A Tennessee woman was murdered this week inside the Nashville counseling center where she worked, according to new reports.
The body of Melissa Hamilton, 50, was discovered by police around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday in a back office area of Crossroads Counseling — where she was the assistant director — in the suburban neighborhood of Madison, The Tennessean reported.
Her body showed obvious signs of trauma, Metro Nashville Police spokeswoman Kris Mumford told the paper.
Crossroads Counseling provides domestic violence counseling as well as alcohol and drug treatment counseling, and some of its clients attend under court orders, police told the outlet.
Hamilton, a married mother of two sons who lived in the town of Smyrna, was known to work at the business during the evenings — and was there Tuesday for a group counseling session that ended at 7:30 p.m., Mumford said.
She often conducted individual counseling after group sessions, according to authorities.
Hamilton’s husband called the police around 6 a.m. Wednesday when he realized his wife never came home from work, the paper reported.
“She was funny and loved,” Jack Hamilton, who was married to Melissa for 25 years, told The Tennessean.
She did not have any known enemies.
“That’s why we can’t figure out what happened,” her husband added.
Police were still digging into the motive and a suspect remained at large, the outlet reported Wednesday. No weapon was recovered, and the medical examiner will determine her cause of death.
While authorities are calling Hamilton’s death a “brutal” murder, they haven’t released any further details about the circumstances.
It was unclear if a client was responsible for the killing — or another person entirely, FOX 17 Nashville reported.
Authorities are trying to determine who remained at the center after the group session, and are searching for usable surveillance footage, according to the station.
“She cared about everybody,” one of Hamilton’s former clients, Heather Butterworth, told the station. “It wasn’t just a profession for her, it wasn’t just a job, it was a lifestyle for her. She lived to help people.”
In addition to her husband, Hamilton is survived by sons Patrick Hamilton, 22, and Dalton Hamilton, 16, as well as two brothers and other family members, The Tennessean reported.