Crime Junkie - SERIAL KILLER: On The Colonial Parkway (Part 2)

Episode Date: December 10, 2018

In part two, we tell you about the murders of Cassandra Lee Hailey, Richard Keith Call, Annamaria Phelps, and Daniel Lauer. Could all four of the murders be connected? Or could there be four killers roaming free? 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-2/    

Hi Crime Junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt, and you sound like you're feeling better. Yes, I am back. And last week, we left you hanging again, I know. But this was a story too big to tell in just one episode. When we left off, there had been two sets of murders. Kathleen Thomas and Becky Dowsky were found with their throat slit in the back of Kathleen's Honda on the Colonial Parkway.

Someone had attempted to push her Honda off the embankment and set fire to it, but the car got stuck in the bushes and the killer used diesel fuel instead of gasoline, which would not light with the matches that were left at the scene. Police couldn't connect the murders to anyone in the women's lives, and they declared this an isolated incident. But less than a year later, another couple was killed just 20 miles from the parkway.

Robin Edwards and David Nobling. The two had met the very same day they were murdered. No one knows exactly what the two were doing together that night, but a few days after David's truck was found and neither of them returned home, their bodies were found near the water. Robin shot once in the back of the head and David twice, appearing to have tried to flee. There were at least suspects in Robin and David's case,

and with 20 miles between them and the first crime scene, investigators didn't initially connect the four victims. But a connection would become harder and harder to ignore come April of 1988, when another couple near the parkway goes missing, leaving only their vehicle behind. In a series of unfortunate events, much like the meeting of David and Robin, two more young kids had a chance meeting that would lead to them forever being linked.

20-year-old Richard Keith Call, who just went by Keith, had just broken up with his long-term girlfriend in 1988. He was looking to get back out there when he asked out a pretty young girl he went to college with. 18-year-old Cassandra Lee Haley, who either went by Cassandra or sometimes Sandy. Cassandra had actually been secretly seeing somebody, but I'm not sure if it just wasn't that serious or if she was going out with another guy

in an attempt to keep her other relationship under wraps. You see, she was actually dating an African-American young man who was one year younger than her. Nothing about this seems salacious to me or something you would need to hide. But it seems there was still some racial tension in Virginia back in the 80s because when her mom found out about their relationship, she had told Sandy or Cassandra to just be careful.

All throughout high school, this young man, whose name was Terry, was the only boyfriend she ever had. And from what I read, I think she really cared for him, which is why I don't think her first date with Keith went well at all. Keith and Sandy attended a party together in the university square area. But everyone who was at that party said the two barely spoke to one another the whole night. Not that they had a fight or anything was weird or wrong, but they just spent the night talking to other people.

So when they left that night around 1.30, their most likely destination would have been for Keith to drop Sandy back off at her house. But Sandy never made it home. Her mother woke up around 2 a.m. and noticed her daughter hadn't arrived. She thought it was strange. Usually Sandy did such a good job communicating her plans with her family. If she was going to be gone for the night, she'd tell them.

But she was 18. She probably just forgot and it didn't really nag at her mom. Not the way something was nagging at Keith's ex-girlfriend anyway. Remember, they had just broken up a couple of weeks ago. And so she said the night that he had gone out with Sandy, she had also gone out to a party. Sometime between 1.30 and 2 in the morning, she said she got this horrible, sinking feeling in her stomach. She couldn't explain it,

but it was so intense that she ended up leaving the party and going home. She thought it was just because she missed Keith so much. Maybe she could sleep it off, but it didn't work. That same night, Keith and Sandy had gone out with Sandy and that same night, Keith's brother, Chris, was actually driving home from a trip to Richmond. He was with a friend and they were riding down the colonial parkway sometime around 2.30 in the morning. And this is Sunday, April 10th now. And that's when the strangest thing happened.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a van pulls out of the woods and starts gaining on their car quickly. Totally normal. Right. Chris knew that the car was speeding. He'd actually gotten a ticket on the parkway before and he knew the speed limit was only 45. And he remembers making a comment to his friend that the van had to have been going at least 65 or 70. And this van is gaining on them. As they're driving, they both pass this car on the parkway that looks just like his brother's car,

a red 1982 Toyota Celica. And after he passes the Toyota with the van just a short distance behind him and the van passes the Toyota, the van slows down and does a U-turn to head back toward the car. And then the van never reappears in his rear view. He said at the time he passed it, the dome light was on and he thought someone was likely in the car. And he's no dummy. Everyone knows that the parkway is used for hooking up and he thought someone was there hooking up. And heck, maybe even his own brother, but he's not going to stop and say hello.

That would be really awkward. So a few short hours later, around 5 a.m. as morning starts to come, other drivers remember seeing the car parked on the parkway as well. So 5 a.m. another car sees it at 6 a.m. By 7, another passerby sees the car, but this isn't just any motorist. This time it's Keith's dad and he knows his son's car. What on earth would he be doing out here at 7 in the morning? So he's a dad.

He doesn't feel awkward. He actually does stop. He pulls into the turnoff to check it out. When he gets out of the car, he notices that the driver's side door is slightly ajar and the seat was kind of folded forward a little. Now Keith's dad moves the seat back, takes in the scene. In the back, there's this great jacket, some beer cans, and in the front seat, he sees Sandy's purse and his son's gold watch.

There weren't any keys in sight, so although the scene seemed irresponsible, it didn't seem really alarming to him. He figured his son had been out late the night before with a girl and maybe the two were just out somewhere on the beach doing whatever it is teenagers or young adults do. Right. They just left their stuff there and kind of wandered off to take out, hook up, whatever. Right.

And plus, his dad at this point is late for work. So Keith's an adult, like he's 20 at this time, at least he knew where he was, so his dad sets off. Just an hour later, the car would be officially processed as a crime scene. But do you want to know what's really weird? What happened? When they officially logged the items in the car after Rangers had found it, there was more stuff in the car than when Keith's dad had found it.

What? What else was in there? So this time when a Rangers officially say they found it, the keys were in the ignition, there were clothes in the front and back seat, almost all of Keith's clothes, some of Cassandra's clothes, the glove compartment is open and none of that was like that when Keith's dad saw it. Yeah. He specifically said the keys weren't anywhere to be seen.

Right. And his dad even underwent hypnosis to see if maybe he was just misremembering, but he had the same exact memories. Oh my God, does that mean that the killer came back? So that's the sensational version of this story and something that I've heard over and over or seen on at least like one hour TV documentaries about this, but I think the real story is far less sensational and just a little more clumsy. The Park Rangers had actually come across the car before 7 a.m. when Keith's dad drove by.

I think they had the same thought that Keith's dad did. Oh, just these dumb kids leaving their car and their possessions. So maybe they took a bunch of stuff out thinking it would help them find out who the car belonged to or maybe they took the clothes thinking they were going to run into some naked kids on the beach and like they're going to need these by the Rangers own admission. They tried to put stuff back where they had found it once they realized this scene was something more. But in doing that, we have no real idea of what the scene actually looked like when it was first discovered because by the time any real crime text got there, it had already been contaminated twice.

Although Sandy's purse was there with her checkbook inside, her wallet was missing. This checkbook is what was able to lead the Rangers to her family to see if maybe she had come home. But of course she hadn't and Sandy's family knew something terrible had to have happened to her. Members of the family along with the media start to trickle on to the scene where the car was and media started to broadcast this story over the radio. On the other side of one of those radios was one of the FBI agents who worked the Kathleen and Becky case and he hears this broadcaster come over the radio. Two college students are missing after leaving their car abandoned.

Park Rangers think the two went skinny dipping and possibly drowned. Immediately this agent is like, no, no, they did not probably drown. He's baffled. Why had no one called the FBI? The FBI was the one who was in charge of the Kathleen and Becky scene and this seemed so similar to that case. Why is he hearing about it on the radio? So this guy goes right into the office, pulls his team together and goes out to the parkway to talk to the Rangers and try and work the scene. When the FBI got there, they said the Rangers were so rude, so defensive and acted so odd.

They thought they might have actually had something to do with it because of how weird they were being and a lot like in the Kathleen and Becky case where the wallet was taken out as if you were going to show someone your driver's license. This time Keith's glove box was open. You mean as if you were going for maybe your registration? Exactly. The FBI said later their behavior was just so weird. They felt like, hey, we should all be on the same page. We should all want the same thing. Why are these Rangers being cagey and uncooperative?

Do you think it was like a jurisdiction thing? I know we hear a lot of cases where local agencies don't want the FBI to come in and will hold information from them and stuff like that. Was it one of those situations? Oh, 100% I'm sure that's exactly how they felt like they were getting their toes stepped on. But also, the Rangers got to take a little responsibility. The way the scene was handled was so sloppy. And the fact that no one on the Rangers team was connecting this to the other double murder that happened in the parkway. To me is just like a flag like maybe you guys need help.

You don't have the same resources that the FBI has. Yeah, but I can also kind of see them wanting to cover it up because they did mess up a ton. They don't want the FBI to be like, dude, you guys screwed this up. Right. So I mean, 100% they don't want that. But also, again, that's what makes making the FBI say like, are you guys just like sloppy or did you have something to do with it? Is there a reason you don't want us coming in and taking a real look at it? Right. So either way, the FBI takes over the case.

Search dogs were brought in and used in the area to try and track down these kids since three different dogs were used. Three dogs all went the same route straight to the water. So the handlers even take them out on boats because proper noses are so freaking magical that they can sometimes even smell stuff in the water. I just like they're so great. So all three dogs are out on the boats and all three of them pick the exact two same spots in the water to missing kids. This feels like they're onto something. Based on where the dogs hit, the FBI brings in divers to search these two areas and they come up with nothing. Weeks later, the body of a man was actually found in the water in about the same area.

It was totally unrelated. I think he had actually fallen or jumped off of a boat. So many people believe that is what the dogs were hitting on and Keith and Sandy were likely never in the water to begin with. Wait, so now weeks have gone by and we still haven't found them, right? Not just weeks, Brett. To this day, Keith and Sandy have never been found. What? And this is what makes their case a little unusual. Despite the ground and water searches, there has been no trace of them.

No one believes they just walked off naked, but no one has any kind of trail to follow them that might lead to their remains. The FBI's theory is that the two went to the parkway to drink and make out. They point to the empty beer cans and the clothing as proof of that. Then they think that someone used the rules of authority to get them to try and give them their license or registration or whatever, and that they were marched off the scene somewhere else to be killed. So let's go back to the beer cans real quick. Were they for sure theirs? Were they ever tested or anything? I don't know this.

So the FBI's theory is that they were drinking beer and making out. So I have no real proof or I couldn't find any proof that the FBI actually did any kind of testing on the beer cans, whether that's DNA or fingerprints. I have to assume at least maybe fingerprints because the kids aren't wearing gloves. So I would hope that they had done that. I don't know if new testing is available to see if maybe, I mean, I think there were more than two cans. Maybe if there was anyone else, I really don't know. And am I the only person who thinks it's a little bit weird that these two didn't talk to each other all night,

but then suddenly decided to hook up? No, okay. Actually, this is something that gets brought up all the time. People say over and over like, I don't think that that's why they were there because just like you said, they weren't talking to each other at the party. Everyone who's at the party says they weren't like flirting or again, not even talking to each other. So everyone who is like either in their families or was at the party is like, I'm pretty sure he was just taking her home. Right.

Also Keith's ex-girlfriend said that she and Keith would never go to the parkway to hook up. And Sandy's sister said that Sandy would have never gone there. She hated the parkway. Okay. For argument's sake, let's say they did want to hook up. Why park there? It was so close to the roadway that even his own dad was able to recognize his car while just passing by. That is not privacy.

Yeah, that's just like pulled over on the shoulder. Right. Yeah, exactly. A lot of people believe that they were driving somewhere, not even necessarily on the parkway and got pulled over by somebody needing help, by somebody who seemed like an authority figure, and they could have either pulled over right there on the parkway or been somewhere completely different and had their car disposed of on the parkway. But what about all of their clothes? Well, some people say that this could have been one of the ways that their killer controlled them.

You got to remember, if we're talking about one person, it would be really hard to overtake two young, healthy people. The more vulnerable you can make them, the more control you would have. Sandy only had one boot found in the car. How hard would it be to run if you were wearing one shoe on and one shoe off? I would imagine it would really throw you off. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And just for clarity's sake, the FBI have linked these cases to the other ones because of the similarities with the clothes and stuff like that, specifically with Robin and David's case, right?

Actually, no. Well, at least not publicly. The FBI is only in charge of two cases, the first one with Kathleen and Becky, and now this third case with Sandy and Keith. So they aren't involved with Robin and David's case at all? No, the state police are actually the ones who have the second case of Robin and David. So I think the FBI saw similarities between Kathleen and Becky and Keith and Sandy, but they were not telling the public that there was a serial killer.

I guess that makes sense, and the MOs are completely different. Kathleen and Becky were both found in the car. The contents of the car were completely different. I can see why they wouldn't necessarily want to connect all of these. Well, yes, but kind of no, the killer could have been evolving. They're not that different. Like, yes, Kathleen and Becky's scene was a lot more violent. They were still found, but if you remember, everything kind of went wrong in their case.

The car got stuck, the diesel fuel wouldn't ignite, the bodies were left in the car, and so much potential evidence was left behind. I mean, even that plastic line that was found that Kathleen was strangled with is evidence that could have linked back to the killer. It was a really messy scene. So each time, I mean, if you look at these cases back to back, the killer is evolving. With Robin and David, they're found away from the car.

Days later, after being in the water and evidence has been basically ruined. And now in this case, Sandy and Keith, the bodies aren't found at all. They're outside of the car again and never found. So the FBI has almost no leads to go on. They tried everything to track down leads, and I mean everything. They found out that there were some Russian satellites in the area that were taking pictures, and it was a long shot, but they thought maybe the satellite pictures caught something that night. So the FBI actually contacted the Russian government and they said,

listen, we don't need to see anything else. We don't need to know why you're taking pictures. We'll sign whatever you want. This isn't about governments or secrecy or spies. We just have a small window and we're trying to track down a killer. Please let us see what you have. But of course, the Russian government refused. There was one kind of creepy lead that the FBI chased down that stood out to me.

There is this guy driving around the parkway with an oversized truck and a vanity plate that says, eat them. I'm sorry, what? Yeah, you heard me. Eat them. So investigators run down the plate and track down this guy. And the guy who owned it matches a description of a peeping tom that had been reported in the area. The reports that came in of this stranger said that he would walk up on people as they were making out or hooking up.

And there was one case of this peeping tom walking up to a girl and a guy with long hair. And as they were kissing, this guy comes up and is like, are you girls having fun? I don't know if that's how he sounds, but like in my mind, he's like real creepy. So he's like, are you girls having fun? And then they turn around and this peeping tom realizes that it's not two girls. It's a guy and a girl. And so he backs off. So this lead, of course, peaks their interest because what if he was going around looking for two girls like in Kathleen and Becky's case?

Yeah. So they look into this eat them guy who matches the description of this peeping tom because if it's the same person, he's jumping to the top of their suspect list. He lived in a trailer with his brother, who was also a suspect in another murder case. So getting sketchier, but the agents didn't really have anything on them. So they would just kind of do drive-bys and scope out the trailer, see what they were up to. And once when they do a drive-by, they see him washing the inside of his truck and cutting out the upholstery. Okay. So they frantically try to get a search warrant for that truck and trailer.

Now they do get it, but they don't find anything in either the truck or the trailer that would connect this guy to the murders on the parkway. But he did have weapons and handcuffs and some pretty violent pornography. Police also found out that he was in the area the nights of some of the murders and he fit the description of a waterman that they had profiled after the first killings. This guy made up multiple stories about the night of the murders, even though the investigators could put him in the area. Multiple agencies at the time thought that this guy looked good for it, but still, at the end of the day, there was no evidence and this guy ended up passing a polygraph, so he was let go. The FBI went back to looking at rangers. They could easily pull someone over on the parkway and no one would even look twice or think it stood out. They pulled that same ranger again in the first case, Clyde Yee.

But again, he passed another polygraph with no issues. But even though they couldn't pin it on a ranger, they just couldn't shake the thoughts of those wallets being pulled out and the glove compartment being open. They kept thinking these kids were getting pulled over by someone. If it wasn't anyone in a real department and they looked everywhere and said it wasn't, then it had to be somebody pretending to be affiliated with law enforcement. And there were some complaints at the time of people impersonating officers. Maybe that was their killer. There were these stories circulating in the community that were never fully confirmed, but supposedly there was this fake ranger with a blue light and an unmarked white car that would pull people over. And in one story, apparently he just looked at the person's license and told them to drive more slowly.

And this sounds like a regular stop, but rangers never use white unmarked cars. One woman even had a story that she got pulled over by this white unmarked car. And as she was parked, she got this weird feeling that overtook her, that something was wrong. So she just drove off and nobody came after her. And that's how she knew that this guy wasn't legit. Be weird. Be rude, girl. Right. 100%. Always. Great for her to get out there.

But do we know that this is the killer? It seems like he's just like letting people go? Well, you know, I don't know. We're hearing these stories from maybe the people who got away. And I also don't know like the order of like when these stories happened. If this is our guy, it could have been that he's doing this early on before he's ever killed anyone to see if he can get away with it. Can he look like a ranger? Can he get people to comply? Or it could be that this guy is pulling people over and looking for a specific kind of victim.

The FBI decided to try and take proactive measures just in case this impersonator was their guy. They make an announcement to the public. Anyone pulling you over should be in uniform. And if you're stopped, let the police vehicle pull alongside you. Let them identify themselves before you actually roll down your window or get out of your car. And I would say that still holds true today. Plus, we now have cell phones so you can call the police, verify a badge number, verify that there's an officer in the area, that this guy's legit. Oh, 100%.

I think we even covered that on another case before. Like there's nothing wrong, especially if you were like in a like desolate like area that's not well lit, you're not around other people. Nothing wrong with calling in and verifying that you're getting pulled over. We were never able to track down this phantom impersonator and every small lead they got, including psychics who said they felt Sandy is somewhere near a wooded park with a large clearing and barbed fencing, turned into another rabbit hole with no end in sight. Just like the cases before it, Keith and Sandy's case went cold. But this time, their families didn't even have the closure of knowing where their loved ones were. As seasons came and went that year in 1988 and turned into 1989, the community began to forget. Come September, there is little to no media attention about the cold cases.

With the exception of the six families whose loved ones were missing or murdered, the public has moved on. Until another car carrying another couple shows up abandoned near the parkway. It's Labor Day weekend, 1989, when 18 year old Anna Marie Phelps and 21 year old Daniel Lauer pack up Daniel's car to make the trip from Amelia County to Virginia Beach. Virginia Beach is where Anna Maria lived with her boyfriend Clint and Clint is actually Daniel's brother. Daniel had gone to the beach with his friend Joe Gottsey, Joe's wife and their infant daughter for the holiday weekend. While Daniel's down there, he learns that his brother has hit a bit of a rough patch. He's lost his job, rent was hard to make, so the boys come up with this great idea. Daniel will move in with his brother. He can help with the rent and this gives Daniel a fresh start too. But he couldn't just stay like he needed to go home for one thing to get all this stuff and he also needed to drop off the Gottseys back at home.

So that was the plan. He was going to go back to Amelia County and return the next day. Anna Maria, also being from the same area, decided that she would go with him just to keep him company, but then also this would allow her to see her own family for a little bit. So they set off. Everyone gets dropped off at their respective homes and Daniel goes back to his to pack up all of his worldly possessions and collect the 800 bucks or so from his dad that he got for doing work for him. Daniel's mom gave him an extra electric blanket, because you know, moms, and within a few hours he was ready to start his new life. Daniel picked up Anna Maria and the two left in his Chevy Nova at about 11.15 p.m. on September 4th. It was a decent night that night, about 60 degrees, a little breezy, a little overcast. They should have arrived to Virginia Beach within just a couple of hours, but 1.30 came and went then 2.30. Clint started to grow nervous and eventually he decided to get in his own car and look for them.

Maybe he thought they had broken down somewhere along I-64 where they would have been traveling. So he drove a decent stretch of the road without seeing any sign of his brother's car. Clint decided to turn around just before a rest stop. What Clint didn't know, what he couldn't have known, is that that rest stop was where his brother's car was, pulled off an acceleration ramp, half on the road, half off, completely abandoned. When Clint arrives back home and they still aren't there, he phones his parents, who in turn phone the state police. A missing person's report is filed and comes into the office just as Daniel's car was about to be towed. It had been found some hours earlier on the trucking side of the westbound rest stop. Like I mentioned, it was on the acceleration ramp, half on the road, half off, next to the exit and no parking sign,

with the keys still in the ignition and the driver window rolled partly down. There was something else. Anna Maria had this marijuana roach clip with feathers on it that she always had with her and this thing was clipped to the window and it's not something she would ever have done. It was almost like a taunt, the police thought. There were no signs of the kids, no sign of any struggle, they just vanished, poof, into thin air. Tracking dogs were brought in but they couldn't detect the kids scent coming anywhere from the vehicle. This is feeling a lot like the other cases. Maybe the car had just been abandoned there by someone else. Possibly. There were helicopters and ground searches for three days but the kids weren't found.

When the car was processed, the state police said there were some items missing. Anna Maria's wallet with her ID and money, that $800 Daniel's dad had given him and the blanket that he had gotten from his mom. Okay, at this point it's the fourth couple. Please tell me they're connecting all the cases now. Still not quite. So again, the state police has this one, they had the second case but not the first and the third and the state police actually came out and made a public statement that they believe this case was in no way linked to the others because of the proximity alone. So this one was a little farther away, it was about an hour's drive from the parkway but even this statement though, they're saying it's not connected to the others, shows you that there's at least talk that the other three are connected. Everyone I think all the public started to believe it and even though the police and the FBI would never say serial killer,

it's obviously something that they're thinking about. But the main reason they didn't connect this one was because again, it was like an hour away from the parkway. I mean, killers can drive too and it would make sense if he's already killed six people in the same place to move to maybe distance himself from it, you know. Yeah, I mean an hour is not that far away and everything about this just seems so familiar. So for almost a month, they weren't able to locate Daniel or Anna Maria, they didn't have any prime suspects and the leads were drying up quickly. But on October 21st, two turkey hunters were in a wooded area near a logging road just over one mile from the rest stop where the car was found when they came across some remains covered in the same brown electric blanket that Daniel's mom had given him the night he left. The two bodies were completely decomposed after being exposed to the elements for over six weeks.

So there were very few ways to ID them or even determine a cause of death. It took two days to definitively ID Anna Maria with her dental records and a couple days more before they could get Daniel's. The only wound found on either of the victim's skeletal remains was a singular cut made to one of Anna Maria's finger bones indicating perhaps there was a knife involved in their deaths. The full remains were turned over to the Smithsonian to see if they could possibly come up with something more definitive or any more evidence, but those records are sealed. Other than the blanket, the only piece of physical evidence found around the bodies was a locket Anna Maria wore around her neck with pictures of her nephews in it. It was found 50 to 100 feet away from the bodies without the chain. And I think we should go back to the car for a second because now that the bodies are found and they proved to have no physical evidence, all police have is this car. Something I should point out is I mentioned already that the car was found on the westbound side of the freeway.

They would have been traveling east to go to Virginia Beach. So if they were going to stop logically, they should have stopped on the eastbound side of the rest stop. So that kind of plays into the theory that the killer abandoned the car, right? Right. If they stop at the eastbound side, run into somebody there, maybe they take them and then the killer comes back, moves their car to the other side, right? Maybe, but it seems like it kind of risky, right? Yeah, but it's a possibility, right? But there's also another option.

Maybe they met them at the rest stop and forced them to go somewhere in their car, then the killer ditched it. Okay, I have two problems with that theory. The first is that they tested the tires on Daniel's car and there was no dirt and no soil that matched the logging road where they were found off of. But again, for argument's sake, let's say that the killer still took the car with them in it, went to a second location, killed them, then used another car to take them to the burial site. So then he just wants to dump their car. So you're obviously not worried about it looking like they were the ones who abandoned it or you would have dropped it off on the east side. So you just drop it off on the west side. Do you have your own car waiting there?

Because that doesn't make sense because that would have meant that you parked on the west side, walked across the highway hoping maybe there would be two people you could overtake at a rest stop? Like, that seems really unlikely. Yeah, yeah, you're right, it does. So I think there are two viable options. Either one, there were two people who maybe came across them at the rest stop on the east side. They took control of them. And one in Daniel's car, one in the killer's car, they drive off, do whatever they do and then ditch Daniel's car and then take off together. Or two, they were never stopped at a rest stop.

And with the window rolled halfway down, they were pulled over somewhere and their car was just abandoned at a convenient place, which happened to be the westbound side of the highway. Daniel and Anna Maria were laid to rest, but there is no real rest for their families because the case is still unsolved. Depending on who you talk to, you'll hear different opinions. Some will say these were all horrible acts, but committed by completely different perpetrators and the cases have no link to one another. A private investigator named John Morris offered his services free of charge to reinvestigate the case, and that's the conclusion that he came to. With Anna Maria and Daniel, he thought their friend Joe Gottsey had something to do with it. He was one of the few people who knew Daniel was coming into a chunk of money from his dad. It was one of the few cases where robberies seemed to have occurred, and he points to that blanket.

None of the other victims that were found were covered up. That's an act of remorse or of someone who, in a twisted way, cares for the victims because it's somebody that they know. The private investigator said Joe Gottsey also had connections to a hunting club near the logging road where they were found. And that road wasn't just any kind of road. Apparently it was pretty muddy and super easy for cars to get stuck back there. Whoever went back there likely knew the area. They knew how to navigate it. They knew they could turn around.

And the private investigator says the same thing about Robin and David's case. There's a clear suspect, that Washington guy. He says the bodies were never found in Sandy and Keith's case, making it so different from Kathleen and Becky's. So in his mind, he says he can conclusively say that they're unrelated. But that's just one opinion. And the majority of opinions are a lot different. In the early 1990s, when this case was reinvestigated as a whole, looking at all four crime scenes, pulling together the FBI and the state police, they brought in a computer science expert to run the numbers.

Double murders are super rare. Lovers lane type murders are super rare. What are the odds that four cases of double murders, of young couples, or at least what would appear to be couples, would happen within a few years span in such close proximity? And the answer, the expert said, was quote, you would have a five times greater chance of winning the Virginia lottery than finding these crimes are not related. If you look at the killings together, looking for a pattern, they all happened in the spring or the fall, all on weekends or holiday breaks.

Could it have been possibly a college student or somebody affiliated with the university nearby? Because if you think about it, the murders only spanned over four years, the same time it takes to get the average person a degree. No students have ever been named as persons of interest. In fact, there are no named suspects to date for all of these, like cases as a whole, if it's one person. All eight families are doing their best to keep their loved ones' stories alive and keep public interest until there's some resolution. Not too long ago, there was talk about using the new genealogical testing to possibly close these cases if there was any physical evidence that was still intact and usable. But the family hasn't gotten a firm answer from the FBI one way or another if this is going to be done. But what I would recommend to everybody is if you want updates on this case, I strongly recommend you follow the Facebook page run by Bill Thomas, Kathleen's brother.

You just need to search Colonial Parkway Murders on Facebook. You guys, we try to stick to as much of the facts as we could in this two-parter, but these cases are rabbit holes. So for all of you who subscribe to our channel on Patreon, you'll see another full-length episode dropping in your feed tomorrow all about these cases and some of the crazy theories we couldn't get to on these main episodes. So crime junkies, if you can't stop thinking about this case, you want to know all the theories, including the crazy ones, other murders, other serial killers this case might be connected to. Check out our Patreon. You can find it by clicking on the word Patreon at the top of our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. And when you sign up, you don't just get the Colonial Parkway bonus episode. You automatically get all of the bonus episodes we've been creating since July. It's hours and hours of content. And if you don't want to do Patreon, but you just want to learn more about this case, I highly recommend a book called A Special Kind of Evil, The Colonial Parkway Serial Killings. And don't forget, you can always follow us on social.

On Twitter at CrimeJunkiePod and on Instagram at CrimeJunkiePodcast. We will be back next week with a brand new episode. This episode of CrimeJunkie was researched, written, and hosted by me with co-hosting by Brit Preywat. All of our editing and sound production was done by David Flowers, and all of our music, including our theme, comes from Justin Daniel. CrimeJunkie is an audio chuck production, so what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?