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.
Speaker 3: Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind Ever Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly
and I'm Bill Thomas. Would I saw you off entirely
one day if I said I'm Bill Thomas, what would
you say?
Speaker 2: I know you threatened that a few weeks ago. I
would roll with it and I would pretend to be
You wouldn't even face me. I'm ready because you've hinted
at it twice now and it just shows quite how
dangerous and deranged you can be.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I could just show that.
Speaker 2: And I'm prepared, I'm nimble, I'm ready. You can throw
anything you want at me and I will not even
be phazed.
Speaker 3: Cool. So mental gymnastics are a thing that you can
do with ease.
Speaker 2: And when's the last time someone called you dangerous and deranged?
Speaker 3: My therapist? Two weeks?
Speaker 2: Oh, I can see that we're.
Speaker 3: Kidding, folks, just kidding potentially. Oh, it is a snowy
day here in coastal Virginia, and Bill is rolling his
eyes because I just got the phone call that we
have a snow day tomorrow, and I realized.
Speaker 2: That's snow day number two.
Speaker 3: Actually tomorrow is going to be snow day number three,
because we were off this past Friday, we were off today,
We're gonna be off tomorrow.
Speaker 2: I know, when the Commonwealth of Virginia is paralyzed by
a four inch snowstorm, I must take the opportunity to
tease just a little bit. But I guess the fact
that the Commonwealth only owns two snowplows does create a
bit of a problem.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, that's probably what it is. I will say
that people who come up here from Florida would probably
be paralyzed by less than four inches of snows You
gotta give us a little bit of credit.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 3: Maybe you don't. Maybe you don't. You're the person who
moved into the middle of the ice box of Connecticut,
and you have to deal with this stuff all the time.
Speaker 2: This is true, and it can be dangerous. I do understand,
and I don't want terrible things to happen to our
friends in Virginia or anywhere. So if you have to
take the day off, you have to take the day off.
Speaker 3: I'm curious, what does it take to close schools in Connecticut?
Speaker 2: Oh, seriously, yifs legitimately they have the same kind of standards.
None of us want to see kids or school buses
in accidents or anything like that. I would say, four
or five six inches of snow, you're definitely going to
have a snow day. Crap, there's no question about it.
Speaker 3: Right, fair enough? And here we are at four inches,
so we have hit your respectable amount there. I think
it's four inches now. I haven't outside, it's too cold.
Speaker 2: I stand corrected. I but I will continue to tease
my good friends in Virginia who are paralyzed by four
inches of snow it's a good time to go out
and do snow angels if you're familiar.
Speaker 3: It's too cold. I'm not going to go outside of inches.
Speaker 2: Okay, then you come in and you have hot coco.
That's just how it works.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is true. However, it is cold and dark
as it gets to be in the winter, and I
will not go out in this right now. Maybe I'll
take a little walk later five to ten minutes and
get my fill of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: We are continuing our ask Us anything, and as you
guys know who've been with us for a while, ask
us anythings very rarely stay at one episodee. They usually
go to two. It's three, sometimes even four. And we
had so many amazing questions come in to us from
our various stute listeners that we wanted to try to
answer as many as we possibly could. When we left
off last time, we were answering a question from Robert,
one of our loyal listeners. I'm going to reread the
question and get to his next line of thought and
then his question beyond that, and we can go from there.
The question that we answered last episode was this one.
Three of Wilmer's four victims have some degree of connection
to Liberty Security. If the Pettenger and call Haley cases
are eventually tied to Wilmer, even more victims would have
a connection to that company. Does this make you rethink
whether these are actually crimes of opportunity or do you
think there's a chance these were more planned and premeditated
attacks committed with intention of targeting a specific victim due
to their connection to Liberty Security. So that was asked
and answered last episode. I also like this little bit
of information here that Robert gave at the end. He said,
the dissonance I'm trying to resolve is if Wilmer was
purely opportunistic in selecting victims at random, how does it
end up that a significant portion of these victims have
a connection to a single security company, and nonetheless a
company owned by a sketchy character who inserted himself into
the Colonial Parkway murder cases. I don't know what to
make of this bill for anybody who isn't familiar with
the way that Ron Little inserted himself into the investigation,
can you do a quick reminder on that?
Speaker 2: Sure, Robert's hitting us with a lot, but let's focus
on the part you steered us towards first. In nineteen
eighty eight, Ron Little, who had emigrated from his native
New Zealand to California. Initially he moved to Tracy, California.
He tracked down a woman that he knew from New
zealand ended up wooing her, as my father would say,
marrying her, having a and then they split up, and
then for reasons we still don't completely understand. This is
one of our many questions about Ron Little. We're not
quite sure how Ron Little, New Zealander moves from California
to Gloucester, Virginia. And we're not putting down Gloucester at all.
It's a beautiful place, but it's an odd choice. What's
the California to Virginia connection. So this is something we're
still looking for more information about. If anybody who's listening
to our podcast has any idea, we're welcome to it.
So Ron Little ended up working for Liberty Security. He
was attending classes at what was then called Thomas Nelson
Community College. He ended up supposedly purchasing Liberty Security, and
I have some doubts as to whether that was a
real purchase. I'm not sure he would have had the
financial wherewithal to buy a small security company outright. I
think that may have been a straw man purchase from
the previous owner, a man named John Knight. Hawthorne. Little
inserted himself in the Colonial Parkway murders in a very
bizarre way, around the time of Brian Pattinger and Lorian
Powell's murder and the disappearance of Keith Collin. Cassandra Haley
s this is nineteen eighty eight. He ends up making
public statements that he is going to solve the Colonial
Parkway murders, that he knows who is committing these murders,
and that he is going to bring them to justice. Effectively,
I'm rolling my eyes a bit. He ended up doing
interviews with local newspapers and local television. I know there's
one video clip that we've seen several times which has
run Little wearing this very eighties style pink jacket, walking
along talking to longtime Wavy reporter and friend of the podcast,
Andy Fox, making these claims that he knows who's committing
the Colonial Parkway murders. He ended up writing this bizarre
multi page letter. You can tell this is the eighties
because it goes to this cast of characters. It's hard
to believe just from memory. It wrote to a letter
complaining that the FBI was harassing him because of his
advocacy in the Colonial Parkray murders and that they were
threatening they were going to deport him back to New Zealand,
which they eventually did. But he also sent the letter
to the United States Senators, Congress, people, to Oprah Oprah.
Of course, I love the fact that the letter went
to Oprah of all people, and just a bizarre cross
section of nineteen eighties America, complaining that he was being
harassed by the FBI for being this outspoken kind of whistleblower.
Almost it's really bizarre behavior, without question. Eventually, by nineteen
eighty nine, reading into it a little bit, but it
almost sounds like the FBI had enough of Ron little
and in looking into his background, they discovered that he
had an extensive criminal background in New Zealand, his native country,
and had probably entered the United States under false pretenses.
Because you're supposed to answer these questions honestly, and they
do ask you if you've ever been arrested or if
you have a police record, which he did. Eventually, the
FBI kind of went after a Little, And I don't
think actually Little was completely wrong in saying the FBI
was harassing him, because I think they were. He had
become this kind of loud mouth claiming that he knew
all these things about the murders and that we had
this very strange connection, as we've discussed on mind Over Murder,
where a number of these victims in the Colonial Parkway
murders had connections to his security company, Liberty Security. So
by August nineteen eighty nine, the FBI had questioned him,
and then I think made a huge mistake by deporting
Little back to his native New Zealand. The FBI and
thes Immigration and Naturalization Service sent Little back to New Zealand.
I think they made a serious error because I actually
think they should have taken a much harder look at
Ron Little for potential involvement in the Colonial Parkway murders.
It's a bizarre story. Some of it might make you
laugh because some of it's just so crazy why we're
writing to Oprah. But at the same time, this is
a series of unsolved murders. A number of them are
still unsolved to this day. Just in the past few weeks,
we've had what is more or less a solve in
the Lorine Powell murder, linking her to Wilmer. Now you
and I are exploring other potential linkages there as well,
involving Ron Little. So it's a very weird story. I'm
not saying we've never chuckled about it. When you step
back and think about it, it probably isn't quite so funny.
Speaker 3: I think it's important to mention that before he put
himself on the radar, the FBI said, we've never heard
of this guy. We were taking a look at some
of our information that we have from Joyce called Canada's
Father's Archives. Richard call really made sure that he took
note of everything in the press regarding the Colonial Parkway murders.
And he has this wonderful file that Joyce has kept
up and it really is just like a timeline of
everything related to the case. He's got some great articles
in there about Ron Little, and in a number of
those articles, the FBI agents in charge of the case said,
we have never heard of this guy. If he's a suspect,
that's news to us. Little had styled himself as the
family spokesman for Brian Pattenger and for Lorin Powell, which
again is odd when he set himself as the person
who was going to investigate and solve them. The FBI
wouldn't have been harassing him amusing their quotes there if
he hadn't put himself in the middle of this thing
in the first place. So it is very odd. The
fact that he inserted himself in this investigation and then
eventually ended up getting himself deported very interesting and definitely
I think a connection that is worth looking into now.
Robert asked us three more questions along the sort of
train of thoughts, so let's go ahead and continue these
before we move to others. Robert's third question is do
you think homicide or sexual assault was the primary motive
in the four cases tied to Wilmer so far? What
do you make of Wilmer switching between solo females and couples.
I actually want to give that one a shot, if
that's all right with you, and then we'll kick it
back your way. At this point, we have positive DNA
linkages between Wilmer and Robin Edwards, Laurian Powell, and Teresa Howell.
To my mind, that leads me to think that sexual
assault was the primary motive in these cases so far.
The fact that David was there as well at the
time that he approached Robin may very well have just
been another channel. Okay, I want to assault this girl,
and I'm going to have to go through the guy
to do it. But it seems to me that it
seems like the primary motive in this case is sexual assault.
As to what do I make of Wilmer switching between
solo females and couples we talked about this last episode.
I think Wilmer was willing to attack whoever was affording
him the opportunity at that point. I am wondering if
because Laurie was on her own and Terry was on
her own, that was an easier target for him, and
that maybe he was just willing to go through David
to get to Robin. Bill, do you have any thoughts
on that.
Speaker 2: I'm going to disagree with you on some level. Cool,
Let's not forget that Alan Wade Wilmer Sr. Is an
avid hunter. He is a crack shot. He is also
an championship archer. He won archery competitions. He's a hunter
and he loves the woods and the water. And knows
these areas backwards and forwards. I think that Alan Wade
Wilmer Senior liked a challenge Joseph DiAngelo, the Golden State
Killer and others. He escalates, so I think he may
be opportunistic in that if he sees a woman, and
let's remember we talked about this last time, I think
Lorient Powell and Teresa Howell were both somewhat inebriated, they'd
been drinking. Their judgment might not have been the best.
They were both known to hitchhike by the way, and
Teresa was having car trouble the weekend that she was
assaulted and killed. We know that Loriane Powell was pretty fearless.
She knew a lot of people in Gloucester. She often
hit strides and then of course a lot of times
small town people would come along and if Loorie was there,
they would see her, they would stop, they would give
her a ride if they were headed in that direction.
I think Wilmer might have enjoyed the escalation of going
after couples, just a challenge of it, and attacking two
people and controlling two people, as we've talked about on
the podcast before, is a significant challenge, and I think
he may have wanted to see can I do this?
If we go back to Kathy and Becky, the first
victims in the Colonial Parkway murders, there's a struggle. Kathy
clearly struggled with their attacker. Yeah. Could he have gone
up to two women in a car and attacked them? Absolutely,
these other situations, certainly, as far as we know, these
couples are either traveling in a car or parked in
a car, are approached by Wilmer. That may heighten his excitement.
And this is something that our friends Fits and Ray,
both former FBI profilers, We're telling us that this may
be part of this escalation where you know, he's killed
single women, and then he'll also think to himself, I
could take on a car, I could control this couple.
And remember this isn't necessarily just about sex. Yeah, as
our friends like Laura Richards, Jim Clementi and others have
said to us, it's about power and control. Yep, exactly,
I guess. Look sexualities mixed in here. Yes, for sure.
We know that Wilmer was married and his wife broke
up with him, left him. We know that Wilmer had
a girlfriend in Williamsburg, and that she broke up with
him and then married another man shortly thereafter. Could these
be precipitating events that helped drive him to this lashing
out in this way, murdering both women and couples. Years ago,
when the Colonial Parkeray murders were first happening, FBI and
Virginia State Police profilers talked about the fact that they
thought the killer or killers might be someone who hated romance,
or hated couples, or hated sexuality, because you think about
a couple parked in cars engaging in romantic or sexual behavior.
These breakups that took place in Wilmer's life where his
wife left him several years later, his girlfriend left him
for another man, and this could really grind on a guy.
These things could be the kind of things that pushed
him over the edge into this kind of heinous behavior
that he was engaged in.
Speaker 3: It could very will be. I also think it's a
good idea to just remind people that because he has not,
to our knowledge, left journals, notes, or anything else, we're
never really going to know motive for him. I'm always
a little hesitant to ascribe motive just because human psychology
is fluid in a lot of ways. I think even
fitz and Ray would maybe hesitate on a signing motive
to somebody like Wilmer if they weren't able to talk
to him or see any of his writings. But I
think what you said is there's very like is some
truth to that. And you'll notice that for long time
listeners and new ones too, you'll notice that we don't
always have to agree with each other on every aspect
of a case. I think that once we learn more
about Wilmer, and once more comes out about his crimes,
we may have a better idea about how to answer that.
We don't always have to agree. And that's one hundred
percent fine. The next question from Robert again gets right
into the heart of what we just talked about. He says,
if Wilmer's found responsible for Brian Pettinger's murder, how does
this make you rethink potential motive killing a single male
would be an outlier compared to these other cases where
a female and sexual assault is involved and the only
male victims are within the context of a couple. Is
there evidence that Wilmer's sexually targeted female and male victims?
Has this angle been explored. I think the only thing
we can come up with this one is supposition, because
we don't know what's been going on inside the investigation
into Brian Pettinger.
Speaker 2: I think Brian Pettinger's murder has everything to do with
Liberty Security. He worked at Liberty Security. If Pettinger's murder
is solved, then we hope that it is. I think
Brian Pettinser's murder has something to do with his employment
at Liberty Security, much in the same way. I think
we can no longer ignore the fact that three of
our four victims currently identified are linked to Liberty Security.
The only one that's not is Teresa Howell Pettinger's murder,
which is so remarkably similar to the murder of Lorianne Powell.
I remind everybody she also worked at Liberty Security. This
feels inevitable. I don't think that Brian Pettinger's murder as
a result of a sexual assault. I'm not saying he
wasn't sexually assaulted. I don't know. I think there's a
strong possibility that Pettinger's murder is linked to Liberty Security,
without question.
Speaker 3: I agree. And then Robert's final question, this is this
is an interesting I like this, If you could do
a ride along with any true crime investigator, forensic specialist, psychologist,
or professional that you've had on the podcast and shadow
them for a day, who would it be?
Speaker 2: Oh man, I think each one of us would want
to answer that. That's a tough one. We've had so
many amazing people on the podcast, and we still always
have a list of people that we'd like to get.
John Douglas, a former FBI profiler. We've met mister Douglas,
We've had our pictures taken with mister Douglas. We sat
in like the third row of a packed auditorium at
Crime Con when he spoke. First of all, he was brilliant,
and he was hysterically funny, which I hadn't anticipated. And
we've read his books and we know his co author.
I might go with John Douglas, But who would you
go with?
Speaker 3: Yeah, my original thought was John because he's really the
person who cut me into true crime and profiling. It
is a real case of a hero worship for me, really,
any of our profiling friends, though, I would love to
do a one hundred percent let's sit down and work
this case start to finish for me, it would be
really any profiler, so Lara Richards, Jim Clemente, Jim Fitzgerald,
Ray Carr, John Douglas, and at this point too, I
would say Marco Ohlshaker knows enough about profiling from working
with John that I want to sit down and just
have a cool And it really is interesting because I've
met all of these people. I work with all of
these people, but I really want to have an actual
let's go to the FBI Academy sit down at one
of the worktables. I'm desperate to go to the FBI Academy.
You guys can idea, you have no idea, Like the best,
the most amazing thing that could ever happen to me
with getting a trip to the FBI Academy and being
able to run the Yellow Brook Road. If somebody can
make that happen, Please make it happen.
Speaker 2: I think happen no pessure.
Speaker 3: But it has to, it has to. But yeah, and
I think it's just because the profiling aspect of it,
the one part of all of this that I can
really get behind. I can't do blood and guts, so
I could never hang out with somebody like doctor Boden
or a forensic specialist. It would be awful. I don't
know that I would be able to really hold my
own at a crime scene, so hanging out with Mac
for a day would be It would be cool, but
I know that I'd be able to handle it very well.
Speaker 2: Oh, I would do that in a heartbeat.
Speaker 3: I really think it would have to be one of
my profiling friends, because that's the part that I think
I'm equipped to handle. Give me a little bit of
training and tell me where I'm going wrong with some
of my suppositions and help me become a better understanding
person when it comes to psychology. That would be it.
I would love a ride along or work along with
any of our profiling friends, as long as we can
do it at the FAI Academy.
Speaker 2: All Right, Just so we're clear here, We've had John
Douglas's co author Mark Olshaker on the podcast a couple
of times, and he's always welcome to come back because
he's so interesting. But I think even he would push
back politely because he's that kind of guy that he's
not an FBI trained profiler, but he has worked with
one of the guys that helped develop the modern profiling unit,
the Bau and I'd be real open to sitting down
with any of these folks, and we really consider it
a privilege just to be able to ask them questions
and listen and learn.
Speaker 3: Oh, I got one hundred and ten percent, one hundred
and twenty percent. Even we're out here trying to do
good work. I think sometimes we're doing great work and
other times I'm not entirely sure that we're moving the needle.
Those are people who have really gone out there. They've
done the work, They've changed people's lives, they've saved people's lives.
Those are the people that want to hang out with
and get to know.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: Let's see, we're going to skip back over to Colonial
Parkway murders. This is a question from Holly who asks
what do you think the possible sequence of events or
logistics were in the Call Haley case? Where do you
think they might have been accosted.
Speaker 2: I think they were accosted at or very close to
the party. I agreed at Christopher Newport University at the
University Square apartments, which are long gone. We heard from
some people, and over the years I've talked to a
number of people that were there at the party. You
got to remember, this is multiple apartments, a lot of
young people coming in, going, people having a lot of fun.
A party held at those apartments, which was mostly college kids,
didn't necessarily happen in only one location. People would wander
down the hall and pop into another apartment where the
door was open, and it'd be kegs of beer and
people were having a really good time. As a result,
a lot of people would come and go over the
course of the evening. Some people have told us that
there were one or two older men who attended those
parties that night. I should probably say parties plural. And
remember these are eighteen to twenty one year old kids basically,
so somebody that was thirty plus would be older to them.
And there's these odd stories we've heard about the possibility
that there was an older man at these parties that
night who had a snake. Now Ron Little is really
into snakes, which is odd whatever, And he was a
very big show off. He was always trying to be
the center of attention, attract attention to himself, always hitting
on young and even underage girls in his capacity at
Liberty Security. So this story that we've heard that there
might have been an older man or older men plural
at these parties that night, possibly with a snake. And
then we have a picture of Ron Little with a
snake around his shoulders, which this must be like a
Boa constriction.
Speaker 3: It's a huge snake. Yeah, it's like a Boa constrictor.
Speaker 2: I think this is super creepy. From my perspective, that
possibility is very real. First of all, I want to
express my disappointment that I've talked to a number of
people that were there at the party that night where
Keith and Sandy were last seen. I think they were
accosted there. My disappointment is that I was shocked at
how many people who were there at the party were
never interviewed by the FBI. Now, this is an FBI
case because Keith and Sandy disappeared along the Colonial Parkway
and the FBI asserted jurisdiction, but they didn't seem to
ever interview all the people that were at the party.
And this is the last place that those young people,
Keith and Sandy were seen. Lisa Brown, who was one
of the people who was scheduled to be interviewed by
the FBI, said the FBI agent was a no show,
stood her up and never she never met him, and
then they never rescheduled her interview, and she was talking
to Keith Called for hours that night in the kitchen
of the apartment. He was singing the blues about his
temporary breakup with his then girlfriend. Remember Sandy is his
classmate on a first date, so they weren't necessarily any
kind of serious couple. He was actually seeing his high
school girlfriend for years. Then they had gone to separate
colleges and they were on a temporary, short term break.
And the Call family has told us they think they
would have probably gotten back together because they were pretty
serious couple for a number of years. When you find
out from Lisa that she chatted with Keith for the
better part of the evening and the FBI stood her
up for her interview. So she's still to this day
never been interviewed by the responsible agency who were looking
into his disappearance. And I find that incredibly frustrating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very odd. Let's see here, hold on, I'm trying
to find out of our questions. Okay, So let's asks
has there been a good reason given as to why
the FBI would throw away Kathy and Becky's rape kits.
Was it procedure, Was it an accident? Or is there
more to this part of the story.
Speaker 2: Oh hell no, It's definitely quite deliberate on their part. Okay,
let's recap as we understand it, Kathy and Becky were
both given rape kits at their autopsies. Based on the
standards of nineteen eighty six, it does not appear that
my sister Kathy or her girlfriend Rebecca were raped. Eight
years later, the York Pocosin County Sheriff's Department was working
on a rape case that they were moving towards trial.
This case required evidence which was currently in the evidence
locker at FBI Norfolk. They requested this evidence in this
other unrelated rape I think it was a rape murder case.
It was sent over. When the evidence clerk at York
Pekoson County Sheriff's Department opened up the bag with these
various items in it, they noticed that, in addition to
the evidence that they had requested, Kathy Thomas and Rebeccadowski's
rape kits were included with the other evidence. It doesn't
mean the evidence was blended. Everything was in its own
little packages. The clerk, as I understand it, reached back
out to the evidence clerk at FBI Norfolk and said,
you sent over evidence from the Thomas Sdowski case. We
didn't ask for that, We asked for this other stuff.
So FBI evidence clerk asks York Pecoson County evidence clerk
to put the evidence aside in their evidence lock up.
And then, as I understand it, it ends up being
a bureaucratic pissing contest. FBI wants York Pekoson County to
run the evidence back over to the FBI off York
Precosson County says something along the lines of you guys
are the ones that made the mistake. You send somebody
over here to pick up the evidence. So they got
into this pissing contest and the evidence just sat. Finally,
after some time had elapsed, the FBI sent a letter
via fact I know the letter exists, and they ordered
York Pecoson County to destroy Kathy Thomas and Rebecca Dowski's
rape kits, which York Pacoson County included it in what
they call a burn bag, and that evidence was burned
as medical waste. I talked to the Commonwealth of Virginia
Chief Medical Examiner Marcella Fierro, who was absolutely wonderful, really
nice lady. But she said, mister Thomas, my understanding is
that your sister and Missdowski were not raped. She said,
you never know what test will come along in twenty ten.
Keeping in mind we're having this conversation around November two
thousand and nine. He said, you never know what test
will come along in twenty ten that will be much
more refined and might be able to extract DNA evidence
from your sister in Missdowski's rape kits. And she said,
even failing that those would have represented super clean DNA
samples for comparison purposes at any point during the course
of the investigation. And she told me flat out, she said,
I don't care what the FBI says. Now, they're lying.
She said, for them to say your sister and Missdowski's
rape kits were of no value and it doesn't matter
because they weren't sexually assaulted, she said, that's not true.
That's a lie. She said, you never ever throw away
evidence in an unsolved murder case. And I said, did
they take up a lot of room. And she said,
imagine if you ordered business cards and they come in
a little box roughly the size of two cigarette packs,
and now they fit in an envelope, so they fit
on shelves a little bit more easily. But she said
it didn't take up a lot of room. And she said,
and they absolutely should have been sent back. And it
doesn't matter whether FBI picks them up or York, because
in the county drops them off. She said, what they're
telling you is not true. And I know they don't
like to throw their law enforcement partners under the bus,
but they also knew they were lying to me, and
I called them out on it publicly. To this day,
I have never heard an adequate explanation. And it seems
like the FBI is completely incapable of ever admitting fault
or mistake. Heaven forbid. I wouldn't expect them to say
I'm sorry, at least admit it shouldn't have happened, We're
sorry that it happened, and let's move forward, but they
won't even do that. I know that's a long answer
to the question, but it was really a bureaucratic foul up,
and it should have never happened.
Speaker 3: I don't even want to call it a foul up.
Let's call it what it was, because you said it exactly.
It was a pissing contest between two jurisdictions and York
because we should not have listened in the FBI, said Burnett.
They shouldn't have. Somebody should have had the integrity to go,
you know what that in a murder investigation, we shouldn't.
But really, the FI has more culpability here. And while
we're on the subject of FBI culpability, because it always
bears repeating, let's just make sure that we're aware how
many screwups the FBI has committed in this case. Oh no,
I know, but I'm going to do it this time
because I want to feel righteously angry about it. You
just recounted one of them. The FBI ordered their rape
kids burned as medical waste. Big No. Number one. Number two,
they lost control of seventy highly graphic crime scene photos
allowed those to be released. That is also a foul
up that should never have happened because the FBI couldn't
keep control of them. That's number two. Number three. They
had Alan Wade Wilmer in their sites as their primary
suspect in nineteen eighty eight in the disappearance and probable
murders of keep Calcusator Hailey, and they let him go
and as a direct result of that, Terry Howell is dead.
There is no getting around that one. So that's three
screw ups on the part of the FBI. And I'll
go ahead and add a fourth to what you said
a little bit earlier. The FBI should have taken a
harder look at round little before they shipped him back
out to New Zealand, where we know that he went
on to a life of crime, drug dealing, and various
other things. There are four screw ups here from the FBI,
and there's probably more, and there are probably more. Again,
for anybody who is either new to the podcast or
who thinks that maybe we're being a little too tough
on the FBI, you just heard four reasons why we
are not being too tough on the FBI. And that's
also if you want to go down the conspiracy theory
rabbit hole. I thought, so, four good reasons why they
might not want this case solved.
Speaker 2: At this point, it's clear that the Colonial Parkway murders
is a massive embarrassment for the FBI. And I'm going
to point out something that ought to be obvious, but
I'm not sure sure that it will be to everyone.
Notice how the Virginia State Police are still working this case,
and we've got to give them a lot of credit.
I've criticized the Virginia State Police more than once on
various aspects of the Colonial Parkway murders investigation. But who's
moving this investigation forward, Who's applying for the Sexual Assault
Kit Initiative sake Grant's Virginia State Police. And then we
were literally begging the Virginia State Police about five years
ago to please test the last bit of remaining evidence
from the Robin Edwards rape kit. We knew it was
a long shot. We knew that the evidence was highly degraded,
and it was a very small amount of DNA left
after previous tests had consumed some of the evidence in
Robin's rape kit. God love them, they actually took the chance,
applied for the grant, sent it down to DNA Labs International,
and they got a hit and that led directly to
Robin Edwards, David Nobling, and then Teresa Howell murders all
being solved and now I've expressed some frustration as to
why it took two and a half years to get
around to applying for a Osaki grant and sending the
evidence in Lorian Powell's rape kit. And Peter Dujardin in
the Daily Press did an excellent article that just broke
a couple of days ago that talked about how the
Compton and Powell families were not aware of the fact
that Lorian Powell had been raped, but they were informed
some months back that they were applying for Asaki grant
and they were going to continue to be working that case.
While we're seeing this slow but steady progress by the
Virginia State Police, I will remind everybody we are hearing
literally nothing from the FBI. They call me once a
month to tell me they have nothing to tell me.
I wish I was joking, I'm not. They have not
provided an update on DNA evidence that they promised us
results for over a year ago, and we have heard nothing.
They give us the straight arm. They barely speak to us.
As I said, they call once a month to tell
us we got nothing to tell you. The Virginia State
Police are proceeding, maybe not at the pace I might
like or that the other families would like. But they
are working this case and they are coming up with
solutions in the meantime. The FBI, and as you said, Kristen,
neither one of us are conspiracy theorists. But you start
to think to yourself, maybe you don't want to solve
this case because it will further embarrass the FBI. But
the FBI brought this on themselves, and their horrific work
in this case is right there for anyone that wants
to take a look at it. They have done a
horrible job in this case. The only way to rectify
this is for them to work the case as hard
as the Virginia State Police are and tell us who
killed Kathy Thomas at Kadowski, Keith Call and Cassandra Haley.
Those four murders are on their beat because they happen
inside the National Park. So step up and do your jobs.
Speaker 3: Agreed. As always, we want to thank everybody for your
excellent questions, your comments, your support. We asked a couple
of weeks back for people to write in excellent reviews,
and boy did you guys deliver. It was wonderful to
see all those wonderful reviews come rolling in. We appreciate
it more than we can tell you, because while we
do enjoy doing this very much, it is also sometimes
very difficult to do, and so kind words and thanks
for our efforts are always appreciated. So to everybody who
has been listening, watching, commenting, and cheering for us, either
in the comment section or on the sidelines, we appreciate you. Thinks.
Thank you so much, and please keep all of that coming.
With your energy and with your help, we're going to
get to a new year and hopefully more answers in
the Colonial Parkway Murders cases. That's 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 Coral 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.
Speaker 1: Five six Thank you for listening to Mind Over Murder.