While wrapping

up a final hot lead on a 25-year-old murder case, Maj. Bruce Jordan of

the Fayette County Sheriff's Department did an indirect favor to the very

man he helped put behind bars for the killings, admitted murderer Carl

Millard Patton Jr.

At the same

time, he may have helped solve another murder that of Patton's stepdaughter,

Melissa Wolfenbarger, who was reported missing from her Atlanta home several

years ago near Metropolitan Boulevard.

Jordan and

other sheriff's detectives worked with medical examiner's offices across

Georgia and came across a file on an unidentified body that was discovered

in Atlanta just a few blocks from Wolfenberger's home.

Atlanta police

had previously reconstructed the body's face and determined it to be that

of a male, but after the latest information they agreed to reopen the

case. Dental records from Wolfenberger's dentist confirmed the remains

were indeed hers.

"I was

glad to give some closure to the family," Jordan said.

Wolfenbarger's

disappearance is "suspicious" because her husband at the time

didn't report her missing, Jordan said. Instead her mother filed the missing

persons report, months after she allegedly disappeared, the chief detective

added.

Christopher

Wolfenbarger said in a phone interview that his wife disappeared from

the couple's home one evening in November 1998 and never came back, Jordan

said. He declined to be interviewed in person and called from an undisclosed

location.

Knowing there

was a warrant for Christopher Wolfenberger's arrest for violation of probation

from Gwinnett County, Jordan hunted Wolfenberger down and found him in

Dublin living under a different name. He notified the Laurens County Sheriff's

Department of the warrant, and deputies arrested him at his Dublin residence,

Jordan said.

So far, Christopher

Wolfenbarger has not been charged with his wife's murder, but Jordan insists

Melissa Wolfenberger's death is indeed a homicide.

The case has

been handed over to the Atlanta Police Department's homicide division,

Jordan said. He added that none of the evidence points to Patton, the

admitted serial killer.

"It was

a loose end that needed to be looked into," because of the ties to

Patton, an admitted serial murder, Jordan said.