Virginia Fisherman has been linked to three murders in the 1980s, police say

A Virginia fisherman who died in 2017 was responsible for the murders of three people in two separate cases in the southeastern part of the state that remained unsolved for more than three decades, police said this week.

New DNA evidence linked the man, Alan W. Wilmer Sr., to the 1987 murders of David L. Knobling, 20, and Robin M. Edwards, 14, in Isle of Wight County, which were part of a series killings in the area that were known as the Colonial Parkway murders, police said. They said he also killed 29-year-old Teresa Lynn Spaw Howell in 1989 in the nearby town of Hampton.

“As Alan Wilmer Sr. If we were alive today, he would be charged with all three of these murders,” Corinne Geller, a spokeswoman for the Virginia State Police, said at a news conference. a press conference on Monday.

Mr. Wilmer, of Northern Neck, died at his home in December 2017, police said. He was 63.

Authorities said they had compared Mr. Wilmer’s DNA to evidence recovered from the scenes of the three murders. His DNA was obtained after his death, authorities said.

Ms. Geller said investigators from several agencies, including the FBI and the Hampton Police Division, had pored over evidence collected over the years, including witness statements, and narrowed down a list of potential suspects. Mr. Wilmer was one of them.

She added that Mr. Wilmer, because of his genetic material, had been identified as a suspect in both cases “a few years ago,” but he could not be identified because his DNA was not in law enforcement databases. Authorities said he had no criminal record.

Ms. Geller said she could not share further details, including those about how and when Mr. Wilmer initially became a suspect in each case, as the investigation continued.

The deaths of Mr. Knobling and Ms. Edwards in 1987 were linked to a series of unsolved double murders in the area in the late 1980s, which became known as the Colonial Parkway murders. The murders of Knobling and Edwards were among three such cases that occurred along a specific stretch of highway between 1986 and 1989, according to the Crime Museum. Two other people went missing in the same area and are presumed dead.

Mr. Knobling and Ms. Edwards were last seen together on September 19, 1987, and Mr. Knobling’s truck was found in a nearby parking lot the next day. Authorities discovered their bodies on September 23, 1987, on a shoreline in the Ragged Island Wildlife Management Area, a vast swampland in southeastern Virginia. The couple had been shot dead. authorities saidand Mrs. Edwards had been sexually assaulted.

Two years later, on the morning of July 1, 1989, construction workers in Hampton found Ms. Howell’s clothing scattered near their job site, leading to the discovery of her body in a nearby wooded area, authorities said. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled, authorities said.

At the news conference on Monday, Brian Dugan, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Norfolk office, said Mr. Wilmer was the subject of several active investigations into other slayings that occurred around the same time, including the rest of the Colonial Parkway. murders.

“While he may or may not be involved in these cases, we are still pursuing justice for these victims and will explore all options,” Mr. Dugan said.

Authorities asked anyone who knew Mr. Wilmer to come forward to assist in the investigation and provided a description of his life around the time of the murders.

Mr. Wilmer was a fisherman in the 1980s who operated a small wooden commercial fishing boat built in 1976 called the Denni Wade, authorities said.

He also drove a “distinctive” pickup: a blue 1966 Dodge Fargo with a Virginia license plate that read “EM-RAW.” It was one of several trucks he was driving, authorities said.

Mr. Wilmer is believed to have been in his late twenties at the time of the murders. He had brown hair and blue eyes and was about 6 feet tall, authorities said, adding that he was muscular and wore a close-cropped beard.

He had also run a landscaping business called Better Tree Service and was a member of at least one hunting club, they said.

The cases were the latest in a wave of cold cases solved in recent years thanks to advances in DNA technology.

At the end of Monday’s press conference, Ms. Geller made a statement on behalf of the Knobling and Edwards families.

“For 36 years, our families have lived in a vacuum of the unknown,” Ms. Geller said. “We have lived with the fear of worrying that a person capable of deliberately killing Robin and David could attack and claim another victim.”

“Now we have a sense of relief and justice knowing he can no longer victimize another,” she added.