When a series of double-homicides struck Virginia in the late 1980s, authorities immediately suspected a serial killer. But it took 35 years – and random chance – to find the missing link. Keep up with us on Instagram @serialkillerspodcast! Have a story to share? Email us at serialkillerstories@spotify.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the Colonial Parkway Murders?
The Colonial Parkway is a 23-mile stretch of road in Virginia that connects Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown, otherwise known as America's Historic Triangle. The highway serves as a link between the three places. In much the same way, that's what investigators searched for in today's case, a link.
Between 1986 and 1989, six people were killed and two others went missing, all surrounding the Colonial Parkway, all in sets of two. It feels like they'd be connected, as clear as the line down the center of the parkway. But the harder you look, the fuzzier the connection gets. There are similarities between the cases, but nothing definitive. It's possible the location is just a coincidence.
Or is it? That's the frustrating back and forth that investigators, victims' family members, and residents along the Colonial Parkway have endured for decades. It only got fuzzier in 2024 when two of the murders were solved. They were confirmed to be victims of a local serial killer.
As of this recording, police and the FBI are still seeking a link between that killer and the victims who remain missing. they're also exploring another chilling theory, that there was more than one serial killer along the Colonial Parkway. Welcome to Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. I'm Janice Morgan.
You might recognize me as the voice behind the investigative docuseries Broken and the true crime podcast Fear Thy Neighbor. I'll be your host for the next few weeks, and I'm thrilled to be here. We'd love to hear from you. Follow us on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast and share your thoughts on this week's episode. Or if you're tuning in on the Spotify app, swipe up and leave a comment.
Today we're covering the murders of three young couples and the disappearance of another all along the same stretch of road over a three-year period. We'll dive into the 39-year hunt for answers and how a chance break in the case revealed a suspected serial killer who evaded the police until years after he died. Stay with us.
There's no limit to how far criminals will go to cover their tracks. But investigators will go even further to uncover the truth. I'm Nancy Hixt, a senior crime reporter for Global News. This season on Crime Beat, I'll take you from the crime scene to the courtroom and inside some of Canada's most high-profile cases and some you've likely never heard of before.
You can search for and listen to Crime Beat on Spotify,
My name's Jack Wagner, host of Otherworld, a podcast featuring real people who experience something paranormal, supernatural, or unexplained. I have no idea how I got there. I don't think I've ever seen anything that looks like this. It felt like electric stars on fire.
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Chapter 2: How were the first victims discovered on the Colonial Parkway?
On October 12th, 1986, a jogger went running along the Colonial Parkway in Virginia. Trees covered the winding road and wood stretched out on either side. Overlooks and pull-offs allowed travelers to soak in their surroundings. In the early morning hours, it was peaceful for the jogger. As they moved along, they noticed a Honda Civic on an overlook.
It looked like it was pushed off an embankment into the brush. The car seemed abandoned, the owner nowhere in sight. Concerned, the jogger called the police. When officers arrived to check out the car, they realized it wasn't abandoned. Two young women were in the car, one in the back seat and one in the hatchback. Both throats slashed, blood everywhere.
The car was doused in diesel fluid but not burned. Authorities presumed the suspect tried to set it on fire but didn't realize diesel is less flammable than standard gasoline. State investigators quickly identified the victims thanks to a wallet on the driver's seat floor. The woman in the trunk was 27-year-old Kathy Thomas. The woman in the back seat was 21-year-old Rebecca Dowski.
The authorities contacted Kathy's parents, who shared the heartbreaking news with her three brothers. Eventually, the family gave investigators some insight into Kathy and Rebecca. Kathy had just left her service in the U.S. Navy and was working as a stockbroker. She was thinking about going to graduate school.
Rebecca was a business administration major at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg. She worked in the English department and at a nearby daycare. The two women were dating, though it's not clear whether Kathy's family told investigators this at the time. The Thomases were supportive, but the women had largely kept their relationship a secret.
That's because, up until recently, Kathy had been enlisted in the U.S. Navy, and in 1986, it was illegal to be openly gay in the Navy. Even outside of the military, lesbian couples weren't welcome everywhere. It was a possible motive for the double homicide, but by all means, not the only motive. The FBI would find that out as they combed over the crime scene.
Now, the FBI's involvement may feel like a big escalation, but it was actually due to the crime's location. The Colonial Parkway travels through the Colonial National Historical Park, which is federal land, so this crime fell under their purview. Not long after the bodies were found, FBI Special Assistant Irvin Wells was briefed on the murders.
He learned the cause of death was strangulation, which means the women's throats were cut after they were killed. To Wells, that meant these murders were overkill, which is when an attacker is more violent than necessary to kill their victim. This overkill led Wells to wonder if the killer knew the women and whether their deaths were personal.
He examined the crime scene himself and noticed rope burns on the women's hands and necks. It suggested the killer subdued them somehow. Kathy and Rebecca were two young, smart, athletic women, so Wells believed they would have fought back, And yet, they were subdued.
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Chapter 3: What theories did investigators pursue in the Colonial Parkway cases?
Then he clocked the rolled-down driver's seat window and the glove box dangling open, as though Kathy had been reaching for her license and registration. Is it possible the killer impersonated a police officer to catch his victims off guard? Or perhaps worse, were they actually a law enforcement agent? This became the prevailing theory.
Wells and his fellow investigators believed that the killer posed as an officer in order to render the women compliant right from the jump. He probably also approached the car at night with a flashlight to obstruct their vision. However, it wasn't the only theory. Investigators also drew a line between three items used in the murders.
Forensics showed that the knife used in the murder was curved, like one you'd use to shuck an oyster. The rope was the kind used for fishing, and diesel is commonly used to fuel boats. Together, they painted the portrait of a fisherman. Along the eastern seaboard, that was just as likely as law enforcement. we should also note that investigators immediately assumed the killer was male.
A few studies support this theory, like a 2019 Penn State study that points out that male serial killers tend to hunt their victims, who are often strangers. On the contrary, female serial killers usually target people they know. And yes, they're already talking about serial killers here too. From the get-go, the FBI profiled this culprit in the same way they analyze serial killers.
They seemed to suspect the other shoe would drop eventually. A year later, it did. In September 1987, 20-year-old David Knobling and 14-year-old Robin Edwards were reported missing. We don't know the exact nature of their relationship, only that earlier that day, Robin went on a date with David's younger cousin, which David and his brother chaperoned.
Later that night, Robin and David headed to an overlook on the Colonial Parkway. The next day, a sheriff's deputy discovered a pickup truck in a parking lot near the James River. A door was left open, the keys still in the ignition, radio on, and the wipers running. The deputy also noticed a wallet left on the dashboard. He grabbed it and checked the license. David Knobling.
Authorities reached out to David's family. According to them, the truck was David's prized possession. He would never leave it abandoned. Investigators also reached out to Robin's family. They showed her mom photos of a pair of shoes left in the truck. Robin's mom immediately recognized them as her daughters because of the way they were colored all over with markers.
Officers surmised that David and Robin must be together somewhere, hopefully alive. Three days later, those hopes were dashed. Amid an intensive search for the couple, Robin's body was found near the riverbank. And then, David's own father found his son nearby. Both were shot in the back of the head, execution style. Robin had been sexually assaulted.
Notably, out of the four victims so far, only Robin's body showed evidence of assault. She was also the youngest victim at just 14. Investigators took samples of the evidence, hopeful it could catch her killer. But solving the case got complicated quickly. These murders occurred about 30 miles away from the area on the Colonial Parkway where Kathy and Rebecca were killed a year earlier.
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Chapter 4: Who were the subsequent victims in the Colonial Parkway Murders?
It was at Christopher Newport University, about 20 miles south of Williamsburg. Eyewitnesses said they took off together around 1.30 or 2 a.m. They were never heard from again. The next morning, park rangers discovered Keith's car. It was abandoned at an overlook by the York River, only a few miles away from where Kathy and Rebecca were killed in their car.
But this time, there were no bodies inside. The rangers called in the abandoned car to the police. Meanwhile, they searched the vehicle to figure out who it belonged to. They found a woman's shoe on the passenger seat floor and men and women's clothing in the back seat. Their best guess, Keith and Cassandra stripped and ran into the river for a late-night swim.
Except Cassandra's family swore Cassandra would never do that. She was scared of the water, not to mention it would have been freezing at that time of year. Keith's family was equally confused. The parkway was out of the way from both the party and where Cassandra lived. And Keith knew about the previous murders. He thought going out there was dangerous.
It made Keith's family think someone forced him and Cassandra to go there, or someone hurt the couple somewhere else, then dumped the car there. Due to the location, this case went to the FBI, who immediately began an extensive search. Helicopters looked from the skies. Police dragged the river. Bloodhounds on boats sniffed over the water.
You might be thinking, wait, doesn't water throw dogs off a scent? What about the books and movies where people run through creeks to escape bloodhounds? You wouldn't be alone. Some members of law enforcement were also skeptical. But it turns out there's a big difference between tracking someone who's alive and recovering someone who's dead.
Decomposing bodies underwater actually emit gases, body oils, and tissue that all make their way up to the surface. So a bloodhound can detect underwater victims. But this would only work if Keith and Cassandra were dead. In their search, the dogs didn't pick up a scent, which meant there was still hope of finding the pair alive. So the FBI homed in on suspects and made a critical mistake.
In 1988, the FBI sought any and all information related to the disappearances of Keith Call and Cassandra Haley. One tip led them to a man who was spotted driving a unique blue pickup truck along Colonial Parkway. Apparently, he'd stopped the car and approached a few couples. They recalled his memorable vanity plate, E-M-R-A-W, MRAW. The car was registered to Alan Wade Wilmer Sr., a.k.a. Pokey.
That's his chosen nickname, not ours. Wilmer was in his late 20s, white, fairly short, but muscular and strong from his work fishing. Wilmer farmed and sold oysters and clams. This explained the vanity plate, E.M. Raw, as in eat them raw. Wilmer also drove his own custom commercial fishing boat, the Denny Wade. He loved to hunt and was a winner in at least one local archery contest.
So they had a man who fit their fisherman profile, had excellent aim, owned a fishing knife, was strong enough to overpower someone, and was known to approach random couples on the parkway. Naturally, the FBI questioned Wilmer. He admitted he'd been on the Colonial Parkway the night Keith and Cassandra disappeared, right near where Keith's abandoned car was found.
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Chapter 5: What challenges did investigators face in solving the Colonial Parkway Murders?
In all the Colonial Parkway cases so far, wallets and glove boxes were found open, as if the victims had been reaching for driver's licenses or registrations. All of the attacks happened at night in secluded areas, involving young people who appeared to be couples, with most of the cars found near water.
Now, double homicides are rare, and three, potentially four, in just three years, all within the same 30-mile radius, off the same stretch of road, well, that's even rarer. That said, there's no clear motive, and no concrete M.O., Some believed they were dealing with a murderer who evolved, changing his methods each time he killed. But for others, things just didn't add up.
The cases were similar, yes, but could they be linked conclusively? And then, just like that, the killings stopped. Years passed. The Parkway communities regained a sense of peace, and the pressure on authorities to find the killer lessened. But people still needed answers, especially the victims' families.
For the next 12 years, investigators tried to bring them closure, but there just weren't any more leads. The case got a new look in 2001, when an FBI trainee named Steve Spingola dove into the Bureau's stack of cold cases. Pouring over the files, he came across the Colonial Parkway murders.
At this point, the public was long convinced that the double homicides were all the work of the same serial killer. But Spingola wasn't so sure. He wondered if the serial killer angle was just the easiest pill for people to swallow. At least, it was easier than admitting there were four different attacks in one small area. Spingola looked into Kathy and Rebecca's case first.
He wondered if this case did have a motive, one that wasn't properly looked into, mainly that the two women were romantically involved. In an Oxygen docuseries on the murders, former FBI profiler Jim Clemente suggested the killer saw himself as a moral enforcer, someone who doles out punishment on those he deems sinners.
That same documentary revealed that Kathy and Rebecca regularly visited the parkway on Thursday nights, so it's possible the killer wasn't just lashing out at a random couple, but targeted them specifically. If Spingola is right that the killer targeted Kathy and Rebecca specifically, then that muddies the water for the other three cases.
But even if there aren't four separate perpetrators, Spingola believes there might be more than one. So he looked at all the files and focused on the last double homicide, Daniel and Anna Maria. It didn't seem to fit with the other three. Unlike the other cases, they weren't pulled off onto a lover's lane. They were at a rest stop. Their attacker could have been anyone.
Still, Spingola's theory was only a theory. And without new evidence or suspects, the case grew cold and the files collected dust. Even though the victims' families desperately wanted answers, they were stuck. That was until the FBI made a major mistake. In 2008, nearly two decades after the final set of murders, a man named Fred Atwell enrolled in a school for private investigators.
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Chapter 6: What were the key findings in the investigation of the Colonial Parkway Murders?
Bill is an older brother of Kathy Thomas, one of the first women killed on the parkway in 1986. In 2009, Bill had never actually spoken to other victims' families. But after the FBI leak, he decided to reach out. He felt they now had an opportunity to make demands. The FBI messed up, and now they owed the families.
Bill convinced other siblings and parents of the victims to team up as a united front. Then he contacted the FBI. He asked them to spend more time and resources on these cases. The FBI agreed to meet with all the families. It was the first in-person meeting with everyone together. FBI agents discussed the status of the case and answered questions to a degree.
The FBI didn't share everything they knew with the families, nor did they share files with the media. Regardless, the families felt this meeting was a step in the right direction. It helped to have whistleblower Fred Atwell on their side. He seemed to genuinely want to help and offered the family's support.
Atwell believed the theory that the murders were committed by at least one, if not two, law enforcement agents. He even named names. However, he offered no proof, and no one has been charged based on his accusations. But around 2010, not long after the FBI family meeting, Atwell started acting strange.
First, he claimed to be in contact with a lawyer working for an anonymous client involved in the murders. Atwell said he was just the middleman, but the client wanted $20,000 to reveal the location of Keith Call and Cassandra Haley's bodies. Those are the victims in the third Parkway attack who've never been found.
Virginia authorities were skeptical, and after questioning Atwell, authorities decided his claims weren't worth pursuing. The following year, in 2011, Atwell set up a raffle, which he advertised as a charity event. He said the prize was a new car, and all the proceeds would go to the Colonial Parkway Victims Fund.
But Virginia police learned he was actually pocketing some of the money for himself, so they arrested him on charges of obtaining money under false pretenses. Soon after that, Atwell allegedly called a suicide hotline and claimed he was a suspect in a serial murder investigation. He said the FBI was after him and he wanted to die by suicide.
It's unclear whether authorities verified this call, but Atwell spiraled further. A few weeks later, he robbed a woman at gunpoint, stealing $60. Officers caught Atwell and arrested him again. Atwell was convicted of multiple crimes and sentenced to a decade in prison.
Despite his alarming behavior, the families of the Colonial Parkway victims never seem to suspect Atwell of the crimes, although it's not out of the realm of possibility given that he would have been in his late 30s at the time of the first murders and presumably working in law enforcement in the Colonial Park area.
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