Chapter 2: Relentless pursuit begins in murder cases

Date published: 11/20/2007  Frederick Free-Lance Star

By PAMELA GOULD

When Darrell Rice drove his bright blue pickup into Shenandoah National Park on a summer day in 1997, his life was in turmoil.

He had recently been fired from his job as a computer programmer. And he had been battling mental health problems and exhibiting odd behavior for more than a year.

But the Maryland resident whose chief passion was following the Grateful Dead could have had no idea just how bad his life was about to become.

That day, just two months shy of his 30th birthday, Rice’s actions thrust him into the center of two high-profile murder investigations in central Virginia that were languishing.

Instantly, when Rice was arrested in the attempted abduction of a female bicyclist in Shenandoah National Park on July 9, 1997, federal law enforcement officers converged. 

Immediately, questioning began about the March 2, 1996, abduction and subsequent slaying of 25-year-old graduate student Alicia Showalter Reynolds just 40 miles away.

Immediately, queries began about the May 1996 slayings of 24-year-old Julianne “Julie” Williams and 26-year-old Laura “Lollie” Winans in that same park.

Authorities would have been foolish not to pursue him.

They had just caught him—nearly in the act—trying to accost a woman inside the park where two young women had been killed 14 months earlier.

He was driving a pickup, as had Reynolds’ abductor—a man dubbed the “29 Stalker.”

He even looked like one of the composites that were circulated across the state after Reynolds disappeared from U.S. 29 in Culpeper County.

And federal officials would soon learn that Rice’s father lived in Culpeper.

Building a case

Over the next five years, federal officials pursued Rice as the prime suspect in the slayings in Shenandoah National Park.

They questioned him, interviewed jail and prison cellmates, employed an undercover agent and conducted dozens of forensic exams.

They interviewed park visitors, volunteers and staff.

Eventually, they claimed the Shenandoah slayings and the 29 Stalker cases—incidents where a man in a pickup flagged down women drivers suggesting they were having car trouble—were committed by the same person.

And ultimately they assembled a circumstantial case.

On April 10, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced capital murder indictments against Rice, claiming he targeted Williams and Winans out of a “hatred for women and homosexuals.”

Ashcroft noted the 15,000 leads federal investigators had pursued since their deaths.

He commended the “exemplary work” of FBI Agent Jane Collins and National Park Service Investigator Tim Alley.

And he said that federal prosecutors would “take full advantage of the solid foundation that was laid by the investigation” as they pursued a conviction and death sentence.

But Ashcroft was in for a surprise.

Questions, but no confessions

A ranger in Shenandoah National Park pulled Rice over along Skyline Drive shortly after a radio alert went out for a man in a truck fitting the description of his bright blue 1989 Chevy S–10.

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Not long afterward, Rice sat down for the first of two official interrogations he would undergo with federal investigators that day.

When he spoke with National Park Service Investigator Ken Johnson and Supervisory Ranger Clayton Jordan, Rice admitted accosting bicyclist Yvonne Malbasha.

He said he was attracted to her and had pulled his truck over. He admitted he grabbed at her chest and asked her to expose her breasts. But he said he had no intention of raping her.

“I was trying to ruin her day,” he told them.

He said he was frustrated at people having “messed” with him the past few years and over recently being fired.

And he mentioned he was hearing voices.

Rice initially resisted but then also admitted he had thrown a rock at the windshield of a parked, unoccupied minivan inside the park about a week earlier.

He admitted he’d done some things to harass people in Maryland—such as slashing the tires of a man’s van late at night, yelling rude comments at a woman bicyclist and even forcing a woman driver to exit a roadway.

But when Johnson and Jordan asked about other incidents in the park, Rice had nothing to share.

When they asked if he ever flagged down drivers and offered anyone a ride, he said only that others had come to his aid.

In the early months of 1996, the 29 Stalker flagged down women drivers—mostly along U.S. 29 in the Culpeper area—suggesting sparks were coming from beneath their cars. He then offered several of them rides.

Three women besides Reynolds got into the man’s truck. Two arrived at their destinations without incident; the third jumped from the truck after becoming afraid.

After Johnson and Jordan concluded their interview at park headquarters, Rice was driven to Charlottesville and taken into the FBI’s office.

He spoke to FBI Agent Peter C. Groh and National Park Service Investigator Alley until just after midnight. Then he was taken to the local jail.

Rice made no admissions of any murders to any investigators. But he told them he was struggling with being either bipolar or schizophrenic.

He didn’t make any admissions either to Larry Carter, a deputy with the U.S. Marshals Service, who spoke not only to Rice that day but to his father as well.

After learning that Rice drove a truck and was familiar with the Culpeper area where his father lived, Carter told Groh he should check out Rice in Reynolds’ slaying.

But Groh needed no prodding.

He was not only the FBI’s lead investigator in the Shenandoah slayings, he had worked the Reynolds case with Virginia State Police from the start.

Seeking inside help

Though nearly half a dozen federal law enforcement officers failed to elicit a confession from Rice in the slaying of Williams, Winans or Reynolds, an array of inmates began lining up to offer their help nearly as soon as the first jail door clanged shut behind Rice’s back.

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And when prisoners quit calling, federal authorities took an active role—visiting various prisons in search of someone with useful information.

The FBI also launched an extensive undercover operation, placing an agent in a cell with Rice, trying to establish a bond to eventually elicit incriminating information.

Between Rice’s arrest and his court date, FBI agents spoke to at least two dozen inmates. At least half a dozen were on their witness list for trial.

Rice had been locked up little more than 24 hours when the first inmate claimed to have heard a confession.

Inmate James Shifflett called his wife from the Albemarle–Charlottesville Regional Jail and told her to contact his attorney, claiming he heard Rice confess to killing Alicia Reynolds.

He offered to be fitted with a recording device and placed in a cell with Rice to try to replicate the purported confession.

State police were notified and federal authorities took Shifflett up on the offer—but the attempt failed.

Nothing even hinting at a confession emerged in the July 15, 1997, conversation. But federal authorities did think they gathered something useful—Rice saying, “I hate gay people.”

That was so inflammatory it apparently helped form the basis for pursuing the Shenandoah slayings as a hate crime. And it was echoed in Ashcroft’s April 2002 announcement of the indictments.

But it turned out to be wrong.

After the defense team hired someone to enhance the recording, it turned out that Rice said it “made me angry” when federal investigators claimed he hated gay people. 

Five days after Rice’s arrest, an inmate who was already helping prosecutors in a federal drug case was transferred to the Charlottesville facility to testify.

By the time Phil Robertson returned to Dillwyn Correctional Center in western Virginia the next month, he claimed to have heard Rice incriminate himself in the Shenandoah slayings.

His mother contacted the FBI on Robertson’s behalf on Aug. 26, 1997, because “he had told the counselors at the prison this information but they do not believe him,” an FBI report shows.

Two months later, Agent Groh and Investigator Alley interviewed Robertson.

He told an elaborate tale about the alleged encounter between Rice and Williams and Winans. Ultimately, he claimed Rice decided to tie up the women, rape them and slit their throats after they rebuffed his advances.

But autopsies show the women weren’t raped.

Other inmates also revealed their understanding of the benefits of “snitching” through the letters they sent the FBI asking for a variety of favors. At least two of the men federal officials placed on their witness list failed a polygraph test.

And other inmates refuted the accounts of those who claimed Rice had confessed.

Word of the FBI’s hunt for incriminating information became so well-known within prison walls that one inmate wrote court officials to rat out some of the men for their plans to collaborate in concocting stories.

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On March 11, 1999, after getting input from its profilers and a forensic psychiatrist, the FBI launched its undercover operation.

Agent Mike German was brought in from Providence, R.I., and, posing as a prisoner, placed in a holding cell with Rice on the day he was sentenced for the attempted abduction of Yvonne Malbasha. German and Rice chatted for hours in the cell that day and sent each other cards and letters over the next three years.

German, known to Rice as Mike McCarthy, also visited him at various prisons.

The final visit came on April 1, 2002—eight days before Rice’s indictment.

Despite the friendly relationship, Rice never admitted involvement in any of the slayings.

Costly plan falls short

Agent Groh invested 31/2 years of his life investigating the slayings of Williams and Winans. The last 21/2 were spent focused on Darrell Rice.

As the final days of his career approached, Groh implemented one last-ditch effort to snare his suspect.

He employed the undercover agent as part of the plan.

“At this stage of the investigation, an effective interview of the suspect is regarded as paramount to successfully resolving this matter,” Groh wrote in a Dec. 7, 1999, memo outlining the operation.

Under the guise of seeking Rice’s help in solving a crime that his buddy Mike McCarthy (Agent German) had committed in Shenandoah National Park, Rice was taken from a federal prison in Cumberland, Md., to a room in the town’s Holiday Inn on Dec. 16, 1999.

To make the move, Groh needed approval from the Justice Department and two FBI field offices. He also needed 10 FBI agents, two investigators from the National Park Service, the forensic psychiatrist, an FBI profiler, FBI supervisors and a representative from the U.S. attorney’s office, his memo shows.

Over nearly nine hours that day, Groh questioned Rice in the room with Investigator Alley at hand. Other agents and experts monitored from an adjacent room.

Before the daylong effort concluded, Groh had not only accused Rice of the double slaying in the park, he had suggested an indictment was imminent and, perhaps most importantly, he had thoroughly educated Rice about the killings and the so-called evidence against him, a videotape of the session shows.

When Rice repeated some of that information back in prison, some inmates used it in making their cases for Rice’s guilt.

Groh showed Rice a photo of Julie Williams, detailed the crime scene and laid out the case federal authorities had built—including entrance tapes showing Rice coming into the park on May 25 and May 26 of Memorial Day weekend in 1996.

He also talked to Rice about a one-minute call placed from his home about 10:30 a.m. on May 28 to Spectrum, a center in San Anselmo, Calif., that supports people engaged in homosexual, bisexual or transgender activity.

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That call was viewed as the clincher for the case—placing Rice in contact with the young women, federal authorities theorized. They suggested Rice stole Williams’ journal after killing her, discovered the phone number inside it and, out of curiosity, called.

The journal, however, was never proved to exist. Nor was it proved that Williams ever had—or could have had—the number.

In the videotaped interview, Rice looked baffled for a moment when Groh told him of the call. But after Rice looked at the bill, he understood what had happened.

The call to Spectrum resulted from a misdial, combining two numbers he frequently called—his boss’s and the ticket line for the Grateful Dead, also located in San Anselmo, Calif.

The call to Spectrum was an extraordinarily odd coincidence that even Rice attorney Gerald Zerkin admitted initially jolted the defense team.

As the motel interview drew to a close, Groh tried all angles.

He suggested a confession would make a nice Christmas gift for the Williams and Winans families. He mentioned his pending retirement. And ultimately, in what may be the most telling comment of the entire investigation, Groh made a final, exasperated statement.

“There isn’t a single thing today in eight hours that we’ve pulled out of the box that you haven’t told us we’re all wrong,” Groh said. “We can’t be all wrong all the time.”

Groh left the interview, and two weeks later the FBI, without a confession or an indictment.

In fact, throughout the motel interview, Rice calmly, consistently and politely told Groh he was on the wrong track.

“You’ve got the wrong person,” Rice said. “I’ll say that to my grave.”