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.
Speaker 4: 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 3: Welcome to Mind Over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly and I'm
Bill Thomas. We're joined today by Robert Gray, one of
our longtime fans and supporters, who is here to talk
to us about the millennial view on various true crime
happenings at Crossed Virginia. Robert, thank you so much for
joining us. We're so glad to have you here.
Speaker 5: Guys. I am so thrilled to be here. Thank you
for having me on.
Speaker 2: So you transition from listener to participant to guests.
Speaker 5: I know this is a long time dream. I'm fine.
I think I've been listening since your very first podcast,
and what drew me in was a lot of these
cases you covered were in Virginia, in areas of Virginia.
I knew, in particular some of the ones in Blacksburg,
where I attended undergraduate school.
Speaker 2: So let's start there. Tell the listeners the rest of
the listeners a little bit more about yourself, because we
obviously know you, but they would like to know the
basics about you.
Speaker 5: I'm Robert Gray. I was born in Fairfax, Virginia. Have
been a lifelong resident of Virginia, primarily Northern Virginia. I
attended school undergraduate school at Virginia Tech from twenty thirteen
to twenty seventeen, where I majored in political science and
public relations, and then I got my MBA through William
and Mary during the pandemic, primarily virtually, but there was
some in person conformance towards the end. From twenty twenty
to twenty twenty two, since I graduated school, I've been
living in the Northern Virginia area, working in corporate growth
and strategy for a few technology companies that do business
with the federal government. I've been a long time for
true client fan and fan of this podcast, so very
excited to be here and provide whatever perspective I can.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. We have always really appreciated your
very thoughtful questions, comments and posts on the podcast, so
when we had the opportunity to have you on, we
jumped at the chance. This is a real thrill for
us as well to be able to interact with one
of our longtime listeners, So thank you.
Speaker 2: A jumping off point for us, Robert, was you had
sent Kristen and me some very thoughtful private messages after
we did a recap on the Caldwell Fields murders from
two thousand and nine that involves the murder of Heidichilds
and David Metzler, and it turned out with your experience
from Virginia Tech, you had some interesting observations about that
case and even your time in that part of Virginia. So,
just to start off with, you're at Virginia Tech from
twenty thirteen to twenty seventeen. Did you feel like Virginia
Tech had begun to recover from some of the very
dark experiences of the previous couple of years. Kristin and
I had talked about this very sad pattern for a
while there. Virginia Tech seemed like it was being hit
time after time with these terrible tragedies.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think by the time I got there, there
was still a memory of these events, especially the events
that occurred in two thousand and seven, but by the
time I graduated it was ten years ago. There was
very little in terms of the student body first hand
experience with some of these prior cases, and there were
a lot of reforms on campus that occurred to make
it a very safe environment. Most of my memories there
extremely happy, just a phenomenal time that I had while
I was attending university there, and overall it felt like
a very safe community. But you would hear this stuff
bubble up from the past with some of these cases
that I'm sure we'll discuss today, where outside of the
main event in two thousand and seven, stuff like the
case at Caldwell Fields, it had really become almost like
an urban legend at that point where there weren't necessarily
names connected to the case, but you would hear about, oh, yes,
there was a couple that was murdered in the nearby
National Forest, etc. Etc. Usually as context for being careful
and being vigilant when you were out hiking or doing
any recreational activities outside camp.
Speaker 3: You had mentioned that there had been a lot of
reform that had taken place on the Tech campus as
a result, of course, from the mass shooting in two
thousand and seven and then several other sort of campus crimes.
Can you talk a little bit about what kind of
reforms were made that sort of helped contributed to this
feeling You said you always felt safe on campus. Can
you talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 5: I think the most noticeable thing in terms of day
to day life was what was called the VTAS short
for Virginia Tech Alert System, which pretty much was a
direct message alert system via text message, email, and other
instant forms of communication to let students know if there
was an emergency event or a crime on campus, as
well as things like inclement weather. So, actually, before I
came on the podcast today, I opened up my old
student email and was parsing through some of these alerts,
and there was one, in fact tied to Nicole level case,
which I'm sure we'll couple at some point, and I
actually printed out the transcript of what that alert was
and the messaging. So I'd say that was one of
the most noticeable things that got implemented to my understanding
in terms of the text messaging component in two thousand
and eight, right after the shooting occurred. And then in
terms of other reforms, there was a very strong law
enforcement presence on campus. You couldn't really go a block
without running into VT campus police or in town there
was usually a presence of Blacksburg Police and they had
a very good relationship with the student body and the
Blacksburg community, so that helped to always make us feel safe.
In addition to that, you had things like the blue
Light emergency call box systems. They were set up extensively
around campus and other areas off campus, like the Huckleberry
Running Trail, and that contributed to a census safety. It
was not uncommon to see female students out running alone
even because they've felt this safe with these measures put
in place. And then you also had the Cook Counseling Center,
which was an affordable and accessible mental health service on
campus that was available to students, and that was strongly
emphasized after the events of two thousand and seven as well,
given the mental health side of that story. So you
take all these things together, and I think by the
time I was entering in school, it was probably the
shining example of campus safety in the country, and it
certainly felt.
Speaker 3: Like that there anybody who's not familiar with the size
of the Virginia Tech campus, it is a massive campus.
Can you put in context for anybody who's not familiar
with it, talk a little bit about the size of
Tech and why you need a whole campus police force.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it really is a city and of itself. I
did some research before I joined today, and as of
fall twenty twenty four, they did an enrollment census at
Virginia Tech and the total student population is around thirty
nine thousand wow. And I believe around twenty one hundred
of those are in state students thirty one thousand or
undergraduates who are primarily on the Blacksburg campus. And so
it is like a city. People liken it to Hogwarts
if you've ever seen a moment cars heard it compared
to the United States Military Academy at wets Point. It
has these very prominent stone buildings throughout campus that are
constructed with something called Hokey Stone. It's just a beautiful place,
but it is a very large student body, yet when
you attend there, it becomes pretty small pretty quick. You
recognize people, you recognize faces, you recognize names, and there
is just a strong positive sense of community that goes
throughout the school, especially around football season. I'd say that's what, Yeah,
I think it's best known for is the football tailgating
and athletic culture there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my dad is a Hochey from way way back,
and we are very familiar with the Virginia Tech football
team and the football season. Tech is very different from
Layme and Mary, where you also attended. It's really you
almost can't put the two of them in the same category.
So thank you for clarifying that. For anybody who may
not be familiar with the Tech campus.
Speaker 2: You would reference the Nicole Level murder. Can you talk
a little bit about that and how that impacted the
Virginia Tech community.
Speaker 5: Yes, I certainly can. So just to preface this, I
was actually not on campus when that occurred. I was
doing an internship with Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia through
the Hokies on the Hill program, and I was up
in Washington that semester, and I had just started my
internship when this occurred. There was a campus alert that
went out over email once the perpetrator was arrested, and
then President Sans, the president of the university, sent out
a note to the student body as well, and I
have those. I'm happy to share those.
Speaker 3: Yeah, please.
Speaker 5: I didn't actually hear about it that way because these
were sent on a Saturday evening and I was not
checking my student email. The way I heard about it
was I was talking with another intern at the time
who went to UVA and we would love to rib
each other given the school's rivalry. We were talking about
something related to a true crime show we liked, and
he did you hear about the thing over in Blacksburg recently?
Speaker 2: Said?
Speaker 5: What are you talking about? He's just been this awful case.
And then I looked it up and I'm like, oh
my gosh. And I texted my friends who were on
campus and they're like, yeah, it's pretty heavy. The thing
that stood out to me most was no one seemed
to know the perpetrators, which even though it's a big school,
like I said, that small school field and you recognize faces,
you recognize names. This was someone I think who was
pretty socially isolated, who was not necessarily a known name
on campus, So that stood out to me. And then
also there was just certain chilling details of that case
that I remember really sticking in my memory. Where they
plan the murders was at a restaurant called Cookout, which
is a chain, but it is very famous with the
student body in Blacksburg, at least when I was there,
because it was a common pit stop after the bars
if you had a mee or were in an uber
to go get a meal at Cookout. And when we
heard that this awful crime was planned at the Cookout,
people were just disgusted by that. The dorm he lived in,
I think was a fairly well known dorm on campus.
It was stuff like that where people were just in
shock that something so awful could occur, and that there
were these well known places. The Walmart where they got
the supplies was usually where you went to pick up
school supplies when you were moving in and stuff for
your dorm or your apartment. So there were all these
familiar places that were revealed in the case that really
stood out to me, and I think stood out to
a lot of the student body that just made it
a chilling experience.
Speaker 3: There's got to be a certain amount of cognitive dissonance
involved in that, knowing a place that you're so familiar
with has been involved in this terrible crime, and.
Speaker 5: I think that was hard for a lot of the
student body to reconcile. Again, I wasn't on campus that
exact time, but I do remember the reaction of the
student body of people I was in touch with, and
then going back the next semester. By then, I don't
think it was as widely covered. There's always that underlying
undertone of that.
Speaker 2: There was something that was very striking about that too,
which is that, unfortunately, a lot of times when we're
talking about prime on campus, it's directed at students, right,
But in this exact example, the two offenders were students,
victimizing a much younger girl and nicole level. There was
something about that I found incredibly disturbing. I don't mean
to imply that college students never do anything wrong. Far
from it. The people do and say dumb things and
sometimes hurtful things. Murder on a college campus is not
usually part of the mix.
Speaker 5: Right, And I think that was so striking with this
case was it was very out of character, especially for
the school we all knew and the culture there.
Speaker 3: Move over to twenty fourteen for a minute, because that
was also an impactful year. Talk to us a little
bit about your memories about UVA student Hannah Graham's disappearance
and murder in twenty fourteen that was eventually linked via
DNA to the murder of tech student Morgan Harrington from
two thousand and nine. What do you remember about Hannah's
disappearance and the outsized media coverage that came with that.
Speaker 5: It's a great question, and I have pretty extensive memory
of this case in particular, and this kind of goes
into what we were referencing before this millennial perspective on
true crime, as I'm part of the generation that really
grew up with social media for the first time, and
this is one of the first cases I remember receiving
extensive organic social media coverage, as in you had people
in your network who were resharing articles or the missing
person's content that was being published at the time. And
I just remember my newsfeed on Facebook being flooded with
people resharing articles about this case, but in particular the
missing person's digital poster of her, and I remember this
day the screenshot of the CCTV footage of what she
was wearing, and that being why circulated, and then as
there were updates in the case, that also got circulated
as well. And what really stood out to me was
a lot of the people reposting this were female friends
of mine. I think this really struck a chord with them.
It was something that I think garnered a lot of
organic traffic on my feed because she, like me, was
from Northern Virginia, and so a lot of Northern Virginia
people were either connected to her and by the first
degree or the second degree, or what have you. I
think that struck a chord with a lot of people
as well. And there was a big cultural significance to
this too, because there was beginning to be a shift
in the conversation around violence against women and sexual assault
on campus and this was really, I think in line
with what later would bubble up as the me too movement.
And of course that was underscored by the fact that
in November of that year, the Rolling Stone article about
UVA and sexual assault on campus, which is now attracted
was published and that widely circulated on social media as well,
and so those two being so close together, there was
this broader conversation around safety on campus and violence against
women and all of these topics that really came to
the forefront later on. But I would say that was
the seeds of this, at least in Virginia.
Speaker 3: You had alluded earlier to the fact that UVA and
Virginia Tech have a pretty intense rival, right, and so
anybody outside of Virginia who doesn't know take it as
a fact UVA in Virginia Tech or when they get
together it's a barn burner. I know that both universities
also are able to stand together when something like this happens.
Do you remember how Tech students, either individually or as
a communities came together to support UVA when they learned
that this horrible thing had happened to Hannah Graham.
Speaker 5: I think when you have tragedy like the Hannah Gram
case or what happened at Tech in two thousand and seven,
that whole rivalry goes to the back burner. Any solidarity
across those two campuses. And of course this case was
later linked to the murder of Morgan Harrington, who was
a Virginia Tech student, and so I think the intertwining
of those fates between the two schools really reinforced that
degree of solidarity. But yeah, when it came to stuff
like this, I think what struck me the most about
this case and what bothered me about it was although
I didn't know her, she seemed so much like someone
I did know, especially within the Virginia University system. She
just seemed like someone you could go to class with
or be friends with, and I think a lot of
people felt that way.
Speaker 2: One of the things that really resonated with me when
we spoke to the Harringtons and Jane, Lilly and Vance,
three of them had founded helped save the next girl
as a result of losing Morgan was a story I
had never heard before. They mentioned that the Virginia State
Police investigators had said that it might take another sexual
assault or murder for them to be able to track
down Morgan's killer, and that is exactly what happened. Five
years had gone by, and then sadly we lost Hannah Graham.
But it's Hannah Graham's death that leads to a connection
via DNA to Morgan Harrington's case. And then a third
still unnamed survivor of sexual assault up in Northern Virginia.
It's amazing they were basically able to predict the future
that it might take another person's death to be able
to link that to Morgan Harrington's death. And I'd never
heard that story before, and I just remember just being
shocked listening to that. I think the investigators were quite
prescient in saying that it struck me as so sad
that's what it took to help solve these three cases.
Speaker 5: Absolutely tragic, I agree, And the fact that Jesse Matthews
was able to operate for so long undetected, I think
highlights some of the holes and flaws in the system
at the time that were beginning to become a part
of the conversation now. It's interesting you mentioned the case
up in Northern Virginia. I didn't realize till years later
that occurred relatively close by to where I went to school.
In fact, I passed Rock Garden Drive every day on
my way to school, where that case occurred, and where
they've made that DNA link that linked those three cases.
That chills up my spine too.
Speaker 3: So there's all.
Speaker 5: These true crime cases in Virginia that I feel like
I'm just a third degree away from it's a shape
or form, and it really humanizes that experience, especially as
a consumer of true crime.
Speaker 3: I love that you mentioned that because you had alluded
ear to the fact that by the time you got
to Virginia Tech, the Caldwell Fields case and taken on
this sort of urban legend type of aspect that does happen.
By the time I was in high school, Bill's Sisters
case had taken on that kind of urban legend aspect
for my generation. I think that it is very interesting
that over time we see crimes become dehumanized in that
way they take on the specter of urban legend, and
it really does take someone like you to be able
to look at it and go, you know what, there
are actual there are human beings there, faces behind here.
It is not just something that we tell over campfire
at night.
Speaker 5: And that's why, as a consumer of true crime, I've
always been hesitant to say it's a form of entertainment.
To me, I like to view it as a form
of knowledge or being able to gain information or insight,
and yes, it can be interesting, but I've always been
comfortable when people say, oh, it's so entertaining to watch
this show or something like that of true crime docuseries
like any other person. But I hesitate at saying that
word entertaining because these are real families and real people involved,
and I think my exposure to these cases, especially during college,
shape that perspective.
Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit more about this shooting range
near Caldwell Fields, which is the place where Heidi Childs
and David Messler were killed in August two thousand and nine.
Several years later, you're at school there. At some point
you made your way to this shooting range, So tell
us a little bit about it.
Speaker 5: Sure, So I'll start with this. I grew up in
a family where we hunted and we had firearms for
recreational use, and my father attended the United States Military
Academy at West Point, so did my younger brother. They
always drilled into us, respectively, being a responsible steward of
firearms and gun safety in particular. And so that was
the mentality I had whenever I was around firearms or
engaged in recreational shooting. And so I had a few
friends who were in the Cora Cadets at Virginia Tech
who were on an ROTC track and were going to
be heading into the Marines, and they were firearm owners,
and so was my other younger brother who attended Virginia
Tech with me as well, and we went on two
occasions that I remember distinctly to a range that was
close to Blacksburg in what is known as the Jefferson
National Forests, so public forest land that is under the
purview of the National Park Service. I believe the range
is only about fifteen minutes outside of Blacksburg. I think
it's close to six to eight miles by how the
crow flies, But it feels a world way because if
for those of you who knows Blacksburg, or even for
those of you don't, it's there, very hopping town and community.
But you go ten minutes outside of it and you're
in southwest Virginia in Appalachia.
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Speaker 5: Beautiful part of the state, but very remote, very rustic,
and so even a fifteen minute drive can transport you
to a whole different world. And that's where this range was.
It was down four four sixty West, which is a
major transportation artery in the area. If you follow that highway,
eventually you will get into West Virginia if you keep going.
The range is off of for sixty on a road
I believe is called Craig Creek Road. It's an interesting
range by many accounts. It's very different. It's a public range,
but it's very different than the public ranges I had
ever been to in Northern Virginia, which are very well regulated,
have a supervised staff where you have to reserve spots,
et cetera, et cetera. My impression when we arrived at
the range the first time was this place is a
little bit on the sketchy side for my There was
no range safety officer overseeing the range, so it was
completely patron regulated, meaning you could go up shoot and
there was no one saying, Okay, this is when you're
going to put targets down range, or this is when
the shooting's going to stop. I don't even remember there
being proper shooting stalls. Really, there were shooting benches, but
there was no necessary strict divider between where people were shooting,
and I just witnessed some very poor gun safety practices
while I was there. Not what the group I was
attending with they were all very professional season shooters and
had a sense of decorum, but there were people around
us who were joking around, and it made me feel
very un comfortable, to the point that I remember just
standing a few yards back from where all the shooting
was occurring, being like, I got a bad feeling in
my stomach about this place. Now, I have heard that
this was ten years ago. I have heard conditions there
have improved a great amount, but at the time it
was like the wild West.
Speaker 3: Essentially, sound like a nightmare your instinct, let me just
back out of here. Yeah, that's one hundred percent what
I would do for sure. Wow, it was definite place.
Speaker 5: Have a name, by the way, I always knew it
as the Blacksburg Shooting Range in the Jefferson National Forest.
It's the only one I know of that's nearby. And again,
I'm not denouncing the use of public ranges by any means.
I think they're a great resource to the public. I've
seen some very well run ones up in northern Virginia.
This one at that time, though, it was a bit
chaotic for my taste. Another thing I'll mention that I
recall pretty vividly was there was just junk everywhere down range.
And we're not talking about your standard targets. We're talking
people had put computers, TVs like anything you could really
shoot at down range. I was concerned about a ricochet
effect occurring, essentially, and so that was another thing that
made me uncomfortable, and just I recalled vividly was this
place was trash when we got there. That was my
first experience there. We went back a later time. Another
thing I'll note is it's isolated. It's down a gravel
road and there was no cell service there either. So
that's something I remember, and that there's a whole story
behind how we discovered that we had a little bit
of an emergency situation occurred the second time, and we're like, oh,
this is the one time we really need cell service.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, is there anybody in charge there. I've been
to a shooting range a couple of times, but they
were always well run. There was a person in charge
who was usually expert at firearms, and they'd be in
for safety rules. You'd sent me a couple of pictures
and one of the pictures had a guy all the
way down range, and you said that people went into
the downrange area, which is a place where you could
actually be hit with very little regard to what was
going on around them, and this would never happen. A
couple of times I've been to a shooting range, it's
always been quite strict. There's a signal or a whistle,
or there's a stopping line of demarcation that says there
will be shooting at this point and there won't be
shooting at some other point while people place targets or
whatever they're shooting at. Is there any of that at
this place?
Speaker 5: Again, I can only speak to my experience ten years ago,
and at that time, no, there was not. It was
like you were referencing very different from any public shooting
range or private one for that matter, I had ever attended.
When it came to put time to put targets down
the range, what I recall was it again was patron regulated,
where there just seemed to be a natural stop in
folks shooting. People then decided, okay, it's time to go
down range to put items down range, which again I
could just hear my dad's voice in my head. He
was very strict with us and gun safety, and he
would have been mortified and it said chills up my
spine for sure. But yeah, there was no regulation that
I saw at that point in time, certainly not an
arranged safety officer present.
Speaker 3: So is this heavily patronized by college students or more
so by older adults? Like what would you say? Was
sort of the makeup of the people who were there.
Speaker 5: So I think it's a mix. I think you do
have some college students, especially ones who were gun owners,
that might be recreational shooters or tied to the core
of cadets, and they're practicing targets because that's in line
with the career path they're intending to pursue. There also
was quite a bit of the local population there from
surrounding southwest Virginia, and I saw a decent amount of
responsible gun owners there that you could tell we're seasoned
and experience and had the proper etiquette. But there are
also some guys who were joking around where, like I said,
did not make me feel comfortable. And I've heard over
the years just some pretty sketchy characters that show up there.
I had one friend who I was talking about the
range with before we had our podcast today, and he
had a particularly interesting story where he remembered a very
weird acting guy in a hoodie with a fully automatic
M four shooting down range and he's like, how the
heck did this guy get access to this weapon? And
he said it spooked him out. And he's a decorated
marine officer now, not a guy who's easily intimidated, and
he found it to be a con experience. So you
had folks like that there. Again, I only went there
two times, but these places garner a reputation. This one
definitely was on the sketchy side based on my calculation
of things at the time.
Speaker 2: I want to be clear on something here. Our sources
inside the Child's Metzler investigation have told us that there
is a long standing suspicion amongst the investigators, and Kristin
and I did a recap on the Child's Metzler case
a couple of weeks ago, which we refer people back
to if they haven't listened to it. There is a
strong potential link that the investigators believe may exist between
the murder of Heidi Childs and David Metzler and this
shooting range. Your viewpoint from ten years ago actually gives
us a better idea of what might have been going
on there fifteen years ago. Quite frankly, we're not as
concerned with what is going on at this public shooting
range now. We actually were hoping to get your view
on what was happening back then. So things may have
improved with investigators looking at this shooting range as potentially
a place where the killer or killers came from before
they happened upon Childhon Metzler at Caldwell Fields. Can you
give us a sense of what the distances between the
shooting range and Caldwell Fields approximately? People would be driving
so they come back up the gravel road. How long
do you think it would take to drive from the
public shooting range to Caldwell Fields where Heidichilds and David
Messler were killed.
Speaker 5: You're talking about essentially a ten to fifteen minute drive,
depending on how fast you're driving. It is a pretty
isolated rural road. You knew that road. Especially at night,
you might be going a bit slower. It's around eight
to nine miles away if I'm correct, and it's about
a Caldwell Fields is about a twenty four to thirty
minute drive from Blacksburg. Downtown. Blacksburg specifically there is a
bit of a connection between Caldwell Fields and the university.
Addison Caldwell was the first student in cadet at Virginia
Tech who attended the university in eighteen seventy two. The
Core of Cadets at Virginia Tech, which is the military
body of the institution. It's a very well known part
of Virginia Tech culture. They do something, to my understanding,
called the Caldwell March every year, which is to mimic
the march this kid did from this part of rural
Virginia to Virginia Tech's campus to commemorate the founding of
the Core of Cadets, essentially in the university. That's the
only time I had heard about Caldwell Fields in particular,
outside of researching this case years later. I was very
familiar with the area while I was at school. I
had the good fortune of having a jeep rangler in college,
so I did a lot of joy riding and off
roading on the back roads of Blacksburg. Right down the
road from there, i'd say about twenty thirty minutes further
down for sixty there's a big off roading area that's
in I think it's the Jefferson National Forest. Still it's
right near Mountain Lake Lodge where they filmed Dirty Dancing
that movie. Oh yeah, just a little side note. The
lake's gone now, unfortunately it naturally drains every one hundred
and fifty years, but the lodge is still there, and
I would go off roading near there, and I think
one time in particular, somehow I took a trail and
it spit me out on Craig Creek Road, and that
was the first time I had ever seen Caldwell Fields myself,
aside from hearing about it through the Caldwell March and
then these cases later on.
Speaker 3: There has been this longstanding understanding that one of the
biggest problems in southwest Virginia is opiate use, and that
is a problem that really has just seemed to grow
and grow. I don't see us being able to get
that under control anytime soon. You'd mentioned in some of
your communications with us that speculated that maybe there was
a drug tie into the cald Well Field's child's Metzler murders.
Do you want to discuss that a little bit or speculate.
Speaker 5: Yeah. The reason I mentioned that in our direct messages, again,
I'm not law enforcement I'm not an expert on this
case by any means, being exposed to that surrounding area
in Southwest Virginia, Like I said, beautiful area, great people
over all, just down to earth, give the shirt off
their back type people. But you can notice, especially as
you get further into West Virginia and some of these
more remote parts, the devastation that has been by the
opioid crisis. And it's really well depicted for those who
who like these type of series. If you've seen Dope
Sick or Painkiller, two very popular series I believe on
Hulu and Netflix, right, they do a great job depicting
how this crisis has affected that area. A lot of
the crimes that you read about that occur in this
region of the country do have some link to the
drug trade going on, in particular the opiate trade, or
that might be a motivator for robbery of some regard.
And I know in the Metzler case there was a
wallet stolen, I believe, or there is some indication robbery
may have been a either primary or secondary motive. They
don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Heidi's purse was taken.
Speaker 5: That would tie into maybe a broader theory that there
could be that underlying factor as a driver here.
Speaker 3: Sounds reasonable enough.
Speaker 2: One other things that it's been mentioned too regarding the
shooting range Robert, is the use of alcohol and drugs
at the shooting range, which obviously you don't want to
be drunk or high while you're shooting.
Speaker 5: No, that is not ideal etiquette.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that you saw people drinking, So what goes
on there? Is this a place where people are using
drugs and alcohol and then out there in the woods
blasting away.
Speaker 5: I have a memory of one of the times I
went there, and it was either that there was a
lot of beer cans on the ground near a particular truck,
or it was these guys in the bed of a
truck drinking, the details of which I can't recall, but
I do remember there being the presence of alcohol there,
not what the group I was with, of course, so
it would not surprise me. Again, there's no oversight of
this place if there was that type of activity occurring.
I know that people would go out on various occasions
and maybe party or go camping. In the surrounding Jefferson
National Forest. It was definitely a big area for fraternity
rituals and initiation, ceremonies and stuff like that. So there
might be a culture of that tied to that place.
I can only speak to again my memories of it,
and I do remember beer cans being on the ground
and there being evidence of alcohol consumption. Now, I don't
know if that was stuff that was used as a
target or whatnot, but that is my recollection of that
particular factor.
Speaker 2: One thing I'd say about beer cans is they might
be empty. Now, they weren't always empty. They started out full.
Speaker 5: Very fair point.
Speaker 2: I don't think people would be moving let's say dozens
or maybe even hundreds of beer cans empty. I think
it's a fair assumption that if there are tons of
beer cans in location, there's a fair amount of beer
being consumed there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's the blue bud light cans I just remember.
I mean, it's weird what your brain picks up on.
That's my distinct memory. And being by a white truck.
Speaker 2: I wonder if that's a regional favorite.
Speaker 3: And Hazard Bush is based right here in Williamsburg, so
it does head out that way.
Speaker 2: That is true.
Speaker 3: It's been fifteen years since the child's Metzler case, and
we don't want to sit here on Monday morning quarterback
and make it sound like we know better than the investigators,
because obviously we are not investigators any of us. But
give us some speculation, just based on someone who's familiar
with the case. Why do you think that the Child's
Metzler case has stalled? And what would you like to
see happen going forward to rev it up again?
Speaker 5: Of course, I want to see justice for these two
young people who are tied to this wonderful community, and
I think their families deserve answers after this many years.
And to my understanding, there's a team that's actively hard
at work on this case. And again, I have nothing
but positive things to say about my interactions with Montgomery
County Police, Blacksburg Police, Virginia Tech Campus police during my
time there, but I don't believe they are the ones
leading the investigation anymore. I had heard, I believe through
this podcast and then through my own research, that there
has been DNA evidence collected from the scene. And I
had also heard stories about canvassing going on in the area,
of people voluntarily submitting their DNA that went on in
some of these backwoods hollers near that area. On Craig
Creek Road. My hope is that they revisit that with
all of the great technology that's available to us today,
especially when you get into forensic genealogy through some of
these public databases and sites. I think that would be
hopefully in Avenue. As a Virginia tax payer and someone
tied to this community, I would like to see happen
and for these families to get answers after this many years.
Speaker 3: Well said agreed, Robert. You were saying Affair that you
found our podcast through like backways through Amazon, that you'd
been reading a Ron Peterson book and it led you
to Blaine Party, which led you to us. Yes, were
you familiar with the Colonial Parkway murders case before you
saw Blaine's book? Was that something that had filtered out
to Tech or up to Fairfax.
Speaker 5: I was not, and I did have an experience on
the park Way that years later. It's anti climactic, But
when I found out about these cases, I called my
friend who brought me out there. I'm like, I can't
believe we went out there at night. So one of
my best friends transferred from Virginia Tech and he was
a football player. He played at William and Mary, so
I spent a lot of time Williamsburg during college watching
his games, and one summer he was moving between apartments.
I had helped him move and we moved him into
his new apartment and they hadn't paid the utility bills yet,
so the power was off, the ac was off. Kristin
howe hot and humid. It gets in the tidewater region
of Virginia in the summer, so we were like, what
do we do? And we just went out joy riding.
He had a Camaro and I'll show you this cool spot.
So we go out on what I found out to
be the Colonial Parkway. At the time, it's pitch black.
I don't think we had self service. And he pulled
over to College Creek and he's this where a lot
of people come and parties. Apparently people go swimming there,
but there's been drownings and stuff. I just had this
feeling of dread the whole time I was there. I'm like,
get the heck out of here. What are we doing
out here? And then years later I read this book
and I'm like, oh my gosh. And I had no
knowledge of these cases, but I did have that impression
of the parkway years back where I was like, this
is a sketchy area, and I called them up. I'm like,
I can't believe you had us out there. And I
remember saying when we went out there, I'm like, this
is somewhere like a serial killer would roam around. He
was like, calm down, we're two big guys, and he
wasn't easily intimidated. But I remember that spooky experience there,
and that years on, when I read about the cases,
was really the first time I had heard about them.
And then my mother attended Radford right after Gina Renet
Hall's case, and so when I read that book, she
had an interesting perspective right away on that.
Speaker 2: I said, do you.
Speaker 5: Remember anything about Gina Rene Hall and she said, yeah,
she's buried under the I forget the name of the
whatever center that was the urban legend at the time. Okay, yeah,
the cases exist in the institutional memory of these and
go on through generations. A lot of times. The details,
of course, get lost over time. It's only upon researching
them or reading about them that you're able to gain
insight into the human element of it. So that was
my experience with the Colonial Parkway murders prior to reading
Blaine's book.
Speaker 3: Boy, if he took you out to College Creek, he
took you out to where all of it. When he
says there are drownings there, that he's not kidding. It
happens at least once or twice a year because the
rip current is so bad out there. You guys didn't
go swimming, did you, No.
Speaker 2: We did not.
Speaker 5: There was no way in heck I was getting in
that water. I love to get out of there as
soon as possible, much like the shooting range. That was
my first exposure to the case was reading Blaine's book,
and then I did a little research on the cases afterwards.
And it was right around the time you were starting
the podcast, and I've been pooked ever since.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. That is
going to do it for this episode of Mine over Murder. Robert,
thank you so much for joining us today and giving
us your perspective on all of these cases.
Speaker 5: Thank you, guys, it's been an honor and a pleasure
to come on.
Speaker 3: We'll look forward to having you on again for now.
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 McLoud.
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 my mind Over Murder.