Crime Junkie - SERIAL KILLER: On The Colonial Parkway (Part 1)

Episode Date: December 3, 2018

In 1986, park rangers near Virginia's Colonial Parkway get notified of a possible traffic accident. When rangers arrive, they are confronted with a violent scene. The deaths of Cathleen Thomas and Rebecca Dowski. Though it is brutal and seemingly unprovoked, the public doesn't start getting truly concerned until two more young people, Robin Edwards and David Knobling, are murdered just off the Parkway. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/colonial-parkway-part-1/    

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt, but I don't think you're Ashley Flowers. You do not sound good, girl. Yeah, it's rough. So I am the voice of what once was a healthy Ashley Flowers. I'm struggling to make it through. And of course, I pick like the craziest case to get sick on because, as you know, we always do so much research, as much as we can on our cases. And even though our episodes are short, we try to pack them with facts. So most of our half hour episodes take over 20 to 30 hours of researching and writing. But this case with eight victims, four crime scenes, and over 30 years of investigations is one that took me more than

twice as long. My head is still spinning from all the information. And it is again, like I picked the longest case to tell you guys why I'm sick. So I apologize for my voice. But I would like to give a special thanks to one of the victim's brothers, Bill Thomas. He was kind enough to kind of help guide me in my research. And he pointed me to some of the best and most reliable sources to help tell his sister's story and the stories of these seven other families who are now all tied together in infamy through the Colonial Parkway. The Colonial Parkway is a 23 mile stretch of road running through some of the most historic spots in Virginia. It's two lanes separated by a grassy median that's beautiful in the day,

but really eerie come nightfall. Without streetlights for miles, the night gave cover to very secret acts, some more sinister in nature than others. On Saturday night, October 12, 1986, park rangers in the area got a report of a possible traffic accident. Passersby reported seeing a car off the side of an embankment. When they arrived on scene, they saw a car hanging over the side at a 45 degree angle, just like reported. A couple of rangers tried to like shimmy down this bluff area following the path that the car had created. They were slipping and sliding the whole way down and the car would have gone over into the river, but not for this big patch of large bushes. When they reached the car, they saw that this was more than just a serious

accident like they had anticipated. There were two people inside the car still. Fearing these two people had been hurt in the accident, not knowing how long they'd actually been in there, the rangers smashed the back window to get to them. When the glass shattered, they saw a sight much worse than anything they had imagined. The passengers were dead, but it was clear their injuries weren't from any kind of vehicle accident. There were two women in the car, one who was laying in the back seat with her foot jammed between the driver's seat and the front door and another woman in the hatchback. Both women's throats had been slit beyond ear to ear with some blood pooling beneath each one of them and the woman in the trunk had been almost nearly decapitated. The rangers knew

right away that they weren't equipped for this case and the same night the bodies were found, they called in the FBI. When the FBI arrived, they took photos and then had the car towed back up to the road. As they processed the scene, the case became even more perplexing. Inside the car, they found ID for two women. 27-year-old Kathleen Thomas was the woman found in the hatchback and 21-year-old Rebecca Dalsky was the woman in the back seat. They learned that the car they were both in belonged to Kathleen and inside was a mess. It was hard to make heads or tails of the crime scene because it was basically tipped over and everything inside had been kind of flung everywhere. They did find that the keys were still inside the car, somewhere on the driver's side,

and on the passenger floor was a church flyer and a Carly Simon album. In the rear of the vehicle, they found a blue blazer on a hanger, a jacket, a gym bag, and shorts stained with blood along with a blue cardboard carton of some kind. Now there was something of interest actually on the victims. The killer had doused their bodies in diesel fuel and there were matches that appeared to have been struck in and around the car. So I grew up on a farm and most of our vehicles used diesel fuel growing up and one thing I do know is that it doesn't ignite like gasoline does. It has a much higher ignition point and you really have to almost prep it to be ignited. It doesn't just work like regular gasoline. Exactly. And that's why their bodies were incinerated. Whoever killed

them was trying really hard to get rid of their bodies, pushing the car over the side, trying to light it on fire in an attempt to cover up their crime. But the diesel fuel in particular is a clue into the identity of the killer that I think a lot about. Did they use or come in contact with diesel fuel a lot without really knowing anything about it and how it worked? Or did they perhaps just like grab the wrong can thinking that they grabbed gasoline and they didn't discover their mistake until they were already at the crime scene? Well, and I kind of wonder too, did the killer bring the diesel with him as like part of the plan? Was it something he decided to do when he got there and he had on him like his own vehicle

uses diesel and he siphoned it out? Or after the car didn't fall, did he go get it and come back to the scene? I think all of those are plausible and all three ideas have been postulated by other investigators and authors. And to this day, no one really knows. Now, nothing inside the car seemed to point to a specific suspect. So the investigating agents hope that the autopsies will be able to reveal some clues as to why these women were attacked and who the perpetrator was. What the autopsy showed was heartbreaking. The women had been dead for at least 24 hours before being discovered. There was partially undigested food in their stomach suggesting that they had eaten a meal shortly before their death. Do we know what kind of food it was? I don't. And I'm

not sure if the investigators knew either. I would assume that this is a detail they would know, but I would think if they did, we would know more about their last movements and where they might have ate at, which you'll learn later. We really don't. It was found out that both women had actually been strangled before having their throats cut. Now, there was speculation from people about whether they were strangled from the front or strangled from behind. And despite theories, I tend to think it was from behind based on a 1991 article where the lead FBI agent at the time was interviewed. He was the second agent to ever take over the case. And the article specifically says strangled from behind. Now that could have been an assumption by the author or just like

a stretch made. But until someone else has a better source or proof, I think that we have to rely on that. So they're strangled and then have their throat slit. That seems like overkill by a lot. I would agree. And using two types of method feels like a very passionate hate filled act. But you have to remember, too, the killer tried to push the car into the river, then light it on fire, both acts, which were unsuccessful. So I also think it could be actions of somebody who doesn't know what they're doing or like had this plan that just went totally awry. The cause of death for Kathleen and Becky for both of them was strangulation. So they were likely brain dead after the strangulation. But the autopsy showed that their hearts were still pumping blood

at the time of their throat injuries. So what I'm thinking is if the killer was checking for a pulse, like he strangles them, he probably looked dead. Yeah, they looked dead, but he's still feeling a pulse. So he assumed they're still alive. The strangulation didn't work. I can imagine that the killer is kind of like panicking and just spiraling. And maybe that's what's all part of it. Or again, like we said to begin with, maybe this really was just a crime of passion. And he, whoever he or she was, hated these women. Now, during the autopsy, they were able to find one tiny piece of physical evidence in Kathleen's hair. There was a one inch piece of plastic line or rope. And investigators believe this was the type of rope used to kill both women.

And they think maybe it got left there if the killer had cut her throat while the line was still wrapped around her neck. Both women had signs of being handled roughly bruises in a bunch of different places. And there was even a handprint on Kathleen's butt. Now, Kathleen also had at least one marking that appeared to be a defensive wound. She had this cut in the webbing of her hand between her thumb and her pointer finger. This could have either happened while she was grabbing at the rope around her neck or if she came in contact with the knife before she was strangled. So that was the only defensive wound? Yeah. And that's something that's baffling about this case. How a person or persons is able to get two strong healthy women to comply

and be overtaken with almost no defensive wounds is part of why I think this case has spawned so many crazy theories. Absolutely no one can explain it. I hate asking this question, but I know our listeners are probably wondering too. Was there any evidence of sexual assault? Actually, no, neither woman was sexually assaulted. But if it wasn't sex motivating this crime, investigators wondered what could have been driving the killer. And as they dig deeper into the lives of their victims, Kathleen and Becky, they wonder if maybe this wasn't a hate crime instead. You see, Kathleen and Becky were actually girlfriends, something that they didn't advertise back in the 80s because, well, it was the 80s and it was the 80s in Virginia. And there

wasn't the same kind of open and accepting attitude towards gay and lesbian relationships that I like to believe exist today. Did either their families know about the relationship? So Kathleen's family did. They had known for some time and Becky was actually Kathleen's second serious girlfriend and they were looking forward to actually meeting her that Thanksgiving. Now, Becky's family, however, did not and they for a long time had trouble really accepting it and wrapping their heads around it because Becky had been in a serious relationship with a man right before Kathleen and she had never talked to her family about being gay. So I think it was hard for them to like really grasp and believe since they were never able to talk to Becky about it.

And I think all of this kind of fed into why they weren't super open about it. Being in a lesbian relationship was new for Becky. Kathleen was actually part of the second class ever of women to graduate from the Naval Academy and her time in the Navy was hard, not just because she was a woman, but back then the military actively were investigating and searching for homosexuals to dishonorably discharge. And she'd been investigated in the past, which is why she ended up leaving the Navy and going to work as a stockbroker. So again, they're keeping this like kind of on the down low, like they they're in a relationship together. Some people know about it, but they're not open. And as investigators are learning more about their victims, a picture of their last

days is starting to come together. Now Kathleen was 27 and had her own apartment, but Becky was 21 and a student at William and Mary living in the dorms. And the dorms and the campus are like 45 minutes one way from Kathy's apartment. So it wasn't unusual for them to go out to the parkway on weeknights when they wanted to be alone or have privacy to be intimate. Now the last time the investigators could pin down the locations of both girls was Thursday, October 9th. And they were found on the 12th, right? Right. And then the coroner said they were dead at least 24 hours before their bodies were found, correct? Right. So on the 9th, their last scene on the Williams and Mary campus, we know that Becky was using a computer

and Kathleen was seen with her at around 6 30. And around 6 30, she logs off, went to another hall where she logged on to a different computer to use the printer. This was the last time either of them were confirmed to have been seen. And I should note this is Thursday, right before a fall break. And Becky had her car all packed up to go home. She had just one more day of classes on Friday the 10th, but she never showed up for them. And her car sat unmoved, loaded with clothes to go home. Because Becky never showed up for classes. And because they had food in their stomachs, the prevailing theory is that they likely died the same night that they were last seen. They probably went to grab dinner together. There's one unconfirmed sighting of them at a

restaurant near the parkway and well away from campus. So the thought is maybe they ate there, but it's not confirmed. And then investigators are thinking maybe they went out to the parkway, like which is a known lovers lane, a spot that they were very familiar with, to be alone that night, the night before Becky was going to leave for fall break, and they weren't going to see each other for a while. So out there on that dark stretch of road, they encountered someone. Now where exactly they encountered this person and how long the car really was hanging off that embankment are all still unknown to this day. But there is something I didn't mention about the car that I really need to point out. Because inside the car,

along with the keys and the random items scattered about, was Kathleen's wallet. It was left out. Was anything taken from the wallet? Did it still have her money in it? Nothing was taken. Everything was still in it. What does that mean? Well, I don't really know for sure, but it's strange and it's just one of those things to keep in the back of your mind as we continue to talk through this case and about how two girls, one a former Navy grad and the other who by the way was an athlete, could be subdued and taken control of with little to no struggle. Because if you think about it, if you're in a car,

not at a drive-through, when is the only time you pull out your wallet? For a police officer. Yeah, if you think that you're being stopped by an authority figure, someone you'd willingly comply with until it was too late. At first, this wallet thing didn't hold much significance. Surely this was a crime of passion. So they looked at people in the women's lives. Could Kathleen's ex have been jealous enough to kill Kathleen and her new lover? This was a theory that investigators gave a lot of attention to.

But one tiny problem. Kathleen's ex is actually the one who introduced her to Becky. She didn't care that they were together. She was happy for them. So was it Becky's ex? According to the FBI, he was a quote, hot-tempered Muslim man who didn't believe in homosexuality. Uh, I can only imagine the racial stereotyping that went on in that conversation. Oh, I'm sure. But he luckily had an alibi. He was two hours away in DC around the time that they were thought to have gone missing. So he was removed from the suspect list just like Kathleen's ex. So what now? They're out of exes. None of their family members are good suspects.

They have to start considering a stranger did this. But how on earth do you find a stranger? Well, lucky for the FBI, there was a new division, the behavioral analysis unit, which today we are all familiar with because of shows like Criminal Minds and Mindhunter. But in 1986, the BAU was in its infancy, but they pulled their team together to try and profile this killer. And here are a couple of things that they found most intriguing. That piece of plastic line or rope that was found in Kathleen's hair, it very well could have been nautical line. Additionally, diesel fuel that was poured on the bodies, a lot of boats tend to run on diesel fuel, whereas you don't find it in a lot of cars, sometimes in trucks, but not in your everyday car.

Additionally, the cuts made to both women's necks were made with a extremely sharp knife, not just your average switchblade or kitchen knife. This one would be similar to the kind used to gut fish. I was going to suggest a filet knife. Yeah, now all of this, the BAU said, pointed to some kind of waterman. Someone who works on boats is somewhat of a nomad, lives paycheck to paycheck. He could either hate women or he could hate lesbians specifically. There were a couple of suspects who came to the surface when this theory first came out, but no one panned out and no arrests ended up being made. When the exes didn't pan out, and when no watermen seemed to fit the bill, the FBI started to look at those rangers that were

first on the scene. This is when they start looking at that wallet. Could it have been some kind of authority figure? One in particular was named Clyde Yee. But Clyde was able to pass a polygraph and through that, he too was ruled out as a suspect. Slowly the leads dried up. As tragic as this case was, the investigators really believed it was an isolated incident. They even said in a press conference that they were treating it as such. And whether it was destined to happen, or already planned, or maybe, just maybe, that was a taunt to the madman watching. Months later, another crime would occur on the parkway, making everyone question whether Kathleen and Becky were just the first in a line of brutal killings on the parkway to come.

It was September 20, 1987, when by a total fluke, 14-year-old Robin Edwards meets 20-year-old David Noblin. The two had no reason for meeting and likely never would have if all the stars didn't align just so that night. If Robin hadn't have accepted a date to the movies from David's younger cousin Jason, if Judy, David's mom, wouldn't have gotten a migraine that night and asked David to drive Jason and Robin to the movies for her. If it wouldn't have rained, Robin probably would have rode in the back of the truck with Jason instead of riding in the cab of the two-seater truck with David where they got to talking. If David hadn't have been currently off with his on-again, off-again, pregnant girlfriend, maybe he would have had plans that night with her,

and he wouldn't have been free to make plans to meet up later that night with Robin. The date that she was on with Jason seemed uneventful. The movie Robin and Jason were supposed to go see was sold out, so Robin, Jason, David, and David's brother all went to an arcade instead. Now, David's brother would recall how strange it was to learn that Robin and David were together later that same night because they said the whole night at the arcade. They didn't say a word to each other. Robin was with Jason the entire time, and the only time Robin and David could have even talked would have been in the cab of the truck where tops they spent 20 minutes together. And no one knows exactly what was said, but something for sure was said because after everyone

was dropped off at home for the evening, Robin by 11.15 to meet curfew and call her mom and David around the same time to eat pizza and watch a movie with his family, the two ended up leaving their homes again. Robin snuck out, something she'd done many times before at her young age, but David, being 20 and adult, just grabbed his keys around midnight and said he was heading out. No one questioned him on where he was going, and this is something that his family would later come to regret. Not that this could have stopped him or changed what had happened, but nobody asked him, where are you going? Who are you meeting? When will we see you next? David never came home that next morning, and when Robin's dad checked her room at five in

the morning that Sunday, she wasn't in bed either. Like I kind of alluded to before, Robin had a history of running away. When she was gone, her dad thought, oh gosh, this again, but she didn't take any of her clothes with her. So this was a good sign to her dad that she'd be back soon. She was just blowing off some steam. Robin, after all, was like a very fiery one. Brett, we've joked before about us being eight going on 25, but Robin really was. From a very young age, she was running away. She was sexually active. She even had a 21-year-old boyfriend by age 11. Yeah, and none of this means that what happened to her was her fault. In fact, she was a child, and it's shocking to me that the older men she was engaging with

didn't get in trouble. She is as much a victim as every person in our story, but I think it's something we can't ignore. Robin was 14 and David was 20, and it's uncomfortable. Maybe this is me trying to be naive, but do we know for sure that they were going to hook up? No, we definitely don't. And that's something like, as I talk about the scene, we'll kind of learn later. There's stuff to suggest they were, like pieces of clothing missing, but there's nothing to prove that they took that off willingly, and someone didn't force them to. Okay. The area they went to was just 20 miles from the parkway, and it was a place called Ragged Island. And like the rest of the parkway, it's known for two things,

hooking up and low-level drug deals. So it's possible they went there to score we didn't get high, or they could have gone there to hook up. Very unlikely that it was anything in between. So Robin's dad notices she's gone at about five, but her mom feels like something is wrong, and this doesn't feel like her normal runaway kind of situation. So by 7 a.m., her mom tries to report Robin missing to the police, but they won't let her. They say it's too soon, plus it's the weekend. There really wasn't anyone there to take the report. You have to remember it was a different time. They tell her to come back in on Monday if Robin still isn't back. But Monday rolls around, and there's no Robin. Instead, a truck is found on Ragged Island that would eventually link to

Robin and give her parents answers as to where she was and what happened to her. In the early morning hours of Monday, a deputy on patrol was passing through the Ragged Island area when he saw a truck with its windshield wipers flaring and the door open. This was something that needed to be checked out. Like I mentioned, this is where a lot of like low-level drug deals happen. So the officer wanted to get a closer look. What he found were the wipers were flaring, keys were in the ignition set to accessory mode, the radio was left on, and inside the truck were two pairs of shoes, some other pieces of clothing, and a man's wallet. The deputy had a theory almost immediately. These kids probably undressed and went skinny dipping.

Time out. Skinny dipping? It's, what'd you say, September in Virginia? Do you have any idea what the weather was like that day? That night, it was actually 40 degrees. So their explanation made sense to nobody else. The morning that they found the truck, they notified David's mom because they knew who the truck was registered to. So they were able to track down the family. And his mom even left work and came to look at the site. And she said that it felt all just weird. He loved that truck. He would never leave that truck unlocked, much less leave it with the doors open and the keys still inside. But I think it's hard to believe the worst case scenario is actually happening to you. So Judy went back to work thinking maybe her son was just being a little bit reckless.

But there was something nagging at her, something itching the back of her brain, that key in the ignition. The key was turned to accessory mode and the radio was playing, like most cars would be set up to do. But Judy knew something. She knew that her son had wired the radio directly to the battery of the truck. So you didn't have to have the car on to play it. You just hit the on button. David would not have turned his car on to have the radio on that way. Whoever left the car on wasn't David. His mom left work knowing something had happened to her son. David's mom, Judy called her ex-husband and told him everything that was happening. Now the authorities were still unconvinced that something sinister had happened. So the

police asked that they take David's truck to their house. And that's when David's dad decided to do some searching himself. The tides were so high that he actually put on waders and was wading through the water looking for any sign of David, but he found nothing. Although the Rangers didn't process the truck like a crime scene right away, they do notice a pair of girl's shoes in the car. And it didn't take long to match those shoes to the missing person's report that Robin's mother had filed that Monday. By the next day, even the Rangers were starting to admit that this scene was looking suspicious. If they had gone skinny dipping, they should be back. If they had gone skinny dipping and got taken away or drowned, their bodies should be showing up. So they went

to the home where David's truck was and processed it for fingerprints. They also started official searches where the car was found and along the water. A jogger was running when they saw a pile of clothing. As they approached, it became clear there was someone in that clothing. The bloated body of a young girl laying face down shot once in the head with her pants unbutton and her shirt pulled up to her neck. About 30 yards away from Robin is where they found David wearing only pants. He was tangled in tree roots and he had been shot once in the shoulder and once more in the head. Both families learned about the deaths of David and Robin on the news with horrible images to accompany descriptions of what happened to their loved ones. Now that investigators knew for sure

this was a crime scene, they started to piece together what could have happened. From the injuries, they speculated that Robin was shot first and David tried to flee by climbing up the embankment. His killer likely shot him once in the shoulder to slow him down and then was able to catch up and shoot him again in the head to kill him. There was evidence that Robin had had sex before her death but it's unknown if it was with David or with this attacker or with someone unknown. Because she was in the water so long, the DNA at least at the time wasn't useful. There was also evidence that she had been sodomized or had had anal sex the night that she was killed. Now the autopsies in both of them showed that there were beans in their stomach, though neither one of them

had had beans with any meal they ate with their families that night so it's believed they could have either stopped at a Wendy's or a Taco Bell together before their death. It'd be great if there was like a witness who would come forward from a restaurant to say they saw them or interacted with them. If so, we might have more of a clue as to their movements that night but no one claims to have seen them. We have no sightings of them at any restaurant and after they each left their homes, the next thing we know is that they end up on Ragged Island. Police tried different theories on for size. David had been receiving death threats before the murder so they checked into people in his life, even going through the guest book at his funeral, but that lead didn't go

anywhere. Then they thought maybe the couple had just walked down to the water and encountered a killer but that didn't make a lot of sense either. Why leave your shoes when it was so cold and that area is like full with rocks and shells like it didn't make sense to walk down their barefoot and why if you're going to why leave your truck open with the keys inside. Some investigators think that maybe they were dropped into the water from a nearby bridge but this is contested by other investigators who say there's no way that bridge is well lit, well traveled. There would have been way too much of a risk of being seen and you'll see this a lot in this case. Multiple agencies are involved so there's all different agencies having different theories all looking at the same

thing the same scene and coming to different conclusions. There was one theory though that a lot of people got on board with for a while. Before this night Robin had been approached by a low level drug dealer at a party and this guy's name was Mr. Washington. He wanted to hook up with Robin but she had actually turned him down and this he said really pissed him off because according to him Robin was known for being promiscuous which we knew and this guy in his mind is like who is she to make me the exception like he for whatever reason felt like she owed it to him which no one owes sex to anyone ever right but the investigators think it's a possibility that maybe Robin called him that night to buy weed. If her and David decide they were going to meet up and smoke weed

she knows this guy obviously like through acquaintances and maybe when they met up everything went wrong. Did they just think this because she had had this interaction with them or or because this area was kind of known for drug deals and they were just kind of putting pieces of everything together. I think it's a little of both but there was one big clue that was pointing to Washington. You see he had a reputation for only having anal sex didn't matter with who men women so everything you mentioned combined with the fact that Robin had either been sodomized or had anal sex made him look even more suspicious. This lead felt like a really good one but there was nothing putting Washington at the scene they needed someone to turn on him

and they knew just who. Washington you see had this sidekick who always hung out with him and this man had been actually raped by Washington before and he was scared to death of him. It took a long time but they finally get this guy talking but not long after he starts he winds up dead after quote falling asleep on a railroad track. Wait what? Yeah I'm not sure if that's like a way you try to take your own life or if that's how someone shuts you up when you start talking but the Washington lead died with that man and police had to start looking at other options and like in the case of Kathleen and Becky whispers started about it being somebody with a badge a real badge or a fake one. David's family said the only scenario that made sense to them

would be if somebody pulled him over and he was complying with somebody he thought was of authority. There were some people who kind of fit this person in authority figure and they checked them out but again none that really fit the profile. There was another weird lead that came up kind of unexpectedly. This 28 year old dishwasher with a record for forging checks put himself on police's radar by calling in a tip saying that he saw the kids that night get out of the car on their own leave the door open and then walk down the trail to the water. He said that at about 1 30 in the morning that night he hears gunshots so he decides to take off. Every time the authorities talk to him his story changed and this guy was super fishy. I mean sometimes he would like say he saw the kids

with somebody then the kids were alone and then he was in a different place and then he was like popping out of the bushes like none of it made sense. He had weird ties to guns as well and a handful of people think he could have been the guy but again there was no way to tie him to the case and the last thing one of the investigators heard is that this suspect was deceased now and this was the case over and over lead after lead would come in it would be vetted seem really plausible and investigators would get their hopes up just before having to start right back at the beginning and right back at the beginning of this single case because at this point it wasn't getting connected to Kathleen and Becky two couples sure but 20 miles apart two very different methods of

killing it was just a bad 12 months for the area had to be they couldn't believe didn't want to believe it was part of something more but investigators were forced to when that very next spring another couple near the parkway goes missing and an all too familiar scene has the public very concerned but i'll have to tell you about that next week on crime junkie if you want to see some of the pictures regarding this case you can visit our website crimejunkiepodcast.com and be sure to follow us on social at crimejunkiepod on twitter and at crimejunkiepodcast on instagram we'll be back next week with the second part of the colonial parkway murders this episode of crime junkie was researched written and hosted by me with

co-hosting by brit pray watt all of our editing and sound production was done by david flowers and all of our music including our theme comes from justin daniel crime junkie is an audio chuck production so what do you think chuck do you approve