Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind over Murder podcast.
Speaker 2: My name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting, producer,
and now podcaster. I am now trying to use my
experience as the brother of a murder victim to help
other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book
on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders and I'm the co
administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 3: My name is Kristin Dilly. 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 4: Welcome to Mind of a Murder.
Speaker 1: I'm Kristin Dilly and I'm Bill Thomas, and we're.
Speaker 5: Joined today by Jill Harrington, Dan Harrington and Jane Lillian
Vance here to talk to us about the amazing work
they are doing at Help Save the Next Girl.
Speaker 2: This is part two of our conversation with Dan, Jill
and Jane discussing the work of Help Save the Next Girl.
At this point, we're discussing their relationship with law enforcement
during the investigation into Morgan Harrington's murder in two thousand
and nine.
Speaker 4: I think one of the greatest contributions the Harringtons and
Help Say the Next Girl have made is exactly this.
The triangulation between victim's family, news media, and police has
evolved into an incredibly supportive set of relationships. Where before
there was hierarchy, doubt and closed doors. Now we know sheriffs, deputies,
police captains, lieutenant's investigators, and they are our friends. Not
because we are pretending to be police are not, but because,
my god, the list of support Brent since Helps Say
the Next Girl has given recently Jill can tell you about.
But one example is a police officer recently said, and
they come to Jill's home, Dan and Jill's home to
eat at the table. We make sure of that we
break bread. That's what you do when you care about someone.
And one policewoman said, it's hard for us in crime
situations because active situations, because we don't have kevlar best
Why because our brains are smaller and we don't have
all the money, so they order the larger sizes for
the men. Help Say the Next Girl took complete care
of that problem. Those things happen in conversations now. It's
amazing and people are grateful, of course they are, but
it takes someone breaking the old father knows best mold.
And then look at the relationship and ship changed with
news media. Jill, let you talk about this. Actually this
then at the first meeting when we went to Charlottesville, when.
Speaker 6: We on the Monday following Morgan's murder, we obviously were
needing to meet with the university police at UVA, as
well as the state police and probably even the county police,
and we spent the whole day there and at the
end of the day they said, there's a large contingent
of media in front, and we recommend that you go
out the back, and Joe and I both said, absolutely not.
We have the ability to present what situation we were
in to the media so that the public can be
engaged and perhaps help us. And so the reality of
it is, we went out front and it was very emotional.
I get cheerful sometimes with all this. We're asking if
Morgan's out there, please come home, if you've left, if not,
if someone's taken you, please bring Morgan back. From then on, literally,
we're actually very lucky that there wasn't a war or
earthquake or anything like that in the month following that.
In it we spent we said no to only one
and we won't say it is only one invite, and
we were on TV all the time, and that was
a really important piece for us. And we're educated people,
and sometimes what happens in these situations or that families
are not as educated and are also fearful and don't
know what to do. And we didn't know what to do,
but we knew.
Speaker 4: What we had to do.
Speaker 6: And that's one reason I think that so many of
these cases has never come to light within communities because
people can't get the media to come talk with them
because they don't know that they can. We were very
fortunate that we were able to utilize the media as
we did, because I think it was helpful to us.
Speaker 4: That they were invaluable and to move the culture because
we did with law enforcement with media, often the victims
and media. Victims, families and media are adversarial, but we
needed their help to find our daughter and to help
us solicit information from the community, and we would have
people come to the house. We would if you were
a fifth grader and your school paper wanted to do
a little story, we would speak with you, and we
said yes to pretty much everyone, and reporters would come
and go in Morgan's room and stop at the threshold
and say, oh my god, those are the same sheets
my little sister took to college. So they had a
connection and they worked with us and helped us a lot.
The relationships that we developed over time with media had
many benefits for us in furthering and continuing interest in
Morten's case, but we were also able to provide soccor
and support to media in our community. When to media,
Adam and Allison were executed on air, and those people
who had interviewed us in our living room about our
daughter's death came all to our house to eat and
to cry and to comfort one another about the loss
that station had incurred. Again, the boundaries have moved and
were some I know none of those young people ever
envisioned that they would be the one sitting in a
chair being interviewed about a pedastrophe like murder.
Speaker 5: That was absolutely horrific. I remember when that happened, and you.
Speaker 4: Have to understand when Dan and Jil say they've been
in our home that means they are welcomed like family.
Here's try this sweet peach tea. And here, let me
get you something to eat and sit here, and then
we'll go to Morgan's room. Would you like to look
at for drawings. Let me tell you about this one painting.
And they open up as well. So what was stiff
if not adversarial melts. And that time when all the
reporters from different channels they called and said, may we
come to your home? And yes, they said, we're on
the other side of the story. Now it wasn't just that,
it wasn't the technical realization that now had someone who
had been murdered. It was that they knew who understood
the anatomy of grief and of survival with loving arms.
I remember Dan's Catholic priest father, Steve Dan, was there
that night, and he no one would have known he
was a priest. He was in civilian outfit, but he
was going from person to person. There were a lot
of tears that night, and there was bonding. That's what
I mean. When my part of the book begins, I
say that one of the things Jill has done dyl
and Dan and help say the next girl have done
is change the history of Virginia because of those relationships
of news media once seemed to be kind of scurless
and invasive, police seemingly cold, and father knows best, and
victim's family seemingly helpless. And it's not our case. It
is evolved here in great part because of the Harrington's
great hearts and sights you.
Speaker 5: Just mentioned Alison Parker and Adam Ward, who for our
listeners who may not be familiar, they were executed live
on television by a disgruntled colleague. Allison's father, Andy Parker,
is also doing a lot of work to further legislation.
Are you in contact with Andy at all? And are
you Have you guys worked in any way together?
Speaker 4: We have not. We have not. Bill.
Speaker 6: Yes, I have to leave for another meeting, and I
really appreciate participating in this. But you have the two
experts on the screen. Okay, Thanks Dan, thank you. Thanks.
Speaker 5: It's great to meet you.
Speaker 4: Dan.
Speaker 6: Nice to meet you too.
Speaker 2: Are you comfortable in now dealing it's fifteen years on
since we lost Morgan. Are you comfortable talking with the
parents of other victims of violent crime? Is that something
that does it bring back some of your sense of loss?
And pain, or is it something you feel like you're
taking your life experience and able to help them as
you did with the law enforcement people and the media people.
Speaker 4: I think, to me, service is the way out of
the pit. I'm an oncology nurse, and people would say,
how in the world can you go into that specialty
because it's so sad, it's they're often that outcomes, And
for me, it is a privilege to work with people
at such an intimate time and to know that I
can make it better. I may not change the outcome,
but I can make them more comfortable along the way.
And it's not a different kind of action that you
do with other victims' families. And I also think that
we can show that we have established a considerable degree
of wholeness. We can have the docs for Morgan basketball game,
and that our daughter died is actually the seed for
a joyful circus and fun day that you can come
back into a land of joy, and just being able
to model that I think is helpful. Jill, in reference
to Bill's great question about your working with other families,
will you speak to what you did in response to
young seventeen year old Alexis Murphy's murder in Virginia some
years ago, so Alexsis was missing. I think it overlapped
with Morgan's time will being missing. And we did events
with them and for that it was so funny. They
came to the first time that I met them. They
came to an event that we were doing outside like
a grocery store. We would set up a stand and
pass out literature. They came up and I swear it
was like a clown car. There were people kept coming
out of that car, coming out of that car. And
I went and met her mother and her aunt and
I said, I'm amazed that you have such a big family.
This is great. And I said it's like a clown car.
It never stops. And they were laughing about that, and
I said, we have a really small family and it's
smaller now. And she hugged me and she said, well,
your family just got bigger. We have tried to help
other people along the way. I talk about how you
were determined to be in the courtroom for Alexis's family.
This is an amazing story. Yeah. I went every day,
was an hour and a half, hour and a half
one way to the courtroom to be there. To support them,
because courtrooms intentionally are very stern, severe places, and I
wanted to just be there, And in fact, that is
one of the ways that helps see the next girl
does victim support is we go to trials law. We
attended Nicole Lovel's trial in Welsburg. You should probably tell
this story of we were with the police captain Nicole
Lovel's murder. I knew Nicole Lovell, a little thirteen year
old girl who met a predator online on the back
of a game and said to one of our friends,
I always knew i'd meet my current prince charming. But
that young man and his sort of understudy accomplice were
real associopaths who planned her violent, awful dozens of stabbings
and other things murder. And so we went to the
trials of David Eisenhower and Natalie Keeper's ironic last name
for her. I usually do drawings and quote some of
the salient and strange things that the people on trial say.
But Jill made such an insight, and this is so
typical of you, Jill. She saw Nicole Lovel's grandfather, who
had been a military man and of my father's generation.
The vitalis hair nicely combed back. And what did you notice?
They called him Big Fred and he was no longer big.
He was caved in. And I sat behind him every
day of that trial and would see he had little
yellow ear plums in because he was he felt honor
bound to be in that space for his granddaughter. That
he could not stand to hear what game were saying.
Speaker 7: Oh gosh, And that is so typical of Jill's compassion
and insight to notice that Bigfred had those banana yellow earplogs,
and Bigfred hogged us.
Speaker 4: And when the sentencing of those two murderers was light
in our opinion, I remember Jill hogging that family in
a way that I think was medicinal helped them. So
the courtroom time has been very important, and the ongoing
relations with families, the support we know their nephews and grandchildren.
And I remember at one event in honor of Alexis,
who was this great athlete, great academic student in her
little high school in Country Virginia, I made a portrait
of Alexis. Oh it brings tears to say. It occurred
to me. She was seventeen and so beautiful and so vivacious,
but half the portrait that one half vertically was of
the seventeen year old we see in pictures smiling and
participating on social media. But the portrait fades subtly to
the Alexis who's beginning to have silver hair. And so
you could cover one side and have the young Alexis,
and then you could cover the other side and see
the woman we lost. And I remember her mother doing
that with her hand. There's the young Alexis. I can't
know the older Alexis. And I think those are some
of the pieces that occur to us to add with
our particular skills.
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Mind over Murder.
Speaker 4: Helps say the next girl being an or organically conceived,
I think has served us well. The courtroom piece, I
never anticipated that there would be a need for it,
but having been in a courtroom, you were like, oh, yeah,
this is a really tough place. It would be supportive
to people. We've had a young nurse get in touch
with us that she had been abducted and raped and said,
I know that you sometimes go to court with people
and I do not want my husband, my family, or
my baby girl to be in the courtroom to hear
the forensic evidence and listen to the testimony. Will you
all come with me? And Jane and I did. Yes,
we did, and we had breakfast with her, and we
held her hand, and we sat in the fore room
with her, and we were in the courtroom as he
was sentenced. We corresponded. She sent us little remembrance gifts,
but that was the part we needed to do, and
it was an honor to do it.
Speaker 5: It is so astounding that you are able to give
so much of yourself and yet there is still so
much more leftover That is incredibly inspiring and heartening.
Speaker 4: In person, Jill Harrington is roughly the size of a
spool of thread. She is a tiny human being, but
my god, volcanoes, wisdom, and compassion are packed into her.
It's not just the story of the small woman who
can lift the back of a car to save a child.
She has lifted families in these fifteen years. I'm not
sure anyone else has the skill set that I have
seen in her. And she is a person of service,
but she's got a particular genius about helping practically that
has made a difference for so many people.
Speaker 2: We think of you as a giant hill, so you
know you're like ten feet tall in our world.
Speaker 4: Bill, when you come to Virginia, I'll test you on that, Okay,
to tell the lie, I'm sitting on a book save.
Speaker 2: Here for the record and for our listeners, and useful
that the Harringtons have been trying to invite us to
dinner for I think probably fifteen years, and I was
on in Los Angeles for a number of years. Now Connecticut,
at least Christen's in the same state, but we are
expecting some significant developments in the Colonial Parkway murders conversation
for another day. I think I will be back in
Virginia much more frequently in the coming months, and we
definitely plan on having that dinner at some point.
Speaker 4: Great, Great, let's make it happen. Bill. There. I know
we have told you many stories, but there's one more
story that I would like to tell you. It's another
story of me having a wobble. It's in the book.
The first year after Morgan was killed, the first trip
to go back to Zambia, and my team said, it's
going to be too hard for you because it's physically
and emotionally very demanding work that we do. I said, no,
I can do it. I'm strong, I'm ready to go.
I would not come if I would be an impediment
to the team. I got this, I'm going to go. Well.
The first clinic we were at was I'm the leader
of woone Care, so I didn't happen to be too busy.
At Winecare and our team leader, Karen came over and said, Jill,
we've got a young child here that is sick and
needs to go to the hospital. Will you be the
nurse on transport with the mother and baby and the grandmother,
you know. I said, yeah, I'm not busy right now.
I'll do that, and the three of us and the
baby got in the car in the it was actually
the bus was the only vehicle we had left. The
hospital was probably about half an hour away, and that
little baby during the course of the ride became more
and more lethargic and agonal, stopping breathing. I kept stimulating
this baby. I saw this little tiny ends of her
fingers turned white like pearls as her blood pressure was dropping.
We got to the hospital and she was dead within
minutes after transport. I was so pissed. I was furious
at God or fate or whatever. How can this be?
I went to Africa to mitigate my pain by saving
other people and other people's children, and I instead I'm
here with a baby dying on my lap? How can
that be? And what took me forty eight hours to
receive my teaching? That baby was ten months old, her
name was Gift. Mother was twenty, the age of my Morgan.
That mother had her gift for only ten months. I
had my organ for twenty years, and I felt cheated.
Was the luckiest person alone.
Speaker 2: It's a pretty powerful lesson, though. Did this come to
you later?
Speaker 4: Did you realize me two days there to get over
my fury and put it down and say, what a
fool I am experiencing these emotions when I am the
lucky one. I had twenty yes with my kid.
Speaker 5: Before we let you all go, we wanted to mention
that helped save the next girl has a regular social
media presence, and the reason that we reached out is
you all had put up a social media post very
interesting to us in the last couple of weeks, and
that is the rather alarming intelligence that there there are
currently five teenage girls missing from the same area of Lynchburg.
I'm really hoping that there is a good outcome to this.
Have you heard any updates recently that there is potentially
a good outcome here that these girls have been found?
Speaker 4: Three of the five have been found. Oh, thank goodness.
And I have a contact with the Lynchburg Police, a
very kind and polite officer, and we asked before we
spoke to you. But that means that there are two
young women underage, and as Jill said so poignantly and practically,
it's getting cold. One of the distinctions we are fierce
about making is not using the word runaway. We use
the word endangered because for whatever reason, that young person
is miss saying they are endangered, so we do not castigate.
We tried to help save the next girl.
Speaker 5: I'm so glad that three of them have been safely located.
That is amazing. That was when I said. The minute
that I saw that on your Facebook page, at my
antenna went up. I called Bill and I said, we
have to cover this. This is so upsetting because it
should be the sort of thing that like a national
media network should have grabbed hold of instantly and said,
why are there five young women missing in this one area.
So I was a little surprised that it wasn't. But
I'm so glad that you all had posted it on
Facebook so that we could signal boost it.
Speaker 4: And do you know how we found out? Jill was
invited to be the guest speaker at an event that
was the Virginia State Cheer Off, So cheer teams, okay,
all met and to tell you, it was like watching
the Olympics. They're so gymnastic and so talented and so
full of dance and costumes. A smaller school was there
from Lynchburg, and the coach came up and thanked Jill,
and then as she was leaving, she shrugged her shoulders
and said, yeah, it's really important. We've got five girls
missing since the beginning of October and Lynchburg and we
looked at each other and said, five alarm fire. Why
didn't we know this? Because our ears to the ground
on these things. When you're in the club, listen, So
we I think amped it up, and I hope we
did it properly, and I'm glad you saw it, and.
Speaker 2: Then hopefully we can find these other two missing girls.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, you bet.
Speaker 2: How do young girls and young women get involved with
Help Save the Next Girl. You do a lot of
community outreach, So how does it work from the perspective
of it. If it's okay to call them kids young people?
How did they get involved with your programs?
Speaker 4: When we're not speaking and inviting them, they contact us.
Our most recent contact is Ohio State University, and a
young student there wrote and said, Hi, I'm interested in
being a leader at this school. What do we need
to do? And within five minutes she's got a voluminous
welcome and all you need to have is a faculty
member in case you need to ask a question. And
then I think I've sent to you the thirty six
recipes to keep a chapter active in cooking. And we
tell them that we are not a manifesto. We don't
require a certain number of meetings and proof that they
are doing anything in particular to help save the Next Girl.
We are a movement, and so we encourage the creative
process in their take on how to be a help
say the Next Girl chapter, and my God or young
people good at it.
Speaker 2: So, for instance, a place like Ohio State, we want
these young women, many of whom may be away from
home for the first time. And I think about my
time many years ago at the University of Massachusetts where
we had a cluster of sexual assaults and a lot
of the young women that were being victimized were freshmen.
And again, you're seventeen, eighteen years old away from home
for the first time. And look, the world is a
big and wonderful and exciting place, but it can also
be a dangerous place. You need to be aware and
have that self awareness that there are predators out there
and that you need to be careful, and there are
people that will prey on, particularly the youngest of whether
it's a high school or a college age population. I
think it's so exciting that this becomes a self directed thing.
You've built a template. Any group of young people can
help save.
Speaker 4: The next girl, and boy do they? And when you
say boy do they? We have a lot of young
men who are part of our movement. In fact, the
Phareh chapter, their vice president and president are both males. Yes,
and we welcome that. We say we need heroes of
every gender. It is so heartening that the template is
taken on. I gave a talk to the Virginia Tech
our flagship our first chapter, about a month ago, and
I heard from so many of the kids who heard
me speak the other and they've taken it on with
such passion. The other part of Help Save the Next
Girl is when you do reach out to us as
a prospective new chapter, we are able to send you
Santa Claus's gift box for how to be present and
visible on campus or at school immediately. We send so
many Help Save the Next Girl shirts, we send vinyl
banners to put off at football games. We send We've
already its literature, and we've built up such an arsenal
of literature of our own brochures, cards, stickers, and all
of that gets to them. So, as Jill has said,
they don't have to be putting on a bake sale
in order to be Help Save the Next Girl. They
can hit the ground running, and that's what we want.
Speaker 5: This sounds like something I may need to open a
chapter of at the high school where I teach.
Speaker 4: Ready for you bit.
Speaker 2: I love that idea, and I think that's a great idea.
How can mind Over Murder listeners help you? Is there
a way to contribute funds or like Kristin just said,
she wants to start a Help Save the Next Girl
chapter at her high school. What can our listeners do
to help you?
Speaker 4: There is a donate button on our website. Donations are
always appreciated and utilized very carefully. We're not a business,
and we are we have an open hand with our
work and our chapter. We don't If you want to
change the logo a little bit, do it, put your
colors on it, customize it to you. The movement is
relevant where you are in your locale, which is very
different than most organizations operate. So if you go to
the website, there's a donate button and there's a contact
to us link which leads you directly to me. And
I am Johnny on the spot, ready to talk to you,
and I take it very seriously Jill's phrase, You individuate
the suffering. You individuate your connections as well, and then
they are sincere and hearty. And I don't imagine I
will ever run low on energy for the nonprofit that
was started in honor of my student, Morgan Harrington. She
was remarkable, She made me laugh. She was an A
plus student when she left my course. And it is
a tough course. I require such precision and a lot
of editing, and I owe her if I'd made a
film that won a lot of awards with my film
team called A Gift for the Village about making a
painting and taking it to the west of Nepal. The
film is dedicated to Morgan Harrington. She would have been
part of my film team. She was remarkable. Yes, we
have a lot of energy, and with Jill and Dan,
we have a lot of wisdom.
Speaker 5: Well, this has been amazing talking to you. Thank you
so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: It was really such a pleasure to meet both of you.
We think so for the evening. It has been so
admire your work. We understand the nature of it, and
we're here for you as well. And Bill, can I
just tell you what a champion for justice you have been.
You're here, your sister's behalf. We have been walking this
path for fifteen years. You have more than doubled the
distance that we have, and you still have stamina and
resilience to keep on. I admire that so much. We're
sorry not to know her.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you.
Speaker 5: That is going to do it for this episode of
mind Over Murder. Thank you so much for listening. We'll
see you next time.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.
Speaker 1: Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.
Speaker 2: Our theme music is by Kevin mcleoud.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with crawl Space Media.
Speaker 2: You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Speaker 1: You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway
Murders on Facebook.
Speaker 2: And finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
Bill Thomas five six.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder.