The Ice-Cold Case

 On a chilly fall morning in 1978, Melanie Morgan sat eating breakfast at the posh Pam Pam Room restaurant, inside what was then the Alameda Plaza Hotel on the Country Club Plaza. Morgan, a 24-year-old reporter for KFIX AM, lived in an apartment on the Plaza and sometimes stopped in for French toast at the hotel before walking to the radio station's offices at 47th Street and Broadway, near the Tivol jewelry store.

Morgan knew that the hotel's restaurant drew a breakfast crowd of politicos. Having grown up in a politically active family of Kansas City Democrats -- her mother served for years on the Committee for County Progress -- Morgan knew the names and faces of the local players. And she knew that her ex-boyfriend, political consultant Jerry Jett, plotted strategy over coffee at the hotel with then-Mayor Charlie Wheeler, Democratic kingmaker Jim Nutter and other power brokers. "It was a sneaky way to get dirt on what was going on in town," Morgan recalls.

At the time, the luxury Alameda Plaza Hotel (now the Fairmont) was only a few years old. The hotel's construction was part of an early-'70s development boomlet that included the building of Crown Center and the Truman Sports Complex. The Alameda, financed by J.C. Nichols, drew conventiongoers, business travelers and the elite -- Ronald Reagan stayed there during the 1976 Republican National Convention.

As Morgan ate on the morning of October 18, 1978, she didn't overhear juicy political gossip, but she did notice two women who seemed distressed. "I could tell something was wrong, but I just sort of filed it in the back of my mind, finished eating, paid my bill and left," Morgan recalls.

She walked through the hotel, her mind on her upcoming news broadcast, but the scene in the lobby stopped her. At least half a dozen Kansas City cops had crowded near the front desk, and more were rushing in, one by one, through the revolving door.

"I thought, well this is strange," Morgan says today. Her reporter instincts kicking in, Morgan nonchalantly followed the police into the elevator. The cops ignored her and pressed the button for the ninth floor.

The elevator opened onto a crime scene: The door to room 928 sat propped open, and inside, a young woman's dead body lay sprawled on the floor. Her black, wavy hair hid most of her chalky white face, and she was dressed for work in '70s career attire -- a frilly patterned blouse, a sharp blue skirt, beige pantyhose and blue pumps. Her eyes were closed. A bullet had pierced her temple.

Detectives walked in and out of the room, making notes and conferring with each other.

Just outside the doorway, Morgan hovered, watching. She noted the makeup containers scattered on the gold shag carpet, the bedspread trailing on the floor. A suitcase sat on a dresser.

Morgan stayed only long enough to get her story -- she feared that the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department's homicide commander, Captain Lloyd DeGraffenreid Jr., who had a reputation for disliking reporters, would discover her. And she had overheard someone say that veteran crime reporter Charles Gray, the WDAF AM news director at the time -- known as "Blood and Guts" Gray -- was headed to the scene. "I knew he might beat me at my own scoop if I didn't get out of there," Morgan says.

On her way to work, Morgan formulated the story in her head: shocking murder on Kansas City's Country Club Plaza ... white female found murdered at the Alameda Plaza Hotel ... police investigating ...

Over the following days, newspaper stories revealed that the victim, 29-year-old lawyer Mildred Louise Vilott, who worked at Phillips Petroleum Co.'s Bartlesville, Oklahoma, headquarters, had flown to Kansas City to give a seminar on document retention -- teaching employees which records the company was legally required not to destroy in case of future subpoenas. A Kansas City, Kansas, native, Louise Vilott (she went by her middle name) had attended law school at Southern Methodist University and then landed a position at Phillips as the first female lawyer in the legal department.

Whoever killed Vilott had also taken a gaudy ring and a billfold filled with credit cards. But when no one used the credit cards and police noticed that Vilott was still wearing an expensive gold watch, they began to doubt a robbery motive. "We don't have anything to go on," DeGraffenreid told The Kansas City Times. "We'll keep investigating until we run out of leads, but we don't have any leads."

Media attention waned as the case went cold. Morgan, meanwhile, stopped following the story -- she had other things to worry about. Her radio station, which had struggled financially almost from the start, cut her job. In need of work, she signed on as news director at KYYS 102.1, an FM rock station that had little interest in hard news. After that, she took a job at KMBC Channel 9 as a reporter and anchor. For the next year, she worked long hours, overwhelmed with trying to learn the television business. When she heard that her bosses were considering offering her a 5-year anchor contract, she called her boyfriend, who was living in San Francisco. He proposed over the phone, and she agreed to decline the offer and move to California.