Trailed, p.8
Trailed, page 8
In the meantime, Karen Malmquist, a dispatcher for the park, was assigned the job of acting as runner. Later, she and Bobby Fleming would marry. But on that night, she was a twenty-three-year-old working an entry-level job in the park. One of the rangers at the murder scene first radioed and asked Malmquist to bring a shotgun down to the scene, presumably out of concern that the assailant might still be in the area. Later, they asked her to bring food and water.
And then they all continued to wait.
Sunday, June 2, 1996
12:18 a.m.
True to their word, the state police investigators arrived at Shenandoah National Park not long after midnight. They were joined at 2:00 a.m. by several FBI agents. Together, along with Tim Alley and another senior ranger, they began the dark walk to the crime scene. Alley remembers that the adjacent stream was raging that night—even in the dark, he could hear that the water had grown wide and deep. The resulting rapids were loud enough that it was difficult to have a conversation.
Using their flashlights, the investigators attempted to assess the scene. They pulled back the crown of both sleeping bags and observed that the women had been gagged. They made note of the fatal wounds on both necks. They then inventoried the backpacks, removing the contents as they jotted down each item. They took a few Polaroids and then made the decision not to process the rest of the crime scene until daylight: even with all the flashlights, it was just too dark to really see anything.
Alley appointed several rangers to secure the scene and stand watch for the night. The remaining investigators slowly made their way back up the trail. They’d all try to catch a few hours of sleep in a vacant ranger apartment located at Skyland and then return again at first light.
Alley hurried ahead of the rest of the crew to make the phone calls he’d been dreading. He first tried Lollie’s mom, Laura, who was sound asleep at her estate in Grosse Pointe. We have found the bodies of two deceased women in the park and believe that one of them may be your daughter, Alley said. I am very sorry. Laura Winans received the news in such a state of shock he couldn’t tell if she actually comprehended what he had told her. Next, the ranger called Tom Williams. There’d been no positive ID, of course, but it seemed pretty clear they’d finally found his daughter and that she was dead. Williams thanked him and said he’d be on the first flight to Virginia.
Sunday, June 2, 1996
3:30 a.m.
Back on the Bridle Trail, the state police investigators and remaining rangers couldn’t help but speculate on the similarities between this crime and another recent murder in the area. Exactly three months prior, Alicia Showalter Reynolds, a pharmacology doctoral student at Johns Hopkins, had awoken early in her Baltimore apartment. She showered and dressed, then kissed her husband of two years goodbye and slipped into her white Mercury Tracer. Petite with shoulder-length hair and freckled cheeks, Showalter Reynolds looked far younger than her twenty-five years. That morning, she was on her way to rendezvous with her mother, Sadie, in their native Charlottesville, Virginia. Alicia’s twin brother was about to be married, and the two women needed dresses for the ceremony.
The drive normally took about three hours. Alicia was always prompt. After waiting more than an hour for her daughter to arrive at the store, Sadie found a pay phone and called Alicia’s husband, Mark. He confirmed that she’d left on time and should have arrived by then. They talked about what to do next. The most direct route would have taken Alicia south on I-95, around the DC Beltway, and then southwest on US Route 29. In 1996, that remote stretch of state highway cut mostly through woodlands and agricultural fields: if your car broke down there, you’d most likely wait a while before help arrived. Mark offered to call the state police. They told him a trooper would take a swing through that stretch and, in the meantime, they’d issue a BOLO for Alicia’s car.
State troopers eventually found Showalter Reynolds’s Tracer two miles west of the town of Culpeper and about twenty-five miles east of Shenandoah’s Thornton Gap entrance station. The car was parked on the side of the road, a white take-out napkin tucked under a windshield wiper—a common indicator left by a driver to say, Hey, my car broke down; I’m working on getting it towed. The troopers noted several cigarette butts and a pair of black gloves lying next to the vehicle. They knocked on the doors of a few nearby houses. Several residents there said the same thing: the driver of the Tracer, a young-looking brunette, appeared to be having car trouble. A clean-cut man, probably in his midthirties, wearing a flannel shirt and jeans and driving a dark pickup truck, stopped to help her out. She climbed into his truck, and they both left the scene. Later that day, a local police officer found one of Showalter Reynolds’s credit cards lying on the side of a road back in the town center of Culpeper. Two days later, a woman discovered Showalter Reynolds’s size 2 jacket lying in the mud near a remote pond about ten miles away. There was still no sign of Alicia. State police escalated their missing-person’s search.
As news of Showalter Reynolds’s disappearance spread, women—twenty in all—started coming forward. Their stories were disturbingly similar: all about a clean-cut Caucasian man, thirty-five to forty years old, driving a dark pickup truck, who would pull up alongside them, frantically waving and motioning for the women to pull over. Those women who ignored him watched with increasing fear as he exploded in a tirade before eventually speeding off. Those who complied and pulled over met a polite good Samaritan. Most of the women said the same thing: the man now known as the Route 29 stalker was articulate, concerned. He always offered a gentle variation on the same theme—I saw sparks flying underneath your car. If I were you, I’d have that looked at. Never pushy. Just worried about their safety. If anything, he seemed maybe a little patronizing or parental. Three of the women accepted his offer of a ride to a nearby gas station. They later told police the man appeared to be about six feet tall, with reddish-brown hair parted on one side. He was clean shaven and wore a wedding ring. The interior of his truck was immaculate. He made pleasant conversation and waited until they had found a station attendant before driving away.
“He was so nice,” one woman told the Associated Press (AP). “Unbelievably friendly.”
As with the other vehicles, nothing discernably wrong could be found with Alicia Showalter Reynolds’s SUV. Police suspected that the stalker had used a similar ruse to get her to pull over. Using information from the other women who came forward, FBI profilers began creating a composite of Showalter Reynolds’s suspected abductor. At press conferences, they speculated that the man had spent that winter practicing his routine and getting up the nerve to commit a serious crime. Maybe those other three women he dropped off at gas stations didn’t fit his profile of an ideal victim. Maybe they seemed like they’d put up too much of a struggle. The profilers theorized that as time went on, the stalker had become bolder and more persuasive.
These pronouncements intensified the growing fear in the Shenandoah region. Women began buying handguns and pepper spray. They told spouses and family members that they were afraid to drive alone. And still there was no sign of Alicia Showalter Reynolds.
Then, early in the morning on May 6, a logger was making his way to a cleared patch of woodlot in rural Lignum, an unincorporated village about twelve miles southeast of Culpeper. The woodlot itself was located on a barren gravel road and abutted the Rapidan River. As the logger picked his way through the bark and tangled limbs from the most recent cut, he noticed a committee of turkey vultures swooping overhead. The logger followed their path, walking down an incline and deeper into the razed detritus of the cut. Just shy of the river lay a partially buried body. It was too badly decayed for the logger to know if he was looking at a man or a woman. But whatever lay before him was undeniably human.
The same state police crime scene investigators walking up the Shenandoah Bridle Trail in the early morning hours of June 2, 1996, were also the first called to the Showalter Reynolds scene. The terrain where Showalter Reynolds’s body had been found was so rugged that they’d requested—and received—assistance from park law enforcement rangers. For most of the rangers, Showalter Reynolds’s case was the first violent crime they’d ever worked. Initially, the state of decomposition had made determining the cause of death difficult, but the state medical examiner eventually found evidence of asphyxiation and ruled her death a homicide.
The ruse to get Alicia Showalter Reynolds to pull over, the gloves near her vehicle, the way her personal effects had been deliberately scattered around the area all suggested that this was a meticulously executed crime. Investigators knew that alone was a rarity: nationwide, fewer than 10 percent of all murders are premeditated. Most, instead, erupt sloppily and from a quick, unplanned chain of events: a robbery goes bad; a bar fight escalates; a domestic abuser arrives home drunk and belligerent. Showalter Reynolds’s assailant, by contrast, had clearly planned out what he was doing. He’d no doubt gotten away with crimes in his past, and all signs suggested he’d act again. Investigators told residents in the region to be on the lookout for someone who probably seemed like the guy next door. He was dependable, helpful to neighbors.
“It’s very important to catch this guy,” the lead detective had told reporters in mid-May. “Alicia is the first homicide he’s committed, but if we don’t catch him, he’ll kill again. Once you do it—once you kill—it’s no big deal the second time.”
Two weeks later, walking up the dark and empty Bridle Trail, no one had to articulate what the officers were now thinking: it looked like they might now have a serial killer on their hands.
5
Sunday, June 2, 1996
6:15 a.m.
Tim Alley and the other investigators returned to the murder scene. They began by laying the bodies of both women, still in their sleeping bags, atop a bright blue tarp. Then they unzipped the bags. The on-site state police crime lab technician recorded what appeared to be small contusions on the women’s arms, chests, and faces. He made note of the two gags, both apparently fashioned from the women’s long underwear. Duct tape was wound tightly around both women’s wrists, binding their arms behind their backs. Lollie’s ankles were also bound with what appeared to be a third piece of long underwear belonging to the women. The technician also observed no obvious sign of decomposition. Investigators took photos of the women lying prone, as they were found, then rolled them onto their backs and took additional pictures. They then rezipped the sleeping bags.
More local law enforcement officers began to arrive. Most just stood around, awaiting instruction and drinking coffee. Rangers came and went. One of them noticed a discarded duct tape roll on the trail, a few hundred yards up from where the women’s bodies had been found.
Nine miles to their south, Ken Johnson and several members of the Virginia State Police Investigative Unit met with Greg Stiles, the assistant superintendent of the park. They told him the crime scene was complex. Preliminary evidence suggested a double homicide. Stiles thanked them. He sat down and penned a confidential memo outlining his thinking on the case, along with possible scenarios that would explain how two people had come to die in his park. Probably, he concluded, “one woman killed the other, then had committed suicide,” he wrote. “This was considered the most likely scenario as they were apparently in a romantic relationship, and one of the women allegedly had previous drug and alcohol problems based on other information developed as a result of the search investigation.” Aside from Lollie’s occasional use of recreational drugs at school, there was no evidence either women had a regular drug habit, let alone a problem; nor was there any evidence either woman had any issue with alcohol. Nevertheless, Stiles concluded that any lingering danger to park-goers was unlikely. He wrote down his justification for this conclusion in a ten-point bullet list, which outlined factors including the rarity of stranger-on-stranger homicides and the low murder rates in national parks. He noted that previous murders in Shenandoah had been isolated incidents and that except for immediately after the killings, few visitors were endangered. He also noted the lack of reported crime or suspicious activity in the park over the previous two weeks. Finally, he stated that most homicides are committed by people who are not only known to their victims but who also are in some kind of domestic relationship with them. Without naming her, he stated that one of the women in this case had just ended her romantic relationship with a man and, as a result, was about to move out of the residence she shared with him. This final justification was, of course, also false: Julie and her roommate were not in a romantic relationship and had lived together platonically. Lollie, who had been briefly engaged two years earlier, hadn’t lived with her former fiancé, Ken, in over eighteen months.
In his confidential memo, Stiles went on to speculate that once news of the women’s deaths became public, park visitors would clamor for a heightened law enforcement presence. The park already had a ranger shortage. Those on staff were going to quickly tire with all the extra overtime and would need rest. Stiles theorized that AT thru-hikers had probably already heard rumors of the deaths and so would be policing themselves. He determined no further action was required there. After listing all these reasons, Stiles concluded the memo with his final determination:
Decision: wait until news organizations discovered the incident on their own before making any announcement.
Sunday, June 2, 1996
7:00 a.m.
The group of five friends woke early at a motel in nearby Luray and prepared to set out on a weeklong backpacking trip. Three of them, commonly called “the Annes” because they share a first name, had met in a physical therapy graduate program several years earlier and had become instant friends. On this particular trip, they were joined by a favorite couple of theirs, Chip and Laura. All five individuals were young, fit, and adventurous. They were also brand new to the world of backpacking, so they had planned their trip with what they admit was an overzealous amount of detail.
For years, the Annes had been talking about doing a section hike on the AT, but they worried it would be too dangerous for three women alone. They eventually settled on Shenandoah because they figured that as a national park, it would be the safest part of the trail. They mapped out each day’s itinerary on three-by-five-inch notecards and did all the research they could on clothing, gear, water, and food. By their count, they made at least ten different trips to an outdoor store, making sure they had the right backpacks and boots and water purifiers. With each visit, their excitement built: the trip, they were certain, was going to be amazing.
When it came time to pack, they went heavy on luxury items, including cribbage boards, beach towels, and extra shoes. It would add a burdensome amount of extra weight, but they figured they could jettison what they didn’t need along the way. Their planned itinerary was a seven-day traverse of the trail as it passed through Shenandoah National Park: 101 miles in total. They would begin near the park’s north entrance and shuttle their two cars along the way, making it easy to drop off gear if need be.
On the morning of Saturday, June 1, the three Annes rendezvoused in Philadelphia, then drove the four hours to Shenandoah. There, they met up with Chip and Laura, went out for an early dinner, and then bunked in a couple of cheap motel rooms for the night.
Just after dawn, the fivesome arrived at Shenandoah’s north entrance station, obtained their backcountry permits, and began their hike. They estimate they’d been under way for less than an hour—just a couple of miles, really—before they met their first thru-hiker. He was skinny, rugged looking, about thirty or forty. The Annes were thrilled: after all that time thinking about the trail, it felt like meeting a celebrity. One of them had a film camera in her pack; she asked if she could take the thru-hiker’s picture. He agreed. As she was rummaging through her backpack, he seemed to grow nervous. He asked the group where they were heading and how long it would take them to get there. He also wanted to know if they were planning on going anywhere near Skyland. Had they heard what happened there? It was crazy last night, they remember him saying, what with those two girls getting killed.
It wasn’t just the content of what this thru-hiker said that so bothered the group. There was also something about his demeanor—the way he seemed to be probing them for information. They also felt as if he really wanted them to know about his own itinerary: where, exactly, he’d been the previous few days, and that a friend was going to pick him up just outside the park and drive him farther north. Once he finished the AT, the hiker said, he planned to immediately hop a plane for California and the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail.
Growing leery, the Annes told him they’d better start walking again if they were going to maintain their own itinerary. As soon as the hiker was out of earshot, the fivesome stopped to debrief. What had just happened there? Was the thru-hiker a freak? Was he just messing with them? And how could he know what had happened forty miles south of them—easily a two-, or even three-day hike from where they had begun?
The Annes didn’t know that at the time the only people informed about the murder of Julie and Lollie were their respective families and the investigators involved. But what the hiker had said to them was enough for them to contemplate abandoning their trip altogether. They talked it over and eventually decided to keep hiking.
A few miles later, the trail emerged in a parking area. There, the Annes found a ranger sitting in his truck. They approached him to find out what was really going on—and if what the thru-hiker said was true.
We’re not saying anything, the ranger told them. There’s crime everywhere. Just be careful.
The Annes described to the ranger their planned itinerary, which would have them at Skyland in two days. They asked if they should change their plans. Nope, he assured them, You’re good. Walking away, the group reconsidered their plans once again. In the end, they decided to keep going. Maybe the thru-hiker was some kind of kook, they concluded. If we were walking right toward a violent crime scene, surely the rangers would have to tell us.
