Chapter 4: Expert asked to check for Reynolds link

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

By PAMELA GOULD

Five years ago, the FBI and Virginia State Police said forensic tests were being run to see if serial killer Richard Marc Evonitz murdered Alicia Showalter Reynolds.

They weren’t.

In fact, in direct contradiction to those statements, neither the FBI nor state police ever asked any crime lab to run those tests, The Free Lance–Star found in its 18-month investigation.

When the Reynolds hairs and fibers evidence finally made it to the FBI Laboratory two years later, it was as a result of the persistence of the lab’s Evonitz expert. But it still didn’t get examined.

Whether to check Evonitz in Reynolds’ 1996 slaying was never a question. FBI Lab trace-evidence expert Douglas Deedrick had sought to compare evidence in Reynolds’ death with evidence from the slayings of three Spotsylvania County girls as early as 1997. 

Once Evonitz was named as the killer of Sofia Silva and sisters Kristin and Kati Lisk in August 2002, all levels of law enforcement were calling for him to be checked forensically against any crime he might have committed.

“Where there is evidence—DNA, hair or fiber—we’re going forward and doing lab comparisons,” Donald W. Thompson Jr., then head of the FBI’s Richmond Division, said just days after Evonitz was confirmed as the Lisk–Silva killer. 

“Naturally, we’re comparing Evonitz evidence to the Reynolds case,” Rick Jenkins, then a state police lieutenant, said the following month.

Behind the scenes

Understanding why those exams weren’t carried out requires a look at what else was happening when Evonitz popped onto the police radar in June 2002, and when the Reynolds evidence arrived at the FBI Lab two years later.

In short, federal officials appeared to be so entrenched at that point in their years-long pursuit of suspect Darrell Rice that not even a known serial killer could alter their course.

In April 2002, two months before learning of Evonitz, federal prosecutors had obtained capital murder indictments against Rice in two slayings at Shenandoah National Park despite having no evidence—forensic or otherwise—to directly link him to the crime.

And by June, as part of that case, the FBI was pursuing Rice as the 29 Stalker, the man believed responsible for Reynolds’ slaying.

In addition, state police, who had ruled out Rice as a suspect in Reynolds’ slaying within weeks of learning about him in 1997, were going along with the FBI pursuit in 2002.

Neither FBI Agent Jane Collins nor state police Agent Stan Gregg asked to have Evonitz checked forensically against their cases in 2002. And as the federal case against Rice was collapsing two years later—when Evonitz couldn’t be ruled out as the park killer—they still didn’t ask to have the forensic tests run.

Even when Collins and Gregg delivered the Reynolds evidence to the FBI Lab in May 2004—with every forensic test showing no link between Rice and Reynolds or any 29 Stalker case—neither asked for the comparison with Evonitz. 

Finally, according to information obtained from the FBI Lab, Collins never did the one thing essential to forensically evaluate whether Evonitz killed Reynolds: provide samples from Evonitz for the comparison.

Though the FBI Lab’s stance is that it couldn’t conduct the exams because it never got the Evonitz samples, the fact is that nothing barred its examiner from picking up the phone and asking the Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office to provide them. 

In the end, whether by intent, acquiescence or neglect, the actions of the FBI, the state police and the FBI Lab combined to thwart the years-long efforts of the lab’s expert on Evonitz and fail the family of Alicia Reynolds.

As a result, to this day, the question of Evonitz’s involvement remains unanswered.

An examiner’s interest

In the summer of 1997, FBI Lab expert Deedrick temporarily set up work space at the Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office to aid in the hunt for the Lisk–Silva killer.

Weeks earlier, he had helped link the deaths of the three girls through examination of hairs and fibers.

When he spotted a poster about Reynolds’ March 1996 abduction in adjacent Culpeper County, he instantly wondered whether she was killed by the same, as yet unknown, man.

Given the geographic proximity and the fact that all four females were abducted and slain within a 14-month span, he felt the question should be answered forensically, and immediately told state police of his interest.

He periodically reminded investigators of his interest in examining that evidence, but it was not provided. 

In the summer of 2002, Deedrick’s role in helping link Evonitz to the Lisk–Silva slayings renewed his interest in checking evidence in the Reynolds case. 

Deedrick saw it as “the perfect cold case,” with a wealth of evidence—hairs and fibers, in particular—because of the way Reynolds’ body was found.

She was clothed and found in an essentially undisturbed, remote location, plus she had been transported in her killer’s vehicle.

For Deedrick, Evonitz was an obvious suspect.

“He was a person who was a known abductor and murderer in Virginia,” Deedrick said. 

“You gotta look at him.”

An FBI agent’s pursuit

When Evonitz attracted police attention in 2002, FBI Agent Collins was in the third year of her pursuit of Maryland resident Darrell Rice for the unsolved slayings of two young women in Shenandoah National Park in May 1996.

And when Thompson, her boss, said Evonitz would be checked against any unsolved crimes using forensic analysis, Collins and Gregg were pursuing Rice in Reynolds’ unsolved slaying.

They were traveling across central Virginia showing a photo lineup including Rice to women who reported contact with the 29 Stalker.

And federal prosecutors were pressing Virginia’s crime lab to quickly check Rice forensically against evidence in Reynolds’ murder and the 29 Stalker stops.

Police had always suspected that a pickup-driving man dubbed “the 29 Stalker” pulled over dozens of women drivers along U.S. 29 in and around Culpeper County as practice runs for Reynolds’ abduction on March 2, 1996.

But Collins was headed for bad news all around.

In the fall of 2003, Deedrick reviewed the Shenandoah slayings evidence and found that none of it linked Rice to the crime. He then asked Spotsylvania officials for hair samples from Evonitz and checked them against that case.

His check and mitochondrial DNA testing showed Evonitz couldn’t be ruled out as that killer, sending a wrecking ball into Collins’ murder case against Rice.

“If I didn’t stir things up in the Rice case, right or wrong, poor Mr. Rice would have been in a boat heading down the river,” Deedrick said.

Months later, when Collins was pressing Prince William County prosecutors to pursue Rice as the 29 Stalker, her plans ran headlong into Deedrick and Evonitz again.

State police pursuits 

The day after law enforcement officials announced Evonitz was a serial killer and said they would do everything in their power to determine every crime he committed, state police Agent Gregg submitted evidence from Reynolds’ slaying to the state crime lab.

But it wasn’t for checking against Evonitz. Gregg wanted it checked against Rice.

On April 3, 2002, six days before Rice was indicted on capital murder charges in the Shenandoah case, Gregg and FBI Agent James Lamb had visited Rice in prison, signaling the start of the joint FBI–state police pursuit of Rice.

The next month, Gregg started submitting evidence from the Reynolds case and other 29 Stalker incidents to the state lab for a thorough forensic check against Rice.

That happened even though state police had evaluated Rice in July 1997 and dropped him from consideration.

In December 2003, two months after state police learned fiber samples from Rice didn’t match the Reynolds case, Deedrick approached them again. 

This time, they agreed to submit the Reynolds hairs and fibers evidence to the FBI Lab.

“As a result of discussions between Lt. Rick Jenkins and certain individuals within the State Lab, it was concluded that certain items of evidence collected in the Alicia Reynolds’ case would be submitted to Douglas Deedrick at the FBI Lab for comparison with evidence collected against Richard Evonitz in the Lisk–Silva case,” Gregg wrote in a Dec. 10, 2003, memo.

Travels but no exams 

Gregg—like any investigator in the country—could have delivered the Reynolds evidence to the FBI Lab himself.

Instead, he waited for Collins, who inserted herself into the equation and, in her words, “assisted” state police with the submission.

Between April 2004 and August 2005, the Reynolds evidence was submitted to the FBI Lab twice. But no one examined it either time.

During that 15-month period, the Reynolds evidence traveled between Richmond, Culpeper and the FBI Lab at Quantico, including at least three trips through Spotsylvania County. But no one stopped at the Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office to pick up known samples from Evonitz to enable the comparison.

On April 26, 2004, the state crime lab finished with the Reynolds evidence, finding no link between Rice and Reynolds or any of the other 29 Stalker cases. Two days later, state police picked it up in Richmond and returned it to Culpeper.

On May 14, 2004, Collins drove to Culpeper and got the Reynolds evidence from Gregg, and the two of them drove it to the FBI Lab, located on Quantico Marine Corps Base.

“Generally, when we get a request in, we have to be told, ‘Here’s the items we have and here’s the evidence we want it compared to,’” said Bob Fram, chief of the FBI Lab’s Scientific Analysis Section. 

Fram was appointed by the FBI Lab to answer The Free Lance–Star’s questions. He agreed to discuss general lab procedures, but not specifics of the Reynolds case. 

Because Collins officially submitted the Reynolds evidence, it was her responsibility to bring the Evonitz samples as well.

But instead of traveling to Spotsylvania to retrieve them, Collins was focused on events in Manassas. There, in a series of pretrial hearings, Rice’s defense team was waging a battle to prove he wasn’t the 29 Stalker.

After the capital-murder case against Rice in the Shenandoah slayings collapsed in February 2004, Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert said Collins and National Park Service Investigator Tim Alley visited his Manassas office and asked if he could pursue Rice in one of the 29 Stalker cases.

Ebert agreed.

On June 7, 2004—three weeks after Collins delivered the Reynolds evidence to the FBI Lab—Rice was indicted on charges of abducting Carmelito Shomo in Prince William.


On Aug. 2, 2005—three weeks before Rice’s trial as the 29 Stalker, and by extension Reynolds’ killer, was to begin—Collins drove to the FBI Lab, picked up the unexamined evidence and returned it to state police.

Collins’ explanations

Though the FBI Lab pointed to Collins for its failure to conduct the Reynolds evidence examinations, Collins blamed the lab—four times saying it “denied” the request.

Because Collins’ supervisor wouldn’t allow her to be interviewed, her only comments come from her sworn testimony during Rice’s pretrial hearing of Aug. 15, 2005.

Collins, then in her 14th year with the FBI, said she normally specified the exam sought when she submitted evidence to the lab, but said “there was no such thing done for this Virginia State Police evidence.”

And, under questioning by defense attorney James G. Connell III, she acknowledged that her omission played a role in blocking the exam.

“There was no formal examination requested. Therefore, it was denied,” she said.

She made no mention of responsibility for bringing the Evonitz evidence. She said the “denial” came down to three points:

She made no specific request for examination.

The FBI Lab doesn’t re-examine evidence after another lab has examined it.

The Reynolds case was a “unique submission” because Deedrick initiated it.

FBI Lab refutes Collins 

But Fram, in explaining FBI Lab procedures, refuted each of Collins’ points.

First, he said examiners don’t need a specific request to conduct exams.

“We’ll look at the case and we’ll do all logical exams and go beyond what they request based on the evidence and facts of the case,” he said.

Second, Fram agreed his lab doesn’t simply do re-examinations, or repeats of another lab’s work. But he said it will review another lab’s work to see if anything was missed or if something more can be done.

The Virginia crime lab examined the Reynolds hairs and fibers evidence immediately after her body was found in May 1996. It never compared the evidence with Evonitz because the FBI Lab handled all of the comparisons involving him.

Comparing evidence to a new suspect is not considered a re-examination.

Third, Fram said he had never heard the phrase “unique submission” and couldn’t imagine any circumstance in which he’d use it.

He said examiners are part of the crime-solving team on a case, are trained to think about what exams can help solve a case, and sometimes suggest other exams.

“I couldn’t tell you how often,” he said, “but it’s not unusual, certainly.”

Gregg’s contradictions

Gregg, too, was called to testify in Rice’s August 2005 pretrial hearing about the intent behind submitting the Reynolds evidence to the FBI Lab.

Gregg directly contradicted his Dec. 10, 2003, memo, testifying that it was “not the purpose” of submitting the evidence to get it checked against Evonitz. He eventually testified that he changed his mind about the exam after being told Evonitz was at work the morning Reynolds disappeared.

However, an Aug. 27, 2002, memo he wrote shows he knew about Evonitz’s purported alibi 16 months before agreeing to the exam.

Under cross-examination, he also acknowledged that a serial killer might doctor his time sheet to create an alibi, and that he did nothing to determine whether Evonitz was actually at work. 


Neither Gregg nor his supervisor Jenkins would explain in an interview why Gregg, the man tasked with finding Reynolds’ killer, would resist forensically checking a reasonable suspect in a case unsolved after 11 years.

“You don’t have all of the information,” Jenkins said. 

But they said their case needs a confession or a solid tip from the public to move it to a conclusion.

When asked about their involvement in the FBI’s pursuit of Rice despite having dropped him as a suspect in 1997, Jenkins attributed it to being a team player.

“We have tried to cooperate with other cases going on and be supportive of those investigations,” he said.

And when asked about the state police’s handling of the Reynolds forensic evidence, he said his department listens to whatever advice lab personnel give.

That, apparently, is with one exception: heeding the advice of Deedrick, the FBI’s expert on Evonitz.

Nothing to lose 

Collins’ current supervisor was asked about the lab’s view that the Reynolds–Evonitz exam wasn’t done because Collins didn’t provide the Evonitz samples.

“I can’t comment. I don’t know,” said Charles J. Cunningham, who took command of the FBI’s Richmond Division in August 2006.

“We don’t want to answer any question about what Jane Collins did or didn’t do, or should or shouldn’t have done,” said Lawrence J. Barry, who serves as the Richmond Division’s chief counsel and sat in on Cunningham’s interview with The Free Lance–Star.

Thompson headed the FBI’s Richmond office when the Reynolds evidence went to the lab. He said he would never condone not checking a new suspect to protect a case against someone else.

“That’s not how it works,” he said.

In her testimony at Rice’s pretrial hearing, Collins said the decision on the evidence examination traveled from lab examiner Karen Korsberg to then-Director Dwight Adams to Thompson and then to her. She never said who made the decision, and said it wasn’t documented anywhere.

The lab would not allow Korsberg to be questioned. Adams, who retired in June 2006, declined an interview request. Thompson, who retired in July 2006, said he could not recall the denial.

Further, Thompson, who once served as acting lab director, said he couldn’t fathom why the lab would have denied the request.

“I can’t imagine or think of any good reason why that would not have been examined against Mr. Evonitz if the local jurisdiction requested it,” he said.

“To me, it’s what do you have to lose? The lab guys would say ‘time.’ ... I would have wanted to run the exams to rule it out,” he said.

Abdication by the lab 

The FBI Lab’s view that Collins’ failure to provide the Evonitz samples blocked the lab from doing the examinations is a harsh indictment of the agent, but it falls short of exonerating the lab on two points.

First, when Deedrick decided to check Evonitz’s hairs against two significant crime-scene hairs from the Shenandoah case in 2003, he simply called the Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office and got the hairs.

Korsberg could likewise have contacted Spotsylvania officials herself, or asked state police for help.

Second, the FBI Lab didn’t examine the Reynolds evidence during the 14 months it had custody of it. That could have been done with or without known samples from Evonitz, and was something Gregg testified he wanted.

On the first point, Fram said “generally” the case agent—in this case, Collins—is the one who submits evidence for comparison and must coordinate with other law enforcement agencies to see that it gets there, but he conceded it doesn’t always go that way.

“There are times we might get involved in facilitating that, but it’s ultimately up to the law enforcement agency to do that,” he said.

On the second point, Fram said the lab won’t simply redo another lab’s work.

“It’s only if there’s something new we can do,” he said.

Fram said that was out of concern for contaminating evidence.

But that’s precisely what was done when Deedrick worked the Lisk and Silva cases in 1997.

The Virginia crime lab had already examined the Silva evidence. Deedrick re-examined it, and then he and a colleague linked fibers from that case to fibers found with the Lisk sisters.

Though Deedrick retired from the FBI in July 2004, shortly after the Reynolds evidence arrived, he knew he’d be working alongside Korsberg in the FBI Lab’s Trace Evidence Unit in his new job as a trace-evidence examiner for the Metropolitan (Washington) Police Department and figured he could help with the case if asked.

He hadn’t lost interest in the Reynolds case and was willing, even eager, to help.

When he learned the Reynolds evidence was heading back to state police unexamined, he said he was stunned and told FBI Lab officials it didn’t look good.

“That’s going to come back to bite you,” he said he warned them.

‘They depend on us’ 

On March 2, 1996, a hint of snow was in the air as 25-year-old Alicia Showalter Reynolds said goodbye to her husband of 14 months.

She walked out of their Baltimore apartment and headed to Charlottesville, where she was to meet her mother for a day of shopping.

The Johns Hopkins University graduate student was on U.S. 29 just south of the town of Culpeper when a white man in a dark-colored pickup flagged her down.

The last time she was seen alive was between 9:30 and 10:30 that Saturday morning when she got into the passenger side of the pickup.

For the next 91/2 weeks, her parents waited anxiously at their Harrisonburg home as Mark Reynolds scoured the countryside for some sign of his wife.

Over that time, people from Charlottesville to Harrisonburg and across the Baltimore–Washington region learned about the petite, brown-haired woman with a radiant smile, and a disarming man who became known as the 29 Stalker.

On May 7, 1996, the torturous wait ended.

Reynolds’ skeletal remains were found fully clothed in her size 2 Talbots-brand jeans, tuxedo-style shirt and brown hiking boots. She lay on recently logged land near the hamlet of Lignum, 15 miles from where she had left her car.

Sadie and Harley Showalter have now been married 40 years. Their two other children have given them six grandchildren, which help redirect their focus.

But they’re never far from reminders of their older daughter, a young woman with a bubbly laugh whose passion for science led her to pursue a doctorate in pharmacology.

Mark Reynolds remarried and now has children of his own. But holidays remain painful, always taking him back to the start of his brief life with Alicia, whom he wed on New Year’s Eve 1994.

It was those people Deedrick had in mind as he pressed for years to review the Reynolds evidence.

For him, unsolved cases are never forgotten.

“You know that show, ‘Cold Case’?” Deedrick asked. “That’s what it’s about.

“There are people out there, cases out there. They depend on us to solve these things.”