Chapter 6: Victims' families want answers
Date published: 11/20/2007
By PAMELA GOULD
For 11 years, the families of Alicia Showalter Reynolds, Julie Williams, Lollie Winans and Anne McDaniel have lived with the agony of losing a loved one and the frustration of not seeing her killer brought to justice.
That frustration increased upon learning that a serial killer operating in the region at the time of those slayings wasn’t forensically checked after he was identified.
It was heightened further by the fact that the FBI and Virginia State Police said those checks would be done five years ago, after Richard Marc Evonitz was linked to three Spotsylvania County slayings, but then didn’t request the exams.
“That jolts me a little—that they would say they’re going to do something and not do it,” said Harley Showalter of Harrisonburg, father of Alicia Reynolds.
Tom Williams of St. Cloud, Minn., called it an “obvious” and “easy” step that should have been taken years ago by the federal officials investigating his daughter Julie’s death.
“My sense is he should have been ruled out or he should have been ruled in because they have an obligation to. If not, we’re questioning their sincerity and their integrity,” he said.
Evonitz, 38, was forensically linked to the 1996–97 slayings of Sofia Silva, Kristin Lisk and Kati Lisk in August 2002. He had taken his own life six weeks earlier as police were about to arrest him for an attack on a South Carolina girl.
The Lisk–Silva Task Force determined that he had lived in the Fredericksburg region from 1992 to ’99, had roamed the roadways searching for victims, and knew the areas where all of the young women were abducted and slain.
Alicia Reynolds, 25, disappeared March 2, 1996, after being pulled over by a man driving a pickup along U.S. 29 in Culpeper County. State police are in charge of that case.
Julie Williams, 24, and Lollie Winans, 26, were killed at their creekside campsite in Shenandoah National Park in May 1996. Their deaths have been investigated by the FBI and National Park Service.
Anne McDaniel, 20, was last seen in the town of Orange on Sept. 18, 1996. Her remains were found four days later near Lignum, about seven miles from where Reynolds’ remains were found. The Culpeper Sheriff’s Office is in charge of that case.
Puzzled tests not done
The lead investigator in McDaniel’s case declined to comment on what type of evidence checks he requested. But at least one item from her case was submitted to the FBI Lab to check against Evonitz in September 2002—one month after he was declared a serial killer.
In the Williams and Winans case, one forensic check was done, and it couldn’t rule out Evonitz as their killer. But it wasn’t initiated by federal investigators, and no further steps were taken.
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In the Reynolds case, hairs-and-fibers evidence eventually made it to the FBI Lab in 2004, but only through the persistence of the FBI Lab’s expert on Evonitz. Even then, the FBI Lab didn’t examine it.
“That just is strange,” Harley Showalter said. “Because if you're going to look at the evidence, why wouldn’t you want to know?”
Mark Reynolds, Alicia Reynolds’ widower, was equally puzzled.
“I would think both the FBI and the FBI Lab would want it done because it’s an open case and ... you have a serial murderer who could have done more crimes,” he said.
‘Not changed our mind’
The victims’ families have heard about Darrell Rice, the man FBI and state police were pursuing for the Williams, Winans and Reynolds slayings when Evonitz surfaced.
Rice was indicted in the deaths of Williams and Winans two months before authorities discovered Evonitz. But no forensic evidence linked Rice to those slayings, and charges were dropped in February 2004 after Evonitz couldn’t be eliminated as a suspect.
Rice was never charged in Reynolds’ death.
In separate interviews, some of the victims’ family members indicated investigators haven’t given up on Rice as a suspect.
John Winans said that more than a year after charges were dropped against Rice in his daughter Lollie’s death, he pointedly asked National Park Service Investigator Tim Alley whether Alley, the FBI and federal prosecutors still considered Rice a suspect.
“He said unequivocally, ‘We have not changed our mind one bit,’” Winans said.
Testing’s a ‘no-brainer’
With nothing to directly link Rice to any of the murders, the families of the victims want to see the evidence forensically checked against Evonitz.
“It just doesn’t matter who you like for it,” said Mark Reynolds, who now lives in North Carolina. “The police have told me they would like to close the case and they have an open file for Alicia and it’s just a no-brainer.”
Tom Williams and his ex-wife Patsy Payette were led to believe Rice killed their daughter four years before he ever was indicted. Though it’s hard to shift their thinking after 10 years, Tom Williams said, “I don’t want him convicted if he is not the right person.”
Between the time a forensic exam showed Evonitz couldn’t be ruled out as the source of the hairs in Williams’ and Winans’ slayings, and when the case against Rice ended, the FBI and federal prosecutors sent DNA evidence to a private lab in Louisiana for what was then a cutting-edge analysis known as Y-STR.
But despite the fact that Evonitz remained in the suspect pool, federal officials asked only to have the evidence compared with Rice.
Those results, like all the others, failed to link Rice to the crime.
The Williams and Winans families were dumbfounded that Evonitz wasn’t also checked in the Y-STR analysis.
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“It certainly would have made sense—even more so than earlier,” Winans said. “You’ve been running into problems. You are one step from having to drop the cases. I would certainly have checked the DNA of the serial person.
“I don’t think one has to be an FBI agent or a trained investigator to think you need to take the time to do that.”
Seeking justice
Scott McDaniel, Anne’s brother, said he didn’t know whether Rice and Evonitz were forensically checked as suspects in his sister’s slaying.
He has been told that investigators have long focused on a man his sister said she was dating as the chief suspect in her death. But that man has never been charged, so he would like to see serial killer Evonitz checked.
“At the very minimum, it’s one more person to rule out,” he said.
John Winans is for an open-minded examination of all the evidence—forensic and otherwise—in his daughter’s death.
“I think not pursuing other individuals after the case was dissolved would be highly inappropriate,” he said. “It’s not just local police, it’s federal authorities.”
Alicia Reynolds’ widower and parents feel certain she would have wanted science used to whatever degree is possible in trying to solve her murder.
Reynolds was a scientist herself, someone with a bent for research and uncovering answers to mysteries.
If she left behind the clue that forensic scientists can use to identify her killer, her family feels that would be fitting.
Julie Williams pursued justice for those who couldn’t fight for themselves, said her mother, Patsy Payette.
She marched on Washington for the homeless, served as an interpreter for migrant workers and participated in the “Take Back the Night” campaign against rape and domestic violence on her college campus.
Payette is a member of Parents of Murdered Children and knows many slayings go unsolved. But she hopes her daughter’s case doesn’t wind up in that category.
Knowing how hard her daughter fought for others, Payette said it would be a cruel injustice if everything possible weren’t done to find her killer.
Her ex-husband agrees.
“If there is anything that could be done, it should be done,” Tom Williams said. “And if there’s anything that hasn’t been done today, it should be done—clearly.”
SIDE BAR
Sheriff: No prime suspects in McDaniel case
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By PAMELA GOULD
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The day after her birth, Anne Carolyn McDaniel’s parents were told she would never walk or talk—if she survived.
She defied those odds only to have her life cut short by a killer just as she was learning to make it on her own.
Anne McDaniel was 20 years old and living at the President Madison Inn in the town of Orange when she disappeared the evening of Sept. 18, 1996.
Four days later, her burned body was found off Stringfellow Road in Culpeper County, a remote spot used by hunters.
Scott McDaniel of San Francisco, Anne’s brother, is the only remaining member of their immediate family.
Their mother, Shirley McDaniel, died in 1999; their father, Gary McDaniel, two years later.
After 11 years, Scott McDaniel’s hope of identifying Anne’s killer is waning—but not his desire.
“I think about Anne every day and I want nothing more than for her killer to be found,” he said. “But I’ve reached a point where I’m not optimistic something is going to happen.”
Maj. Jim Branch of the Culpeper County Sheriff’s Office was assigned to the McDaniel case in 2000, shortly after Lee Hart was elected sheriff with a pledge to do all he could to solve three unsolved homicides.
McDaniel, Alicia Showalter Reynolds and Thelma Scroggins were found dead in the Lignum area within a four-month period in 1996.
In 2001, one man was convicted and a second pleaded guilty in the death of 74-year-old Scroggins. No one has ever been charged in the other cases.
‘Keeping an open mind’
Branch said he and Capt. Russell Lane sent DNA evidence to the Virginia crime lab for updated analysis and re-interviewed roughly 20 people.
In the summer of 2006, they spent a few days checking out a new suspect brought to their attention by another jurisdiction. But Branch said that lead has not panned out “so far.”
“Just because something may not look promising now, doesn’t mean in the future it won’t be,” he said.
He hasn’t ruled out a link between the deaths of all three women found in and around Lignum in 1996. And he hasn’t ruled out a link with two other women’s slayings in May 1996 in Shenandoah National Park.
“You have to look at the probability and possibility,” he said. “For me, anything is a possibility.”
Branch, elected earlier this month to succeed Hart, said he’s also keeping his options open with regard to serial killer Richard Marc Evonitz and Maryland resident Darrell Rice.
In 2002, Evonitz was linked to three Spotsylvania County girls’ deaths in 1996 and 1997. One occurred the same month as McDaniel’s slaying.
Rice was once accused of the slayings in Shenandoah National Park and investigated in Reynolds’ death.
In the past, Hart called both Evonitz and Rice suspects in McDaniel’s death. He backed off from that in an interview for this project.
“We are keeping an open mind about any and everything,” he said. “We’re very cautious because we do not want to get tunnel vision.”
When pressed about his previous public statements about Evonitz and Rice, he was more straightforward.
“I don’t want you to leave here with the impression I’m looking at those two people as suspects, because I’m not,” he said.
Branch said that “obviously, we did” look at Evonitz, but he would not comment on whether that included forensic tests.
The Free Lance–Star discovered independently that items from the McDaniel case were submitted to the FBI Lab in the summer of 2000, and in September 2002, one month after Evonitz was named as the Spotsylvania girls’ killer.
Hart said McDaniel’s case is “still a priority” but challenging, given that it took place 11 years ago and people have moved away or died.
“We have no prime suspects in the investigation,” the sheriff said. “I wish we did.”