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You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good Evening. In their book A Special Kind of Evil The Colonial Parkway Serial Killings, authors Blaine Pardo and Victoria Hester wrote about Alan Wade Wilmer, Sr. Who was the prime suspect in the nineteen eighty eight disappearance and murders of Richard Keith Call and Cassandra Hailey. He was under police surveillance and fit the criminal profile the FBI had developed. An expert polygrapher administered an exam to Wilmer and he passed.
As a result, he was cleared as a suspect. On January eighth, twenty twenty four, the Virginia State Police announced that through DNA, Alan Wade Wilmer, Senior, who died in twenty seventeen, has been identified as the killer of David Nobling and Robert Edwards, who were written about extensively in a Special Kind of Evil, and for the killing of a nearby Hampton, Virginia woman, Teresa Lynn Howell in nineteen
eighty nine. Blaine Pardo joins me now to discuss the latest developments in the Colonial Parkway serial killings, Alan Wade Wilmer Senior, the FBI agent who zeroed in on Wilmer, and what's next in the ongoing Colonial park Way murder investigation. Tonight's program is a Special Kind of Evil, the Colonial Parkway Serial Killings and Alan Wade Wilmer, Sr. With my special guest journalist and author Blaine part Oh. Welcome to the program. Thank you very much for this interview, Blaine part Oh.
Great to be back on talking with you, especially with news like this.
Well, let's get right to this. You are the author of a Special Kind of Evil, and that's how you came to this case. That book was released in twenty seventeen with your co author daughter Victoria Hester, and that's a wild blue press release. Tell us where you were and the circumstances and the news that you heard surrounding case that you talk about in a Special kind of Evil Well.
I was online actually at the time, and friend of mine associated with the case reached out to me and said, you're going to want to tune in. They're doing a press conference on the Colonial Parkway murders. So I pulled it up and caught it as it was starting, watched it unfold, and I gotta say it was kind of a gut punch. What they had revealed was that the
Colonial Parkway murders is a series of eight murders. These people were always killed in couples in the nineteen eighties, started in nineteen eighty six and etc. And they've often been referred to as like the Lover's Lane type murders and things.
Along those lines.
But they had announced that two of those crimes, that of David Nobling and Robin Edwards and of another person, had been solved and had been solved with DNA evidence. And they splashed the guy's picture up during the press conference,
and I didn't recognize him at first. When they showed his truck and I saw his Vanity license plate, Gotta tell you, a chill went up my spy right it was I had interviewed IRV Wells, who was the special Agent in charge for the FBI on the Call Haley case, and he had told me about their prime suspect in that case, who four days after they had brought the couple, had disappeared. They had basically had this guy under surveillance an issue to a search warren On's property, and they
had cleared him due to polygraph test. And IRV told me, he said the back of my mind, he said, I knew we had the right guy. He fit our profile from the very first murder. He was a known stalker on the Colonial Parkway confronting people. We had him, and he said, I've always felt like we let him go, but you know, he said, we had our best polygraph person POLLI him and said, this guy was perfectly fine.
And when I saw his license plate, I'd even put a variant of the license plate in the book because at the time I didn't want to put the guy's actual license plate and had people harass him and stuff. When the FBI had cleared him. Now I look at it and go they had him all along. They had this guy pinned on the murders that followed, it didn't capture him.
Tell our audience plain about the Waterman profile that's created, who created it and what you're referring to when you say watermen.
Well, you know, in Virginia and in the Chesapeake Bay area, watermen is kind of a it's almost a cultural group of fishermen. Some of them are oyster fishermen, some are crabbers, some are just fishermen fishermen. They have their own dialect that they speak in. They're very much a closed culture and in some of it it dates right back to the colonial period during the first pair of mergers, which
were the Tomasdowski murders. Initially, the FBI thought that it was a lover's triangle and they focused in on a very close circle of friends around the two victims. They then realized that it wasn't and when they happened, they put together a profile and the FBI behavioral profilers for it put together a profile.
It said, it's.
Most likely a waterman because the Colonial Parkway kind of sneaks along the York River where a lot of the watermen fish. And they said, you know, watterman would have diesel fuel, which was how the Tomastowski car was hit. The knife used in those murders was a considered to be a long curved blade, very sharp, which would also be a fisherman's.
Type blade, right, And they.
Said, whoever did this was probably someone who had a reputation and even potentially a legal problems with stalking people on the Parkway, that this was, you know, somebody who operated in the parkway. Well, the FBI on the third set of murders dusted that profile off and that's what Well told me, And he said, we started to look at people that were cruising the parkway who were stalking people, and it turns out that they actually had one and he had a very distinctive license plate in a truck
and was identified. The FBI found this guy, and when they found him, they started doing surveillance on him. And this is four days after the call Haley murder, which are the pure murders that follow those that have been recently solved last week. And as they were following him, he started to vacuum ount his truck, paint the back of the truck bed, and things along those lines, which seemed like the kind of behavior of somebody trying to
cover up evidence. They got a search warrant. They found pornography, they found handcuffs, a gun, etc. They brought the guy in and bollyed him and he cleared, so they took him off their radar. And it turns out he is the suspect now and has been named as a person who committed the murders of Robin Edwards and David Knobling and one other person.
You write in your book a special kind of evil. You talk about though he lives with his brother. So he lives with his brother, and it wasn't you didn't distinguish between which brother these agents. You write that the agents would do these dry bys to see what kind of whatever they could discern from outside of his trailer, and that's when they spotted him painting the truck bed a spray painting the truck bed and vacuum them out
the truck. And so you say that they didn't distinguish, or you don't distinguish in the book between which brother was also a murder suspect in another county and which brother was painting the bed of the truck.
Yeah, didn't do it at the time because I didn't have the information from the FBI on him. Irvwells was always a professional. He was retired at the time. I interviewed him and he was very reluctant to actually give me the guy's name.
And I think some of that was due to his memory.
I don't think he remembered the guy's name exactly wow, which really didn't give me much to go on. What he did give me was the license plate, which I changed in the books slightly. I just didn't want people harassing someone that the FBI had cleared.
In the case. So it was one of those things.
I saw the license plate, That's when it clicked with me, the concept that this guy would be vacuuming out that truck. Those pictures were clearly taken by the FBI of his vehicle, and they showed at the press conference, and it just was ridiculous. He was clearly trying to conceal evidence at the time.
Let's talk about before we talk about the crimes that he has now been linked to through this new DNA technology and new revisiting the crime again through DNA analysis, we talk about me. One of the victims, Teresa Lynn Howell, a twenty nine year old, and she was last seen at about two thirty am in the city of Hampton, Virginia.
Tell us what's the distance between Hampton and Williamsburg, where the Colonial Parkway area is, and tell us a little bit more about what about Teresa Lynn's Howell's murder and the particulars.
I really don't have a lot on her murder because at the time she wasn't at all connected to what we knew as the Colonial Parkway murders. I'm just now starting to crawl through some She was last seen at a club called the Zodia Club and was found murdered as a result of that. They The distance were we're talking about is always interesting because people, when they look
at a map, go, oh, that seems so far. But all of the Colonial Parkway murders are within twenty minutes of each other, depending on which roads.
You're on and how you get there.
So you're really only talking a twenty minute drive from where she disappeared to the Colonial Parkway, and the probably only about a ten minute drive to Ragged Island where David and Robin were kill You know, these aren't huge distances that have to be covered once out of the murders took place in New Kent County, which is about
a fifteen minute drive by sixty four. But again, you know on a map it can look like they're kind of spread apart, and a lot of people have said over the years, well, you know they're not connected because of all this distance, and you look at the distances Ted Money operated under when he committed his crimes, et cetera. These are relatively close. And the fact is, the FBI profilers and the Virginia State Police profilers have said on the record and have stated for the press as well
as for my interviews that these crimes aren't connected. They definitely are linked, and to me, I think that's important. I think that the fact that they were able to solve too through DNA testing doesn't mean that the others aren't connected to this person. It just means they don't have the forensic evidence to tie them to them. You're talking early nineteen eighties, DNA technology wasn't being used to solve crimes, so the fact that we had any was great, It was great news.
You right about that, and that they don't have enough evidence at this time and so you stress that. But it's very interesting the law enforcement tip line asking for the public's help in light of this information coming out, and they state that we recognize relationships and loyalties change
over time, as to people and their perspectives. There are occasions where people who may have had knowledge of an incident didn't feel comfortable coming forward with the information in the past, but we would want them to know that it's not too late for them to come forward. And so they described the vehicle, and they also say that he also drove a white pickup truck, a van, and a silver nineteen eighty nine Ford one point fifty and he had a commercial boat, fishing boat called the Demi Wade.
And of course all of these photos you've have on Wild Blue Press website as well accompanying your description of new developments in this case. It's very interesting too that they asked for anyone who had worked with him in the oyster business, anybody had worked with him in the landscaping business, anybody that docked near him at the marina. Virtually anybody that had any contact with him at all was encouraged to come forward and speak to the police.
Well, I think it's important you got to remember too these cases Cassandra Haley and Keith call their bodies were never recovered. We don't know what happened to him. Their car was found on the Colonial Parkway with their clothes in it in April. The park rangers at the time tried to perpetuate a story that they thought they had gone skinny dipping, and trust me, I live in Virginia. You don't want to go skinny dipping in New York River in April.
It's cold. It's real cold, you know they were.
I think that's where their car was deposited, was on the Colonial Parkway Murder less than a mile from where the first victims were killed. The Colonial Parkway, I might add they were intercepted as they left a party at the University Square apartments in Newport News area, and you know, Keith was going to be taking Cassandra home. And I think it's important that they look not just at the people that are connected to him, because they may have information about Gee. It was weird that he went out
on the boat the day after Colin Haley disappeared. He went out fishing and it wasn't like him. Maybe that's what they're looking for, you know, since the bodies have never been found. I also think it's important to look at all the people that were at the party that night where Keith and Cassandra Werek did anyone at the party, see this person there, Did they see him in the parking lot of the party, did they see his truck
anywhere in that vicinity? Because we know that they were intercepted before he got Cassandra home, which was only a
ten or fifteen minut drive away at most. Somewhere between that party and her house is where they engaged whoever killed them, you know, And now that you have picture of the person, now that you have a picture of the trucks and vehicles that he drove, Now that you have that information, it really does help you because it may trigger some memories with people who go, oh, my god, I saw that guy that night at the party, or he was talking to them in the park even think
about it until I saw that picture. So I think you're going to see is a sturge now of what I would call circumstantial evidence right that comes forward. It's not forensic, but it's I think you're going to get people that say, yeah, this is what he may have told me when he was drunk, or this is what I saw that night or a different night.
We know this guy was a.
Hunter as well, And where the last two victimslwur Phelps were found was a turkey hunting area. You know, they were found by hunters six weeks after they disappeared in New Kent County at the rest area. So putting that vehicle out there and putting his picture out there is bound to trigger some memories with people. And I'm hoping that the FBI and the Virginia State Police are going back to the people who own that property and saying, you know, you had a hunting club that operated in
this property. Was this guy ever on that property?
You know? Did he have familiar with it? Did he know that area?
Did he hunt there? Things along those lines. And I think that's what the FBI and Virginia State Police, I would hope are looking for at this point, are ways to connect him to those crimes and perhaps other crimes that we've never associated with. The Colonial Parkway murders.
Do you know how he was linked DNA wise to the rape and murder of Robin Edwards and Teresa Lynn Howell? Was it through that DNA and the sperm collected at that time?
Yes, I did talk with a retired Virginia State Police officer who worked in both that case in Ragged Island as well as the Phelpslower case up in New Kent, and.
I spoke with him about it.
I said, you either had to have gotten the DNA from Robin Edwards, who we knew was sexually assaulted that night, or had had intercourse that night. We know with who, so you know it could have been with David. No, we don't know, but you know, I said, you either had to have gotten it there or would have had you'd have to use like m VAK or some other technique to extract it from their clothing. Now, the vehicle
was very poorly handled. They didn't think that these guys were dead, so they towed it to his father's yard and it wasn't until his father was present when they found the bodies that they went out and started fingerprinting the car. And I even talked to Andy Parks, was one of the journalists who's been covering the Colonial park reamers, and he goes, I feel terrible, he said, I sat in there David's trut when I did my piece, and I said, well, you left trace DNA evidence. That's how
poorly the crime scene was handled. But you know, the general belief is that it was recovered from a sperm sample that was left in Robin Edwards, and that somehow that has been protected and maintained all this time. At least that was what I had. They got DNA sample from him. This guy who did this, this Alan Wade Wilmer Sor, he never committed a felony, so they never had a DNA sample from him in their database.
Right.
But when he died, his body lay there for a very long period of time before it was discovered, and they took DNA as part of the identification process to identify the body. Once they had that sample, they had something to compare the cats.
Very very interesting. Before we talk about David Nobling and Robin Edwards and their murder and how the police conducted that investigation, but more importantly, let's talk about, just briefly about how in what way all of these cases are connected.
The initial thing that you look at is with all the Colonial Parkway murders, when they're committed, there are always couples, and they're not necessarily romantic couples. They're just people that are together that are killed. And so right off the bat, that's an abnormality to have people killed in couples in
a very tight geographic area. So that stood out And as we started digging into this, and Neraafoget was talking with the profiler who did this for the Virginia State Police, and we started looking at the case of Robin Edwards and David Nobling. The keys were left in the car okay, and the radio was on, the door was a jar. It was clearly someone had left those keys there and was drawing attention to the vehicle and hopes that someone would steal the vehicle, further making it difficult for the
police to investigate. Your first inclination be heay, you stole this truck, you must have killed them.
We also see.
The exact same thing though in the case of Carl Hayley. The keys are left in the vehicle and in that case the door was left ajar, so the interior light was on so that people would see it. Then you get to Phelps Lour which is out on I sixty four vehicles left the exit ramp from the rest area with a roach clip hanging on the window. Keys clearly
left insight in the car. And I went back Larry Man Mchanna had done the profiling for the Virginia State Police, and I said, you know, we've looked at this and in three of the case latter three cases, every one of them, the vehicle was left with keys and the ignition almost like they're kind of trying to draw attention to the vehicle someone would steal it. And he goes, that's your fingerprint. He goes, that was something we recognized
that this killer was doing. And the last three pairs of crimes, he did not do this with the very first pair, but he did it each time. Didn't work, but that was part of what they had And I thought that was very interesting because I think that's a telling point. A lot of people go, well, you know, just because they were killed as couples doesn't mean that much. I gotta be honest with you. That doesn't happen a great deal statistically. It's way off the board. And I'm talking.
I talked with one officer who checked in ViCAP and it just you know, you have to go to Italy for this to pop up again where you have a series of primes where someone's killing the couples. So is a rarity. I think between that and the staging of the vehicles for theft, you you've got a pretty strong link to that whole instance.
It's interesting too, because there are much different ways methods of killing in these double sets, in these two sets of murders that they could see. And despite that, things like keys in the car again you say that are super rare. Coupled with the idea that couples are rare, you have able to overcome the notion. And I'm surprised and that year that it wouldn't be dismissed because there was no common method of murder.
Well, we know.
Serial killers try to refine what they did. The first pair of murders, you had strangulation and you had a near decapitation of one of the victims with a very sharp knife. I think the killer was.
Trying to refine what they were doing.
Assuming that it's a single person that did the killing, and I'm wide open to the concept that it could be a pair, but right now I tend to focus on one person. They had to have had a gun in order to keep control, you know, a gun's a great way to maintain control.
We don't know for.
Sure how Phelps Lauer died, other than that there was a nick, you know, on some bones that indicated a knife was used.
We do know that a gun was.
Used for the Nobbling Edwards murder. We have no idea what happened with Carl Haley because we never have gotten the bodies and we never knew where the crime scene actually was. We know where the vehicle was left, so you do have, you know, guns and knives, and I have a feeling this killer probably had a kit with him to commit these crimes. He had rope, or he had used handcuffs. We know that handcuffs were recovered in
Wilmer's search of Wilmer's place. He had the means of controlling his victims and he also had the method for being able to kill them, and in that case a gun and a knife. The concept that's always the same way. I think the killer is trying to recreate the emotional experience of killing people.
In doing this, I think.
He definitely got his rocks off doing that. We know from his confrontations on the parkway too. He approached a couple, for example, where the young man had long Harry saw the couple making out and he wrapped on the window and said, hey, what are you ladies up to? They turned and saw him, and when he saw it was a guy and a girl, he took off. But we know that he was the kind of person that was outstalking couples. That's part of.
What he did.
So whether he was working alone or not, I don't know. I'm sure the FBI is taking a very close look at his brother and other friends that may have associated with him, or employees.
Even Yeah, I thought it's obvious, just reading a special kind of evil again, that the brother would be looked at very hard, as we had already indicated some of those things that would just stick right out, And especially because the FBI was certain, they were certain that it was two people involved, and in fact, so much so that when they had that waterman profile, it was two watermen and they were looking for a pair that was looking suspicious, weren't they.
It was definitely an interesting trip down memory lane. And the argument has been going on with law enforcement for years whether it's one killer or two killers. My daughter and I, as author and co author on this, we struggle with that concept. Victoria, my daughter, firmly believes it was two people that did it. I still am in the camp that I think one person did it. It's very hard for two people to do it and managed to keep it a secret all these years.
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Now, let's get to as you do in your book talking about the murders, and you call it the second and so it's the second set of double homicide. But the murder of David Knobling and Robin Edwards. He was twenty years old and she was fourteen, and the remains were found September twenty third, nineteen eighty seven, and he disappeared September twentieth. Tell us a little bit about this extraord case and these two people, you know it is.
It is an interesting case, and people have reacted to the ages of the people involved. But Robin Edwards was She was a very adventuresome young girl and had spent a lot she'd run away several times. She was a tough character and she was really trying to get her life kind of pulled together. She went out on a date with David Noveling's cousin, and he drove them and chaperon them basically somewhere along.
The way on that date.
He and Robin made plans to connect later that night, on the twentieth they did. David pulled up to the house, Robin climbed out a window apparently, and they went out somewhere, and we know they went to a fast food place and got something to eat, at least there's been some evidence pointing to that in terms of witnesses. They went to a place called Ragged Island. Now Ragged Island is the best way to describe it. It's a swamp right at the foot of a bridge on the James River.
It's a wildlife for a fuge It's a known area for drug dealers, homosexual encounters and stuff going back decades.
This was.
It's a rough area and they went there. We don't know for sure what happened other than the next day obviously there. When neither of them are back home, the families get concerned and the police do find David's truck. There in the truck are articles of clothing from both of them. The truck has had the ignition turned to accessories and was playing the stereo system, so it was it was there, you know, trying, as I said before,
trying to attract attention to it. What's interesting is in talking with Michael Knablang, who's David's brother, he said, you know, David had wired the electrical system so you could play the radio without turning the keys to accessories. And I thought that was important because it tells you that it was the killer who.
Staged the vehicle.
It wasn't that David and Rock and were in that vehicle had taken off their clothes, et cetera, and that's.
What had led to their demise.
It was the killer had positioned the car, and David Noveling always backed his truck up into a parking spot. This was pulled straight in and he never would have had to turn the keys to accessories because he could have just turned on his radio and played it. They began at first it was gee, we got missing two young missing people here, and the search was not done well.
The Isleway Sheriff's department did not do an exhaustive search, to the point where David's father actually went down and actually strapped on waiters and was doing the search with the police because he was getting so frustrated that they weren't doing it. They towed the truck to David's father's front yard, so the crime scene wasn't even handled well.
And as they're searching, they they found David. He had been shot in the shoulder and in the back of the he and they found a short distance away Robin's body, and Robin had had been sexually assaulted or it had sex but she as well had been shot. So when they realized that, then they went back to the Nobling house and started trying to lift fingerprints off the truck, which at this point was just crazy for them to
do given how many people had mismanagement. And as I said, even Andy said he and Fox said he was in that vehicle, so you know, it was poorly handled. The families found out on the evening news because there was live coverage when they found the body as the helicopters came in and started filming it for the evening news. So the police didn't even inform the families at that point that it happened. It's a very sad set of
circumstances how they died. To me, I've always pictured that David probably put up a fight and at some point tried to get some distance between him and whoever was in this case, Wilmer was there.
It tried to get some.
Distance, got shot in the shoulder and went down, and that's when Wilmer walked up and had a shot him.
Execution stile. You're right about that. The truck was staged, everyone believed, with both doors open and with the radio blasting. Now, what was the police theory? What did they put forth that had happened in their minds?
They didn't.
There wasn't a lot that the police initially had put forward. The investigation made this look like it was a drug deal gone bad, and I interviewed Danny Platt about this. They weren't convinced that Robin had spurred a drug dealer at some point and that they were at Ragged Island probably to obtain drugs of some sort, and this guy decided to extract revenge from Robin standing him up. And the focus had really been, and I'm talking for years, had been focused along that line. At the time, they
weren't even connected to the Colonial Parkway WRCH. We only had one MDS to that point, so police didn't realize they were dealing with a serial killer. They saw these as very independent cases.
One was being.
Handled by the FBI because it took place in the National Park, which was the first murders. This one was being handled by a Virginia State police. It wasn't until the next pair of murders, which was called Haley or their disappearance. Actually, but once that happened, you start realizing you're dealing with somebody who may be responsible for these murders, one person or two people.
Let's talk about April nineteen eighty eight. As you write Richard Keith call they referred to him as Keith and Cassandra Haley Gloucester County remains unrecovered. As you mentioned, tell us about how they came to be together that bateful night.
Yeah, everything turns on the wheel of fate, and this was just quite literally. Keith was had a longtime girlfriend and they had a great relationship, but they were taking a break. She was off to college and Keith was staying local, going to what's now Christopher Newport and was attending school there, and they were on a break. He asked Cassandra Hayley, a fellow student, to go to a party. She had just broken up with her boyfriend. They weren't
romantically attached at all. They went to this party at University Square Apartments, which is right outside the Christopher Newport campus at this time. They were there until around one o'clock. They didn't even really sit together. It's not like they
were a kissy faced with each other. Keith spent most of his time talking to a friend of his girlfriend, saying he wanted to get back with her, and Cassandra was spending her time having a very similar conversation about her boyfriend, so they weren't.
There was nothing.
Romantic about their interaction. Keith, finally, being a gentleman, said yeah, I'm going to take you home. They left the party, you know, depending on various versions, because no one ever's looking at a clock during these type some things. Around one in the morning, they got it. They left Virginia Square Apartments for the ten to fifteen minute drive to Cassandra's house and never got there. The next morning, Keith's
brother actually spotted Keith's car on the Colonial Parkway. His father drove by, saw it, got out and actually looked and saw the clothes in the car. Their clothes were
found in the vehicle. The park rangers were called. They gathered up rather than even though this is a mile away from where they had this brutal murder year earlier, eighteen months earlier, they gathered up all the clothing, took it to the park office, started calling the parents, and their theory was at the time they had gone skinny dipping,
which is just ridiculous. When they realized they had screwed up, the park rangers took the clothing back to the car and restaged the vehicle, so they contaminated the vehicle twice. Keith's car was left with the door jar, so the interior light was on. Keys were available, His wallet was there, as was Cassandra's checkbook and purse.
I mean no sense.
Neither one of them liked going to the Colonial Parkway. Matter of fact, Cassander really hated it. Even if, on some wild whim in your head that they may have had decided to have a romantic interlude, this would not have been the place for them to go. Neither one of them, and it was way past they would have had to drive by Cassandra's house. It just the whole concept that this was some sort of a lover's lane
killing just doesn't make any sense. They searched the York River, which was fifteen feet from where their car was found. They did find a dead body, but it was actually a sailor who had jumped ship further upriver at the Navy base there. They did an exhaustive search of the river, et cetera, never found their remains. To this day, their remains have never been found. It's just it was a tragedy, really what unfold.
You're right though, that in the book there was some because the father does this previous discovery, the park rangers, like you say, restaged and put things back into the vehicle, spooking the father. But the father contends that the keys were not in the ignition, whereas the park ranger that reported and restaged the scene states that the keys were in the ignition.
Yeah, we're never going to know what the truth is. The park rangers screwed up this crime scene. Their first instinct should have been to call the FBI, especially when you just had a pair of murders less than a mile from the same road, in the same park Sure earlier they should have just immediately called the FBI and kept everybody away from that crime scene. It's interesting as well, Keith's brother was driving on the Colonial Parkway that night, saw his car, and he actually saw a van that
was there, and that van followed him. It pulled out of the area and followed him for a ways. But he didn't think anything, you know, it just wasn't. The concept that somebody would have just killed his brother just didn't click with him.
And for all we know.
Too, the van could have been one that Wilmer was driving. It could very well have been just somebody who pulled into that spot and pulled out. There's only one way to go on the Parkway. You can go north or you can go south. That's it in that area, So we just don't know for sure.
Now, how does the fisherman, the watermen, how does this Wilmer guy get under surveillance at the Keith call and Cassandra Haley murders. How's it come to be?
Irv Wells told me that they dusted off the profile because at this point they were like, Okay, this is this is way too coincidental in proximity to the Tomasdowski murders just less than a mile away, And so they said, we dug out the profile, and they started pulling up police reports that people had made incident reports about somebody's stalking on the parkway, and Wilmer's name came up, not so much his name as much as his license plate. People remembered the distinctive license plate.
Yes.
So actually one of his radio technicians was driving to their headquarters that they had set up in a motel and had seen Wilmer's truck driving around, so they knew he was still in the area. So they pulled him up and started doing very discreete surveillance on him and saw that he was spray painting the bed of his truck, vacuuming out the truck, and they were concerned that he was destroying evidence. So they very quickly moved to get a search warrant, and they thought for sure at the
time they had their guy. Fortunately, they relied I think too heavily polygraph and they brought in with their top polygraph people and he said, no, this guy had nothing to do with these murders. To me, it's way too coincidental that he was the prime suspect on the pair of murders that followed Nobling Edwards, who we now know he did, that he was directly involved with. That can't just be a coincidence to me. This points to his
involvement there. We just don't have the physical evidence to prove it at this point.
Like I mentioned to you before this interview, it seems from reading all these books over the past a dozen years, that there has been an over reliance, especially at that time, to have a lot of credence to what was determined in these polygraph tests, and this one they brought in somebody that had this credibility because of all the things
that he had done in the past. However, as I know and you know and other people know, that there is not much accuracy to a polygraph test, despite the polygraph examiner, and so this over reliance on the lie detector or the polygraph test clearing a suspect has turned in retrospect to be a fatal gesture.
Yeah, I've seen it far too many times that it was used as a way to kind of exclude someone more than anything else. And I think that I think that's a misuse of the polygraph.
It's not like.
Police didn't know that these things were inaccurate. The court system doesn't allow polygraphs as any sort of evidence, and that's been the case for many decades.
You know.
I think that their reliance on it was a huge mistake. I think they needed to press further. They needed really do a more deep dive into this guy and try to build up where was he at certain points in time, who could verify it, you know, check his alibis, things along those lines. I think there was a tendency to just immediately go, well, he passed the Polly. I guess we got the wrong guy. I think it was a huge mistake, and I think her of Wells, in the
back of his mind probably knew that. I mean, in the discussion I had with him, he just seemed like I knew had the guide, but we didn't have the GAMI thanks to the POLLI.
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Tell us more about Irvin Wells and his ideas because he was the big proponent of keeping these cases tied together as a as a series of serial killings that were related and him zeroing in on this suspect was very very interesting. Tell us more more about your interview with Ierwin Wells and talking about Alan Wilmer.
You know, I always let lawn Forstman tell me what they think, because they'll tell you more than anything you'll ever ask in terms of a question. And Irv volunteered this. And I found out later that the families were aware of the Wilmer ins that they referred to it as the driveway incident because he was seen in his driveway cleaning out in his truck. They were aware of it as well, but it was it was fascinating because Ierin
he's old school FBI. He steps into this case and you've got at this point he definitely saw the link based on the geography of a connection to Tomas Dowski and took a lot of foresight for him to say, let's dust off our Watermann profile and I've back into that. You know, he's a very thoughtful person. I could tell
you he was very frustrated him. This case was one of those that he said, this is one I wanted to solve word than any other, if not just some resolution to the call and Haley families, but to really.
Put an end to this.
And you know, he's like, I failed in some way and it's hard for law enforcement to kind of say that, and he did. He was very clear to me about it one on one that that was he always felt this was one of his big disappointments career wise. You know, he said, I had a lot of resources, I did everything by the book. You know, I took a look and said let's dust off this profile and let's pull up anybody that fits it. They had a guy who
fit it. The guy was suspicious, you know, but he's like, you know, you can't arrest somebody because they have pornography.
You know.
Yeah, all serial killers have some sort of connection to pornography, but not all pornographers or serial killers, you know.
And that was a frustration.
He had felt bad for the guy because unfortunately passed away recently, so he didn't get to see this kind of resolution. And I think it's a shame because I think he could have, with his years of experience, actually brought back a lot of what they saw and what they did beyond the written rewards.
It's very interesting, and you chronicle it in your book. A special kind of evil is that, at least to the police credit, they have to follow up every lead, and when they have a lead in a murder case and a series of murders, when people come forward and make themselves a suspect. You have the story of Ron Little and also Samuel Reader. Can you just tell us briefly again the frustration of the police when they have to follow up something where a person makes themselves a good suspect.
Reader pops up in the murders that had were solved a week ago, nobbling An Edwards. He was a person that hung around Ragged Island. He ragged the police that he had deemed the truck, opened the door to the truck that night.
Et cetera.
I don't know if that's true or not. And he took a pretty close look at Reader. But in the end it was another one where it.
Didn't go anywhere.
There was no reason for him to have killed either one of them just because you have a creepy guy hanging around Ragged Island. I can tell you, I've been to Ragged Island. It's a creepy place. First thing when you pull in is the sign for Ragged Island has been with a shotgun burst, you know, and it's all
riddled up. It's a creepy place. So the fact that somebody like Reader was there and was willing to talk to police about it and admitted that he had been to the truck and checked it out that night, it does cloud things up and makes him look more like a suspect.
The case of.
Ron Little, I'll never figure out why people insert themselves into a case the way he did. I mean, he basically went on TV and told people while I'm the prime suspect and the Carl Haley case. Now his name has come up because he was associated with a security business along with a very pick cop named Steve Blackman, whose name comes up often from tips and et cetera from readers. And black Man was a crooked cop, there was no denying it. And he did some pretty neferious
things and Ron Little hung with him. Ron seemed to sever the limelight, got himself deported back to New Zealand as a result of drawing so much attention to himself. But I can't figure why someone ever would go ge or investigating all these murders. I'm going to go on TV and tell people I'm the prime suspect. It takes a whole lot of crazy to do something like that, and unfortunately he did, and it forces police to dedicate resources to investigating.
Someone who, in the end, it turns out didn't have.
At least up to this point, we haven't seen any involvement on his part with this.
You talked about that it didn't seem to be any motive with a person like Simon will reader. Well, was there any idea, any theory on the overall motive of all the killings at any time?
No?
Really, When I talked to the profiler that I spent the most time with from Virginia State, please Larry mccannon was very great about it because he said, look, you know, when all is said and done, a lot of times they have committed a crime, and a serial killer wants to relive that first moment, the first time they killed. Is when they want to try to recreate that as
much as possible and in various different ways. And if you look at where these bodies were all abandoned, they're all in wooded areas, secluded, very middle of the night. It's I think to a certain degree, this killer was simply trying to recreate what he experienced with the Tomastowski murders, if those were his first murders, and I think he was trying to recreate that over and over and over again, and he picked geographies that fit that, and he picked
pair of victims each time. With the exception though of we now know that this person killed another young lady outside the Zodiac Club, So we don't know the full extent of the crimes that this guy may have been involved with. We an't work the way I put it to one person. I think we're at the beginning of the end. You know, we know now a name, and we have pictures of vehicles, etc. I'm wondering how many other crimes are going to get connected to this person over time.
How much validation was it for you to now look at your book in retrospect and see that you were very adamant that the FBI should have pursued the person to fit the Waterman profile and not be concerned so much with this polygraph result.
I'd like to see. I'm satisfied with that. As from a writing perspective, I probably am. Victoria and I've talked about it, and it's like, Wow, we really were We did a good job in what we did in terms of the accuracy to be able to get that. Yes, I'm not really going to be satisfied until these other crimes are declared closed. You know that they know who did it and can pin it on who did it
and if it is this guy. I think it's great, all in favor of it, but I think this does attract a whole new level of attention to the Colonial Parkway murders, and I'm glad that we were able to accomplish that. I think if the book hadn't been printed and hadn't stayed out there and been consistently a strong seller, you know, it puts it in the public's mind over and over again. It's easy for these cold cases, especially in this era of let's defund the police. You know,
the first thing they cut is cold cases. I think this keeps it to the forefront, and I feel like we did our job in that. That's something I am proud of is we haven't just let this die. We have made sure that this stays out there and stays out there for the victim's families because they deserve the closure.
At this point, yes, absolutely, It's very, very interesting to realize that these cases were all linked together because they were, as you say, one of the main reasons, but because they were couples, and that's a rarity. It's interesting now that Alan Wilmer has been definitely implicated in or definitely would have been convicted for these murders, but that Teresa Howell, the victim he has just been linked to, is not
part of a couple and was a single murder. So it would seem now that luckily that now they would be looking and expanding and looking at not only couples but also singles.
I believe that's the case. I've issued Foyer requests to get information on these cases and getting stonewalled in a couple of areas, which is actually a good sign because it's usually an indication that they're keeping the case file open because it's being actively worked on. And I'm trying to take it in the positive light that that is. It's frustrating when you come out and you say you've closed the these cases. You know, we know who did it.
I want the files so that I can go through in a little more detail and see how the investigation unfolded. I'm not getting those yet, but I am pursuing it.
In your mind, will authorities be anxious to take circumstantial evidence and then say, based on our conclusions, we think that Wilmer's linked to these other murders, or will they look for that more exacting evidence as they have announced with the DNA results.
I don't know. I really can't speak to the mindset of this.
I do know that the FBI, when they were present at the press conference, did not, in any way, shape or form admit that this guy was on their radar back in the eighties. I'm sure that's embarrassing for them. My whole thing is get over it. Yeah, don't try to protect the FBI, we get it. Mistakes were made, tell us what you knew, be open, honest, forthright, lay it out for people. I worry about an agency that
tries to protect itself. I haven't seen that yet with the Virginia State Police, but I was a little surprised the FBI. I knew it because we had interviewed some you know, the special agent in charge, or well, it's in the book. It's already public information.
So just admit it.
They have been pressed by other members of the media and said, you know, it was this guy on your radar, and they said, yes he was, but you don't go into any detail. And I think they need to be a little more transparenting. I think the families expect it, and victims definitely deserve it.
I think that if that were to happen, I think it would be a pretty good spotlight on the efficacy of that pubveted polygraph examiner and polygraph exam in in itself. Yeah.
I think that you'd have a number of people who'd say, wait, the polygraph implicated person acts and this was the polygrapher.
You know clearly he screwed up. I get it.
Information's already there I've already put the information out there.
What does before I let you go? You've discussed this case with Victoria Hester, your daughter and co author of a Special Kind of Evil. What's next in terms of this case and developments?
Well, I think right now the FBI is gathering new information, probably more information than they gathered in years, because of being able to say these two are closed. I'm sure Virginia State Police and the FBI are taking a new look at everything they have in the case files, which they should have been doing all along, because this is where this guy was. He was hiding right in their case files. And I think it's great that they're doing that.
I'm hopeful that they will be able to expand that, and I'm hopeful that in the next few months we're going to hear Look, we don't have physical evidence that shows the closure, but we now have circumstantial evidence that allows us to say that we are convinced that this person was responsible for X, Y, or Z of these crimes. I think if that happens, I think it's going to give the families at least some degree of closure.
It's been a real.
Up and down situation, I'm sure for the families. Yes, I've talked to a couple of the family members and friends of some of the victims, and they're kind of torn because they're happy that there's not a trial. You Wilmer's dead, so there wasn't a trial, but you know, they still don't know exactly what happened. They don't know what his motivation was. But they also aren't being put through the ordeal of a trial. So it's a weird
balancing act. And emotionally, I've had to kind of distance myself a little bit from the emotional side of it and just look at it from cold calculation side. And that's why I reached out to you and to other folks that have talked with us about the cases. You know, this is an opportunity and we should view it as such. It's an opportunity to bring closure to these cases, and let's do it.
Yeah, and thank god for DNA advances and technology. Absolutely, I want to thank you very much, Blaine Parto, for coming on and talking about your extraordinary book, A Special Kind of Evil, the Colonial Parkway serial killings, and all of the developments that have happened just recently regarding the cases that you cover in a Special kind of Evil,
and your daughter, Victoria Hester is the co author. So thank you so much for coming on and talking about a special kind of evil, the Colonial Parkway serial killings. For those that may want to find out more information, can you tell us where they might go to? A website? Social media tell us, Yeah.
There's a number of Facebook pages around the Colonial Parkway murders. Obviously I encourage people to go there, and obviously I encourage you to pick up the book. It's on Amazon dot com, it's from Wild Blue Press. It's called a Special kind of Evil.
Pick it up.
It's really got a two years worth of our sweat and research and do it, and you're really going to get as close as you can get to crawling through police.
Files at this point.
Absolutely, thank you so much for this interview Blaine Part oh Special kind of Evil the Colonial Parkway serial Killings. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much, and you have a great evening. Thank you, Dan, and good night,