Port Arthur Police Det. Scott Gaspard considers Roy Melanson one of the worst serial killers in American history.

“He is a true serial killer who wandered across the U.S,” Gaspard said of Melanson, a West Orange native who is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of a Colorado woman, is convicted of another woman’s death and linked to others.

One of those women is Pauline Klumpp.

In 1988, Klumpp, 51, was renting a home to Melanson, his ex-wife and her new boyfriend in the Port Acres area of Port Arthur. Klumpp had gone to the home to pick up a TV she had loaned them and supposedly asked Melanson to come and help her with her air conditioner.

That was the last time she was seen alive.

Four days later her car was found in the Alfred’s grocery store parking lot, now Market Basket. The TV was still in the car.

Melanson, now 79, spent the majority of his life in prison. He was sentenced to two years for burglary in Orange County but served about a year. In 1964 he was sentenced to 12 years for a rape in Jefferson County but was released in half that time.

Through the years came more rape charges, then in 1974 he killed Anita Andrews in Napa Valley, Calif. followed by the murder of Michele Wallace in Colorado. Although Melanson was a suspect at the time, police were only able to charge him with fraud, stealing checks and breaking into a car.

In 1975 he was extradited to Texas for a rape trial and got a life sentence, which was later reduced. He was released from prison again in March 1988 just three months before the disappearance of Klumpp.

Then, a month after Klumpp’s disappearance, police in Livingston Parish, La., found the body of Charlotte Sauerwine, 24. She’d been raped, tortured and her throat had been slashed, according to a 2010 “Napa Valley Register” article. Melanson had met Sauerwine in a Laundromat. In 2010, DNA evidence linked him to the killing.

Gaspard and Louisiana State Police are working together on similar cold cases from the same time frame and hope to confront Melanson soon, Gaspard said.

“We are interviewing (Klumpp’s) family now and finding as much information as we can,” he said referring to her last whereabouts and actions. “The old case files are sketchy at best, and we are putting together a case file leaning toward some type of probable cause. He (Melanson) is the actor (suspect). We want to confront him and see if he’ll tell us more. At this point he will die in prison, but for my case, I want to find the remains and close the case. I’m not interested in lengthy prosecution but find her remains and put her to rest.”

Melanson has been a suspect in the murder of Klumpp from the beginning. Her husband at the time was staying in a motel in Galveston, where he was working. When possible, he would travel back to town and visit with her before going back to work. When he couldn’t get ahold of her, he came back to town to check.

Gaspard said the man found some of her personal items at the home that she left with a pot of gumbo on the stove that had been cooking for days.

Last week Louisiana psychic Karen Jannise met with Port Arthur police in hopes of helping them find her remains.

A skeptic, Gaspard first brought her to various areas where crimes had occurred. Without knowledge of said areas, Jannise was able to provide intimate details only police knew of, he said.

“I brought her to four crime scenes and she told me about things she should not have known. I just brought her and asked, what do you see here,” he said.

Before Jannise was even brought to a the Port acres are she asked if there was a bar close to where the car was found.

A search was performed in an area near a bar in Port Acres but the landscape has changed in the 28 years since Klumpp’s disappearance. Brush and tall grass hampered the search for now.

Jannise said via phone that all she was given was a photograph of a woman she later learned was Klumpp.

“I was able to actually describe the person who killed her. I described the guy and they (police) said you’re describing the suspect as he was 30 years ago,” Jannise said.

Jannise believes she knows how Melanson killed Klumpp and that the killer removed her head, tossing it in a grassy area.

“This man is very dangerous, evil. I looked at him through the victim’s eyes as he was killing her and he was smiling,” she said. “This guy is very sick, he’s killed other women. They told me he’s a serial killer. I said you don’t understand, he’s killed more than you’ll ever imagine, more than you know about.”

Jannise has worked in the past with law enforcement in Port Arthur and other areas as well. She has helped police locate remains in Mississippi and in Canada.

She said her faith has helped her deal with the visions and feels her mission is to help others in ways that other people can’t.

Jannise, who did not charge for her services, said she and police will return to the area in question with cadaver dogs in the near future.

Anyone who may have known Melanson during his time in the area or who has information about the case is asked to call the Port Arthur Police Department at 983-8624.