Speaker 1: These are such amazing questions and we're getting such a
good conversation rolling here that we are going to stop
this episode right here, but keep rolling right into the
next one. So for now, we are going to go
ahead and say thank you to everybody who wrote in
for questions, and if you didn't hear your question in
this episode, stay tuned for the next one, you'll probably
hear it there. For now, thank you so much for
listening to this episode of Mind Over Murder. My name
is Grianaxilliam.
Speaker 2: I'm a writer, a researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate,
as well as the social media manager and co administrator
for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner
in crime, Bill Thomas.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Mind Ever Murder.
Speaker 3: I'm Kristin Dilly and I'm Bill Thomas.
Speaker 1: It is a winter snowstorm, horrific day here in coastal Virginia.
Are you guys having snow like we're having snow?
Speaker 3: We are not having snow.
Speaker 4: I think it's very Christmas and holiday appropriate for you
all have snow. We had snow last week which is
still sticking around. It was like eleven degrees this morning.
Lots of snow and lots of ice, so we had
to tread carefully. As one says, you seem positively tickled
that you've had a snow day. We're recording this on
a Monday. Tell me what happened that boy? Those two
to four inches of snow must be really quite the
weather emergency.
Speaker 1: It's Virginia. And remember, even though we have salt trucks,
brin trucks and everything like that, we do not have
a ton of snow plannels. They mainly worry about the
roads freezing and refreezing in time for school. So the
precipitation was going to come in at a point this
morning where if we dismissed early, buses would have been
on the roads right around the time the road started
getting slick, which you don't want. At this point, around
five fifteen in the afternoon, we still have a lot
of snow falling, so we'll see what happens about school tomorrow.
But we also had a snow day on Friday. This
is from two separate systems, so so I'm fine with
having had a four day week and potentially a seth
if things mise as we're hoping. San Dude, I have
a lot of grating that I need to do, and
I managed to get through twenty five essays just in
the couple of hours before we started working, So I
am fine if tomorrow I have to finish my essays.
Sitting down the couch with a Christmas tree twinkling and
with Criminal Minds playing on Amazon, I.
Speaker 4: Thought for certain you were going to say Paul McCartney's
Wonderful Christmas Time playing on the stereo.
Speaker 3: I hate no song.
Speaker 4: I don't like to air our collective dirty laundry here.
But before I hit the big red button which says RC,
which stands for a record, in case you're not into
that technological stuff. Before I hit the record button, Kristin
was just buzzing around her house in Virginia, enjoying the snow,
and I caught it. Smort I heard her humming, see
be a Wonderful Christmas Time along those lines. No, I imagine.
Speaker 3: That you did.
Speaker 1: Actually, the thing that I've been humming actually is this
fabulous little diddy for the Welcome to Dairy themes song.
I have been watching Welcome to Dairy, this happy bouncy
little tune which starts out a terrible horror ridden show,
and I've had that tune in my head for the
last twenty four hours, so I've been singing the little
catchy tune from Welcome to Day, and anybody who's been
watching it you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4: I'm shuddering here because I am not the guy who's
going to watch those spooky scary films.
Speaker 3: Forget it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I know, and that's I'm a Stephen
King fan from way back. It is my favorite book,
and this has not been quite the series that I
wanted it to be. But I'm going to see it
all the way through and then I can justifiably criticize
it after I've watched the whole entire thing.
Speaker 3: But first, you're going to sit through this gore fest.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, look, I definitely am wholeheartedly of the belief
that most horror movies are way too gory, and I
would like to see a whole lot less. There was
enough gore and Welcome to Dairy that I was like,
I'm going to have to fast forward through at least
a little bit of this because it's nasty. I think
you can make a great scary movie or a scary
TV series without resulting in bucket loads of.
Speaker 4: Gore would have to agree, but I could have sworn
I heard you.
Speaker 3: You could know you did not. You did not.
Speaker 1: I worked in retail for too many years to go
around hunting Christmas carols. I will not even listen to
Christmas carols this time of the year. It's too many
years of eight hour days listening to Christmas music.
Speaker 3: I won't do it.
Speaker 4: I'm old enough to remember that when I was in college,
which is a million years ago, and we cleaned grocery
stores and retail stores in the floor I was only
what was then known as a floor crew. The worst
was there was a big department store we would go
when to clean the floors, and they played the same
ten Christmas songs yep on a tape in the same order.
It was the most insane, infuriating, bizarre thing. I remember
asking the people that worked there. It was like a
Marshal's or something like that. I said, does this drive
you insane? And they said, oh, I tuned it out
months ago because they played the same ten songs, which
lasted about an hour, ten or fifteen whatever. And it's funny,
if you were close enough to the office, it would
stop the Christmas song, and then it'd be a click
and here the same no, the same song. The next
song would play. But we were only there for a
couple of hours once a week. Maybe by the time
you got out of there, it was all ingrained in
your brain. And can you imagine working eight, ten, twelve hours.
You'd want to kill yourself.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep.
Speaker 1: Not a Christmas music fan. All retail workers will agree
on this one.
Speaker 4: I worked for ASCAP, the Songwriters Organization. I'm here to
tell you, if you're lucky enough to write a Christmas
song that's a hit, you can make more money with
a Christmas song, which is only played one month a
year than you do with almost any other form of
pop music.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Really, it's more like two months out of the year.
It starts in November, say have the Wonderful Christmas. Jose
Feliciano told me when I met him that he had
made more money with Felice Navidad, which he wrote for
his kids, and then the record company heard it and
said we really like this, and he said, okay, fire away,
and they released it as a single. He said, I've
made more money with that one song than I have
with the entire rest of Mike's catalog. No, what I mean,
you hit a lucky streak. You got to just go
with it. It's fantastic. Yes, good for him on the
more serious matters. So the more serious matters, what's up today,
Kristin Dilly, Well, he decided on and ask us anything
formatt because we have had a lot of people send
in questions with regard to our most recent episodes, the
ones involving the recent break in the Colonial Parkway murders
case regarding Laurie and Powell, and also the one that
we released with Kelly Richards and Joyce Call Canada with
regard to some very interesting connections that we've learned between
Ron Little and Alan Weidwilmer Senior. So we decided on
and ask us anything, And as so often happens when
we put out and ask us anything request, we asked
and people answered, We're gonna just run through as many
questions as we can in the time that we have,
but let's just go ahead and fire away. But because
someone did send us a non serious, non crime related question,
I'll start with that one oh day, get into murder
and conspiracy and all the rest of that.
Speaker 3: All right, sounds good. Fire away.
Speaker 1: Our first non serious question comes from Kimberly, who asks
a non serious question. As an animal lover, can we
please hear a little about your pets. We'd love to
see photos too, if they aren't too private. Bill tell
us about Oliver, the very good.
Speaker 4: Docs end Well. Oliver was out today Christmas shopping with us,
and he was a major hit. For those of you
that have never met Oliver, which would probably be most
of you. Oliver is a medium sized, long haired docsin
so he's black and tan with long fur. Sometimes people
think that he is not a dox in because although
he looks like a doxin and barks like a dosin,
he has long hair.
Speaker 3: But there are three types of doctions.
Speaker 4: Their short hair, which is what most of us think of,
or smooth coat they call him. There's wire haired who
I think are hysterical. They've got more of a squared
off head and look like a terrier head on a
docks and body, and there may be some truth to that.
And there are long haired doctions like Oliver, so he
has the long body and very bushy hair. Interestingly, they
are hypollergenics, so they don't cause me to sneeze. Some
dog breeds and cats cause me to sneeze. That's Oliver.
Oliver is a ferocious watchdog, very attached to my part
or Pamela. He's oh my gosh, he's a rescue dogs.
I I was thirteen years old. And his big thing
is he must be within say roughly six feet that
would be two meters for our friends in New Zealand,
close to Pamela or closer at all times. So he
follows her from room to room, which can include the
lady's room. So sometimes he'll follow her into the bathroom
and then of course I'll be outside saying are we
having a family meeting in there?
Speaker 3: Oliver will follow.
Speaker 4: Her literally everywhere, and he just loses his little docs
in mind when she's gone, For instance, she goes out
meeting with friends, doctor's appointment, whatever. If she's gone, he
is broken hearted. It's been a number of times when
Kristin and I have been on the phone, she's is
that Oliver, because it'll sound like there's a coyote in
the other room, Yes, doing the ouh thing, because he
just can't stand it.
Speaker 1: He sounds utterly broken hearted. And it is many the
time that I call Bill and I can hear Oliver
in the background, and he just sounds Oh, he's so
upset and he's so sad. So Pamela is his favorite
person and Bill is like a distant second.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a huge margin between Pamela up here at
the top of the list, Bill down here, and then
I'd like to think the rest of the world might
be a little bit below me, but I'm not even
sure about that. He's extremely protective of his house and property.
His sworn enemies, the United States Postal Service, FedEx ups,
and the Amazonians. They drive down our street quite frequently.
He objects to all of them. He'll even bark. We've
been on the New Jersey Turnpike and a massive FedEx
struck will drive by. If he sees the logo, he'll
start bark.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: I did have an absolutely amazing cat named Ziggy Stardust.
Ziggy unfortunately passed away from some cancer this past May,
which broke my heart, and I ended up getting another
cat named Juniper. Her original name was Pinsel because she
was found in Christmas time last year. Oh very sweet,
but I decided to rename her to Juniper. So she
is also an orange cat like Ziggy. She's more orange
than sand colored, which he was. She's still got that
crazy kitten manic energy, so she races around the house
at the crack of dawn and any other time she
feels like it. You can tell she's a rescue. She
spent most of her life from December when she was
caught last year, up until June when I rescued her
in a cage at Pet Smart. So she has had
very little socialization and is not great about being loved
and hugged. But we're getting better and she is very sweet.
She is not Ziggy, but I love her just as
much and we are learning to continue to get along
with each other. She is very agile. She loves to
jump all over things. She will jump like from the
floor all the way to the top of her very
tall scratching post. She loves chasing things. She loves her
laser mouse. So I haven't one of those laser things,
but it's got a little mouse shaped cover on top
of it. We're still getting to know and love each other,
but she is as sweetie, and I am glad to
have a cat that is as soft and nearly as
adorable as Ziggy.
Speaker 4: Those are big pause to follow in. One thing I've
noticed about Juny is that she loves to disrupt podcast
recording sessions by chewing on wires and attempting to unplug
computers and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ziggy did that too, but not nearly as much
as Junny does. And we are definitely we were definitely
prepared for havoc to be reached on the Christmas tree.
But fortunately she's done fairly well because I've trained her
with a squirt model. We do not get near the tree.
So she's right now, she's sleeping on the back of
the sofa while I'm in here doing my podcast.
Speaker 3: But that is Junifer put up some pictures of both
Yeah and I.
Speaker 1: We'll sit up some pictures. So Kim also had a
serious question, and she says, do you guys know of
any murders that could potentially be linked to Alan Wade
Wilmer in Maryland? I live in Maryland and could definitely
see him bringing his boat up here and also hanging
out at some of the dive bars on the local
creeks that existed at the time. Bill, you want to
take this one.
Speaker 4: We've heard some very strange rumors. All they are is rumors,
but we've heard some very odd stories about Alan Wade Wilmer, Senior,
the deceased suspect in the Colonial Parkway murders, now linked
to four double homicides, including Lorian Powells. We've heard some
very strange stories about Wilmer and a couple of other men,
including a younger cousin, who used to make what they
called hunting trips up to the area around Waldorf, Maryland.
So this would involve them heading north from Lancaster County,
which is home base for Wilmer and most of the
watermen that he worked with, and head north across the
Potomac River. Of course, across the Rappahannock as well. There
were a series of strip clubs, some of which I
think are still there along the highway coming down from Waldorf,
Maryland towards the Potomac River. We heard some very strange stories,
some of which I haven't completely run to ground yet.
We've had a lot going on. I'm aware of some
women who danced at these clubs who went missing. That's
an interesting possibility. We can't name names at this point
of potential victims, but it's a sort of tantalizing possibility
that's out there as we'll discuss today. There's a lot
of different aspects of Allan Wayde Wilmer's patterns in these murders.
When Kristin and I were recently discussing the Colonial Parkway
murders in the latest development with former FBI profilers Jim
Fitzgerald and Raymond Carr, fitz and Ray were educating us,
as they often are, about how killers operate and how
they may behave in different ways depending on the situation
they find themselves in. I'll let Kristin explain more. This
Waldorf Maryland connection is something that I really am hoping
to look into in the coming weeks and months.
Speaker 1: I think that it's an excellent possibility that he was
moving up into too Maryland, especially given the intel that
Bill has received. I think what this really highlights is
the need for all of the investigating agencies here VSP
as well as FBI, assuming they're willing to do their jobs,
and any other investigating agency that may have cold cases
on their radar that they think could be linked to Wilmer.
It's time for them to all sit down and really
have a what do we have? Let's lay it out
on the table. As fitz and Ray had told us.
When we discussed the aspects of this case with them,
Fitz kept using the term apex predator for Wilmer, and
I think that's a great term for him. And with
apex predators, they all have a hunting ground or hunting zone.
We don't know how far that extends for Wilmer, either
up or down. The Intra Coastal Waterway runs all the
way through Virginia, North Carolina, even as far down as Florida.
Where else was Wilmer taking his boat and hunting. We
really have no idea until there are multiple investigative agencies
that are willing to look at this and go, here
are the facts. We have a serial killer, a confirmed
serial killer, with a boat, who was working in Virginia,
and he has a massive reach. We're going to have
to take this seriously. Let's get everybody's cards on the table,
and let's see what cases could be potentially matched to him.
Until such time as that happens, it's all going to
be speculation and supposition on our part until law enforcement
kind of gets it together. We can speculate all day long,
and I think most of our speculation is going to
be fairly well informed. I think we are currently the
people who are covering this the most and have the
best information in terms of podcasters. But it's really going
to come down to law enforcement deciding to do their
job and get collaborative with people in Maryland, North Carolina,
maybe even South Carolina, maybe Delaware, who knows. It's a
little frightening and daunting to think about.
Speaker 4: There's no question in my mind that Wilmer is responsible
for more than just the four homicides he's linked to
via DNA, So I think there's a lot more here,
and Christian, you're absolutely right. If law enforcement steps up
and does their job, we should be learning more about
other horrific situations that Wilmer has found himself in, and
he has created just a series of unsolved murders that
we think extends far beyond the four that are currently
linked via DNA.
Speaker 1: To that end, here, Bill, let me go ahead and
ask you, very specifically a question from Kathy over on
Colonial Parkway murders. And we're going to bounce back and
forth between our platforms for the rest of this episode
asking questions because we get them from multiple people. We
can't get to all of them today, but we will
try so Kathy asks, does Bill feel that Wilmer is
the one responsible for his sister's murder. I'll go ahead
and just let you speak directly to that.
Speaker 3: Bill.
Speaker 4: That's a tough one, Kathy. It's something I think about
a lot. I think there's a very good possibility that
Alan Wade Wilmer Senior is responsible for most, or perhaps all,
of what we call the Colonial Parkway murders, So that
would include Kathy Thomas and Rebecca Dowski. There's so much
about Kathy and Becky's murder that is a really good
fit for Alan Wade Wilmer Senior. And I'm not taking
his older brother, Keith Wilmer off the list either. We
know that Wilmer's responsible for incident number two, that is
the murder of Robin Edwards and David Nobling, and he's
very closely linked to incident number three, the disappearance of
Keith Colincusandra Haley. One outlier, at least in my mind
at this moment, without more evidence, particularly forensic evidence, Incident
number four, the murder of Anna Maria Phelps and Daniel Lower,
feels like a good fit to me. Wilmer would have
been driving past that area of Interstate sixty four quite
likely if he was going back and forth between his
home base in Lancaster down to the Peninsula air near
where Kristin lives. So I think there's a very strong
possibility he may be responsible for Kathy and Becky's murder.
I think that's the best I can give you right now, Kathy, let's.
Speaker 1: See here, We've got a question for rum Naomi on
Colonial Parkway murders. Naomi says, this situation with COTIS is frustrating.
Is there any mechanism whereby a close relative of Wilmer
could voluntarily provide a DNA sample to be matched against cotis?
Are there any groups of linked DNA profiles from an
unknown purp on COTIS where Wilmer could be a reasonable suspect.
These are good questions, but I'm not sure we have
the information for this.
Speaker 4: I can provide some information. We've talked to a number
of experts about CODIS and whether or not we would
have to change the law in Virginia so that Wilmer,
who's never been convicted of a crime and died at
the end of twenty seventeen, if his DNA could be
put into the CODAS system It's not a simple thing,
and that may be frustrating for a lot of us,
myself included, but that's the reality of the situation. We
were told by the FBI two years ago when they
rated the Wilmer Holmes Plural, that Keith Wilmer, the brother
who died at the end of April now twenty twenty five,
so he's deceased as well. We were told that Keith
Wilmer had voluntarily given his DNA to law enforcement, and
I have no reason to not believe law enforcement that
this happened. So I think they have Keith Wilmer his
brother's DNA. Beyond that, I'm not aware of any logical
reason why they would need DNA from anyone else. They
have the late Allen Wade Wilmer seniors DNA, and they
have his older brother, William Keith Wilmer's DNA. Those samples
should probably give them enough to be able to create
a good working plile and check unsolved cases against the
two brothers DNA.
Speaker 1: We've got another question here from Blaane, not our Blaine
part oh, but another Blaine, also on Colonial Parkway murders.
Have Wilmer's family members mentioned any hindsight, inklings of weird
behaviors or events that now make more sense. I do
want to mention because we are bringing in Wilmer's family,
I want to again reiterate to everybody that his family
has been nothing but helpful and they have been very
straightforward and forthcoming with law enforcement. That said, I don't
necessarily think that we are in a position where we
can speak for the family. We would rather if they're
going to speak, they speak for themselves. But Bill, I
know that you have spent a little bit more time
with them than I have. So do you feel like
you want to speak to that or shall we let
that be something the family discusses on their own, at
their own time.
Speaker 4: I want to be careful because I don't want to
break confidence. I'll take it this far. I think in
my conversations with members of the Wilmer family, they were
shocked by this news. They had not seen this side
of Alan Wade Wilmer, the serial killer of this person.
From my discussions with the members of the Wilmer family,
that side is just not evident to them. He was married, young,
had two kids, worked hard to provide for his family
as a waterman, and then later with his tree service.
They didn't see a dark or violent side. He wasn't
abusive to his family, So I don't think there's anything there.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: I can ask them again. We don't talk all the time,
but we have talked from time to time. I can
ask them again, But based on the conversations I've had
with them so far, I would say, no, there's nothing
that I'm aware of or that they've told me about
that would indicate in retrospect some dark impulse on the
part of Allan Wade Wilmer Senior. And I totally agree
with your point, Kristen. Please, let's not beat the Wilmer
family up anymore than they have themselves. They have been
fully cooperative with law enforcement. They are truly shocked finding
this out, and they're just trying to keep it together
moving forward. And you can't blame his ex wife or
his kids. And by the way, as a reminder, his
kids were eight and ten years old at the time
of the Colonial Parkway murders, so they were literally little
kids and they would have essentially no knowledge of anything
that their father was into. The parents were divorced, they
stayed in touch because of the kids. When he moved
down to Hampton. As they put it, he seems to
have gotten into some really horrible stuff that they knew
nothing about.
Speaker 1: Also think it's important to mention that because we do
have people who are listening who not only knew the Wilmers,
are friends with them, or just live in the same area,
we are going to encourage people. The Wilmers have asked
for privacy, and the last statement that they made at
Lorian Powell's press conference, they have asked for privacy in
the wake of this news, and so we are going
to ask for people to give them the same thing.
We understand that people want information. It is an intriguing
question to ask what did they know? Did they have
any idea? But if they want to tell their story,
they will tell it, and they will tell it in
their own time and on their own terms. No one
needs owed information about anything in this case, not the
stories of the victims, and not the stories as related
to the killer's family. So we are going to ask
people please make sure that you give the Wilmers the
privacy that they deserve. They did not ask to be
a part of this, and so information attempting to give
out information such as where they live, attempting to provide
for their information in an online forum or even just
speaking for them. It's not appropriate and it's not appreciated,
and if we do see it on our forums, we
will be deleting those comments and banning those individuals. It's
not appropriate. They didn't ask for this.
Speaker 4: You're listening to mindover Murder. We'll be right back after
this word from our sponsors. We're back here at mindover Murder.
One thing I will push back on, though, is after
the news broke that the Virginia State Police and all
credit to them, had connected Alan Widwilmer Sr. To Lorient
Powell's death through testing her rape cap. There were hundreds
of comments on social media, not just on our platforms,
but all of the local radio and television and newspaper
reports all had coverage, and many of them have Facebook
and other social media pages, and so people commented. One
thing I really pushed back on, and you'll note that
other Colonial Parkway murders family members did too, was some
people were laying it on awfully thick from my perspective,
saying things like the Wilmer family has suffered enough. This
sort of thing doesn't belong on social media. And this
was multiple comments, mostly folks from Lancaster County, Virginia. I
get it, and these people know and support the Wilmers.
I get that too. But you saw comments from a
number of our friends and colleagues who are also Colonial
Parkway murders families, and I chimed in as well, You've
got to be kidding. We have been suffering with these
losses for up to thirty nine years, so it's a
thirty six to thirty nine year wait for answers. At
this point. We're not saying anything bad about the Wilmer family.
We're not attacking the Wilmer family. But us asking for questions,
looking for answers, and trying to keep people talking about
the Colonial Parkway murders is completely and totally within our rights. Yeah,
and my heart goes out to the Wilmer family. These
last two years have got to have been incredibly difficult,
and no one wants to find out that their family
member is a serial killer and probably killed far more
than the four people that have been identified as his victims.
But if you think we're going to stop asking questions,
you got another thing coming. And no one's putting down
the Wilmer family. By doing so, we have every right
to ask these questions, and something that Kristin and I
have talked about a lot offline. Every single time there's
a significant development in the Colonial Parkway murders, which we welcome.
And we can give a lot of credit to the
Virginia State Police for the news about Loriente Powell's murder
and the connection to the Colonial Parkway murders. People come
out of the woodwork every single time. I can't tell
you why this is, but it just is. And some
of those people actually have new information, which is very beneficial,
and we try to get those people to talk to
law enforcement and we'll pass along tips to law enforcement ourselves.
We've done it many times. This pattern has been going
on for years. Like I said, I can't explain why
they're doing it, but they are and we appreciate it.
People come forward, Many of them didn't realize that something
that happened thirty forty years ago now was significant. Perhaps
people are asking new questions or just talking about the
case again. So people have come forward, and that's actually
a good thing. None of this is intended to cause
pain to the Wilmer family. If anyone who listens to
this podcast must have figured out by now we're not
going away and we're not going to stop asking questions,
because there's a lot of unanswered questions at this point.
Speaker 1: I think this is one of those aspects of a
true crime investigation that doesn't get focused on in documentaries,
in dateline episodes and so on and so forth, the
fact that one it never really ends for the victims,
for the survivors or the family members, and it always
comes up again in new ways and old ways. When
there's a chase development, people come out of the woodwork.
Like you said, it disrupts holidays, it disrupts family time.
As soon as we knew that something was coming down
the pike, and as soon as we knew that there
was going to be press conference with new information, you
and I both know to just brace for impact and
know that it's going to impact our days, whether that
is our jobs, our family life, and whatever else. We
don't ask, for example, for you to have to drop
everything and try five hundred miles from Connecticut to Virginia
to meet with people and answer questions and do investigative stuff,
but it happens. I think that people who are used
to getting their true crime content through documentaries in podcasts,
but have never lived it. Don't understand that the day
to day reality of it is it never leaves, not ever.
The Wilmer family is going to have to live with
this for the rest of their lives, just like you
are now. Because I involved myself with us ten years ago,
I live it too. This is it's a choice on
my part. It's voluntary, and I wouldn't ask for a
minute to take it back. But it lives with you
and it wears on you. I think it's hard for
people to understand that when you get involved, you're in
it up to your neck.
Speaker 3: For good and for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're in it, and there is no way for
you to ever not be in it. Our big hope
right now is that we shouldn't get through the holidays
without there being a major upset or breakthrough, and that
we can all actually take some time off chill because
I know that you've done more than your fair share
of driving over the last couple of weeks, and we've
both spent plenty of time on the phone. We're ready
to take a little bit of time off here.
Speaker 3: What other questions let's see, Oh, we have so many.
Speaker 1: Okay, so somebody had asked about and this should tell
you where we are. Also, somebody had asked a question,
what about Richard Wade Hall? And because I'm in frazzled
teacher at the end of the semester mode, I forgot
what name that pertained to. And I actually had to ask,
can you ask this person? Can you please clarify? I
don't know who this is? And they were like, heyeah,
that's Wilmer's younger cousin. And I was like, oh my god.
There are so many names and faces here. It's actually
hard to keep track. I'm gonna have to start keeping
a notebook just like you. The question is essentially, what
do we know about Richard Wade Hall? So can you
give everybody a little bit of clarification on who that
is and what do we know about any connection between them?
Speaker 4: I get a couple of different versions of this. Richard
Wade Hall, I am told is a cousin to the
Wilmer family and very oddly, just after the raid at
the Wilmer family homes. That's Holmes plural, and this would
have been two and a half years ago, just after
that raid. Richard Wade Hall who had suffered with some
mental health issues and other things. He lived in the
Lancaster County area. He maybe one county over, was also
involved in working with Waterman, had his own small business.
He committed suicide almost immediately after the raids. A number
of people thought that was very strange, and I am
among those people. One version of the story that we
heard about these trips up into Maryland, which may have
been Alan Wade, Wilmer and others up to no good,
includes Richard Wade Hall. Now I don't know that for
a fact, but we've heard it a lot. There was
some pushback. Right after mister Hall passed away. He had
committed suicide. He killed himself in his garage. There was
a cryptic suicide note, as I understand it, that made
reference to the fact that he was into some things
that he shouldn't have been into.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I've never heard much further about it. It has never
sat well with me. I think that his death and
his life in the years prior to his death definitely
need more exploration. I'm not saying the man's a murderer
or anything like that, but I have heard a lot
of very strange rumors about Richard Wade Hall.
Speaker 1: Next question is from Sandy. She says, the last time
Cassandra and Keith were seen at the party, were there
any searches done in that immediate area, how far from
the party was the water and were any parking areas
nearby near the water.
Speaker 4: There's a lot to this, given how difficult it is
to get the FBI to respond to questions. We've asked
these kind of questions a number of times and never
gotten satisfactory answers. First of all, there is water close
to the Christopher Newport University and the University Square apartments
where the party took place. For those of you that
live there, there's water everywhere.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking you there's water everywhere in Crystal, Virginia.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1: And is it immediately adjacent to the water.
Speaker 4: No, But is there water a couple of miles away,
creeks and inlets that are fairly close. And there are
a number of places where couples would go to be
romantic fairly close to the University Square apartments, again, within
a couple of miles. I've had local folks walk me
through on maps where they used to go when they
were teenagers and where the big makeout spots were, where
those areas searched. Real hard to get a straight answer
out of the FBI. I shrugged my shoulders. I want
to think that there were searches conducted, but I have
no way of knowing that, and they will not answer
these questions. As infuriating as that might be.
Speaker 1: Brandy asks, what what has made Wilmer stop attacking and
murdering young people or couples? If his last known attack
was in the late nineties, seems someone like him wouldn't
have been able to stop if he died in twenty
seventeen and was possibly ill the last few years of
his life. Is it feasible to think he continued to
kill into the early to mid two thousands and those
cases just aren't known.
Speaker 4: Yet entirely possible from what we've been told, And again
we've talked to some of the leading experts in the
field about serial killers and how every serial killer is different.
As we understand it, Sometimes serial killers do slow down
as they get a bit older. They will move away
from killing or take long breaks from murders, and there's
any number of people. BTK is one terrific example that
we've explored before Lennie Franklin from Los Angeles was known
as the Grim Sleeper because that case seemed to be
very active. For a while, he was killing sex workers
and dumping their bodies in alleys throughout south central Los Angeles,
and then the murders appeared to stop, and then they
started up again, and that's where the name the grim
Sleeper came from. So we've seen this happen a lot.
I don't think that Wilmer's last kill was in nineteen
eighty nine, when the Colonial Parkway murders appeared to stop.
I think he continued far beyond that point. I think
the question is a really good one, Brandy. I think
it's easily possible that he was killing into the two thousands.
Speaker 1: Brandy references the last known attack in the late nineties,
and I'm wondering if she's referencing the Amber lungering case
in ninety seven in Asheville, North Carolina. While the suspects
sketch and the truck sketch in that case look very
similar to Wilmer, that has not been confirmed in any way,
shape or form. That is only our speculation that he
might be involved, So we can't technically say it was
his last known attack. The last connected attack via DNA
to Wilmer is nineteen eighty nine murder of Terry Howell
in Hampton. Like Bill has said, I think it's entirely
possible that there are many more cases. It's just going
to take people going through, pulling up those cold case
files and saying, hey, what is there that we can test,
what is there that we can timeline out, and what
is there that we think he might be good for.
And I mean, we're doing this independently, but we're not investigators.
I am trying to build a timeline on this guy,
and I would love to see what actual investigators with
real access to crime scene files can come up with.
I'm not an investigator. I'm just an overworked high school teacher.
But I think it's going to be fascinating once someone
actually sits down and manages to timeline this guy out
all the way.
Speaker 3: FBI, we're looking at you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or VSP has done an excellent job with this
case so far, and I would really like to see
them continue to run with it. I think, really, let's
go ahead and get into the heart of what everybody
seems to want to know right now.
Speaker 3: Because we've been teasing it.
Speaker 1: A little bit. So that means we're going to get
into some of our questions from Robert, one of our
original and very wonderful fans. Robert offers five questions. They're
all connected to each other, so let's dig on in.
Robert says, I really want to hear your working theory
on a potential Wilmer round Little Liberty Security connection. How
are you connecting the dots in your head? And I
think again it's a good idea, just to remind people
that we are not investigators. This is supposition. Please take
this as a theory rather than anything that has been
acknowledged by law enforcement, because it hasn't. Bill, you want
to lay it out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this one gets a little dicey. We believe we're
seeing some can connections between Wilmer and Little. We don't
want to get ahead of ourselves, but we are exploring
potential connections between Alan Wade Wilmer Senior, who's been linked
to four homicides in this series, and Ron Little, who
we think now co owned Liberty Security later called Advanced Security.
At this point, you can't ignore the fact that, Okay,
four of these people are linked to Wilmer, but three
of them are also connected to Liberty Security. Robin Edwards's mother, Bonnie,
worked at Liberty Security and her date that night, David
Nobling was killed with her. He has no personal connection
to Liberty Security. And now we have Lori Anne Powell
has been linked to Alan Wade Wilmer Senior, and she
worked for Liberty Security. And of course we've also talked
about Brian Pettinger, who also worked at Liberty Security, and
Kristen actually has opined that she's hoping that if we
are able to solve that case, that there'll be a
link there from Brian Pettinger to Liberty Security as well.
A professional one exists, but we think it's quite possible
that they are responsible or somehow connected to his death.
We think logically you can't ignore this. Four people are
linked to Wilmer, three of them, three of the victims
are also linked to run Little in Liberty Security. So
we're trying to put that together, and obviously the more
we learn, we're going to be going back to law
enforcement with this new information. People are definitely picking up
on what we're putting down here. I've likened it to
breadcrumbs a bit that's probably all we'll say for now,
but this is something we're definitely working on, and we
are planning to take this to law enforcement once we
have something more concrete.
Speaker 1: Okay, then Robert's question continues exactly where you just left off.
Three of Wilmer's four victims have some degree of connection
to Liberty Security. If the Pettenger and call Haley cases
are eventually tied to Wilmer, even more victims will have
a connection to that company. Does this make you rethink
whether these are actually crimes of opportunity or do you
think there's a chance these were more planned and premeditated
attacks committed with the intention of targeting a specific victim
due to their connection to Liberty Security.
Speaker 4: I guess my answer is probably both. When we had
a very interesting interview and podcast a couple of weeks
ago with our former FBI agents on the Cold Red podcast,
which is very much worth listening to, and oh, totally,
the two of them are brilliant and we learned something
every single time we talk with them. Fitz and Ray
both said, you can be more than one thing at
a time. He may be focused on couples, but there
may be opportunities that are presented where there's a single woman,
for example, Teresa lynd Spa Howell or Lorienne Powell. They
seem to be and I think this is probably fair.
I think these are both single women who are in
a very vulnerable situation. It's late at night, they've both
been drinking. Lauren Powell has a fight with her boyfriend
Chris Cutler. He drops her off on lonely stretch of road.
I recently toured that lonely stretch of road with our
friends from Gloucester County, the same situation. It's not dissimilar
with Teresa Howell. She's out at the after hours club,
the Zodiac Club. She's likely had a lot to drink,
and Wilmer either connects with her inside or outside the club.
We heard a very chilling story recently of someone who
said that Wilmer had followed them from one club to
another and ran into this woman in the parking lot
and called her by name. So he's engaging in stalking
behavior out question. We think that with Wilmer, he's focused
on couples, but he's also more than willing to attack
single women's He's got this varied again.
Speaker 1: As Fitz called him, he is an apex predator, and
I think in adding to that, he is an opportunistic
offender when he can't find what his preference is. We
don't really know yet what his preference is. Is it couples,
is it women that he can assault? What is it?
Precisely that we know, because right at this point we
have Robin Edwards and David Knobling, a couple, they were
certainly together. We have Lrien Powell, we have Thereesa Howell.
So we've got one couple, two single victims. You bring
in Cal Haley, that's two couples, two single victims. If
you add in Brian Pettinger, two couples, three single victims.
And then if you add in Pettenger, that makes the
mix a little in interesting because that would be the
first time he's attacked a solo male. And then that
brings in a whole other set of questions that someone
had asked about sexual assault with regard to a male victim,
And we have no way of knowing where the investigation
is into Brian or whether Brian will even be linked.
At this point, I was watching an episode of Criminal Minds,
as one does, while I was sitting in grading and
The name of the episode was called Omnivore, and the
Aaron Hotchner character was describing a offender very similar to Wilmer,
someone who does not have a specific group that he targets. Instead,
this killer was targeting both couples and single victims essentially,
and so he called him an omnivore. He said, whoever
he can get his hands on at any given time,
And I think that might be an appropriate way to
describe Wilmer. I think we just don't know enough yet
about the range of his crimes to be able to
ascribe to him. He's solely a couple killer with a
couple of single victim outliers or what maybe the couples
themselves were an outlier. Again, we don't know how many
people this man has killed. I think that as more
and more comes out, we're then going to be able
to refine the profile on him. But right now we
really don't have a good way to know. These are
such amazing questions, and we are getting such a good
conversation rolling here that we are going to stop this
episode right here, but keep rolling right into the next one.
So for now we are going to go ahead and
say thank you to everybody who wrote in for questions,
and if you didn't hear your question in this episode,
stay tuned for the next one. You'll probably hear it there.
For now, thank you so much for listening to this
episode of mind Over Murder. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 5: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.
Speaker 4: Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.
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Speaker 5: Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder.