. After White’s body was found, an autopsy ruled the cause of her death as homicide with evidence of strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head, according to police. She had been strangled with a ligature, bludgeoned and dragged by a car into the desert wash, police said. At the time of the investigation, police tracked down multiple leads, but no suspect was ever identified. The case went cold. For decades, her grieving family was left with no answers and a devastating desire for the truth. In 2010, cold case detectives recovered additional items and sent them for DNA testing, leading to the DNA profile of a male suspect. But a suspect was not identified until 2021 with the assistance of the Las Vegas-based nonprofit Vegas Justice League. The nonprofit paid for the costs of sending the case to a laboratory that used DNA testing and genetic genealogy to successfully identify Lavery as the suspected killer. Founded in 2020 by entrepreneur Justin Woo, the Vegas Justice League – and his nationwide initiative Project Justice – has helped solve 41 cold cases across the country, including nine murders in Las Vegas. The initiative provides the funding for forensic genetic genealogy, a law enforcement technique that uses DNA analysis and genealogical research to identify suspects in criminal cases or “Jane Doe” victims whose identities were never determined.