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 4: My name is Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 3: 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 Ever Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 2: And I'm Bill Thomas.
Speaker 4: I was about to mix it up and say I'm
Bill Thomas, but just to see how you would.
Speaker 2: React, I could say, and I'm Kristin Dilly. You think
people would be confused.
Speaker 4: You are the one with the velvet golden voice, and
I'm definitely not velvet voiced, so probably I don't think
there would be any way to confuse the two of us.
Speaker 2: I like your voice just fine, Bill Thomas.
Speaker 4: I sometimes do, sometimes do other times not so much.
Speaker 2: I'd like you to refer to me as Kristin Dilly
throughout this entire podcast. It might be hard to remember.
Speaker 4: Actually, I figured it would be a nice way to
three off your stride very first thing. Minute one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, consider me thrown.
Speaker 4: Yeah, keep you on your toes a little bit. We
are into oh how many weeks into this whole new
world of Colonial Parkway murders coverage? Are we now three weeks?
Four weeks?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's got to be four six months a year. Yeah.
Time flies when you're having fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and not Bill Thomas time either, but actual regular time.
Speaker 2: You mean, everything from January eighth, twenty twenty four forward
is how we're measuring things.
Speaker 4: I feel like it is honestly when I talk to
people and they're like, oh, yeah, how things man, I've
been like since January eight, things have been nuts everything
for me. For Kristin Dilly, time is being reckoned forward
from January eight for me too.
Speaker 2: And then I also find myself really annoyed because I
see articles and I'll go back and I'll read them
for the first time, or perhaps so the fifth time.
I'm still very troubled by the amount of misinformation that
was included with that press conference. I guess it's up
to people like us to set the record straight in
terms of what's gone on with the Colonial Parkray murders,
our media partners and Blaine Pardoh and so many people
have come forward. But it just feels like we're pushing
back against a lot of misinformation that was put out
there and just glossing over really important aspects of this investigation,
pretending that, oh, we didn't mention that Alan Wade Wilmer
was suspect number one, and the Keith call and Cassandra
Haley disappearance must have slipped our minds. Things like that,
where you just say, please, do we really have to
play these games?
Speaker 4: I have said before and I will continue to say it.
I believe the FBI has a bit of a transparency problem,
and I really wish that they were willing to come
out set the record straight and say, hey, here's the
information that we gave, here's the information as it actually is.
Please uptake your internal systems to reflect this information and
move forward from there. But we also know the FBI
does not like to admit that they're wrong, and from
here we shall proceed with us continuing to give you
the real information that you need.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that we wanted to give
you a heads up about is we really appreciate the
very positive reaction we got to our two recent ask
us Anything episodes in the Colonial Parkway murders. We wanted
to thank Robert Gray for his excellent questions. We will
be doing that again because obviously we're seeing a lot
of questions being asked on our social media pages mind
over Murder on Facebook and Colonial Parkway Murders especially seems
to be very hot these days also on Facebook. So
we will be coming back and asking you for more
questions and also trying to go back through the many
questions that people have asked over the past month or
so about the status of the Colonial Parkway murders investigations.
Please be on the lookout for that, and thank you
so much for the great feedback that we've gotten so far.
Speaker 4: And if we ever don't answer a question, it is
not that we are trying to withhold information. It is
very likely just that we don't have the information available
to tell you. We do not know it, but we
are working very hard to get answers to everything that
you all have asked, because you're asking excellent, probing questions,
and so we thank you very much for that.
Speaker 2: As Bill said, please don't consider this finger wagging moment
when I say this, we did run into a couple
of problems. We've all got to be careful that we're
not throwing out accusations about living people who have lives
and reputations and families and their potential linkage to various
aspects of the Colonial Parkway murders. We had a situation
a couple of weeks ago where someone was just throwing
out a person's name. Now, this person's alive and has
friends in the community. His friends responded immediately, and then
he did too, within minutes. So that's how quickly the
World Wide Web works. It's one thing for us to
put out a discussion point about someone that's deceased. So
I'm comfortable talking about Alan Wade Wilmer Senior, the man's
been dead since twenty seventeen, and other potential suspects who
are no longer with us. You can't slander or libel
the day, but you can damage the reputation of living people.
So if you said, I think Bill Thomas is involved
in the Colonial Parkway murders. He's right in the middle
of this whole thing, and I think that guy's a murderer.
You got to be real careful about stuff like that.
Kristin and I do moderate these social media pages, but
we also have lots of other things we're working on.
And quite frankly, I was horrified that someone was just
going to throw someone's name out there who was a
friend of one of the victims, and we're like, what
is going on here? And I end up, in this
particular example, just hitting the high button because I don't
want to see people get sued here, and I don't
want to see innocent people's reputations be damaged by baseless accusations.
Much in the same way you're not going to see
us offer theories about other living people. This is something
that law enforcement has to do exploring a lot of
interesting options. You bet we are, and we're talking to
a lot of people in the Tidewater area in Lancaster
and surrounding areas. Absolutely, and it's very helpful and interesting.
Some of it's frustrating to hear about missed opportunities, but
we're interested in exploring things, but we're not interested in
damaging people's reputations. So I appreciate the consideration. Try to
be a little bit thoughtful about how you might put
forward an idea, could this involve X, Y or Z
without necessarily naming them, because they could easily take offense exactly.
Speaker 4: And I think that's good practice, not just for our website,
but really for any Facebook page or Twitter page or
anyplace else where you're going to spend your time and energy.
It's just really important to make sure that we're being
careful and thoughtful and civilized with our discourse. One of
the questions that Robert asked us on our Ask Us
Anything episode, we said we wanted to put a pin
in because we would do a larger episode about it later,
was his question about whether or not Alan Wade Wilmer
Senior seemed to have any particular aggression or anger and
hostility toward same sex couples in particular, and so we
wanted to take a little bit of time today and
dig into that question. There are several instances of potential
aggression against same sex couples in the Colonial Parkway murders,
and so we wanted to spend a little bit of
time today kind of addressing that, seeing if we can
parse together what do we think if the question is
does he have overt aggression? Let's talk about it. Bill.
I'll go ahead and turn the mic over to you
for a couple of minutes. Now that I've teed it up,
what do you think?
Speaker 2: It's an interesting question, Kristin. It really is, was Alan
Wade Wilmer Senior targeting same sex couples in the Colonial
Parkway murders. It's a provocative question, and it's not quite
so crazy as it might sound at first. There's some
obvious things that are worth pointing out. First of all,
the first known victims in the Colonial Parkway murders are
Kathy Thomas and Rebecca Dowski, a lesbian couple. There's kind
of two scenarios that could indicate Wilmer's involvement in Kathy
and Beckie's murder. Now, we don't know who the offender
is in Kathy and Beckee's murder. The FBI is still
working this case actively, and I know they are trying
their best to figure out if they can create a
link between Wilmer and Kathy and Becky, who kick off
the Colonial Parkway murders as we know them. There's two
different scenarios that I think are worth talking about. One
is we have these unconfirmed reports that Kathy and Becky
may have gone to the Yorktown Pub to grab something
to eat that evening. You may recall that in their
autopsies they had ground beef and lettuce in their systems.
Now bread is digested very quickly. Ground beef and things
like lettuce roughage are not digested as quickly. But if
you think about Kathy and Becky having ground beef and
lettuce in their stomachs, and you think about Williamsburg in
the nineteen eighties, where your late night and I put
quotes around that dining options are somewhat limited. You've only
got three or four choices when you're into the evening,
say after eight o'clock. You got things like McDonald's, Taco Bell,
and places where you could get a hamburger like the Deli's,
like the Delis or the Yorktown Pub. Now there is
a football game card from McDonald's found in Kathy's car
as well, which might indicate McDonald's, and that's definitely a possibility.
Then we have these unconfirmed reports that two women were
seen matching Kathy and Becky's descriptions at the Yorktown Pub
now the Yorktown Pub. We've talked about this a little
bit before. I've only been there during the day, and
I didn't go there in the nineteen eighties. My understanding
is there's two different kinds of crowds there during the day,
and there's a lot of tourists and people stopping in,
business people, military people, watermen, all sorts of different folks.
Apparently at night the crowd got a little rougher, more bikers, watermen,
a lot of service personnel who'd be having a few
pops after hours. And it was also a place where
if you knew the right code words, you could make
a drug deal, not necessarily over the bar, but around back.
As we understand it, if you ask the right people
the right question, you could buy cocaine, marijuana, and other
drugs there. It's not considered a gay friendly place. As
we've talked about before, Kathy and Becky has the same
sex couple. If they went to a place like that
would probably have to be very careful. It isn't a
place where you're gonna have a lot of public displays
of affection. There's not kind to be any handholding or
anything like that. It's the nineteen eighties. Virginia's conservative, a
lot of military. Kathy's on active duty for at least
the first part of their relationship, and Kathy course has
been investigated by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service for being
a lesbian, so they're going to be real careful. Unfortunately,
there were some waitresses that the FBI was trying to
talk to who flew the coop were not exactly sure why.
One waitress in particular said she thought she had waited
on two women with shoulder length hair, one with dark
wavy hair, and one with red wavy hair, which would
match Kathy and Becky's description. Now, if somebody like Wilmer
were hanging out at the bar there, it's all one
big room, he might have seen them, he might have
followed them. Wilmer, as we understand it, did go to
singles bars by nineteen eighty two or so. He he's divorced,
he has two kids and an ex wife up in
Lancaster County. He's down there in the Tidewater area more
or less on his own, And apparently we're hearing more
and more reports that he did frequent singles bars. We
believe that he met Teresa Howell at the Zodiac, the
after hours club, and that's conversation for another time. So
there's a possibility that Kathy and Becky may have intersected
with Wilmer or an offender like that at the Yorktown Pub.
There's another really dark option, which is we believe that
Alan Wade Wilmer, who started out as a peeping tom,
he has a history, and we believe there's escalating behaviors.
In other words, you start out as a peeping tom,
and then eventually you move into break ins, sexual assaults, rape, murder,
and you can see this is the track that we
believe that Wilmer was on. There's a very scary possibility
that Alan Wade Wilmer may have taken his boat or
his truck to these locations where he knew lovers would
be engaged in sexual and romantic activity. He may have
actually gone there hunting. So there's this very scary scenario
where he actually could be going to these places with
the specific intent of raping and killing people. Since we
believe that Kathy and Becky may have been at the
Ringfield Plantation picnic area, which is a very quiet ten
acre spot, quite isolated along the Colonial Parkway, with much
more privacy than most of the other places that we've
talked about with the half moon pull offs along the
Colonial Parkway. Could he have actually been emerging from the
woods into a place that was known for same sex
twisting if you.
Speaker 4: Will, it could be in I think that's something right
out of a horror movie. Let's be real about it.
It's terrifying to think of being in a lovely secluded spot,
spending time with your significant other, trying to get a
little romantic, or just talking and watching the water, watching
the moon rise totally also a valid choice of activity.
And suddenly you've got a guy with a flashlight blinding
you while he's knocking on the window. That's terrifying, full
stop terrifying. I hate the idea of that. That is
absolutely nuts to me. And suddenly, because you had used
the words lover's Lane, I'm suddenly realizing that the name
of our Oxygen series maybe isn't as bad as we
thought it was, and it might be a little more
on the nose. And that's scary to me as well.
Speaker 2: No, I think you're right. I'm fairly certain that Kathy
and Becky were not killed at the Cheatham Annex overlook,
which is where the car is found, because it's so close,
literally fifty feet or so from the surface of the
roadway that is the Colonial Parkway, So there's no privacy there.
If you wanted to be romantic or commit a crime
for that matter, would you do either of those activities
in a grassy parking area that's directly next to the roadway.
It just don't like me as a likely scenario, no
matter how in command you think you are or how
much you're in your comfort zone, I have a real
hard time believing that Alan Wade Wilmer or another offender
is going to spend all the time necessary to take
the steps that were included in the murder of Kathy
Thomas and Rebecca Dowski.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, because you are talking about not only making sure
that the bodies are in the way back and the
back seat, you are also talking about the time that
it would take to try to push the car toward
the edge of the embankment. We know that Wilmer was
a smaller statued guy, we know he was strong, but
still it takes a little bit of work to push
a car over the edge. Remind everybody what Kathy was driving.
Speaker 2: She's driving a nineteen eighty Honda Civic and that was
back when Honda's were smaller than they are now. So
it's a fairly light cards under two thousand pounds. It's
a manual transmission, so easy enough to throw into neutral.
I do think one person, and as we understand it,
Alan Wade Wilmer, was extremely strong. We've talked to people
that worked with him in his tree service business and
they said they would not have messed with the guy.
Even though he was fairly shortened stature at only five
to five, he was really built from all the work
on the water. So I don't think he would have
any problem whatsoever pushing the Honda Civic over the edge
of the embankment down towards the York River, even with
Kathy and Becky's bodies inside. I think totally you're probably
looking at an eighteen hundred pound car plus two people
under twenty two hundred pounds and on level ground. I
don't think a strong built guy like Wilmer or another
offender would have difficulty pushing the car over the edge.
Speaker 4: We do know ultimately though, that his goal of getting
the car into the river did not succeed because it
got tangled up in the underbrush. And at that point
you're not going to get the clean getaway that you
were looking for. You're not just going to be shoving
the car over the edge and being able to beat
feet back to wherever the boat or the truck was. Instead,
then he's got to take the time to pour the
diesel fuel. Like the matches, all of that is something
that you don't necessarily want other cars coming down the
parkway within fifty feet of you seeing you do so.
I think that the dump site is not the site
where the actual crime took place. It is not the
primary crime scene. I can't imagine dumping the car over
the edge and trying to get it to go down
the edge of the embankment. I can't imagine that being
just a short and easy process.
Speaker 2: No, it sounds very time consuming, and with these multiple steps,
with the strangulation by rope throat cutting, loading the cars
with the two bodies, Kathy in the way back in
diagonally across the rear seat, attempting to set the car
on fire with diesel fuel, which always struck me as
really out there, and then ultimately pushing the car over
the embankment having failed to set the car on fire.
It's very time consuming. I'm thinking you're spending half an
hour or maybe longer with this car in these bodies.
It's a pretty gutsy move to do all of this
right next to the roadway.
Speaker 4: One of the things that I've been trying to figure out,
I'm sure you are too, over the last series of weeks,
is what is he using to get himself there? Is
he beaching the boat someplace, is he anchoring someplace and
wading in, or is he using the truck that so
many people have seen? That I think changes the roadmap
a little bit. If he's in the truck, where did
he come upon them? Did he pull in to the
Ringfield plantation? So then that means if he did, he
drove Kathy's car, had to do everything that he could
to try to dispose of it, and then he had
to run half a mile down the road back to
his car.
Speaker 2: No even a little further nine tenths of a mile
from one location to the other. You're listening to mind
over Murder. We'll be right back after this word from
our sponsors. We're back here at mindover Murder. I try
to be logical about this stuff, even though I think
sometimes we're trying to attach logic to an inherently illogical act.
There is a reason why Becky's bodies in the back
seat and Kathy's bodies in the hatchback area that would
allow an offender or two offenders to ride in the
front seats. So that driving the Honda, let's just say
from Ringfield Plantation nine tenths of a mile down the
road to the Cheetah Mannox Overlook. It's not that much
of a stretch. But if he's arriving in his own truck,
if he's by himself, a single offender, he can't drive
both vehicles at the same time. If he's arriving by boat,
he has to leave the boat and then use the
victim's car. This begins to sound a bit like Keith
and Sandy, where Keith's Toyota Celica. There were a number
of reports that the seat was pulled well forward. He's
five to five Keith is closer to six feet, so
there's a significant difference in leg length. It sounds like
if it's one offender without an accomplice or someone to
help him move cars and stage cars. They do have
to then get back to the boat, the truck, or
whatever vehicle it is they're using to get to the location.
Speaker 4: I know someone is going to ask, I'll go ahead
and ask preemptively. How tall was Kathy?
Speaker 2: Cathy's five to seven.
Speaker 4: Okay, so she's my height, all right.
Speaker 2: Becky's even a little taller. I never met Backy, but
I think she's a five to eight. So they're both
good sized, athletic women.
Speaker 4: I tend to drive with my seat pretty far back
because my legs are long. Would that that have been
the case with Kathy as well?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely?
Speaker 4: Okay, So for Wilmer to drive her car, for example,
the seat would have had to have been moved.
Speaker 2: I imagine I would say yes. Now, in the photographs
I've seen most of the time, and some of the
photographs are reversed, which makes it a little complicated because
they started out as slides, the seats seem to be forward,
in other words, folded forward. So you can get into
folded forward. Ye, yeah, get into the back seat. Now,
remember when the first responders were there, they actually entered
the vehicle. You wouldn't do that in twenty twenty four,
but this is nineteen eighty six and crime scenes were
not restricted in the way that they are now. I've
talked to the first responders who said they actually climbed
into the vehicle. They weren't certain that Kathy and Becky
were dead at first, and they actually got into the
Honda in the back seat. And then it's a little
easier to access Kathy's body because she was in the trunk.
It's a little hard for me to say where the
Honda's seats were in relation to when the car was
first found. I have seen photographs in various stages, but again,
you don't know exactly when the photograph was taken. Some
of them are clearly taken after the car has been
pulled back up from the embankment and back onto the
grassy area, because not much detail is visible when the
cars nose down towards the York River.
Speaker 4: Another question that I know people are going to ask,
because we have very conscientious listeners and followers, can you
tell us what happened to Kathy's car after her death,
because I'm sure people will be asking where's the car?
Can we swab it for DNA. Can we use them back?
The answer is no, but I'll let you expand upon why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those cars are all long gone. I've seen photographs
of the car in an impound garage where it was
taken after it was towed from the Colonial Parkway. A
number of interior parts of the car, carpets, floor mats,
probably some pieces of the interior of the Honda Civic
were retained and are still in possession of the FBI,
but the car itself was ultimately scrapped. We have the
situation with a number of vehicles where the vehicles were
actually returned to the families, which now strikes me as
very unfortunate. That's how things were done in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 4: I'm really hoping that if the FBI has not already
tested those interior portions of the car that it still retains,
I hope that now would be a great time for
them to do that, using both the MVAC from our
friend Jared Bradley and anything else that they think they
can use to see if maybe there's some DNA on
those seats and floor mats and so on and so forth.
I think this would be a great opportunity for them
to test all of that. Now, let's see what we
can get out of it.
Speaker 2: I believe most of that testing has been done based
on my conversations with the FBI and the last couple
of years. So before we move on, I think we
have two potential scenarios that immediately come to mind. One
is that perhaps Kathy and Becky cross paths with Alan
Wade Wilmer Senior or another offender at a place like
the Yorktown Pub. Or that Allan Wade Wilmer Senior or
another offender entered what I believe to be the Ringfield
Plantation picnic area with an intent towards attacking couples, many
of whom might have been same sex.
Speaker 4: In the large book of press clippings that I keep
from that time period, most of which is courtesy of
Joyce Call's father, who kept very detailed notes and files,
I do have a clipping from the April thirtieth, nineteen
eighty eight edition of the Virginia Gazette, which is our
local hometown paper. I'm not going to read this entire article,
not only because it's quite long, but it is also,
by the standard of twenty twenty four, quite offensive. Just
in the way that they use specific terminology with regard
to same sex couples. I do want to make sure
that everyone is clear about why we keep asserting that
Ringfield Plantation was a known cruising spot. This article from
April thirtieth, nineteen eighty eight, which is shortly after Keith
Call and Cassandra Haley disappeared. I want to give you
guys the context on this, and please understand that none
of this writing is from me or from Bill. This
is from Virginiazette reporter Mike Lake from nineteen eighty six.
The unfortunate title of the article is Park Battle's Influx
of Gaze, and I'm going to read just the first
three paragraphs here. Ringfield was made for families. Scattered tables,
nestle under towering oaks on a bluff, overlooking King's Creek,
and grills dot the well kept grassy areas, inviting visitors
to spend an afternoon barbecuing hamburgers and chicken wings. Soothing
breezes in waves gently lapping the sandy shoreline helped create
an idyllic picnic setting. But these days few families can
be found in the park. Quote Ringfield has become a
traditional gathering spot for gays, said David Moffitt, superintendent of
the Colonial National Historical Park, which includes the picnic areas
along the Colonial Parkway. There is nothing wrong or illegal
with that. It's the unsavory activity that goes along with
it that bothers me. Ringfield is but one of three
quote hot spots frequented by homosexuals. Moffat said. The Great
Neck and Yorktown Beach picnic areas also attract their share
of gays, but Ringfield's relative seclusion seems to draw the
most activity. I'm going to stop reading the article because
it really just gets more offensive from there. But you've
got it right here in writing Ringfield Plantation is a
place that was well known as a cruising spot. The
rest of the article does discuss the efforts made by
the folks at the park service to cut down a
graffiti to copy down the license plates of people who
were seen loitering in the area. It's quite appalling the
way that it's written and the way that same sex
couples are referred to. However, this was the treatment in
nineteen eighty six. We do not condone it. We think
it's appalling for anybody who is wondering where did you
get that intel about Ringfield plantation. It's here, It was
well known at that point. Very interesting two potential scenarios.
I think the Ringfield plantation one is probably spot on.
But that does bring to mind that horrific image that
you brought up a little bit earlier, bill of Wilmer
either coming in his truck or coming up through the
water on the boat and sneaking up to the window
of Kathy's car. And that's not going to let me
sleep well tonight.
Speaker 2: Now, we do have other reports that in a different
incident with a straight couple, but in this same timeframe,
Alan Wade Wilmer Senior apparently came up and we've told
you about how he used to accost people on the
Colonial Parkway, banging on windows, demanding driver's licenses, almost like
a cop would. But he's not wearing a police uniform.
He's driving his very distinctive truck. He's using the high
beams on his truck to help blind people. He's not
using police lights or anything like that. He's just taking
this highly aggressive Approachary comes up in bangs on people's
windows and insists they're doing something wrong or they're trespassing,
demands their driver's licenses, and in many examples he's trying
to get them to roll the window down, which some
more cautious people refuse to do, and fortunately these people
lived to tell the tale. Here's one thing that jumped
out at me from one of those reports. Wilmer approached
a straight couple who were engaged in making out and
not paying much attention to their surroundings. He approached them
in this very aggressive manner, but one of the things
he said was, are you girls having fun? Apparently the
guy had longer hair, and when he turned around, he
realized that he wasn't dealing with a same sex couple,
but he was dealing with an opposite sex couple, a
man and a woman, and these people were able to
fend him off. But I remember saying to Kristen, how
weird it was that this guy would say are you
girls having fun? Which is sometimes an expression that's used.
How weird that this would be within at most a
year and a half after Kathy and Becky were brutally
murdered just down the Colonial Parkway. It strikes me as
a really odd thing to say.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, it does. As soon as you had said
that during one of our sort of reporting in phone
calls at the end of the day where I call
Bill and say, what's been going on. I've been wrangling
teenagers and he gives me all the information. As soon
as he said that, that immediately sent my antenna right up,
very odd and.
Speaker 2: Then switching over to the Ragged Island Wildlife Refuge Huge
Management area, they changed it parking area. When we were
talking with Blaine Pardo a couple of weeks ago, we
asked Blaine to tell the story about how the cops said,
are you here for a blowjob or some weed? Apparently,
this Ragged Island parking area has been known for decades
as a gay cruising spot. It's also a place where
you would go to engage in a low level drug
deal and we always have to remind our younger listeners
this is before the internet, this is before cell phones,
before he pagers. If you wanted to go score some pot,
you had to go to where the dealers were, or
you had to know somebody who would say, oh, yeah,
my cousin's a dealer, he can get you some pot
or whatever it was. It's very striking that Ragged Island
is another well known gay cruising spot. Could Alan Wade Wilmer,
whom we know was the offender for certain in the
rape and murder of Robin Edwards and David Nobling which
took place at Right Island. Could he have gone there
with an eye towards attacking a same sex couple or
a mixed sex couple. It's a very intriguing thought that
perhaps this guy is going to equal opportunity offender, willing
to attack women, men, and couples in perhaps any combination.
Speaker 4: Exactly when we were asking doctor Ray Carr and Jim
Fitzgerald the couple of weeks back that we had them
on the pod whether they felt Wilmer was a preferential
or opportunistic offender, they had said that probably preferential, but
most offenders will take what they can get should the
opportunity arise. And I get the feeling that Wilmer was
definitely an offender who would take whatever he could get.
I am still struck by Fitz's terminology of apex predator
for Wilmer, because I do feel like a shark he's
going to hunt wherever he sees potential prey. For Wilmer,
it seems like there were any number of spots where
he might have done that, whether that was clubs on
Mercury Boulevard or the Colonial Parkway or the Ragged Island
Refuge Management area. It looks like Wilmer was very much
an equal opportunity opportunistic offender.
Speaker 2: One of the things that our profilers have told us
is that serial killers like variety in their targets and
that they enjoy a challenge. For example, as we talked
about a few minutes ago, we have reports that Wilmer
started out as a keeping top then escalated over time,
and we know he's for certain a serial killer and rapist.
He may be the kind of offender that actually enjoys
the variety, and, as our profiler friends were saying, enjoys
the challenge of ultimately taking on a couple where you've
got two people and the potential risk to the offender
is much greater because two people, one might be able
to overpower you, or one might be able to get away.
We've talked about that. In the Robin Edwards David Nobling example,
David was shot twice, perhaps while struggling or perhaps while
trying to get away. Robin was shot once. But you
can see how in these scenarios, and Jim Clementi talked
about this with us in the Lover's Lane Murders television
series on Oxygen. It's a challenge, but a well organized,
aggressive offender can control a couple. That offender has got
to come in with a strong aggressive attitude, perhaps use
a gun to establish control, which I think is definitely
what happened in the Edward's Nobling case. Although a gun
might have been used in some of these other examples,
it's hard for us to say because we have badly
decomposed or even missing bodies.
Speaker 4: Lots of interesting things to think about here. If you
have any information about Alan Wade Wilmer, Senior and his activities,
please make sure that you reach out to the correct
law enforcement authorities. The tip lines for the FBI and
the VSP are as follows one eight hundred call FBI.
You can submit tips online at tips dot FBI dot gov,
or you can email questions at VSP dot Virginia dot gov.
That is going to do it for this episode of
Mindover Murder. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see
you next time.
Speaker 1: Mindover 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 McLoud.
Speaker 1: Mindover Murder is distributed in partnership with Coral Space Media.
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Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder.