NEW: Colonial Parkway Murders: Ask Us Anything (Part 1)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
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 (00:26):
My name is Kristin Dilly.

Speaker 4 (00:27):
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 (00:41):
Welcome to Mind Over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
And I'm Bill Thomas.

Speaker 5 (00:45):
It's time for another ask us anything you asked and
we answered.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
All right, We're off to a rousing start here.

Speaker 5 (00:55):
We asked our listeners on social media to ask us
any thing at all, and so we have a number
of different things about cases from around Virginia, about the
Colonial Parkway Murders case, and even a couple of personal questions.
Let's go ahead and kick it off. You were going
to start with questions from Annie. Annie has both a

(01:16):
personal question and a case related question, So we'll start
with mister Thomas. Annie wants to know how did you
meet your partner Pamela Arnois.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
We met online on an online dating service.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
You did not know this. You didn't know this? No,
which one?

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Wait a wait? You and I have been working together
for ten years and you didn't know that.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
When I first moved to Los Angeles, I was single
and ready to mingle, and I ended up establishing a
profile on some of the online dating sites. One of
the women I went out on a few days with
didn't end up being a great romance, but we ended
up being a friend. She actually had written a book
about online dating. I read the book and talked to

(02:04):
her about it, and she knew all about how online
dating worked, and as a matter of fact, as part
of research for her book, she went out on I'm
not joking three hundred and sixty five dates, one date
a night for a full year researching her book.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
That sounds horrifying.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
And her book was called Fearless Manhunting, which I loved.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Wow, what a great title.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Her name is Liz Kelly, and she's a wonderful person.
We're still friends to this day. One of the things
she explained to me was online dating. And this would
have been back in two thousand and seven, which sounds
like a million years ago. This is probably two thousand
and six because I hadn't met Pamily yet. It's a
big business and interestingly, when you sign up for a profile,

(02:54):
a number of those dating sites are all run by
the same companies. Yeah, and so there's a company that around.
I don't know if they're still around now, but they
were called okay Cupid, and they handled the back end
of a whole bunch of different dating sites. So Pamela
and I were both single and we met online, and
I had gone out on a whole bunch of online dates,

(03:15):
which is actually really fun for a newly single guy,
and she had gone out on a whole bunch of
online dates. One of the things that we discovered again
through my friend Liz, was that when you sign up
for a profile, the talent pool, if you will, is
actually dumping in from a variety of different sites, which

(03:37):
I did not know. I remember when I started going
out on these dates. Sometimes the women would say, so,
how long have you been on name website here? And
for example, some of them were on a website called Nerve.
Nerve had a very sexual vibe to it, which but

(03:58):
the assumption they were making an assumb that I was
on the same site as they were, and the truth
is I was on a completely different site with a
different set of parameters. I was on what was then
called Salon Personals. Solon is an online magazine.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
Wow, you did the high scale stuff.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah, it was more high rosse scales Salon, which is
still around. Solon is an online magazine and they cover
the arts and politics and current events and stuff like that.
Cerebrul might be a little strong, it's a smart publication.
And they had the capability to sign up for a profile.
So I had looked at Match and some of the
other real popular ones, and they didn't really quite do

(04:41):
it for me. I probably had a profile on Match
at some point, but I was on Salon Personals. Pamela
was on a completely different site called Act for Love,
which had a very different vibe, okay, And so I
didn't realize until I met Liz that these websites were dumb.
Bring tens of thousands of people into a shared talent pool.

(05:06):
So even though you thought you were on Nerve or
Salon or Act for Love or there's dozens of sites,
and they get even more specialized. Sometimes they're set up
for obviously for the LGBTQ community, people that want to
date that are Jewish and want to date other Jewish folks. Ye,
all kinds of specialties. So there's all these different specialties,

(05:29):
and then there's like real super unusual specialties, like women
that want to meet farmers. They've got this romantic idea
that they're going to meet some guy who lives in
Iowa that owns a farm. Whatever. So when Pamela and
I met, I had a pretty had I think down
to a science, which is I only met in public places.

(05:51):
I would meet for coffee or a drink, and that
way you're not locked into whole evening if it doesn't
go well. And I was polite and respectful to everyone
that I met, But every once in a while you'd
meet somebody and it was very clear they'd grossly lied
about their age. For example, this is very common. And

(06:13):
I'm not talking about trimming three or five years off.
I'm talking about a picture that was twenty five years old. Yes,
and then you meet them and you're like, oh, yay,
look like that person in that picture, but not exactly.
I had a strict policy. I typically meet for coffee
and that has a beginning and an end. Usually something
like that would be maybe an hour and chat and

(06:35):
ask questions and get to know each other and then
figure out would we like to go out again? Sometimes
if things really click, you might go out that same evening.
You might I might say do you have plans for
dinner or something like that, Yeah, And I would say
I went out on a bunch of days. I was,
like I said, new single and ready to mingle, and
I had fun. I met a lot of really great women.

(06:57):
It's not always a big romance, right, but sometimes it is.
And I met some terrific people, and several of them
I went out with for a while. And probably a
year into it is when I met Pamela and I
really liked her. And it turns out we met in
Culver City, California, which is La adjacent. It's where Sony

(07:19):
Studios is, and we met at Starbucks and had a
very nice evening. So it was really fun, and then
we made a second date and then I think it's
on the second date that we realized we had both
attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She's a year
older than I am, so she would have been one
year ahead of me. Talk about a small world. Here

(07:41):
we are all the way on the other side of
the country. We're living in Los Angeles, and we're talking
about going to school in Amherst, Massachusetts at the university.
Although it's a big place now it's like thirty thousand students,
but back then it was twenty three thousand or something,
so we'd never met before. But it's funny as we
got into more detail, it turns out like we started

(08:01):
talking about different events like concerts and big gatherings, and
we were often at the same place at the same time.
But I remember her face appeared shocked when we got
to the place, where did you go to college? And
it turns out we had gone to the same school.
That really surprised her, because when you're in Los Angeles,
you're not going to meet that many people that went

(08:23):
to the University of Massachusetts at Amborersgy. We started dating
in two thousand and seven and it's twenty twenty five now,
so we've been dating for eighteen years. Nice.

Speaker 5 (08:35):
The experience of online dating is very different from a
woman's perspective than it is from a guy's perspective.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
Oh, I have no doubt. And by the way, in
two thousand and seven, this was actually considered edgy. People
would say to me, Oh, where'd you meet Pamela? Oh,
we met online. And people are like, oh, I don't
know if I could do that. Yeah, gosh, that sounds risky, edgy, whatever.
And the truth is, if you think about it and
approach it in a say, systematic way, it's actually a

(09:02):
terrific way to meet people. I think it's a fascinating
use of search engine technology because you answer a whole
bunch of questions and what they're trying to do is
find people that are compatible with you. It worked out
really well.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
I had a very different experience with online dating for me.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
Was this in Virginia or it was in Virginia?

Speaker 5 (09:24):
No, it was in Virginia, and I was on one
of those weird offshoot sites called plenty of Fish because
I didn't.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
I remember that one Okay Cupid. I actually think when
you were doing plenty of Fish, you were actually doing
Okay Cupid.

Speaker 5 (09:38):
Probably it was. It was an unmitigated disaster. I met
some truly awful people and had some truly awful dates.
It really like, at that point, after I'd gone on
maybe three or four just really catastrophic.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
I could not ask for this to be any worse dates.

Speaker 5 (09:55):
I was like that said, I'm done, and so I
just kind of shut down my profile and all those
and I was like, whatever, if I'm alone forever, it's fine.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
So I ended up in a short.

Speaker 5 (10:06):
Lived, unfortunately abusive relationship, and after a year I got
out of that and started working at the high school
where I currently teach, and I met my life partner Mark,
because he also was new to the high school where
I currently teach. We were coming in and teaching in

(10:27):
two separate departments.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
You were you were the new kids.

Speaker 5 (10:30):
We were with the new teacher cohort of that particular year.
The main thing that I noticed was his sense of humor,
because he is wildly funny.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
I think that will serve a man very well in.

Speaker 5 (10:43):
Just about any situation, because I love a guy who
has a great sense of humor and doesn't take himself
too terribly seriously when it really comes down to it. Yeah,
that that is how we met through school, and so
we have taught together over the last four years and
are again kind of like you're in Pamela's. Our relationship

(11:04):
has lasted longer than most marriages. Oh yeah, we're happy
the way that we are. We're life partners. Neither of
us has any desire to formalize the relationship through legal entanglement.
We're just we're each other's and we just call each
other life partners.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
I like to say girlfriend and boyfriend. Pamela hates that.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
I used to do that too, and Mark was like,
can you stop?

Speaker 5 (11:27):
His boyfriend makes me sound like I'm twelve, and I'm like, cool,
we'll go with life partner.

Speaker 3 (11:31):
Then, how about that.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
She doesn't like girlfriend boyfriend? She said, that makes it
sound like we started dating last week.

Speaker 5 (11:37):
I guess when you're over a certain age, girlfriend and
boyfriend doesn't necessarily work. It's like my parents calling each
other there this is my lady friend, or this is
my gentleman friend. Of like, we're not there yet, So
we're just gonna go with life partner.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
Okay, okay, so we say partner. To be honest, that's
been foisted upon me. I would just say girlfriend.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
You would just call Pamela your girlfriend.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
We're not married, and I've been married before, and interestingly,
she's never been married. Regarding the institution of marriage, I
don't know whether I haven't served the institution well or
it hasn't served me well. But I'm done with the
getting married thing.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
Yeah, I can see it.

Speaker 5 (12:16):
I never have either, and I have just reached a
point where no, I'm fine.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah, I'm good. I am I've said before, and Pamela
will roll arise when she hears this. I think I'm
a better boyfriend than I am a husband.

Speaker 5 (12:29):
I would have no basis to comment on that, but
I'll let Pamela be the judge of that.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Yeah, but enough about salon personals. Maybe we should talk
about other questions.

Speaker 3 (12:40):
Yes for us, and I love that.

Speaker 5 (12:43):
Annie, thank you, because we don't get to spend a
whole lot of time talking about the human side of
Bill and Kristen as opposed to the victim's advocate, true crime,
hardened reporter side.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
So thank you for asking that way. Appreciate it.

Speaker 5 (12:56):
Annie's other question is one that I think is fast,
and it's one that I've actually wanted to do a
episode on for a while now, But when I've gone
down the rabbit hole on this case, I've realized it's
actually a little too big for me to handle. And
it's the case of Johnny Gosh, who was one of
the first kids on the milk carton. So her question is,

(13:17):
what do you honestly think happened to Johnny Gosh and
the other local paper boys that went missing in Iowa
in the eighties and nineties. Yeah, it's a great question
because I know that there are many people who take
the case at face value, as there were young people
who were kidnapped off the streets. But there is also
a much darker theory that it is a human trafficking ring,

(13:41):
a sex trafficking ring. There's a really long, deep, detailed,
and thoroughly dark story that I had read a couple
of years back on CNN from Johnny Gosh's mother and
various other people who think that he was kidnapped and
sold into the child sex trafficking market, which is a

(14:02):
terrifying idea.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
And because I have not done enough.

Speaker 5 (14:06):
Research, like deep dive research on this case to be
able to comment on whether I think there is truth
to that or not, I will say Annie that I
think there's every possibility that could be what happened.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
I want to look more into it.

Speaker 5 (14:21):
I would love to be able to cover this for
mind Over Murder, but I don't even know how I
would begin to find the time to do the research
right now to do it justice.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
I know a little bit about the case. For those
of you that are not familiar, Johnny Gosh was a
paper boy. I was a paper boy as well up
in Massachusetts who disappeared Gosh. It's September fifth, nineteen eighty two,
which sounds like a million years ago now, between six
and seven am, which is when you're out doing your
paper route in Des Moines, Iowa. There's always been a

(14:52):
lot of question as to what happened. If Johnny were
alive today, he'd be fifty five years old, but he
was twelve at the time of his disa appearance. It's
a very disturbing case, and it is one of those
situations where Johnny appears to have disappeared off the face
of the earth while out on his paper route. I
think there's a possibility that he may have been moved

(15:12):
into sex trafficking, which is tragic, but then also equally
tragic as the possibility that someone, an offender, attacked him
and killed him and secured his body somewhere so that
it's never been found. My sense is that this is
one of the first cases that was on those milk cartons.
There's another case on hats if I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
That, yeah, I know exactly what he means. I think
it's but I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
It's one of those.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
Things for me.

Speaker 5 (15:40):
Yeah, it's one of those names that you read it,
but you're never quite entirely sure how to say it
out loud. That's my fault. But yeah, it's a really
interesting case. Actually, Annie, I'm glad you put that back
on our radar because it is something I had down
on my very large list of topics to cover. So
now I think I'll try to dust that list off
and see what we can find.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
There are some people feel that Johnny may have been
trafficked into a child sex trafficking ring based in Omaha, Nebraska,
supposedly so exciting. It is one of those things where
as a young boy he was never found and it's
a profoundly disturbing case.

Speaker 5 (16:20):
Our next question is from loyal listener Susan, who we
missed at Crime con this year, but Susan does come
to crime con and hangs out with us whenever she can. So, Susan,
we hope you come to Vegas, Susan, says Kristen and Bill.
In a recent podcast, you reminded listeners that Alan Wade
Wilmer Senior burned his boat, presumably to destroy evidence, DNA,
et cetera. My question is what happened to his distinctive

(16:44):
truck with the distinctive license plate. Couldn't it also possibly
contain evidence or DNA.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
I can tell you what I have been told from
reliable sources. Our now retired FBI agent told me definitively
that Alan Wade Wilmer Senior, who had been a waterman,
as listeners to the podcast know, and then had become
a woodcutter. Wilmer shifted over from being a waterman to

(17:11):
being a woodshock I'm putting air quotes around that when fishing, crabbing,
and oystering, yields on the Chesapeake really plummeted. Folks that
are from that area of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware will recall
that there were a lot of problems with water pollution
in the Chesapeake Bay and the rivers surrounding that flow
into the Chesapeake yields were vomiting, and so these watermen

(17:35):
weren't able to make a living, and that's how Wilmer
ended up transitioning over to becoming a tree cutter. Wilmer's boat,
the Denny Wade, which is the boat we see in photographs,
named for his two kids, was then parked at his
house in Lancaster County, Virginia, and I found this exceptionally odd,
But the FBI told me that Wilmer earned his boat.

(17:59):
This all struck me as extremely odd because, as I
understand it, in the latter part of Wilmer's life he
died in December twenty seventeen, he was struggling financially. People
that I've talked to bought and sold vehicles, for example,
cars and trucks and things like that to help Wilmer
out because he was very short of money. Given the

(18:21):
fact that he was selling his vehicles and other things
along those lines, I find it exceptionally odd that he
would burn the Denny Wade to the ground out behind
his home. Even if the Denny Wade, which is a
wooden hulled fishing boat, had gotten dry rod or whatever
and wasn't in a condition to be sold. Boats like

(18:41):
that have all kinds of fixtures, metal parts, and lots
of different tools on board that are used by the
waterman that could have easily been sold off. So I'm
really surprised he didn't find a way to scrap his
boat or sell off the parts of the Denny Wade
instead of burning the thing to the ground. I think

(19:02):
that's highly suspicious. I think that by the time twenty
seventeen rolled around, Wilmer, who had managed to get away
with at least three murders that we know of, Robin Edwards,
David Knobling, and Teresa lind Spaw Howell, and perhaps others
in the Colonial Parkway murders and other cases, he had
a strong survival instinct, and I think he had recognized

(19:24):
that by twenty seventeen, the art and science of DNA
might allow the FBI or the Virginia State Police or
other law enforcement agencies to discover DNA on board the
Denny Wade, even though it had been sitting in his
driveway for a number of years, And I think that's
why he burned the boat. I think he was trying
to hide evidence and our FBI agent said the same thing,

(19:47):
so I'm pretty firm on the first. The second question
is what happened to his very distinctive nineteen sixty six
Dodge Dakota truck that we've seen in the photographs. This
is the one that led the FBI to recognize that
Wilmer was a likely suspect in the disappearance of Keith
Colling Cassandra Haley that super distinctive truck. I don't know

(20:10):
this definitively, and I'm going to try to track this
down with some contacts in Lancaster County. I have heard
from some people who are pretty knowledgeable that at some
point Wilmer took that truck to Dodson's garage and they
had a Junkyard in the back and they scrapped vehicles. Supposedly,

(20:31):
Wilmer had his truck crushed at Dodson's garage Junkyard Auto
recycling plant. Again, I find that really suspicious, even if
that truck was a rustbucket towards the end of its
service life, those old pickup trucks actually have turned out
to be very collectible, and some people even like the
vintage rusted out look. I find it very odd. We're

(20:53):
going to see if we can pin this down. I'll
try to do some research and reach out to some
of our friends in Lancaster County to see if anybody
can say definitively if Wilmer's truck was crushed. But that's
the case, much like the boat did Anny Wade. I
find it exceptionally odd and an attempt to hide evidence
more than likely.

Speaker 5 (21:11):
That's an excellent question, Susan, and so we do want
to try to make that effort to find out more
about where that truck may have ended up. Another question
from Elaine, also a constant listener. Elaine asks, I thought
I heard on your pod there was an eminent announcement
from law enforcement on the remaining unsolved Colonial Parkway murders.

(21:36):
Did I misunderstand or did I miss an announcement?

Speaker 2 (21:39):
Bill?

Speaker 3 (21:40):
I think you should take this one.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah, I don't know if you misunderstood, Elaine. We've been
hoping for more news from the Virginia State Police and
specifically from the FBI in the Colonial Parkway murders. I
don't recall us saying there was an imminent announcement. I
think we were hoping there would be more. I'm very
disappointed to report that we have had nothing, absolutely nothing.

(22:06):
It's been a year and a half since the announcement
that Alan Wade Wilmer Senior had been linked through DNA
by the Virginia State Police, and thank you to them
and the Virginia State Forensics Lab for making the connection
checking Wilmer's DNA against the rape kit from Robin Edwards,
which they then found a link and that appears to

(22:28):
have implicated Wilmer in the rape murder and murder of
Robin Edwards and David Knobling. Also, while conducting those searches,
they found a link between Wilmer and the nineteen eighty
nine rape murder of Teresa Lynn spaw Howell. We had
hoped there would be further announcements. One of the things

(22:49):
you may recall we were extremely unhappy about in January
twenty twenty four when they made the announcement was that
Virginia State Police spokeswoman Karem Geller, we know of her
and her excellent work over the years. She refused to
answer the question put to her by Andy Fox, longtime reporter,
who said, can you tell us when Alan Wade Wilmer
Senior first moved on to your radar now. As soon

(23:12):
as we heard about fact that they had identified two watermen,
Alan Wade Wilmer Senior and his older brother, William Keith Wilmer,
who passed away in April, if I'm not mistaken, as
soon as they mentioned that this announcement was coming, I
knew exactly who we were talking about, because we were
talking about two watermen from Lancaster, Virginia. I knew that

(23:33):
within days, three or four days of the disappearance of
Keith Colincussandra Haley, the FBI who was doing a full
court press on looking for how this young couple Keith
Colincus Andandra Haley had disappeared. Couples came forward and said
that a man driving this highly distinctive truck had been
harassing them on the Colonial Parkway. He would approach them

(23:56):
like a cop would, but he was wearing coveralls, not
a police uniform, and he would pound on the window
and he would demand driver's licenses. Interestingly, driver's licenses only,
not registrations. These scary encounters were reported by multiple couples,
and they had a very good description of his truck
with his phone number written on the door. And of

(24:16):
course the em raw edim raw license plate, which was
a vanity play on the truck talk about hiding in
playing sight here. It wasn't until a few days after
the announcement when a number of US Andy Fox, Blaine Pardo,
who wrote the book on the Colonial Parkway murders, myself
and others. We challenged the FBI and we said, why

(24:39):
aren't you admitting that Wilmer or the Wilmer brothers were
the leading suspects in the disappearance of Keith Collin Because
Hendra Haley and they were forced to admit that, yes,
actually the Wilmer brothers had been leading suspects. Their home
was searched, his boat, his truck. And I know that
Alan Wade Wilmer Senior, and perhaps I'm not quite as

(25:01):
certain on the second part, which is Keith Wilmer. I
know that Alan Wade Wilmer Senior was given two lie
detector tests by the FBI by their top polygrapher. He said,
and I've spoken to him directly. I tracked him down,
which I know the FBI loves it when I do
this kind of thing. I tracked him down, I spoke
to him directly, and he said, first of all, we
should have never let those guys go, which is an

(25:23):
interesting thing for a polygraphic examiner to admit. And he
said Alan specifically passed one polygraph test and the other
one was inconclusive. In other words, I can't tell you
whether he's telling the truth or being evasive. So he
passed one, if you will, and the other one was inconclusive.
But they let the Wilmer brothers go. They checked so

(25:45):
many boxes in terms of what they said they were
looking for in the Colonial Parkway murders, from all the
way back to when my sister Kathy and Rebecca Dowski
were murdered in nineteen eighty six. I find it flabbergasting
that they never went back and revisits. Did the Wilmer
brothers as suspects. You're listening to Mindover Murder. We'll be

(26:05):
right back after this word from our sponsors. We're back
here at Mindover Murder. Keith Wilmer, who died a few
months ago, as I mentioned, is also a suspect in
the Mary Keeser Harding murder, which took place up on
the Rappahannock River under very similar circumstances to the Colonial

(26:27):
Parkway murders. We've often linked to a story from the
Washingtonian magazine, which is quite good, called a murder on
the Rappahannock River, and they mention Keith Wilmer specifically as
a potential suspect in that case. So this imminent announcement
that I think Elaine is asking about was we were

(26:49):
always hoping that the FBI would, first of all, more
publicly admit that the Wilmer brothers were suspects, and they
only did it because we forced their hands, and they've
never said anything. They have held us at arm's length.
There's a new team of FBI agents who've taken over
the case effective January twenty twenty five, and they have

(27:12):
been beyond standoffs. They're basically giving the families the straight arm.
They have given us no updates whatsoever. They have a
victims services person who's a very nice person, but she
calls me once a month. She called me yesterday. Each
month they tell me and they make the same phone
call to the other families I've checked, and they basically say,

(27:32):
we have nothing to tell you every single month. I've
had my complaints about the FBI and the past teams
that we've had in terms of communication and the relationship.
But the previous teams were much more communicative than this
current team. This current team literally are telling us nothing.
It's been radio silence essentially for about a year and

(27:54):
a half.

Speaker 5 (27:54):
When our former casagent left the bureau, it was with
the understood by the families that there had been DNA
evidence sent out to test and that those DNA results
were again imminent. I'll use Elaine's word. We've heard not
a single thing about those DNA results. And those results
should have been back months ago.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
So it's a year now. They promised us. I'm not
making this up. I don't need to make things up.
They promised us, and by us I mean the Thomas
family and Nadowski family, and the Call and Haley families.
They promised us results over a year ago on the

(28:36):
latest round of DNA testing, and we have heard nothing.

Speaker 5 (28:41):
Yeah, every time that we have said we hope there
is something coming down the pipe, it has always been
because we hope that there is DNA that's going to
come back any day. Now they swear that is going
to definitively link Wilmer or Wilmer's brother to those cases,
and for some reason or another, of those DNA results
have just never materialized, and so we're always hoping that

(29:04):
there's going to be an imminent announcement because there's no
reason why there shouldn't be one. People tell Bill all
the time, mister Thomas, your sister's case is solvable. I
don't know how many times over the last ten years
that we've worked together that Bill has said, someone has
told him this is a solvable case.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
It should be done. It should absolutely be in the book.

Speaker 5 (29:27):
And for whatever reason, maybe just because they love having
Bill Thomas on speed dial, they have not managed to
take the ball over the goal line. I don't know
this should be It should be done by now, it
really should. We have no idea why they're giving us
the straight arm and why they're just remaining so stubbornly
radio silent. And this is after a lot of behind

(29:51):
the scenes discussion of what can we do to encourage
the FBI to speak more to us, And the answer
ultimately is not a damn thing, unfortunately.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
I think there's a couple of things going on. One
thing I heard from someone who worked this case for
several years a number of years ago and still follows
the case closely, is she was talking to another expert
who knows this case very well and is a former
FBI person. This person said, privately one to another, we

(30:21):
owe those families an apology. And what they mean is
because this case has been so botched by the FBI
and perhaps to a lesser extent, the Virginia State Police.
Although at least the Virginia State Police solved the Robin
Edwards David Knobling case and together with the Hampton Police Department,
solved the Teresa Linz baw Howell case, the idea that

(30:44):
this case has been so badly botched that they owe
the Colonial Parkway murderers families and apology. Now, we're never
going to get an apology, and the FBI will never
own its mistakes. And one of the things I've been
told by outside experts and former f people is that
what they hate about the Colonial Parkway murders is there's

(31:04):
been so many mistakes made by the FBI that an
announcement like we've found out who committed the rest of
the Colonial Parkway murders also highlights all of the problems.
Love them missed opportunities, the discarded evidence, the leak of
the crime scene photos, burning my sister Kathy and Rebecca

(31:26):
Dowski's rape kit says medical waste eight years after they
were murdered, which I don't care what the FBI says.
The Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia said
to me when we discovered this in twenty ten, She said,
mister Thomas, you never throw away evidence in an unsolved
murder case. She said, I don't care what the FBI
tells you. Now that's a lie. If they ordered those

(31:50):
rape kits burned as medical waste, which they did, we
have it in writing. That was a huge mistake. And
she said, I know it appears that your sister and
Missdowski were not raped. But she said, even given that,
you never know what's going to come online in twenty ten,
this would have been in late two thousand and nine,
what more refined test might come online. It turns out

(32:11):
she was right. There are all kinds of new tests
that are much more sensitive and much more able to
make kind of discernments that were not available back in
nineteen eighty six. Maybe the reason the FBI doesn't want
to solve the Colonial Parkway murders is because this case
is a massive embarrassment. They've screwed this case up so

(32:32):
badly that even if they did announce it's Wilmer or
it's another suspect, And here's the proof that we have
any fair telling of the tale also has to highlight
the fact that, good God, the reason this case has
gone thirty nine years unsolved is because you guys watched
this case big time.

Speaker 5 (32:50):
And actually this next question from Jody I think links
into that. So this is from Jody, and she says
it's so wrong that the families have been shut out
prior to and especially since the January twenty twenty four
press conference, especially since Wilmer was named as the murderer
and they asked for the public's help. So my question is,
can the Colonial Parkway families petition the new FBI team

(33:11):
of investigators and vsp as indicated to at least meet
with the entire group of family members again as was
done so many years ago. What strategies can be employed
to put public pressure on them? Can the families hold
their own press conference?

Speaker 3 (33:24):
Bill?

Speaker 5 (33:25):
Can you share with Jody what they told you when
you said you wanted a full meeting with all the.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
Families they've so far flat out refused. Now, let's just
recap the last time the FBI and the Virginia State
Police met with the families as a group, and the
only time they ever met with the families as a
group is in January twenty ten. That's, by my count,

(33:50):
more than fifteen years ago. Now, we told the FBI
and the Virginia State Police that we want to meet
as a group with the families, and we told them
up front, we don't want to be presented to We
want to be allowed to ask questions, and we want
you to answer the goddamn questions. They've refused to answer

(34:12):
our questions for so long. It's really hard to just
sit there quietly and behave politely while they constantly refuse
to answer the questions. So far, FBI Norfolk has refused
to meet with the families as a group. Now, we
had an excellent meeting with the Attorney General for the

(34:35):
Commonwealth of Virginia, Jason Mieris, who committed that he would
help us in any way that he could. He's absolutely
terrific and his staff has been incredibly helpful. So we've
gotten some respect and some answers and a commitment to
help from the state side. The Commonwealth of Virginia side
the FBI nothing and so far they are refusing to

(34:58):
meet with us as a group. They tell us they
have nothing to say to us. And as I said earlier,
every month they call me and they tell me they
have nothing to tell me. And I took the call
yesterday and it's the same old just a complete straight
arm as you said.

Speaker 5 (35:12):
And I want our listeners to help us do the
long game here. This time next year we will be
looking forty years for your sister and Rebecca's case in
the face, which is horrific in the extreme. We want
to know from our listeners. We want to ramp up
the pressure we're facing forty. They have to face forty

(35:34):
as well. They need to hear it shouted from the rooftops.
It has been forty years? What are you doing? So
we would love to know from our listeners and anybody
who cares about this case, what would you like to
see us do to commemorate forty Do you want a
big public press conference? Do you want a candlelight vigil?

(35:54):
Do you want a memorial five k run walk or
something like that? What would you like to see us
do that we can put pressure on the FBI. We
know that the FBI does respond to I don't think
we're going to say public shaming necessarily, but they do
respond to media pressure. And the best thing that we
can do for media pressure is to make sure that

(36:15):
our voices are loud and not just the two of us,
everyone in this community that has been affected by this crime.
So we would ask our listeners to think of some
ways that you think we should be commemorating forty so
that the FBI cannot ignore us or strong arm us.
So this is interesting. This one is from Sean, and

(36:37):
Sean asks has any connection been found between Ron Little
or Liberty Security and Alan Wade Wilmer Senior.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
Not, to my knowledge, we've seen connections between Ron Little
and Liberty Security and other people that were associated with
Liberty Security, including John Knight hopp Thorn, who's the former
owner of Liberty Security. He allegedly sold Liberty Security to

(37:06):
Ron Little, who was ultimately deported back to New Zealand
in nineteen eighty nine, which coincidentally or not little deportation
back to his native New Zealand does line up fairly
closely with the end of what we refer to as
the Colonial Parkway. Murders. I've never seen a connection between
Alan Wilmer Senior. It's something that Kristin and I thought

(37:29):
a lot about, talk to a lot of people about it,
but we haven't found any connection between Alan Wilmer and
Ron Little. We do see some very odd connections between
John Knight Hawthorne, who's a former Gloucester County Sheriff, Fred Atwell,
another former Gloucester County sheriff, and other members of the

(37:51):
Gloucester County Sheriff's department. There seems to be a nexus
of mostly former law enforcement people in lost Our County
who seem to have some very strange connections to Liberty Security.
And of course, as we've talked about, we have additional
connections to Liberty Security through family members like Robin Edwards's mother, Bonnie,

(38:15):
who worked at Liberty Security, and other connections that I
think are too strange to be ignored. I don't see
a connection between the Wilmer brothers and Ron Little and
Liberty Security at this point, but we're still looking.

Speaker 5 (38:30):
Plenty more questions to ask, but we're going to end
on two personal ones just to kind of end us
on a light note. So Bill, our top fan Robert
wants to know, Bill, what are the favorite places you'd
recommend for someone who comes to visit New England.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Oh, gosh, there's so many. Yeah, for those that don't know,
I've never lived in Virginia. My family is from New England.
We lived all over the country when we were kids
because my dad was a naval officer. Gosh, there's so many.
First of all, you have to go to Boston, which
is the cradle of liberty and is an incredible city
and lots of fun, so much to see and do there.

(39:08):
I know you're crazy about Salem, Massachusetts. Up north of Boston,
Cape Cod is spectacular and beautiful. Providence Rhode Island is
a very hot hippen happening town. And then north of Boston, Portsmouth,
New Hampshire is a beautiful place. And Portland, Maine is
a really cool, absolutely beautiful seaport town. A lot going

(39:33):
on with bars and restaurants and high tech companies and
all sorts of stuff, great stuff going on there. You
could spend weeks in New England. It's a spectacularly beautiful place.
Lots of folks come up in the fall leaf beepers
as we refer to them, but there's so much to
see and do in New England that it's really the

(39:54):
kind of place you could visit over and over again.
Even just those handful of places that I've mentioned are
only at starting point, and you have to stay with
us at our little airbnb if you like. We've got
a little place called the Maple House in Norfork, Connecticut.

Speaker 3 (40:10):
It is beautiful.

Speaker 5 (40:11):
And then Robert also asked what are my favorite weekend
trips and places to explore in Virginia.

Speaker 3 (40:17):
I'm going to name only three.

Speaker 5 (40:19):
The first one is definitely Charlottesville, particularly the Carter Mountain Orchard,
because I love the views. I love the apple cider donuts.
If you've never had a chance to go there, you should.
It's a wonderful fall activity. And then the Downtown Mall
in Charlottesville has a particularly nice string of independent bookstores,

(40:40):
and they have a wonderful place called Gerhardt's Fine Chocolates.
And I am a chocoholic of the highest order, and
their stuff is tremendous, really like high level artisanal chocolate.
Cannot recommend that enough. I also love Stanton, Virginia, which
is where some of my family is from, because they
have a wonderful, cute little main street, beautiful charming murals.

Speaker 3 (41:01):
They also have a nice bookstore, the Book Dragon.

Speaker 5 (41:04):
And honestly, some of the best seafood that I've ever
had in my life came from a restaurant in Stanton.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
Believe it or not, like you would think it would
be right here on the coast.

Speaker 5 (41:15):
No, it was the best piece of tuna that I've
ever had in my entire life was from a wonderful
restaurant called Aoli in Stanton.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
It was out of this world. And then I love
lay caverns.

Speaker 5 (41:27):
It's a little hokey because everybody at some point or
another goes and looks at the stalagmites and stalagtites. But
I love loarray caverns. It's beautiful and it never really
gets old. So I would say those are my three
favorite places, but there's plenty more around Virginia.

Speaker 3 (41:42):
Mark and I tell each other every.

Speaker 5 (41:43):
Weekend how blessed we are to live in such a
beautiful state because you can get a little bit of everything,
mountains to seashore, beautiful leaves to white sandy beaches and
northern Virginia where you get all the history and all
the museums yeah, I love Virginia. I have no regrets
in moving back here from Arizona, and Robert ask about that.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
But that's the story for another time.

Speaker 5 (42:02):
We have many more listener questions to get to, so
we're going to continue this in a second separate episode.
That is going to do it for episode one of
ask Us Anything.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
Thank you all so much for listening. We'll see you
next time.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Our theme music is by Kevin McLoud.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with crawl Space Media.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway
Murders on Facebook.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
And finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
Bill Thomas five six.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder.

Speaker 5 (43:01):
A

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

24/7 News: The Latest

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}NEW: Colonial Parkway Murders: Ask Us Anything (Part 1)

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

24/7 News: The Latest

Dateline NBC

All Episodes

NEW: Colonial Parkway Murders: Ask Us Anything (Part 1)

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark