The Colonial Parkway Murders, the Route 29 Stalker and the Shenandoah Park Murders in Virginia: Could There Be a Connection?

Source: Series of articles written by Chris Yarbrough, webmaster of Crimeshadows.com

Between 1986 and 1989, at least eight people (two each year) were murdered along a Virginia scenic route known as the Colonial Parkway. All four cases involve the slaying or disappearance of young people who were traveling by car in isolated areas. Two people are missing or presumed dead. The person responsible for these murders has never been caught. The FBI. has stated that these crimes are probably related. Authorities have speculated that the unidentified subject(s) responsible for these killings may have been (or remains) in law enforcement, possibly a police officer or security guard. One theory suggests the suspect may be a rogue CIA. operative from "the Farm" at Camp Peary in York County. Since there appears to be no sign of a struggle in the cases, it is believed the suspect uses his uniform, and/or vehicle to lure his victims into danger.

The first two victims were Rebecca Ann Dowski, 21 and Cathleen Marian Thomas, 27. Their bodies were discovered On October 12, 1986, inside their car. The vehicle had been pushed down an embankment. An autopsy found rope burns on their necks and wrists, signs of strangulation, and their throats had been slashed. Their purses and money were found inside the car. Both women were found fully clothed and there was no evidence of sexual assault.

In September of 1987 the bodies of David Knobling, 20, and Robin Edwards, 14, were discovered in the Ragged Island Wildlife Refuge. They had been murdered. The area they were found was on the south shore of the James River in Isle of Wight County, near Smithfield, Virginia. They were discovered about a mile down the river bank. Knobling's truck was parked at the Refuge several days prior to discovery of the bodies.

On April 9, 1988, Cassandra Lee Hailey and Richard Keith Call were reported missing after going on a first date together. Call's 1982 red Toyota Celica was found, abandoned on the Colonial Parkway in Yorktown, Virginia the following day. Neither body has ever been found, but both are presumed to be dead.

In October 19, 1989, the bodies of Anna-Maria Phelps, 18, and Daniel Lauer, 21, were found in New Kent County by a hunter in the woods near a rest area on Interstate 64 between Williamsburg and Richmond. They were found covered with a blanket. They had been missing since the previous month.

The bodies Rebecca Ann Dowski, 21 and Cathleen Marian Thomas, 27 were discovered On October 12, 1986, in the back seat of their car. They were found by a jogger. The Honda Civic had been pushed down an embankment of the York River, seven miles east of Williamsburg. An autopsy found rope burns on their necks and wrists, signs of strangulation, and their throats had been slashed. Their bodies had been doused with a flammable liquid, and several matches were found outside the car. Their purses and money were found inside the car. Both women were found fully clothed and there was no evidence of sexual assault. Law enforcement officials believe that someone attempted to set the vehicle ablaze. Unable to start a fire, the killer then tried to push the car off the bluff into the York River.

Rebecca Ann Dowski was from Poughkeepsie, New York and was a senior business management major at the College of William and Mary. Cathleen Marian Thomas was a native of Lowell, Massachusetts, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and was employed as a stockbroker in Norfolk, Virginia. Some believe that Cathleen Thomas and Rebecca Dowski were killed because they were lovers.

Robin Edwards and David Knobling were last seen on September 19, 1987. Edwards and Knobling became acquainted at an arcade. The two, along with David's brother and another friend left the arcade to cruise York County in Knobling's pickup. The three boys took Ms. Edwards home before 11 p.m. and went back to the Knobling home. David Knobling left the house again soon afterward. His black Ford pickup was discovered September 21 near the Ragged Island Wildlife Refuge at the foot of the James River Bridge. The truck's keys were in the ignition. The driver's door was open. There was no sign of a struggle.

The two weren't reported missing until Monday morning because it wasn't unusual for Knobling to spend a night or two away from home. Robin's parents had reason to believe she had run away so they were waiting for the Newport News social services office to open to report the problem.

The bodies of David Lee Knobling, 20, of Hampton and Robin M. Edwards, 14, of Newport News were discovered in the Ragged Island Wildlife Refuge. They had been murdered. The two were partially clothed. Knobling was wearing jeans with 13 quarters in the pockets. The belt on Ms. Edwards jeans was not fastened. Her bra was around her neck under her blouse. The area they were found was on the south shore of the James River in Isle of Wight County, near Smithfield, Virginia. They were discovered about a mile down the river bank. Knobling's black truck was parked at the Refuge several days prior to discovery of the bodies. The radio was on, the keys were in the ignition and Knobling's wallet was on the dashboard. Two pairs of underwear and Ms. Edwards' shoes were found in the vehicle. The two bodies washed ashore almost two miles downriver from where Knobling's truck was found.

"When we first found the truck, the driver's side window was half down," Kathy Knobling, David's mother, said. "It was raining out that night, so why would David have had the window down unless someone with a badge approached him and asked for ID."

Police believe the two were probably marched more than 1 1/2 miles through the woods and down a wooden pier, where they were executed and dumped into the river. The two weren't reported missing until Monday morning. It was not uncommon for Knobling to stay away from home for a night or two. Ms. Edwards' parents thought she may have run away as they waited for the social services office to open to report her missing.

Note: The Ragged Island Wildlife Refuge is a popular cruising area for homosexuals. The area had become so rampant that in the early 1990s the area was closed to the public. While Knobling and Edwards were not gay, there is speculation that Cathleen Thomas and Rebecca Dowski were killed because of their sexual orientation. If this was the case, the killer of Knobling and Edwards may have been looking for a gay couple.

On April 9, 1988, Cassandra Lee Hailey and Richard Keith Call were reported missing after going on a first date together. Call's 1982 red Toyota Celica was found car by a ranger about 9 a.m., abandoned on the Colonial Parkway in Yorktown, Virginia the following day. "The driver's door was open and the front seat was folded forward," said Richard W. Call, Keith's father. "I noticed Keith's watch on the dashboard and a purse in the passenger seat. I didn't notice any clothing." The couple's clothing, including underwear, was on the back seat of the car. Several witnesses said the car keys were in the ignition, but Call's father said he didn't see them. Keith Call's brother, Chris, was driving along the parkway when he noticed a parked car with a door or trunk open at about 4:30 a.m. He wasn't certain if it was his brother's car. An employee at the Eastern State Hospital also saw a car with an open driver's side door at about 5:30 a.m. Neither body has ever been found, but both are presumed to be dead.

Richard Keith Call was from Gloucester County. Keith was a student at Christopher Newport College. Cassandra Lee Hailey was born May 16, 1969. She was 18 years old at the time of her disappearance. Ms. Hailey was a student at Christopher Newport College. She was described as 5'7, weighing 135 pounds. She was Caucasian with brown curly hair and brown eyes. Her left ear has three piercings, her right ear is pierced twice. Hailey was last seen wearing stone-washed jeans; and a white blouse worn over a rust-colored jersey turtleneck with long sleeves. She was also wearing a 1987 Tabb High School class ring. Nicknames include Sandra, Sandy, Missy, Cassie

In October, 1989, the skeletal remains of Anna-Maria Phelps, 18, and Daniel Lauer, 21, were found in New Kent County by a hunter in the woods near a rest area on Interstate 64 between Williamsburg and Richmond. They had left Phelps' house together in Lauer's gold 1973 Chevrolet Nova. It was found at 5:30 p.m. on September 5, 1989 parked at the rest stop on the westbound side of I- 64. The keys were in the ignition and the gas tank was three-quarters full. Ms. Phelps' purse was in the car, along with clothing belonging to Lauer. They were last seen alive between noon and 1:00 p.m. on September 5, 1989 at the rest stop for westbound Interstate 64 traffic in New Kent County. Their bodies were found less than a mile from the rest stop. The Smithsonian Institution's Natural History Museum and the state medical examiner determined that Ms. Phelps had been stabbed to death. Though Phelps suffered stab wounds, his cause of death has not been officially determined, other than being a homicide. There were no obvious signs of a struggle inside the car.

Anna-Maria Phelps was from Virginia Beach. Ms Phelps was 5 feet, 4 inches tall, 135 pounds, with blue eyes and frosted brown hair. She was wearing gray stone-washed jeans and a short black T-shirt. Daniel Lauer, the brother of Phelps' fiancé, Clinton Lauer, was 6 feet tall, 145 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair. He was wearing a white long-sleeve dress shirt, blue jeans and tennis shoes. Lauer was from Amelia County.

A private detective named Ronald John Little was questioned by the FBI in 1988, regarding the Colonial Parkway murders. Little came to their attention after claiming to have uncovered a connection between his firm, Liberty Security Services, and the murders. He also claimed to know the next likely victim. He did not identify the possible future victim or his suspect.

While the FBI. did not identify Little as a suspect, Little feared that he was a "major, major suspect" who was "being railroaded" by the FBI. "They asked me, did I have anything to do with it. Did I abduct them? Did I kill them? I told them no," said Ronald John Little a 33 year old native of New Zealand.

The FBI. confiscated his passport and weapons. They also searched his home and automobile. "Who's ever really doing this, they think they're in the clear and they're having a field day." "They've asked me about everyone."

25 year old Brian Craig Pettinger was an agent under Little at Liberty Security Services before he quit in August of 1988. His body washed up on the James River in February. His death was ruled a drowning.

In April of 1988 the body of Laurie Ann Powell was discovered floating where the James and Elizabeth rivers meet. Powell, 18, had worked for a short time as a receptionist for Liberty Security several months prior to her murder.

In September of 1988, the bodies of David Knobling and Robin Edwards washed ashore on the James River. Both had been shot in the head. Edwards' mother had worked as a security agent at Liberty Security.

Lynn-Marie Carty, Private Investigator and CEO and Founder of ReunitePeople.com has brought to light some enlightening information about a very frightening suspect named Michael Andrew Nicholaou.

Michael Andrew Nicholaou killed his wife, 47-year-old Aileen Nicholaou, and critically wounded his stepdaughter on New Year's Eve in 2005. He then fatally shot himself in the mouth. He had broken his wife's shoulder only four weeks prior. she had left Nicholaou for the perceived safety of her sister's home. Nicholaou's stepdaughter, 22 year-old Taryn Bowman, later died from her injuries.

Nicholaou, born August 4, 1949, was a former porn shop owner from Charlottesville, Virginia. He drew the attention of law enforcement from selling obscene materials from his shop called "The Pleasure Chest." He also carried a hatred for women. He was also a Vietnam veteran accused of murdering civilians in the Mekong Delta back in 1971. In 1997, Nicholaou set fire to a family's car after his nine year old son was involved in altercation with another child.

Lynn-Marie Carty was hired by a Vermont mother in 2001 to help find her daughter, Michelle Ashley. Ashley was the mother of Nicholaou's two children and had disappeared in December of 1988 from their home in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Michelle had told her mother about Nicholaou's controlling behavior, and had even warned her mother that he might someday be responsible for her death. Nicholaou told police in Holyoke that Ashley had left with another man. Carty located Nicholaou, and asked him about Michelle Ashley. Nicholaou referred to Ashley as a "slut." He accused her of being a drug user who had abandoned her children.

When Carty heard the news about Nicholaou having killed his current wife and stepdaughter, she knew for sure that there was more to the story of Michelle Ashley. What she would find would be chilling. What she would find would help identify Nicholaou as a serial killer whose crimes are still being revealed.

In August of 1988, a pregnant Jane Boroski was attacked outside a market. At the time of Boroski's attack, police were investigating the deaths of six women. Their bodies had been dumped in wooded areas of Vermont and New Hampshire. The unknown suspect was being referred to as the Connecticut River Valley killer.

After meeting with Lynn-Marie Carty and viewing the evidence and photos gathered by the persevering private investigator, Boroski believes she has finally found the man responsible for trying to kill her in 1988. Jane Boroski believes full well that Michael Andrew Nicholaou was her attacker.

We know he was from Virginia and traveled throughout the area. He fits the composite of the man responsible for the disappearance of Alicia Showalter Reynolds, a case CrimeShadows.com feels may be related to the Colonial Parkway murders.

Nicholaou often told people that he worked for the CIA. or was a police officer. We know that investigators in the Colonial Parkway case believed that the suspect in those attacks may have been using his identity as a law enforcement agent to facilitate his attacks.

In the mid-1980s, a series of fatal knife attacks on young women occurred in the rural Connecticut River Valley, a natural border that is shared by the states of Vermont and New Hampshire.

The bodies of the victims were dumped in wooded areas of both states after the women had been brutally stabbed and/or had their throats slashed. The killer was believed to be highly mobile, traveling by vehicle through the area, seeking victims either at random or by unlucky opportunity.

At least six confirmed murders, and one vicious knife attack where the victim, Jane Boroski, managed to survive, are believed to have been the work of the same person who would become known as the Connecticut River Valley Killer. (Police in both Vermont and New Hampshire have speculated that the same person may be responsible for other unsolved murders in the area).

However, in the last two years, new evidence has surfaced that points toward a man named Michael Nicholaou as a possible suspect in the Connecticut River Valley crimes, as well as a series of murders of young couples in the state of Virginia attributed to an unknown person who would become known as the Colonial Parkway Killer. (The Colonial Parkway is a stretch of scenic highway in Virginia that is only 23 miles long. It links three of Virginia's most popular historic attractions from the colonial era, including the communities of Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown. Locally, the parkway - with its many rest areas and isolated side roads - is rather notorious for serving as a lovers lane, a fact that has bolstered the theory that a serial killer was responsible).

Nicholaou, who had a violent and unquestionably creepy past, either lived in or frequented all of those states during the time that these crimes occurred.

A private investigator named Lynn-Marie Carty has uncovered evidence that she says may link Nicholaou to these serial murders. She further speculates that he may be one of the most prolific serial killers in modern times. (There are some very striking similarities between Nicholaou's life, his physical appearance, and what is known or assumed about the killer involved in each series of crimes).

Many researchers also believe that there may be a link among several unsolved cases in the state of Virginia that occurred from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, all possibly involving either Nicholaou or some other, unidentified serial killer. Those Virginia cases include the aforementioned Colonial Parkway Killer, the Shenandoah National Park hiker murders, the Route 29 Stalker, and the Blue Ridge Parkway rapist. (The FBI has even speculated along those same lines).

As with the murders that occurred in the Connecticut River Valley, the wide geographic areas covered by all of the Virginia murders points to a highly mobile killer and many of the Virginia victims also had their throats slashed.

All of the victims were different ages, all were of different backgrounds and physical appearance, but they had one thing in common: they were all killed either near or within a short distance of the Claremont, NH area. Of note, three of the victims were nurses.

Source: The Shadow of Death: The Hunt for a Serial Killer by Philip E. Ginsburg, January 1993.

1. Elizabeth Critchley - Last seen July 25, 1981 - body found August 9, 1981. Age 23, last seen hitchhiking on I-91 near the VT/MA border on July 25th. Found in the woods near Unity Stage Road in Claremont, New Hampshire. The cause of death was never determined, or made public, but it was treated as a homicide.

2. Bernice Courtemanche - Last seen May 30, 1984 - body found April 19, 1986. Age 16, last seen hitchhiking along Route 12 in west Claremont, New Hampshire on May 30th. Her skeletal remains were found nearly two years later just off Cat Hole Hill Road in Kellyville, New Hampshire. She had been hit in the head and stabbed to death.

3. Ellen Fried - Last seen July 20, 1984 - body found September 19, 1985. Age 27, last known to be talking to her sister from a pay telephone at Leos Market in Claremont, New Hampshire. The following day her car was found abandoned in West Claremont, New Hampshire on Jarvis Lane. One year later, on September 19th, 1985 her body was found in Kellyville, New Hampshire, the same tract of woods where Courtemanche was later found. She had been stabbed to death.

4. Eva Morse - Last seen July 10, 1985 - body found April 25, 1986. Age 28, last seen hitchhiking on NH Route 12, along the Claremont/Charlestown border. Her body was found on April 25, 1986 near the Unity Stage Road, a few hundred yards from where Elizabeth Critchley had been found. She had been stabbed to death.

5. Lynda Moore - Last seen April 15, 1986 - body found April 15, 1986. Age 32, last known to be at her home, outside in the yard in Saxtons River, Vermont. Found murdered later that day in her living room. She had been stabbed to death.

6. Barbara Agnew - Last seen January 10, 1987 - body found March 28, 1987. Age 38, her abandoned vehicle was found in the I-91 northbound rest area in Hartford, Vermont after a heavy snow storm. Her car was found, speckled with blood stains and rammed backwards into a snow bank in the parking lot of the Hartland rest area. Her body was found under an apple tree on March 28th, along Advent Hill road in Hartland, Vermont. She had been stabbed to death.

7. Jane Boroski - Survived. In the late summer of 1988, 22 year old Jane Boroski was stopped at night at a closed convenience store, 30 miles south of Claremont. She was seven months pregnant. A man in an older Jeep Wagoneer pulled into the parking space beside her and approached her opened drivers side window. He asked Jane, "Is that phone working?," but before she could answer, he pulled the door open and pulled her from her car, waving a knife in her face. When she resisted and ran from him, he chased her down and stabbed her 27 times. Amazingly, she was still living, laying still, until he got back to his vehicle and drove away. She managed to get back to her car and drive to a friends house nearby for help. She and her baby lived, but her attacker was never found. At one point in their scuffle, when she asked why he had chosen her, the man replied, "You beat up my girlfriend." Boroski denied it, and the man appeared confused. "Isn't this a Massachusetts car?" he asked. Boroski pointed out New Hampshire license plates, and the stranger hesitated, began to turn away, then rushed at her with the knife again. She described this attacker as a man 30 to 35 years of age with a slim build, dirty blond hair, driving a older Jeep Wagoneer, light colored with wood grained trim. She described his demeanor as very calm, not nervous, in a very odd way as he was attempting to get her to go to his vehicle. Jane would report later that he apparently "knew what he was doing" and he may have done it before. (Note: A recreation of this crime was featured on the Unsolved Mysteries television program).

Click the image on the right to view a Boston, Massachusetts news special about the Connecticut River Valley murders, suspect Michael Nicholaou, and the possible connections to the Virginia murders. (Requires Windows Media Player to view).

Area's Unsolved Mysteries: Are Killings Related?

Source: The Free Lance-Star, March 9, 2002 article by Donnie Johnston

It was six years ago last Saturday when the murders that continue to shock and worry Fredericksburg-area residents began.

On the morning of March 2, 1996, a Saturday, Alicia Showalter Reynolds was driving from Baltimore to Charlottesville when she was apparently pulled over along U. S. 29 in Culpeper County, abducted and killed. Within the span of 14 months seven more murders -six still unsolved - would occur. Five of those crimes were committed within about six months of Reynolds' disappearance. All the victims were women.

In late May of 1996 two hikers, 24-year-old Julianne Williams and 26-year-old Lollie Winans, were found brutally murdered at their camp near Skyland in Shenandoah National Park (near Madison County).

On the night of July 13, 74-year-old Thelma Scroggins was killed in her Lignum, Virginia home.

Sixteen-year-old Sofia Silva disappeared off her front porch near Fredericksburg in early September and killed. Her body was located in a King George County pond a month later.

In late September 20-year-old Anne Carolyn McDaniel disappeared from an Orange street and was murdered. Her body was found near Mount Pony in Culpeper County.

On May 1, 1997, teen-age sisters Kristin and Kati Lisk disappeared from their Spotsylvania County home and were found dead in a river five days later.

To date, only the Scroggins murder has been solved and many who sat through the trials of the three teen-aged suspects accused are far from convinced that authorities got the right men - at least in two cases. The rest of the murders remain unsolved mysteries.

Are all these killings related? Investigators I have talked to contend they are not. Common threads in these cases, however, lend credence - at least in my mind - to the theory that the same man committed all these murders and that the killer may have been a policeman. What are these common threads?

First, if you look at a map, you will find that it is almost a straight line from the spot where the Shenandoah National Park hikers were killed to King George County where Silva's body was found.

Second, there is a Lignum connection to five of the murders.

Third, all the victims were women.

Fourth, all disappeared or were accosted mysteriously, as if they were not alarmed by the presence of their killer.

Fifth, the killings started and stopped within a 14-month period.

The first common thread being obvious, let's look at the others. Alicia Showalter Reynolds' body was found near Lignum on May 7, 1996. Thelma Scroggins lived and was murdered in Lignum. Anne Carolyn McDaniel's body was found within four miles of Lignum. The pond where Silva's body was found was reportedly within sight of a greenhouse that at the time had a strong connection to greenhouses three miles from Lignum. The Lisk sisters' mother worked at Germanna Community College, three miles from Lignum.

Coincidences? Investigators that I have discussed my theory with dismiss them as just that. What about the name Showalter? Alicia Reynolds' maiden name was Showalter. Patty Lisk, mother of the slain sisters, was also a Showalter before she married. Both families are from the Shenandoah Valley where that name is very common.

The fact that all the victims were women is also obvious. So what about the police connection? That seems obvious, too.

Who would Alicia Reynolds, while driving down U.S. 29, have instantly and without question pulled over for? A policeman or someone with a light (perhaps removable) atop his vehicle.

Who would Williams and Winans have instantly trusted and made welcome into their mountain camp? Someone pretending to be a park ranger or a policeman.

With whom would the mildly retarded Anne Carolyn McDaniel have left an Orange street without ever questioning where she was being taken? A policeman.

Who would Thelma Scroggins, known to be an extremely cautious woman who would not let anyone in after dark, have opened her door for without question on the night she was killed? A policeman.

Who would teen-agers like Silva and the Lisk sisters have allowed to take them from the security of their homes without any protest? A policeman.

We are trained from birth to both respect and obey policemen without question. If a policeman tells a law-abiding person to do something, he does it. All the victims were law-abiding citizens.

There other little subtleties in these cases, too. The Lisk kidnappings took place almost exactly on the anniversary of the discovery of Reynolds' body. These two girls were also abducted while police had a suspect in the Silva murder in custody. It was almost as if the killer was trying to show authorities that they had the wrong man. The suspect was cleared a month after the Lisk girls were slain.

Thelma Scroggins' cousin and closest friend said she and the Lignum woman drove down back roads in search of the wooded spot where Reynolds' body was found as soon as they heard it had been located. Did the killer suspect that Scroggins, a retired mail carrier who often traveled these roads, knew something?

My theory that a policeman could be the killer is based on the fact that a man with a badge - or one pretending to be a cop - could have easily used his authority to lure his victims into a false sense of security. Was he actually a policeman at the time? I doubt it. I suspect that the killer may have been a young wannabe cop who, for some reason, could never get a job with a badge. Maybe he wanted to show those who spurned him that he was really smarter than the police.

So why did the killings stop? Serial killings often stop because the murderer is arrested and kept in jail. This situation could very well have been just the opposite. Maybe the killer finally got hired as a cop. That, friends, is a chilling thought but one not out of the realm of possibility. Have authorities crossed-checked those who took police science courses with job applicants who were rejected before March 1996 and then hired after June of 1997? I don't know.

What I do know is that there is still a killer walking around somewhere out there who may strike again. And I know that, after sitting through three trials in the Scroggins' case, I wound up with more questions than answers.

To say that three drug-crazed teen-agers could have talked their way into that old woman's house, killed her in a frenzy and then made off without leaving a single thread of evidence is a hard theory to swallow. A Mafia hit man or a CIA agent couldn't have done that. A ballistics expert also testified that the gun used to kill Scroggins was a rifle while the state's key witness insisted it was a pistol. A deputy sheriff testified that he was in the presence of one of the suspects when he was supposed to be getting high and planning the murder.

Then there was the testimony of the key witness, confessed killer Eric Glenn Weakley, about dreams he had about a body in a pond and a body being dismembered with a hatchet. Could those "dreams" be related to these other murders?

I have discussed my policeman-single killer theory with several investigators working these cases and each time I get a smile and a polite "keep thinking" response. Maybe my theory is wrong, but what better place for a serial killer to hide than behind a badge?

Checking all the usual suspects sometimes doesn't get the job done.

The man known as the “Route 29 Stalker,” who twice told victims his name was Larry Breeden, was acting out a sexual fantasy and probably did not intend to kill Alicia Showalter Reynolds, experts from the Virginia State Police said yesterday.

But now he has killed once - police still believe Reynolds was his first victim - the experts say he will kill again.

The 25-year-old Reynolds, a graduate student from Baltimore, was lured from her car by the killer and found two months later in a shallow grave near Lignum, Va., a small town in Culpeper County. Her killer may have approached up to 25 women along Route 29 before abducting Reynolds March 2, police said.

Yesterday police released parts of a 13-page profile of the man whom they believe killed Reynolds, hoping the information will bring witnesses forward. The information will also be featured Friday night on NBC's Unsolved Mysteries.

Police described the man whom they believe killed Reynolds as shy and helpful. “He's the guy next door,” said special agent Larry McCann, a behavioral sciences expert from the Virginia State Police who helped develop the profile. “People want to think a murderer looks different, looks crazy,” McCann said. “This is an average guy of average intelligence. That's what makes him so hard to pick out.”

But McCann said yesterday he's confident someone not only knows the killer, but probably knows that the person killed Reynolds. McCann admitted police do not have a strong suspect. “In these cases there is always somebody who has more than a hint what their neighbor, mate, boyfriend is up to,” McCann said. “From what we're talking about today someone will recognize the individual. We need them to call us. We've been doing a traditional investigation up to this point. Now we've decided to reach out further.”

Reynolds' killer lured her into his pickup truck with a story that her car was malfunctioning, police said. The killer would drive behind would-be victims and flash his lights, hoping they would pull over. Police said two witnesses saw Reynolds in the truck with the killer. Although the truck had Virginia license plates, none of the witnesses got the tag number.

Police believe the man who killed Reynolds also approached a woman on Route 234 in Dumfries, Va. The killer threatened the woman with a screwdriver and the woman suffered a broken leg escaping from the truck. Reynolds, unfortunately, was exactly what the killer was looking for: a petite, young, white woman who believed his story, police said.

Police think they know how Reynolds died but will not release the information. They will not say whether she was sexually assaulted. “There has to be something we hold back for when we interrogate the suspect,” McCann said. “Something only the killer would know.”

Although the killer's methods may change - he may not, for example, attempt to find another victim along a country road - the type of victim he chooses will not, McCann said. “This guy has got his victimology down,” McCann said. “He knows what he wants and he goes for it.”

In the course of the investigation police have interviewed every Larry Breeden they could find, McCann said, though they don't believe it's the killer's real name. There are more than 1,000 pickup trucks licensed in Virginia that fit the description released months ago in a flier, and police are investigating all of them, McCann said, adding that the trucks' description, as well as that of the killer, are accurate.

According to information released by the Virginia State Police, the Route 29 Stalker is a white man, age 35 to 45, with light to medium brown hair and a medium build. Police believe he has a blue-collar job, that he has a high school education or perhaps a few years' training from a trade school.

Information, taken from the police profile, is consistent with information witnesses provided about the contents of the killer's truck: There was a dark toolbox on the truck's floor near an object that could have been a green tarp or pair of overalls. Witnesses don't remember any aroma in the truck nor any speech patterns of the killer that are unique or recognizable.

The killer wore a wedding band, but police do not know if he really is married or uses the ring as a prop. Police think he was living with a girlfriend or wife at the time of Reynolds' killing and suggest that the murder would have strongly affected the relationship.

Police say the killer would have sought reasonable ways to withdraw from his daily life after the murder, perhaps a transfer from his job to cool off for awhile. “People are people,” McCann said. “If you do something horrible it upsets you. But he got over it.” When asked if the killer felt remorse, McCann said, “I don't know. Maybe the reality didn't live up to the fantasy.” But McCann stressed that the killer's behavior would have been “all wrong” after the incident. Police are asking people to look for this type of behavioral changes.

One aspect of the case that puzzles police is how the killer could have known Culpeper so well without Culpeper knowing him. If the killer was a lifelong Culpeper resident, police speculate, they probably would have caught him quickly. But police say the killer would have had contact with many in the area: store clerks, residents and others.

The killer is shy in his approach to women who are strangers, police said. He is reserved in what he does, reluctant to talk about his private life but helpful to others. He is probably dependable. Still, witnesses have seen his anger. Women who would not stop their cars when the killer tried to pull them over have said that he lost his temper, began swearing, screaming and pounding the steering wheel inside his truck. Police say he is a man who internalizes his anger but flashes of anger, often inappropriate to the situation, will show.

Police don't believe the killer has approached anyone since killing Reynolds. He is strongly aware of the media and probably follows news stories about the case. Renewed coverage of the murder and Friday's episode of Unsolved Mysteries will worry the killer, McCann said, who doubts the killer will stalk any other women until attention dies down. “This killer is your next door neighbor,” McCann said in a statement released to the press. “You may not think so, but if he has access to a similar truck, resembles the composite, and you have valid suspicions, call the Virginia State Police.”

WASHINGTON - It was a case that gripped the region for weeks: the disappearance of a 25-year-old graduate student traveling from Baltimore to Charlottesville. Now, ten years later, Alicia Showalter Reynolds' killer still remains unknown.

Reynolds disappeared on March 2, 1996. Her remains were found two months later, 15 miles away from where her car was located in Lignum, Virginia in Culpeper County. During the investigation, there were numerous reports of a white male flagging down women. The investigation later become known as the Route 29 Stalker case. Several people were investigated as possible suspects, but no one has been charged with her murder. Virginia State Police Sgt. Les Tyler says they are hoping the anniversary of Reynolds' murder will jog someone's memory. "We've even had calls as recent as last week on this case," Tyler says.

Police say the suspect is a white male, age 35 to 45 with a medium build. The suspect is approximately 5 feet, 10 inches tall with light to medium brown hair.

The suspect may have been wearing a flannel or striped shirt and blue jeans at the time of abduction, and may have had access to a small, dark-colored pickup truck, police say.

Source: Cold Case?, article by Barbara Nordin, published May 17, 2007 in The Hook, a Charlottesville, Virginia weekly.

This week's story is mostly about the terrors on Route 29, a series of illicit pull-overs that culminated in the 1996 disappearance and murder of Alicia Showalter Reynolds. (Next week: the Shenandoah National Park murders).

The white wooden cross has broken free of the guardrail and lies on the shoulder as cars rush past; its red bow and artificial greenery, buffeted by blustery spring winds, have flipped over and come to rest in the gravel and dust.

As cars flew past that spot on a March day in 1996, some drivers noticed a young woman standing near her white Mercury Tracer on the shoulder and talking to a man whose pickup truck was parked nearby. The hood of the car was up, and the man and woman were studying the engine; some observers saw her getting into his truck. She was never seen alive again.

Since then, her name - Alicia Showalter Reynolds - has been etched into the minds of many Central Virginians because of what happened to her that day. But the man was never found. Or was he?

Some believe the man at the side of the road was Darrell David Rice - and federal prosecutors believe that less than three months after Alicia disappeared, he murdered two women in the Shenandoah National Park.

Rice, who has been held nearly 10 years for another crime in the Park, will be released from federal prison in two months, and his attorneys say it's unfair to link his name to other crimes. Indeed, 11 years after Alicia's disappearance, State Police have yet to

charge anyone with her murder.

Even so, Darrell Rice continues to be a suspect in the three killings in 1996 - which, for women in Central Virginia, was a very bad year. As soon as Alicia's disappearance was announced, calls began flooding Virginia State Police headquarters in Culpeper from other women reporting that they too had been stopped along Route 29, usually in the Culpeper area, by a man in a pickup who would flash his lights and gesture. If the woman pulled over, he would park nearby and tell her that something was wrong with her car - usually, that sparks were coming from underneath. Then, saying it wouldn't be safe for her to drive, he would offer a ride.

The man quickly became known as the "Route 29 Stalker," and fear began to spread. Wireless phone companies in Central Virginia reported that interest in cell phones went up in response: For many women, Route 29 no longer seemed safe, and residents of the region worried about female family members and friends who drove alone, especially at night.

According to a press release issued by the State Police two months later, the abduction fit a pattern. The women described the suspect as white, age 35-45, 5'10" to 6' tall, 189-190 lbs, and clean-shaven with short, light-brown hair longer in the back than on the sides. He was also well-spoken, with a "clean, casual appearance."

All of the victims said the man was driving a pickup, but accounts of the size and color varied. "Suspect may have had access to more than one vehicle," the police briefing stated, "not to exclude a Ford Ranger/Mazda or a Nissan pickup truck. He may also have recently purchased, sold, or otherwise changed vehicles during the course of these contacts." Based on calls from drivers who claimed to have seen Alicia and the man on the shoulder of the road, State Police investigators felt confident that the truck had been dark-colored with a "splash" or streak in a lighter color, possibly teal.

The incidents began on January 17, 1996 and ended on March 2, the day Alicia disappeared. There were 23 stops during those 46 days, including one for which the date is unknown [see outline below], with the great majority located along a 20-mile stretch in the vicinity of the Culpeper exits.

Most of the women rebuffed the man and drove away, but in addition to Alicia, three got in his truck. Two were dropped where they requested. The third, Carmelita Shomo, was attacked, but she survived - in fact, she did more than survive. Nine years later, she faced Darrell Rice across a courtroom and identified him as the man who had abducted, attacked, and left her beside the road, screaming for help.

It was raining and cold when Carmelita Shomo headed south on Route 234 the night of February 23, 1996. She was driving home to Quantico after her Friday-evening shift as a custodian at the Manassas Mall. Near a crossroads called Independence Hill, she noticed flashing lights in her rear-view mirror. This account of what followed is taken from her March 5, 1996 interview with FBI Special Agent John Zero.

Shomo pulled onto the shoulder, and the man parked behind her. As he approached, she thought he might be a friend of her husband and rolled down her window and asked, "Do I know you?" But he was a stranger, and he said he had seen sparks under her car, perhaps from "a loose bolt" or "the CV joints going bad." He said it wouldn't be safe for her to drive, because the brakes might give out. Then he offered to drive her home, and she accepted.

He suggested that she hang something from a window of her car to identify it as having broken down. (As was the case with all the women who were told something was wrong with their cars, Shomo later learned that her car was fine.) She hung a rag, locked up, and climbed into the truck.

The man drove her approximately three miles down 234 - which, in 1996, was two lanes instead of four - through an area that was less populated than it is now. Three times, the man said that headlights from the cars behind were causing glare on his windshield, and pulled over until the vehicle had passed.

They talked as they headed south in the rain. The man asked her to show him where she lived; she asked his name, and he said it was Larry. He wanted to know how she'd get her car home, and she replied that her husband could tow it himself. Then he asked whether it was an automatic or stick shift, and when she said it was an automatic, he suggested that they go back; he would drive her car, and she could drive his truck to her residence. She said that wouldn't be necessary.

By this time she was getting uneasy and asked him to drop her off at an all-night gas station near the intersection of 234 and the Montclair subdivision. Instead, he pulled over for a fourth time and, again complaining about glare on the windshield - which she couldn't see - asked her to hand him a tissue from the pocket on the passenger-side door.

Then he attacked. Grabbing her neck, he shoved her head toward his lap. In his right hand, Shomo stated, he held a screwdriver pointing at her neck. He told her to "shut up and put your head down in my lap," but she fought back, elbowing him in the chest as they struggled. Somehow, the passenger door came open; Shomo thinks the man must have opened it, because by then he was yelling at her to "get out of the truck."

As she slid toward the door, they both grabbed for her purse, and she fell out of the truck - with the purse left behind and one foot tangled in the seatbelt as he pulled back onto the road. She was briefly dragged before she could wrestle her foot free, breaking her ankle in the process.

Shomo told investigators that cars had passed her on the side of the road as she screamed for help, but no one stopped. Finally, an off-duty ranger for nearby Prince William Forest Park and his wife, whose house faces Route 234, heard her and came out. The ranger used his police radio to call for help.

Raised in the Philippines, Shomo was not fluent in English, and the communication gap would prove critical. Officers and emergency-room personnel assumed that Shomo's husband had been her attacker, and Prince William County police didn't assign a detective to the case until the next day, when Shomo finally got someone to understand that she had been abducted, attacked, and robbed by a stranger.

The misunderstanding meant that during the hours that followed, no alert was issued for a vehicle matching the description Shomo provided - hours during which three more women were stopped. (None, however, got in the truck.)

Beginning two days later, on February 26, there were five more stops before March 2, when Alicia was abducted: one on Monday, two on Wednesday, one on either Monday or Wednesday, and one on Thursday. The frequency suggests that by Saturday, March 2, 1996, the man was determined to find a victim.

At about 10:15 a.m., he attempted to stop a woman heading north on the other side of 29 from where he would soon stop Alicia. Shortly after that, heading south on 29, a man in a truck stopped Alicia. She was his final victim.

Three weeks later, Detective L.J. McDonnell of the Prince William County police wrote: "After reviewing the State Police reports, I have isolated 15 points that link [the Shomo] investigation with the reported incidents in Culpeper County." In addition to driving a truck and always choosing petite female victims (Shomo was about 5' and 100 pounds) who were driving alone, the suspect would flash his headlights and signal the driver to pull over, tell her something was wrong with her car and that it wasn't safe to drive, and offer her a ride. Women who accepted rides and survived also said the man told them "to leave a white item on the vehicle to signify that [it] was disabled," to step on a jacket on the passenger-side floor of his truck, asked them "to search for an item in the door pocket," and said his name was Larry.

The State Police had reached the same conclusion - that the Prince William attack was linked to the Route 29 incidents - and they ended their May 13 press release with this statement: "After a thorough review of all the victims' statements, police believe that all the incidents involved are the same person." The statement they needed the most, of course, was the one they could never have.

Perched atop a hill, Harley and Sadie Showalter's spacious home in Harrisonburg is surrounded by well-tended garden beds and lush green grass sloping down to the street. The living room is dominated by two bold paintings of flowers the Showalters bought on a trip to Quebec, but most compelling is a portrait of Alicia that hangs in one corner: It would be hard not to sense the fierce emotions that surround it.

Harley sold his insurance agency in downtown Harrisonburg last year, and he now offers financial services. Sadie, who taught elementary school before their children were born, later helped set up the first computer lab at the junior high. They met as students at Eastern Mennonite College (now University). Although the branch of the Mennonite Church they belong to is pacifist - like almost all branches of the church - it largely resembles other mainstream Protestant denominations.

The Showalters are gracious to reporters, which isn't always easy. In the media crush that followed Alicia's disappearance, Harley says, some were "not considerate." And the Showalters remain bitter that when the horrific outcome was finally revealed, the news was leaked to the media before investigators contacted them.

As Alicia's image smiles down from the corner of the room, her parents tell the story.

"It was a gorgeous day," Sadie Showalter says - a gorgeous day to drive east from Harrisonburg across the Blue Ridge and south to Charlottesville, where mother would meet daughter at Fashion Square Mall and hear about life as a fourth-year graduate student in pharmacology at Johns Hopkins.

They'd planned to meet at 11 a.m., but Alicia, driving down from Baltimore, was always early. So her mother left home in time to arrive at 10:30 at the women's petite section at Leggett - now Belks - and began looking through the formal dresses. Their mission was to choose a dress for Sadie to wear to the May wedding of Alicia's brother, Patrick.

When 11 a.m. passed without Alicia, Sadie called her son-in-law, Alicia's husband, Mark. He planned to study all weekend; with Alicia's support, he had decided to leave his career as a CPA and enter dental school at the University of Maryland. This weekend, he was working on science prerequisites. Mark told his mother-in-law to give Alicia a few more minutes, then call again if she hadn't arrived. When Sadie called him again at 11:30, he had gone online via a dial-up connection and couldn't be reached.

For the next two and a half hours, Sadie sat on a bench inside the Leggett entrance that looks out on Route 29 and tried to will Alicia's car to turn into the parking lot. Periodically, she called Harley on her cell phone (which was so new to her that when Alicia had asked for the number the night before, Sadie had had to go in search of it and call her back).

After two hours of trying "desperately" to get hold of Mark, Harley finally succeeded at 2 p.m., and Mark immediately began calling the State Police. This was no easy task, since in 1996 there was no communication system linking the various divisions. This meant that he had to call each of the Maryland and Virginia State Police divisions between Baltimore and Charlottesville.

At that point, Sadie abandoned her vigil, left the mall, and headed up Route 29 to drive home. Just as she was about to turn left onto Route 33, she had the impulse to keep driving north on 29. But she pushed it aside and drove west instead, home to Harrisonburg to wait.

"The first two weeks were the worst," Sadie says. Every morning, someone from the State Police would come to make a report - but there was rarely anything to say.

Evidence pointing to foul play quickly emerged. At 1:15 that first afternoon, a woman on Clay Street in Culpeper, which is about five miles from where Alicia had been abducted, found her Citibank MasterCard and called the number on the back to report it. And at 6 p.m., Alicia's car was found three miles south of Culpeper.

The family gathered quickly. Patrick - who was not only Alicia's brother but also her twin - came from Nashville, where he was in his last year of medical school at Vanderbilt, and their younger sister, Barbara, arrived from Indiana, where she was a senior at Goshen College. Mark was there, along with Showalters from around the region and relatives on Sadie's side of the family from Ohio. The phone rang nonstop, mail flooded in, reporters hovered nearby - but nothing changed.

Also recovered the afternoon of March 2 - but not turned in to the State Police until March 8 - was a black parka, later identified as the one Alicia had been wearing. It was found in Madison County on Route 626, less than a mile east of Route 29, at about 2:30 p.m. On March 9, the last items - several more credit cards - were found in Culpeper.

The time came when Mark, Patrick, and Barbara had to return to school, and at some point Sadie told herself that life had to go on. But those departures didn't render the day-in/day-out silence any less agonizing.

It ended on Tuesday, May 7, when a man walking along a country road outside Lignum, in a rural part of Culpeper County, saw buzzards circling over a field that was being cleared of trees. When he went to investigate, he glimpsed a body under several fallen logs in a gully that was invisible from the road.

"Thank God for buzzards," Harley would later tell reporters, explaining that the birds had put an end to nine weeks of waiting: A long-indrawn breath could at last be released. And the next part, where Alicia came home to her family, could finally begin.

"It was pouring rain that night," Special Agent Stan Gregg says, which made an already difficult crime scene even harder to process. A State Police investigator in the Violent Crimes Unit, Gregg worked in the muddy field throughout the night of May 7 and for two or three days in his other role, that of crime scene technician. Nearly fours later, he officially joined the investigation as a detective.

The body was in a state consistent with two months' decomposition, which meant that Alicia had almost certainly died quickly. Between the heavy rain and the fact that two months had elapsed since her murder, the scene didn't yield many clues - and what clues it did give up, such as the cause of death, are closely guarded by Gregg, who is now the only investigator officially pursuing the case.

Roughly 10,000 tips poured into the State Police hotline; Gregg says he can tell when America's Most Wanted reruns its 1996 segment on Alicia, as he always gets another wave of calls.

Only later would one tip stand out in a way it hadn't at the time. The call came from one of Darrell Rice's coworkers back in Maryland, who called the hotline because Rice had been "acting strange." Gregg says that like all such calls, the tip was "given to someone to complete, and it was completed." "Completed," he explains, could mean many things, including that the person didn't resemble the composite sketch. In any case, all Gregg says he knows now is that the tip was considered completed and filed away.

Alicia's memorial service was held on Mother's Day. Twelve hundred people came to Park View Mennonite Church; they filled the sanctuary of the church she'd grown up in and overflowed into rooms fitted with monitors, rooms she had moved through hundreds of times for Sunday School and youth group and parties from the time she and Patrick had played in the nursery to New Year's Eve of 1994, when she'd come back to be married.

The Showalters buried their daughter in a small cemetery next to Trissels Mennonite Church in the rolling countryside outside Harrisonburg. In the weeks that followed, Patrick graduated from medical school, Barbara graduated from college, and Patrick was married.

Since the murder, her sister Barbara has also married, as has the young widower Mark, now a dentist in Greensboro, North Carolina.

All three - Patrick, Barbara, and Mark - have children. Alicia had told family she planned to weave her life as a researcher into her life as a wife and mother. She had been researching bilharzia, an often debilitating disease endemic in developing countries, and Johns Hopkins was so taken with its Alicia's enthusiasm that it created an annual award in her name. Instead, she looks out from her portrait in the corner, always young, always smiling - always gone.

Throughout Central Virginia, the discovery of Alicia's body and the knowledge that her killer was still free elevated fears of the Route 29 Stalker to new heights. Ironically, he has not struck again. Yet only three weeks later, the region was once more rocked by violence.

On May 18, 1996, the Saturday after Alicia was buried, two young women - Julie Williams and Lollie Winans - began driving south from Vermont to Virginia, where they planned to hike and camp in the Shenandoah National Park. Julie had to be home by May 29, but until then they would explore the mountains with Lollie's dog, pitch their tent wherever they liked, and explore the serenity and beauty of the mountains.

They never left the Park. Instead, two rangers found their bodies just past twilight on Saturday, June 1, at a secluded campsite near Skyland Lodge. Once again, Stan Gregg would be called in as a crime scene technician, this time alongside agents from the Park Service and FBI. And once again, like the field outside Lignum, there would be frustratingly little evidence.

Fifteen thousand leads would eventually be followed - to ends as frustrating as what the State Police found in Alicia's case. But then, in July of the next year, Yvonne Malbasha, a bicyclist in the Park, was stalked and attacked by a man driving a pickup. This time the investigation was over in a matter of minutes, because Malbasha was found by a ranger soon after her frustrated attacker sped off. The ranger radioed the man's description, and the attacker, in a blue Chevy S10 pickup, was stopped at the Swift Run Gap exit at Route 33. Malbasha identified him immediately, and he was arrested. It was Darrell David Rice.

Rice had been living in Columbia, Maryland, and, court documents indicate, had been fired from his job making software manuals for MCI Systemhouse (now part of EDS) a week and a half before the incident. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison. Although he resembled some of the police sketches of the Route 29 Stalker, he was only 28 years old during the stalking incidents, a little younger than the police's stated age range of 35 to 45. And there was no evidence he was involved - even though, in the hours after he was taken into custody for the attack on Malbasha, he allegedly made statements to a federal marshal that Prince William County might have deemed worth investigating.

In an interview with Stan Gregg on March 4, 2003, U.S. Marshal Larry Carter (now deceased) claimed that Rice admitted to a "rage against women" that sometimes erupted when he was on the highway and that he liked to "run women off the road" on Route 29. When Carter asked what he did after that, Rice said he would "just keep going." To a question about Alicia Showalter Reynolds, however, he told Carter he "didn't know who that was."

In 2005, in a Prince William County courtroom, Carmelita Shomo took the witness stand and swore that Rice was the man who had abducted, attacked, and robbed her. Rice's defense team labeled her identification of Rice as unreliable, since six years had elapsed before she was shown the photo lineup. They also pointed to inconsistencies they claimed stretched back to her earliest statements to police. Sam Newsome, who is a Master Detective with the Prince William County Police, administered the 2002 photo lineup and claims Shomo has never wavered in her identification. "I have no doubt that Darrell Rice abducted Carmelita Shomo," he says. "Had I had any doubt, we never would have charged him."

Investigators also testified that according to Rice's employment records, he had been off work on all but one day during the period when 18 of the women were stopped. His defense team, however, disputes this. Also, in 1996, his father, Leon Emile Rice, was living in a rented house in Culpeper. Located at 600 Jaynes Lane, the dwelling is convenient to Route 29, which investigators believe Rice could have used as a base of operations.

The trial, which hinged almost entirely on Shomo's testimony, ended when Rice took a so-called Alford plea, in which he claimed innocence while admitting there was enough evidence to convict him. In a statement he made to the judge before being sentenced, Rice said, "I am not guilty of the crimes I was indicted for. This is all for strategic reasons. It is in my best interests to return to my family" - referring, presumably, to the fact that as part of his plea agreement, no time was added to the sentence he was already serving in federal prison.

The abduction of Carmelita Shomo marked the beginning of a series of crimes against women in Central Virginia, and the attack on Yvonne Malbasha marked the end. In between, three women lay dead. Alicia's murder has officially been linked to the other incidents along Route 29, including the attack on Shomo, and investigators from the Park Service and FBI believe that the Rice is guilty not only of the 1997 attack on Yvonne Malbasha, but of the 1996 murders of Julie Williams and Lollie Winans as well.

In April 2002, at a highly publicized press conference at Justice Department headquarters, then Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that Rice was being indicted for the double murder, but the indictment was withdrawn in 2004. Some - but not all - investigators believe the crimes along Route 29 and the crimes in the Park are similar enough to throw suspicion on Rice.

Rice has staunch defenders. In a letter to The Hook, Deirdre Enright, a member of Rice's defense team, stated, "We are confident that Darrell Rice is innocent of the Shenandoah National Park murders, the 'Route 29' crimes, and the murder of Alicia Showalter Reynolds. We are certain we could refute any serious assertion the government might make to the contrary." Indeed, as they are quick to point out, the indictment for the murders in the Park was withdrawn when DNA evidence threw the case into doubt.

Rice, now 39, will be released from prison on July 17, after serving 10 of 11 years of his sentence. He'll be reunited with his truck, which for now is being stored at Enright's house on Saint Anne's Road in the Meadowbrook Heights neighborhood. He plans to move to Baltimore, where his mother lives, and will be required by the terms of his parole to seek work. But just as he won't be able to erase where he's been for the past 10 years, it's unlikely he'll escape the cloud of suspicion that continues to swirl around him.

Police still want tips. The Alicia Showalter Reynolds murder case is still an open investigation, and you can help if you know something. Call the State Police at 800-572-2260 or 888-300-0156.

Chronological List of Incidents

1. (Date unknown), 4:00 p.m.

2. January 17, 11:30 a.m.

3. February 12, 6:00 a.m.

4. February 14, 11:50 a.m.

5. February 14, 6-6:30 p.m.

6. February 16, 5-5:30 a.m.

7. Between February 17 & 21, 6:40 a.m.

8. February 21, 3:15 p.m.

9. February 21, 8:30 p.m.

10. February 22, 7-7:15 a.m.

11. February 22, 7:30-7:45 a.m.

12. February 23, 7:12-7:15 a.m.

13. February 24, 12:30 a.m. (Carmelita Shomo)

14. February 24, 2-2:15 a.m.

15. February 24, 4:30 a.m.

16. February 24, 7:20 a.m.

17. February 26 or 28, 6:45 a.m.

18. February 26, 2 p.m.

19. February 28, 6:45 a.m.

20. February 28, 12:30-12:45 p.m.

21. February 29, 6:15 p.m.

22. March 2, 10:30 a.m.

23. March 2, 10-10:30 a.m. (Alicia Showalter Reynolds)

It was near Mountain Run Road at 11:30 a.m. on January 17, 1996 that smooth-talking "Larry," the Route 29 stalker, first appeared on the Culpeper Bypass. He didn't pull over a woman again until 6 a.m. on February 12. He waited two more days before resuming his ruse twice on Valentine's Day.

And then things began to accelerate. Between February 16 and 21, he stopped four more women - then two on the 22nd, one on the 23rd, and three on February 24, in one case just an hour and a half after Carmelita Shomo was robbed and dragged near Independent Hill, about 40 miles away.

Darrell Rice later took an Alford Plea in the Shomo case. That means he acknowledged that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him, but he didn't admit guilt or serve any additional time on top of the sentence he was already serving for the attack on Yvonne Malbasha (that occurred a year later). There were five more Route 29 stops between February 26 and 29.

On March 2, the State Police received two reports of women being stopped. One of them was Alicia Showalter Reynolds. And then, police say, the series of pullovers ended.

You meet a hardy lot along the Appalachian Trail, some of whom are intent on braving all the perils of 2,159 miles of woods and mountains on a hike from Maine to Georgia.

But the slayings of two women - both accomplished backpackers and campers - just off the trail in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park has shaken people who sought peace and challenge in the Blue Ridge Mountains. “I'm definitely going to be looking over my shoulder on this hike,'' said Cindy Clymer, 42, of Charlotte, who was hiking with her husband and their 21-month-old son near Dark Hollow Falls off the scenic Skyline Drive. “I don't know who's going to get me out there.''

Park rangers found the bodies of Julianne Williams, 24, of St. Cloud, Minnesota, and Lollie Winans, 26, of Unity, Maine, Saturday in a backcountry campsite off a side trail within three miles of the popular Skyland Lodge. Autopsies revealed that the women died after their throats were cut, but investigators refused to say whether they had been sexually assaulted. A golden retriever named Taj, which had been with the women on the trail, was found unharmed in the woods nearby.

Knowledgeable hikers said it's important to keep the murders in perspective. The Appalachian Trail Conference, an organization based in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, that maintains and manages the trail, says 4 million people visit or hike the trail each year, yet there have been only nine murders on or near it in 22 years. “There is an expectation sometimes that the trail is a sanctuary from the creeps of the world, and it's not,'' said Brian King, a spokesman for the group. “People should always keep their street smarts with them,'' King said. “I think if people take normal precautions about strangers, that will serve them well.''

The enormously popular trail draws hikers from all over the Eastern seaboard, including Hampton Roads. “We have a very, very active hiking community here,'' said Lillie Gilbert, owner of Wild River Outfitters, an outdoor-supply store in Virginia Beach. Local hikers are “extremely concerned'' about the murders, she said. One of her employees, Kenny Harrah, is on the trail now. He set out from southwestern Virginia in early May, bound for the trail's northern end at Mount Katahdin, Maine. Harrah telephoned Gilbert on Tuesday from northern Pennsylvania. He hadn't heard about the murders in Virginia. But “he said it would not change his attitude about hiking the trail,'' Gilbert said. She said Harrah told her: “You've always got to be careful, stay alert and be aware of what's around you.''

Reese Lukei, past president of the Tidewater Appalachian Trail Club, said violence on the trail attracts disproportionate attention because it is so unusual. “The reason, I guess, it gets so much attention is that it's the last place in the world you'd ever expect something like this to happen,'' he said.

Both victims were trained wilderness camping and hiking guides. “They wanted to help other people learn to be in the outdoors,'' said Peggy Willens, spokeswoman for Woodswomen, a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based adventure/travel vacation organization for women. The women worked as interns for the group last summer, leading outdoor programs in Minnesota. “They were both very experienced outdoorswomen,'' Willens said.

Cindy Clymer was so frightened and angry about the slayings that she and her husband decided not to camp in the Shenandoah National Park on Tuesday night. “That person could still be lurking around,'' Clymer said.

Porter Teejarden, 23, of Providence, Rhode Island, and two of her girlfriends thought twice about continuing their hike in Virginia when they heard about the slayings. “For women it's real depressing because men don't have to worry about this half as much,'' Teejarden said.

Park officials and trail organizations already have begun receiving calls from people worried about loved ones on the trail. “I've gotten calls mostly from parents who are nervous. This morning I got a call from a man in Vermont who was very worried about his 18-year-old daughter, who is hiking the trail alone,'' said Wilson Riley, director of administration of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club. Nobody has canceled reservations for primitive cabins the club maintains along the trail, but hikers are much more safety-conscious, Riley said. “People are asking us, `What should we do,' and we tell them to take whatever precautions they feel are necessary,'' Riley said. “You are alone and out of sight of others and if someone has criminal intent, there's really no one around to witness it.''

Murder usually comes in pairs along the Appalachian Trail. Of the nine people killed on or near the trail since 1974, all but three died in double slayings, according to the Appalachian Trail Conference. In another case, two women were attacked but one survived. A list of the murders is as follows:

The Appalachian Trail occasionally has presented other perils. In 1990, through-hikers were warned not to camp along a 14-mile stretch of the footpath in Tennessee after fish-hook booby traps appeared there, apparently the work of local landowners embroiled in a dispute with the federal government. A trail shelter was burned to the ground along the same stretch of trail that summer.

Last year, there were 15 homicides in national parks, which cover 83 million acres, said National Park Service spokeswoman Anita Clevenger.

Lesbian hikers found slain in national park, couple planned to live together

The two female hikers slain in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park were lesbians who were romantically involved, according to sources who knew Julianne Williams, 24, of Burlington, Vermont, and Lollie Winans, 26, of Unity, Maine.

Investigators of the double murder would not say whether they are pursuing any gay-related motives or angles in the unsolved case, said Shenandoah National Park spokesperson Paul Pfenninger.

Park rangers found the bodies of Williams and Winans at a backcountry campsite near the Appalachian Trail at approximately 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 1st, the day after Williams' father reported the women missing. The bodies of the hikers, who had planned a five-day hike through the park, were found near Skyland Lodge, along Skyline Drive near Luray, Virginia. According to the medical examiner, the cause of death for both women was "an incised wound to the neck."

The investigation into the murders is being jointly conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Virginia State Police, and criminal investigators from the National Park Service. Many local law enforcement officials are also providing support, according to park spokesperson Pfenninger.

Pfenninger, who is acting as the public information officer on this incident, told the Blade that he asked investigators whether they were examining any gay-related angles but was told they would not comment on whether the murders could have been bias-motivated. "I asked [investigators] the question and they said they just can't talk about the investigation," Pfenninger said. "I explained why I needed to know, that the gay and lesbian community was concerned. One [investigator] I did talk to directly said we didn't have any evidence of that sort ... that they were lesbians."

Park officials said Tuesday that the slayings were "an isolated incident." According to the Washington Post, Pfenninger said that "something [investigators] found at the site led them to believe it was an isolated incident," but he would not say what this evidence was.

Pfenninger later said that park officials "do not know" if the murder or murderers will strike again, according to the Post, and by Wednesday, park officials were passing out fliers about the murder and warning campers to be careful. Pfenninger said he used the phrase "isolated incident" to mean investigators have no similar crimes at national parks to link the murders to. "I think the term 'isolated' is what everyone's getting hung up on," he told the Blade Thursday. "This particular case does not resemble any of the evidence [from] any other cases in the country. I think it was just a bad choice of words." John Donahue, spokesperson for the FBI's Richmond office, did not return a reporter's numerous telephone calls.

The Burlington Free Press reported Thursday that Donahue discounted a theory that the women might have been targeted because the killer believed they were lesbians. "There has been no indication that this is a hate crime of any particular type," Donahue said, according to the Free Press.

Tracy Conaty, a field organizer the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force who is an expert on anti-gay violence issues, said she had spoken with Donahue. According to Conaty, Donahue "said that they are looking at all the aspects. He did not understand why there was such a response from the gay and lesbian community [about the murders]. He said he's gotten over 200 phone calls since the murders."

According to friends and coworkers, both Williams and Winans were very active in the outdoors and shared an interest in women's issues. They met in the summer of 1995 while working at the Minneapolis-based organization Woodswomen Inc., a group that provides outdoor education for women, according to its executive director Denise Mitten.

The Shenandoah slayings reminded many gay activists of another attack on a lesbian couple eight years ago. In May 1988, a 28-year-old lesbian was fatally shot while camping with her lover near the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania. The victim, Rebecca Wight of Blacksburg, Virginia, was camping with her lover Claudia Brenner, 31, when the two were ambushed by Stephen Roy Carr, 28, who reportedly lived in an electricity-equipped cave nearby.

According to testimony provided by Brenner at a preliminary hearing, Carr surprised the two women after dark, shooting them while they were engaged in sex. Brenner, who was seriously wounded in the shooting, also testified that the women believed they were alone in the woods but that they had seen Carr at their campsite earlier that day and deliberately relocated in an effort to seek privacy. Carr was later convicted of first-degree murder in the Adams County Court of Common Pleas in Gettysburg, Pa. He was sentenced the following year to life in prison without the possibility of parole. "I feel like [Julianne Williams] was just getting her life together," said Stradler, whose church will hold a memorial for Williams on Sunday. "I'm reluctant to violate her reticence [to be openly Lesbian] and I want to be honest about who she was. It's important to celebrate who she was."

Claudia Brenner talks to the Matlovich Society in Portland Thursday about the shooting on the Appalachian Trail that wounded her and killed her companion in 1988.

Two weeks ago, the bodies of a Maine woman and her hiking companion were found on the Appalachian Trail, their throats brutally slashed.

Today, a woman who survived a similar attack will speak about anti-gay violence and safety on the Appalachian Trail at the annual Pride Rally in Portland.

Claudia Brenner of Ithaca, N.Y., will be the keynote speaker at the 11 a.m. rally in front of Portland City Hall. Brenner and her partner, Rebecca Wight, were blasted with a hail of gunfire on the trail on May 13, 1988, by a stranger who had seen them kissing. Brenner was shot five times, then managed to hike out four miles to get help. Wight took the rest of the bullets and bled to death under a tree.

Brenner says violence was the last thing she was expecting on that beautiful spring day in Pennsylvania. And she never imagined that it would happen again. But two weeks ago, it did. On June 1, rangers discovered the bodies of Julianne Williams, 24, of St. Cloud, Minnesota, and Lollie Winans, 26, of Unity, Maine, in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia. Williams and Winans were the eighth and ninth people killed along the 2,159-mile Appalachian Trail since 1974.

When Brenner heard about the recent murders, her reaction was "that it was horrible, and that it was somewhat depressing that the violence just continues."

There were some similarities between the two tragedies: Two women hiking alone on the Appalachian Trail. Same time of year. Speculation that the women were lovers. Brenner has chronicled her experience of murder on the Appalachian Trail in a book called Eight Bullets: One Woman's Story of Surviving Anti-Gay Violence.

Talking about her ordeal again and again to the media and the public hasn't had much impact on her personal healing process, Brenner says. But it has helped her feel she is making a contribution toward healing the hate that society directs toward gay men and lesbians. "What I've found is that there's a lot of compassion in the general public for me, for Rebecca, as there is for the two women that were killed just recently," she said. "I think it's an opportunity for me to remind people that compassion really needs to stretch across the spectrum . . . You not only feel compassion for someone whose life was taken," she continued, "but you also remember to feel compassion for the person who has (anti-gay) graffiti scrawled on their locker when they're in high school, or the young person who's family is rejecting them because they're gay."

Brenner and Wight met and fell in love at Virginia Tech University, where Brenner was studying to become an architect. When they set out on their fateful hike, Wight was finishing a master's degree in business and preparing to start working toward a doctorate at Penn State. Wight was "a very strong, centered person," Brenner recalls. "She was only 28 and had already achieved many goals in her life," Brenner said. "She was really happy outdoors, loved the outdoors, very physically fit."

If Brenner and Wight had been superstitious, they might have gone home that day instead of heading deeper into the Pennsylvania woods. The night before, they had parked their car near the trail, on a road with the foreboding name of "Dead Woman Hollow." That morning, Friday the 13th, they thought they were alone.

But someone was watching them. Stalking them. Stephen Roy Carr, who sometimes lived in a cave and carried a .22-caliber rifle, ran into Wight as she was getting ready for the day. She was nude.

"Got a cigarette?" he asked. Wight said no and hurried back to the tent. The two women quickly dressed and decided to find a more private campsite. As they left their camp, they ran into Carr again. "See you later," he said. "See you later," they politely replied and moved on. Later, when the women stopped to consult their map, Carr appeared again, his rifle over his shoulders. "Are you lost already?" he sneered. "No," Brenner said, "are you?"

By 5:30 that evening, the scary-but-brief encounters with the scruffy mountain man were a fading memory. But Carr had caught up to the two lovers and saw them kiss. He hated seeing women kiss, he later told police. So, from his hiding place in the woods, he started shooting.

Brenner was hit, and the two women ran to a nearby tree. Wight was shot in the head and back before she could make it to cover. Brenner - shot in the head, throat and upper body and bleeding badly - decided their only hope was for her to hike out for help. She managed to flag a motorist and make it to a hospital. Wight was not so fortunate. Bleeding and in pain, she lost her vision and died under the tree.

Carr ran, seeking shelter with a farm family who didn't realize he was a wanted man. Eventually he was captured and convicted of first-degree murder. He is serving a life sentence without parole.

Brenner, who turns 40 this month, rejects the notion that women might be safer if they take weapons on their hikes, to give them a fighting chance against someone like Carr. The idea of carrying a pistol on the trail "seems diametrically opposed to making it safer for all of us," she said.

And telling people they should simply try to be more alert to potential danger is akin to blaming the victim, she said. Besides, she and Wight tried to avoid Carr, and he still attacked them.

"The only protection against the kind of people that would slash throats and would shoot in the woods is to have a society that finds that behavior intolerable, unacceptable, and doesn't permit those kinds of attitudes to develop in their young people," she said.

"The guy who shot Rebecca and myself was a person who displayed anti-gay and basically dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors throughout his life, but he wasn't crazy," she said.

Four of the bullets that hit Brenner could have killed her. One shattered her back teeth. But other than some ongoing dental work, she has suffered no serious, long-term physical consequences from the shooting. Psychologically, she is more fragile. She has been treated off and on for post-traumatic stress disorder, which has manifested itself through sleeplessness, restlessness and anxiety. "It recedes in your life, but it doesn't necessarily go away," she said.

In the years following Wight's death, Brenner has tried to go backpacking again. "It hasn't been real fun for me, so it hasn't been something I've chosen to pursue. It hasn't been real relaxing," she said, laughing.

A Shenandoah National Park spokesperson said this week the murder of two women near Skyline Drive last week was an "isolated incident." He said something found at the site of the murders led investigators to this conclusion, though he refused to say what was found. But there is reason to believe the murders may not be "isolated."

At least four other couples have been murdered on park land in Virginia since 1986. Three of those four were at or very near known gay cruising areas. On of those four involved a female couple who, like the Skyline pair, were found with their throats slit.

In October 1986, the bodies of two athletic women, also in their 20's, were found with their throats slit on federal property known as the Colonial Parkway near Williamsburg, Virginia. The area was popular with couples as a "lovers' lane" site and was also situated very near a place known to be popular with gay couples. There were no signs that the women had struggled against their killer or killers and no sign of drug or alcohol use. Their bodies were fully clothed and there were no signs of sexual assault. Police ruled out robbery as a motive because their money was still with them. Their bodies were found in the back of a car belonging to one of the women; the car had been pushed down an embankment and into some thick shrubbery. Police found evidence that someone had attempted to ignite the vehicle.

Three other couples, all heterosexual, were found murdered in somewhat similar circumstances in the eastern Virginia area in 1987, 1988, and 1989. In 1987, a couple was found on Ragged Island, a place known for gay cruising near the James River in the Newport News area. In 1988, another couple's bodies were never found but their car was discovered at a pull-off along the same Colonial Parkway and about two to three miles from where the female couple's bodies were found. And in 1989, a couple's car was found at a rest stop on Interstate 64 between Richmond and Williamsburg and their bodies were found buried nearby. The rest stop had been the site of a brutal murder of a male nurse in 1986 by a group of Navy sailors. The FBI investigated the murders, but never identified suspects.

At left is a copy of a poster, released June 5, 1996, that was made by the National Park Service in conjunction with the FBI to offer a reward of $25,000 (later increased to $50,000) for information that leads to the arrest of the person or persons responsible for the deaths of Julie Williams and Lollie Winans. The murders of Julie Williams and Lollie Winans are still unsolved.

Their bodies were found at their backcountry campsite in the Shenandoah National Forest off Skyline Drive about a half-mile from Skyland Lodge in Virginia on Saturday, June 1, 1996. They were last seen alive on Thursday, May 24, 1996.

If you were in the Shenandoah Park or on the Appalachian Trail near Virginia between May 19 - June 1, 1996 and you think you may have seen either or both of these women and/or their dog, Taj, or any suspicious people in the area, please call America's Most Wanted at 1-800-CRIME-TV immediately. Or, if you were in the park during those two weeks and took any pictures or video tape, you could be holding crucial evidence without even knowing it. You are asked to call 1-800-CRIME-TV immediately. Sadly, it has been reported that there were signs of captivity at the crime scene, so these women may not have been alone when you saw them. Or, perhaps you saw their dog, Taj, with someone else? Somewhere, someone has information that could lead authorities to their killer(s).

The National Park Service waited two days to inform the public, including other campers and hikers in the area, of the murders. Shockingly, when the National Park Service did release the story, they quickly called it an " isolated incident" and simply urged hikers to "take precautions," but these women were outdoor group leaders for a group called Woodswomen, Inc. in Minneapolis, at least one of them was trained in self-defense, and they camped out of sight of other hikers, brought their dog, and did everything else that they were supposed to do! Few details about this case are being released, however, this case marks the fifth double-slaying on park land in Virginia since 1986. Read more about these "isolated incidents," including a frighteningly similar case which also involved two women who were found with their throats slit.

Transcript of the Saturday, July 20, 1996 America's Most Wanted segment about the murders of Julie Williams and Lollie Winans in Shenandoah National Park

[Host, John Walsh] The Shenandoah National Park, nestled in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains is a place where people come to get away from it all, to take in the scenic beauty of the Skyline Drive, to hike the Appalachian Trail. This peaceful setting is the last place Rangers expected to discover not one murder, but two.

[Ranger Clayton Jordan] This is the location where the Rangers found a campsite and found the bodies of Julianne Williams and Lollie Winans on June the 1st.

[FBI, Bill Falls] Their throats slashed and they were bound. It certainly was a brutal crime.

[Host, John Walsh] FBI and The National Park Service formed a task force, but a national forest is a hard place to locate a killer.

[Ranger Clayton Jordan] It certainly is very difficult to track a killer in this situation because we have hundreds of miles of backcountry trails and we're only less than a half of a mile from a road.

[Host, John Walsh] Finding witnesses in a park 105 miles long is proving even more difficult.

[FBI, Bill Falls] It makes for a tough investigation, for we have no witnesses at the crime scene itself, we really have no witnesses that can put people in the park with them.

[Host, John Walsh] With little else to go on, the task force is focusing on the victims to see if the killer was perhaps someone they knew. Twenty-four year-old Julie Williams was from Minnesota. Already an accomplished geologist, Julie worked for a time as a Park Ranger in Big Bend Texas.

[Julie's Father] What she liked to do and who she was, I think she probably gained some spirituality also in the woods and being outside. It was very important to her.

[Host, John Walsh] Twenty-six year-old Lollie Winans was from Michigan and finishing up college in Maine. Her dream was to work for Outward Bound, leading wilderness trips.

[Lollie's Father] Lollie was a caring beautiful young lady at the prime of her life and she was just in the midst of achieving a lot of the goals she had set out many years ago.

[Host, John Walsh] Julie lived in Vermont and often spent weekends with Lollie. They formed a special relationship and wanted to share their lives together.

[Julie's Roommate, Derek] When they were together it really seemed like they had a fantastic time together. They both really loved to spend time together outside, whether it was canoeing or hiking.

[Host, John Walsh] In June, Lollie was moving to Vermont, and both women were starting new jobs.

[Lollie's Friend, Ken] When I was talking to Lollie, she knew that she had a month between school and work, was looking forward to, you know, having some adventures, having some fun.

[Host, John Walsh] On May 18, the experienced back-packers decided to go exploring. They set off from Vermont and headed south to central Virginia to the Shenandoah National Park. Julie and Lollie arrived at the northern park entrance on May 19th, and got a camping permit for two nights. They stopped at Pinnacles' Overlook on Skyline Drive. Lollie's dog, Taj, went along on the trip. The FBI and Park Rangers retraced Julie and Lollie's trip and put together a timeline, using snapshots the women took themselves. May 20th, Julie and Lollie hiked down White Oak Canyon Trail to experience the spectacular waterfalls. Despite two days of rain, they got an extension on their camping permit at Thornton Gap on May 22nd.

[Ranger Barbara Stewart] They had registered to go backcountry camping from, I believe, the 22nd to the 27th of May. When I got a chance to talk to them about, you know, about other things, just in the few minutes, I liked them, and, I didn't know their names then, but they were nice folks.

[Host, John Walsh] On May 23rd, Julie and Lollie hiked to Pollocks Knob on the Appalachian Trail. They took this photo below Crescent Rock Overlook.

[FBI, Bill Falls] Friday, on the 24th, is the last day that we actually have pictures of them.

[Host, John Walsh] Julie and Lollie hiked up Hawksbill Mountain, the highest point in the park, and took a break with Taj at Bird's Nest Two. Tired from the trek, the women hitched a ride from Hawksbill, stopping near Skyland to find a campsite for the night.

[Ranger Clayton Jordan] One of our Park Rangers drove them to a parking lot located at the top of this trail and that is the last confirmed sighting of Julianne Williams and Lollie Winans alive.

[Host, John Walsh] The women set up camp off this hiking trail a half mile from Skyland Lodge. Some time between May 24th and June 1st, the wilderness that Julie and Lollie loved would become a witness to their murder.

[FBI, Bill Falls] Whoever did this, certainly went down there with the intention to murder these people. It was so cold-blooded, it was a methodical killing, he knew what he was doing, and I would almost say he did it without any conscience or remorse and went about his way.

[Host, John Walsh] On June 1st, Lollie's dog was found wandering near Skyland Lodge. Rangers who were already looking for the overdue campers zeroed in on the area and quickly made the gruesome discovery.

[Julie's Father] It was Sunday morning at 3:00, that we got the call, and that they had been identified, and that they were both dead.

[Lollie's Father] One just isn't able to believe that this would happen, and that it, in effect, was reality, and I was devastated, my heart was heavy.

[Host, John Walsh] For now, Julie and Lollie's deaths will remain a mystery. The killer's identity a secret held close by the wilderness.

[FBI, Bill Falls] We know that they were in the park, we know the last day that they were seen. Other than that, we don't know what really actually happened.

[Host, John Walsh] Now, there's not much to go on, but we can solve this case. The crucial time period is when the women were in the park between May 19 and June 1st. If you were in the park during that time, and saw these two women, agents need to know. Also if you took pictures or video tape in the park during those two weeks, you could be holding the clues that could solve this case. Two young women who were killed deserve justice. You could be the one to bring it to them. So please, if you know anything, anything at all, call 1-800-CRIMETV, and remember, you can remain anonymous.

Shenandoah Hikers', Parkway Murders Have Similarities, Investigators Are Studying Possible Connection Between Two Killings of Women

Noting a "striking" number of similarities, FBI agents in Norfolk are probing whether the recent slayings of two female hikers in Shenandoah National Park are possibly connected to the murders of two women on the Colonial Parkway 10 years ago.

The October 1986 murders of Rebecca A. Dowski and Cathleen M. Thomas became the first of four incidents FBI and State Police investigators believe may involve a serial killer and that have been dubbed by the media as the Parkway Murders.

On June 1 of this year, veteran hikers Julianne Williams and Lollie Winans were found dead in a back-country campsite in the Shenandoah park. "There are a striking number of similarities," said Supervisory Agent Bo McFarland with the FBI's Norfolk office. "We are looking into it to see if they are connected," McFarland said Tuesday.

Special Agent John Donahue, with the FBI office in Richmond, which is handling the Shenandoah investigation, said he knew of no investigation on his office's part, except that investigators have gone through the FBI database of murders to see if similarities exist. Other than what has already been released, Donahue would not elaborate on the specifics about the most recent murders, and McFarland declined to discuss the similarities in detail to protect the ongoing investigation.

However, from what investigators have released about both double slayings, similarities include:

(Labyrinth13 Note: The above article failed to note that all four murdered women were lesbians, a fact which may indicate an anti-gay bias in the murders).

The motive for the killings is unclear in each case. Robbery did not appear to be a motive because purses and wallets were still with the victims or their belongings. Investigators say Dowski and Thomas were found fully clothed and had not been sexually assaulted. Donahue refused to say whether Williams or Winans had been assaulted, pending further investigation.

Winans and Williams were good friends who planned to move in together, according to The Washington Blade, a gay newspaper in Washington which has called upon federal investigators to probe whether the killings were a hate-related crime.

Donahue said investigators have already gone through more than 500 leads since Williams and Winans were found June 1. Suspects were identified and then discounted, he said.

An FBI official said yesterday that the agency is studying similarities between the killings in May of two female hikers in Shenandoah National Park and a decade-old double homicide in eastern Virginia to determine whether the two might be connected.

Bo McFarland, special supervisory agent in the FBI's Norfolk office, said that no clear connection has been established between the two but that "the FBI has noted the similarities as just one aspect of the case. We're trying to pursue every angle possible."

On June 1, park rangers discovered the bodies of hikers Julianne Williams, 24, of St. Cloud, Minn., and Lollie Winans, 26, of Unity, Maine, at a remote campsite near the busy Skyland Lodge off Skyline Drive. Their throats had been slashed, and the FBI revealed last week that both women's wrists had been bound.

McFarland said FBI investigators are reviewing evidence to see whether there are links to the October 1986 killings of Rebecca A. Dowski and Cathleen M. Thomas, whose bodies were found on the Colonial Parkway in eastern Virginia. Dowski's and Thomas's wrists also were bound and their throats were slashed.

In both cases, investigators said, no evidence of robbery was discovered. Police said they found no evidence of sexual assault in the Colonial Parkway case. The FBI has declined to say whether the Shenandoah victims were sexually assaulted. If a direct connection is found, the Shenandoah case would mark the latest twist in what the FBI and Virginia State Police believe may be a serial murder case. It started with the deaths of Thomas and Dowski and involved three additional double homicides on the Colonial Parkway from 1987 through 1989.

McFarland said investigations of those cases yielded several suspects over the intervening years, but not enough evidence to make an arrest.

Murder of Hikers May Be Linked to 10-Year-Old Case; FBI: Shenandoah killings may involve more than one assailant

New information emerged this week about the investigation of the double-murder of a lesbian couple camping in Shenandoah National Park two months ago. An FBI agent investigating the case said the women's wrists were bound, indicating that whoever killed them most likely went to the women's secluded campsite with the intention of murdering them. Another FBI spokesperson said this week that the agency believes that the murders may have been committed by more than one assailant. And another FBI spokesperson confirmed this week that the agency is "considering the possibility" that the Shenandoah murders "might be" connected to the murder of a female couple on federal park land in Virginia 10 years ago. Appearing on a segment of the America's Most Wanted television program on Saturday, July 20, FBI investigator Bill Falls called the Shenandoah murders "brutal" and "cold- blooded" and said that the assailant appeared to kill without remorse.

The bodies of Julianne Williams, 24, and Lollie Winans, 26, were found on June 1st, with their wrists bound and their throats slashed. In an interview with the Blade this week, FBI agent John Donahue, who serves as spokesperson for the FBI's Richmond, VA., office, said the FBI believes the murders "could have been committed by more than one person."

If the women were killed by a lone assailant, Donahue said, "that person would have to have been very strong to have controlled the situation." Asked what he meant by "controlled," Donahue explained that "both of the women were experienced hikers, in excellent shape, well-conditioned . . . they were independent, confident, accomplished hikers. That brings us to the conclusion that more than one person could have been responsible for it."

Many of those same characteristics - including, apparently, that there were no signs of struggle at the Shenandoah scene - were true about the two women murdered together near Williamsburg, Virginia, in October 1986. Cathleen Thomas, 27, an Rebecca Dowski, 21, were found dead inside a car belonging to o