Before leaving home on March 25, 2012, Melissa Jenkins called a friend. A woman had asked her to help with a broken-down vehicle. Jenkins associated the caller with the man who plowed her driveway, but something about the request concerned her.
Case brief
St. Johnsbury area, Vermont · 2012
- Recorded outcome
- Allen Prue convicted; 2016 appeal affirmed; Patricia Prue pleaded guilty
Key moments
People in this case
- Melissa Jenkins
Murder victim and St. Johnsbury Academy teacher
Photo at source · Associated Press via Times Union · case photograph
She gave her friend information from the plowing business’s card.
When the friend later went looking for her, Jenkins’s vehicle was still running. Her young son was inside. Jenkins was gone.
That exchange gave investigators an early route into a crime built around a request for help. It also preserved something easily lost in accounts of the case: Jenkins was not simply a person drawn into someone else’s plan. She had noticed that something felt wrong and made sure another person knew where to begin looking.
The business card
The Vermont Supreme Court’s account [1] places the telephone call at the beginning of the investigation. When Jenkins could not be found, her friend contacted police and provided the information she had supplied. Investigators also found a business card at her home.
The trail led to Allen and Patricia Prue.
Police contacted the couple in the early morning of March 26. They were awake because they delivered newspapers. They allowed officers to search their home.
The encounter did not immediately produce a confession. Instead, investigators began gathering information through a series of conversations. A complaint Patricia had previously made about identity theft supplied a reason for further contact.
The couple went to the police barracks ostensibly to discuss that complaint. Allen later acknowledged wanting to learn about the homicide investigation as well. Officers obtained discarded drinking cups for DNA evidence and, with permission, downloaded information from Patricia’s telephone.
Jenkins’s body was recovered during the investigation. Police now had to determine how a roadside-assistance story had ended in a killing, and what each spouse had done.
An interview under another pretext
On March 27, police again invited the Prues to discuss the identity-theft matter. At the barracks, officers separated them.
Allen’s interview began around 5:30 p.m. It became a prolonged interrogation, followed by trips to locations he identified. The circumstances later received close judicial scrutiny.
Officers initially told him that he was not under arrest and could leave. They used conversational language, offered breaks and discussed everyday subjects. At the same time, they were investigating a murder and retained his telephone during the questioning.
Roughly two hours into the encounter, they advised him of his rights. He agreed to continue speaking.
He subsequently admitted strangling Jenkins and took investigators to places associated with the disposal of evidence. The court’s opinion describes locations connected to the body, burned clothing and a discarded telephone.
A confession can provide investigators with a powerful account, particularly when it directs them to evidence. It is still subject to questions about how it was obtained. Those questions became a central part of Allen Prue’s appeal.
The argument over comprehension
The defense challenged whether Prue knowingly and voluntarily waived his rights. An expert testified about his intellectual limitations. His lawyers pointed to the identity-theft pretext, the officers’ informal handling of the warnings and their description of the process as a formality.
Their argument was not simply that he had spoken for a long time. It was that the circumstances, considered together with his abilities, undermined the legal validity of his agreement to speak.
The trial court examined his responses and conduct. It found that he followed the conversation, showed practical awareness of police procedures and understood the warnings as they were read to him.
The Vermont Supreme Court upheld that determination. It acknowledged unusual features of the questioning but concluded that the record supported the ruling admitting the statements.
The court also considered other challenges, including the handling of evidence concerning Patricia and material recovered during the investigation. It affirmed Allen’s convictions and sentence in 2016.
What investigators learned before the admission
The business card connected two separate sources of information. Melissa had given its telephone number to a friend before leaving, and investigators found the card at her home. Her warning therefore survived her disappearance in both a conversation and a physical object. Police could identify the snowplowing business without first relying on a confession or a stranger's identification. The card explained how the callers were connected to Melissa; it did not, by itself, establish what happened at the roadside. [1]
The couple's March 26 visit to the barracks produced further investigative opportunities. Officers offered water and retained the used cups for DNA testing. With Patricia's consent, they downloaded her telephone's contents. A hidden camera and microphone recorded the interaction. The opinion describes these steps as part of the developing investigation; it does not turn every collected item into a forensic match. Collecting a sample and proving a connection are different events. [1]
On March 27, Allen's interview lasted about seven hours when travel to other sites was included. The court's account records breaks and drinks, reminders that he could leave, and his continued possession of his phone. It also describes pressure: the officers used deceptive claims, shifted their presentation of the offense, and tried to build rapport. That combination became central to the later argument over whether his eventual admission was voluntary. [1]
A timeline that could be checked
The judges examined Allen's responses rather than treating the length of the interview as the entire answer. He discussed mechanics and welding, understood military time, and recognized that restaurant cameras might allow police to check his account of an earlier visit. He also identified an interviewing tactic when officers suggested that his wife had already talked. These observations supported the trial court's finding that he understood the situation, despite the defense evidence about his limitations. [1]
The admission changed the direction of the investigation, but the legal dispute did not vanish with it. The appeal asked whether the state could use those words at all. In affirming, the Vermont Supreme Court left the confession and the convictions in place. The route from Melissa's precautionary call to a courtroom judgment passed through both an investigation and a contested examination of how the police obtained their evidence. [1]
Two defendants, different proceedings
A jury convicted Allen Prue of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and attempted kidnapping. Patricia’s case followed a different path.
In February 2015, she pleaded guilty. WPTZ reported [2] that she received life imprisonment without parole for her role in Jenkins’s death.
Jenkins was a teacher at St. Johnsbury Academy. The crime removed her from a school community and from her son’s life.
The record shows why the initial phone call mattered so much. The perpetrators used familiarity with a routine service to make an appeal for help plausible. Jenkins’s decision to share the caller’s information meant that her disappearance did not leave investigators without a starting point.
The later litigation turned on the reliability and admissibility of the account police obtained. The investigation itself began with information Jenkins had deliberately placed in someone else’s hands.
AlexiusHoratius · Image source · CC BY-SA 3.0
Look closer · 3 visuals
Inside the evidence.
Open a visual to explore what it contributed to the case—and the limits of what it shows. These original illustrations explain the record; they are not photographs of the actual evidence.
The business card
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
Melissa gave a friend the number from the snowplowing business card before leaving. Investigators also found the card at her home.
The illustrated card contains no real contact details and is not a reproduction. A connection alone did not prove murder.
The interview timeline
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
Allen’s admission became an important part of the case. The appeal examined his understanding and the officers’ interview methods.
The illustration does not reproduce audio, a transcript or the interview room.
Collected is not matched
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
Police retained cups the Prues used during their March 26 visit to the barracks and downloaded Patricia’s phone with permission.
The cited passage establishes collection, not a claim that these cups produced a decisive DNA match.
★ Key evidence used in a conviction · ✓ Exclusion or reversal · ◇ Disputed evidence · ⊘ Excluded at retrial · ◆ Identity / investigative finding, not a conviction. A symbol does not mean one item proved the whole case.
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Put the story on the map.
Follow the dated entries, then select an event to find its regional setting. Shared-location pins open a group of events. Evidence symbols identify important findings and their limitations.
Open the map in its own window ↗Sources & further reading
- Vermont v. Prue
- Patricia Prue gets life without parole — WPTZSeparate guilty plea and life-without-parole sentence; teacher's identity.
- Body found believed to be missing VT woman — WPTZMarch 26 discovery in Barnet; contemporary identification initially provisional, read with later court opinion.
Editorial review: 2026-09-29 · 1163 words