More than 25 years have passed since Massachusetts mother Debra Melo vanished: ‘We’re not giving up.’

The year was 2000. Stage lights blazed. Music pounded. A stadium full of fans, all there for one reason: Tina Turner. Somewhere in that crowd stood two sisters: Debra Melo and Patricia White. They were there to celebrate Patricia’s 29th birthday. But Debra didn’t seem to be in a celebratory mood. “She was not herself,” Patricia told “Dateline.” “I kept saying, like, ‘What’s wrong? Are you all right?’ And she’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ But I knew something was definitely on her mind.” On June 20, 2000, less than two weeks later, 30-year-old Debra Melo disappeared. Debra and Patricia grew up in a family with five children in Taunton, Massachusetts. Only 18 months apart, the sisters were inseparable. “We were always together playing baseball and chase and all of that fun stuff,” Patricia said. “She was just very adventurous, smart.” Patricia told “Dateline” that when Debra was in middle school, she met a young man named Luis Melo. He was a couple of years older and had just moved from Portugal. As a nonnative English speaker, Luis took a lower-level English class to learn the language. It happened to be the same class Patricia was in. “He would sit next to me, and he would tell me, ‘I’m gonna marry your sister,’” Patricia recalled. “I was like, ‘Yeah, right. She is not interested in you.’” Six months later, Patricia remembers Debra bringing Luis to their house for dinner. Their relationship blossomed from there. According to Steven DeMoura, Patricia’s ex-husband and Debra’s former brother-in-law, Debra and Luis got married in 1986 after dating for about two years. Steven and Patricia were dating at the time and attended the wedding together. “She needed her mother’s permission to be married at the age of 16,” Steven said. Debra left high school before graduating and she and Luis worked together at a local Dunkin’ Donuts. “She usually ran the front of the store and all the personnel,” Steven said. “He ran the back.” The couple eventually had two children, a girl and a boy, and were living in Taunton. Even though their adult responsibilities were time-consuming, Patricia and Debra made time to hang out. “We’d go to the movies, or we’d go do something fun, and we would just laugh,” Patricia said. “She just had this contagious laugh that once she would start laughing, then you’d start going, and we’d be in hysterics together.” Patricia says something changed in the years leading up to Debra’s disappearance. “I noticed she was very quiet, appeared somewhat depressed, very private,” she said. “Took a lot for me to get things out of her.” Patricia told “Dateline” she believes Luis was possessive. “She wasn’t really able to talk on the phone because Luis would listen to our conversations,” she said. Patricia remembers Debra telling her that she wanted to leave the relationship. “We had discussions about where she could move with the kids,” she said. Patricia last spoke to her sister on the phone on June 18, 2000. “We were planning on going out to eat on my birthday,” she said. That never happened. On June 20, Debra disappeared. “Dateline” spoke with Deputy Chief Jason Mohan of the Bristol County District Attorney Office’s homicide unit to learn more about the day Debra disappeared. On June 20, Debra and Luis worked their typical shift at Dunkin’ Donuts from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. “They then drove around for about an hour, the husband said, looking for a farmers market, essentially killing time until her doctor’s appointment at 3,” Mohan told “Dateline.” The appointment was with a dermatologist. The couple arrived at the appointment, stayed for about an hour, and bought $400 worth of skin cream. After leaving the doctor’s office, “Luis says that they get into a fight in the car on Route 18 in Weymouth,” Mohan said. “She demands to be let out of the car. He lets her out. He drives away for a few minutes, then says he comes back and doesn’t see her.” “That is solely information from the husband and cannot be independently confirmed,” Mohan noted. Patricia told “Dateline” she didn’t learn about Debra’s disappearance until the next day, June 21, when she received a concerning call from Debra’s daughter at 11 a.m. “She said, ‘Auntie, Mom didn’t come home last night,’” Patricia recalled. “And I said, ‘What?’ because that is extremely odd for her not to be home.” Patricia says she called Luis to learn more about what happened. According to Patricia, Luis had not yet filed a missing person report when she spoke with him. Patricia began calling around the family, Debra’s friends, and nearby hospitals, without success. The family then decided to go to the Weymouth Police Department to file a missing person report. Mohan said that both Luis and Debra’s family independently reported Debra missing to police on June 21. Since Debra was from Taunton but went missing about an hour away in Weymouth, Mohan told “Dateline” that both police departments were involved in the search for Debra. Search efforts for Debra started close to home. Mohan says the police searched the couple’s house and car around June 23. “The skin cream was recovered in the car,” he noted. But several of Debra’s belongings were missing: her pocketbook, gold bracelet, a cross chain, a pinky ring with a green stone, and her wedding ring. During this time, the police also administered two polygraph tests on Luis. Mohan told “Dateline” he failed both tests. The search widened from there. Mohan says police searched multiple forested areas, combed Route 18, and checked numerous other locations. They also brought in a plane for aerial views, deployed canine units, and used a metal detector. “This was a very heavily publicized incident at the time,” he said. “There were massive searches.” Debra was nowhere to be found. Debra’s disappearance was life-changing for Patricia. “It just caused a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress, and hurt,” she told “Dateline.” “It was devastating to all of us.” For Steven, even though he and Patricia eventually divorced, Debra’s case never left his mind. “No matter where I went or who I was dating or whatever, if I got a phone call and I had to go out in the middle of the night and meet somebody because supposedly they had evidence or they had a clue or something about Debra, I went,” he said. Mohan told “Dateline” that in 2017, police received a tip about an area in Taunton that might be connected to Debra’s case. Taunton Police conducted a dig at the site. “The search revealed nothing,” he said. “Upon further scrutiny of the timeline of the tip, it did not line up with this incident.” As the investigation continues, Debra’s case faces several challenges. “The lack of physical evidence is really the biggest obstacle,” Mohan said. “And now when you combine that with the passage of time, trying to find new witnesses, or develop new leads, it can be challenging.” In 2022, the Massachusetts State Police got creative. According to NBC affiliate WJAR, the agency created a deck of playing cards featuring information about unsolved homicides and missing person cases. The decks were distributed to inmates in the hope that someone would come forward with information. Debra’s case is the Queen of Diamonds. “It’s just another way to keep Debra’s story alive and out there and to let people know that we continue to investigate the incident,” Mohan explained. “We’ve been looking at areas of the investigation even as recently as a few weeks ago.” “We do suspect foul play in this case,” Mohan said. When asked about current suspects or persons of interest, he said, “At this time, we cannot eliminate Luis Melo as a suspect in this case.” According to Mohan, when police interviewed Luis, he denied having anything to do with his wife’s disappearance. “Dateline” reached out to Luis Melo for comment but has not heard back. In 2025, for the 25th anniversary of Debra’s disappearance, the family held a remembrance for her at Memorial Park in Taunton. “We had the mayor there and I wrote a poem,” Patricia said. “It was just to keep her name out there and keep everybody aware that she is still missing and that we are still looking for her, and we’re not giving up.” “The biggest thing I’m hoping to find is closure for Debra. You know, just what happened to her, where is she?” Steven DeMoura said. “And then if justice prevails after that, then so be it.” Mohan wants the public to know that police haven’t stopped looking for Debra. Investigators are trying “to find individuals who we may not have been able to identify in 2000, specifically people who worked with both Luis and Debra Melo.” “If anybody has any information that, even if it’s small, they don’t think it’s important, I’d rather have them call us and let us determine the value of any information than not call us at all,” Mohan said. Debra has blue eyes, is around 5’2” and weighed 108 lbs. when she disappeared. Her hair was brown at the time. She was reportedly last seen wearing a blue sundress with white flowers and a white shirt underneath. Anyone with information about the disappearance of Debra Melo is asked to contact the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office at 774-627-1600. If you have a story to share with “Dateline,” please submit it here.