just once. It is hard to say which is worse.
Virginia’s Colonial Parkway Killer
Between 1986 and 1989, a serial killer stalked the Colonial Parkway, a scenic route that runs from Jamestown, through Williamsburg to Yorktown. The perpetrator specialized in abducting couples.
The first two victims were 27-year-old Cathleen Marian Thomas and 21-year-old Rebecca Ann Dowski, a lesbian couple who used to like to park at a secluded spot on the Parkway to make love in privacy. Cathleen Thomas was from Lowell, Massachusetts and was one of the 100 women of the class of 1981 at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis—the first co-educational graduating class at any federal military academy. She then became a stockbroker in Norfolk, Virginia. Her lover, Rebecca Ann Dowski, was from Poughkeepsie, New York. She worked as a senior business management major at the College of William and Mary.
On 12 October 1986, a jogger found their car, a Honda Civic, beside the York River, seven miles east of Williamsburg. The vehicle had been pushed down an embankment near an area of the Parkway popular with gay couples. The women’s bodies were discovered in the back seat of the car. A post mortem found rope burns on their wrists and necks, signs of strangulation and their throats had been slashed. Their purses and money were found inside the car, and there was no sign of a struggle. Both women were found fully clothed and there was no indication of sexual assault. Their bodies had been doused with a flammable liquid, and several matches were found. Detectives believe that the killer had tried to set the vehicle on fire. Failing, the culprit then pushed the car over the embankment, hoping it would career off the bluff into the York River.
Twenty-year-old David Lee Knobling of Hampton, Virginia and 14-year-old Robin M. Edwards of Newport News were last seen alive on Saturday, 19 September 1987. They had met at an arcade. The two of them left to cruise York County in Knobling’s black Ford pick-up truck with David’s brother and another friend. The three boys dropped Ms Edwards home before 11 p.m. and went back to the Knoblings’ home. But David Knobling left the house again soon afterward. It seems he must have gone back to pick up Ms Edwards.
The two were not reported missing until Monday morning because it was not unusual for David Knobling to spend a night or two away from home. Robin Edwards’ parents thought she might have run away, so they were waiting for the social services office in Newport News to open on the morning of the 21st to report their daughter’s disappearance.
David Knobling’s pickup was found on 21 September near the Ragged Island Wildlife Refuge at the foot of the James River Bridge. There were no signs of a struggle. The keys were in the ignition, the radio was on and Knobling’s wallet was on the dashboard. The driver’s door was open and the driver’s side window was wound halfway down.
“It was raining out that night,” said David’s mother Kathy Knobling. “So why would David have had the window down, unless someone with a badge approached him and asked for ID?”
Two pairs of underwear and Robin Edwards’ shoes were found in the vehicle.
A few days later, their two partially clothed bodies washed ashore almost two miles downriver on the south bank of the James River in Isle of Wight County, near Smithfield, Virginia. Robin Edwards’ bra was around her neck under her blouse and the belt on her jeans were undone. It is not known whether he had been molested by the killer or disturbed in her lovemaking with David Knobling. Knobling still had 13 quarters in the pockets of his jeans. The police believe that the two were marched more than 1? miles through the woods and down a wooden pier, where they were killed and dumped in the river.
Although Smithfield was on the other side of the James River from the Colonial Parkway, the murder of David Knobling and Robin Edwards was linked to that of Cathleen Thomas and Ann Dowski because the Ragged Island Wildlife Refuge was a well known gay cruising area—it became so popular in the early 1990s that it was closed to the public.
On 9 April 1988, Richard Keith Call (known as Keith) from Gloucester County, Virginia and 18-year-old Cassandra Lee Hailey were reported missing. They were students at Christopher Newport College in Newport News and had been out on their first date together.
At about 9 a.m. the next day, Call’s 1982 red Toyota Celica was found abandoned on the Colonial Parkway in Yorktown, Virginia by a ranger. The driver’s door was open. The keys were in the ignition and the front seat was folded forward. Keith’s watch was on the dashboard and Cassandra’s purse was on the passenger seat. All their clothes, including their underwear was on the back seat.
Keith’s brother, Chris, had been driving along the Parkway at about 4.30 a.m. when he noticed a parked car with a door or trunk open. But he was not certain if the car he saw was his brother’s. An employee at the Eastern State Hospital also saw a car with an open driver’s door at about 5.30 a.m. Neither body has ever been found, but both are presumed dead as their disappearance fitted a chilling pattern.
On the morning of 5 September 1989, 18-year-old Annamaria Phelps left her Virginia Beach home with 21- year-old Daniel Lauer, the brother of her fiance Clinton, both residents of Amelia County. They were last seen alive between noon and 1 p.m. at the rest stop for westbound Interstate 64 traffic in New Kent County. At 5.30 p.m., Daniel Lauer’s gold 1973 Chevrolet Nova was found at the rest area between Williamsburg and Richmond. The keys were in the ignition and the gas tank was three-quarters full. Annamaria Phelps’ purse was in the car, along with clothes that belonged to Daniel Lauer. There were no obvious signs of a struggle inside the car.
The following month, their remains were found by a hunter, covered with a blanket, in the woods less than a mile away. The state medical examiner determined that Annamaria Phelps had been stabbed to death. Phelps, too, had suffered stab wounds but, in his case, cause of death had not been officially determined. However, both were clearly the victims of homicide.
The FBI said that the crimes were related, but no one has ever been identified as the Colonial Park Killer. Investigators have speculated that the killer might be a law enforcement officer, possibly a policeman or a security guard, who had caught the couples in a compromising position in their cars and used the authority of their uniform to get them to get out without putting up a fight. Another theory is that the suspect is a rogue CIA agent from their major training facility known as “the Farm” at Camp Peary in York County.
Washington, D.C.’s Petworth Prostitute Killer
In 1998, the police in Washington, D.C. arrested a suspect in the deaths of two of six women whose bodies were found in the city’s Petworth neighbourhood over a 13-month period. Darryl D. Turner, aged 34, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of 39-year-old Jacqueline Teresa Birch and 34-year-old Dana Hill. Both women were known to have worked as prostitutes.
Jacqueline Birch’s body was found on 18 November 1997 inside a building about three miles north of the Capitol Building, next door to where Turner lived. Dana Hill lived in the same block as Turner. Her body was found on 1 December 1997 behind an abandoned fast food restaurant about 1? miles from the Capitol. Both women died from manual strangulation.
Five women who lived in the neighbourhood or visited frequently had turned up dead since November 1996. Three of them were found inside a pair of gutted buildings. The torso of a sixth woman who was thought to have frequented the neighbourhood was found in an alley nearby.
The Princeton Place Task Force that arrested Turner was put together in November 1997, after the community began weekly meetings and
On 5 January 2001, Turner was charged with a third murder—that of 32-year-old Toni Ann Burdine. A known drug-user and prostitute, she was found in an open field in the north-eastern section of the city where Turner lived, on 4 May 1995. After Turner’s arrest, the police had reopened the Burdine case and the authorities were able to match DNA in the semen taken from her body to Turner’s. Turner pleaded not guilty to all three murders.
But killings of other women in the neighbourhood who worked as prostitutes remain unsolved. The cases still open are those of 28-year-old Lateashia Blocker, whose body was found in 1995 in the same empty house as
