Posted on 06/17/2002 11:16:35 AM PDT by crystalk
We have seen in the "Condit-style" and in the "Arkancide"-style murders a tendency for the official cover stories to try to blame the killings on a place. The ten killings mentioned in the Chandra websites as possibly Condit-related, all have been tagged in official media to some specific spot and some alleged series of murders going on in that place-- with the other members of the alleged series tending to vanish upon examination.
In the case of the 1996 double murder on the Skyline Drive near Luray, Virginia, I am at a loss to say whether it more resembles Condit, or Arkancide a la Caity Mahoney, a DC intern and alleged lesbian lover of Hillary Rodham Clinton. What it does have in common is the same lack of firmness in anything the public has ever been told, the same feeling that even the most critical and vital clues or information may be retracted at any moment.
Here is the bare bones story of the Williams-Winans killings, alleged lesbian lovers aged 24 and 26 respectively, currently officially said to have been killed on the night after Monday, May 27, 1996, and with bodies discovered only as dark fell on Saturday, June 1, 1996. I have read about 20 published stories on this case, and persons seeking citations are invited to use a search engine.
Around midday on Sunday, May 19, 1996, the two young women arrived in the Shenandoah National Park and took out a back-country camping permit for five nights. They planned to leave the park on Friday, May 24, before the Memorial Day crowd would be there. Friends in an eastern city (Baltimore, as I recall) were expecting them for the 3-day weekend (May 25-27).
Their permit stated an area in which they planned to camp, but rangers later could not recall seeing their car at all in this period, esp not where it logically would be for access to the stated destination. Rangers do routinely find the campsites of, and check the permits of, at least 80% of the campers in the long, narrow park, where even the furthest back campsites are less than 5 miles from the Skyline Drive. Yet it appears no one saw the young ladies and their golden retriever Taj, anywhere, not on the trails, nor in the camping zones, nowhere.
Suddenly, on the Friday May 24, the day they planned to leave, they appeared on a well-touristed mountain climb in the park, not too bedraggled or worse for wear. They seemed cheerful and outgoing, chatting and joking with fellow climbers, taking a whole roll of film, having bystanders photograph them together, and the like. Despite having been [supposedly] in the back country with only what they could carry in, including tent, stove, sleeping bags, food for themselves and the dog, and the like...there is no evidence they bought more provisions on this day, nor that they showered at the established campsites or elsewhere. They did see a ranger and extend their camping permit for three days.
It later developed that their friends who were expecting them for the weekend were stood up, no call. On Monday, May 27, the last day of the weekend, the father of Ms Winans called in some desperation to the Park offices, insisted on declaring the girls missing and having a report made, despite being told of the time extension and that they were only expected to leave the park that same day. Word went out to all the offices and facilities in the Park to be on the lookout for the girls, their car, their dog, etc. But no one took it very seriously, for the Park felt their intended stay was only then coming to an end.
Late Wed (29) or early Thu (30), however, their car was found seemingly intact and fine, at a parking area indicating their possible camping in another back country area. No one had seen them, not even to pass on trail and say hi, no ranger had seen their camp in the daily back country patrol/visits. Just like the earlier 5 days, and now this was getting to be another 6 days!
Once the car was found [another incredible: rangers felt it impossible it can have been there the whole time, with Park visitors and employees asked to look for it.], the panic and search began in earnest. The likely camping areas based on car location were scoured on Thurs and Fri (30/31 May), with no result.
On the Saturday June 1, visitors to the Park including the most casual tourists and senior citizens coming up to eat at the Skyline Lodge, etc. were questioned and beseeched concerning any possible sighting of the women and their dog, their tent etc.
At 8:30 pm on the Sat., searchers returning in despair to the Skyline Lodge found the girls' tent in a hidden obscure cove only a few hundred yards from the Lodge itself, in a spot completely unlikely based on the car's location, and also just a few hundred yards from the Skyline Drive itself and maintained large, tourist trails.
Backcountry campers had been advised, even forbidden, to come and camp in close to busy areas like this...and worst of all, since the main reason anyone WOULD do so...might be to come in and use the facilities, eat, buy supplies, etc.--NO ONE HAD SEEN THE GIRLS IN OR AT THE LODGE, shopping, eating, showering, buying supplies, nothing. Their dog had appeared at the Lodge only on Saturday morning, with the dead girls supposedly in their tent 200 yards away for the past 5 days. (!!)
The girls had both been killed by slitting of throat, nothing had been taken, money, camera, and credit cards intact. No rape, no assault, no signs of a struggle! Park officials continued the search till Monday evening the 3rd without announcing the finding of the bodies, supposedly in hopes the perp might return to the scene of the crime. Based upon the condition of the bodies, and the girls dressed for sleep, etc. it was officially declared they were murdered while sleeping late on the night after Monday, May 27. There were no signs of a struggle, and no signs of any secondary disturbance of the crime scene by animals or people.
Initial theories that the girls might have been hurt or in distress, and tried to hike in and might not have realized how near to civilization they were, fall on the fact that the camp was very well made, tent well pitched, hours taken, good order everywhere, not in haste nor emergency. Elaborate care had been taken to put the tent in a terribly hidden, concealed spot-- not to make it or themselves findable near obvious, large, maintained trails immediately at hand.
They would have noticed lights and sounds from the Lodge, and certainly after first night there would have realized how close to the Lodge, and how far from the car, they were! But no one ever saw them at the Lodge.
For nearly six years this case remained a mystery. But in April of this year, 2002, a man already in prison in Va., Darrell David Rice of Columbia, Md., was charged with these murders, based upon his [Guandique-style unexplainable] "assault" upon a female Canadian cyclist in July of 1997, 14 months after the W/W killings.
Trouble is, the State's case is very weak: they cannot show he was in the Park, nor even in Virginia, when the crimes were committed.
He is 34 now, would have been 28 when the deeds were done.
Gimme a break.
That tends to prove my theory that the girls were brought here, already bound gagged throats cut--and dead.
Think about it, he would have had to crawl in there with them, what a tangle of arms and legs in the pitch dark. Yet he unfailingly managed to find just which parts of each to bind, gag, and cut throats, all with no appearance of a struggle, nothing to look disorderly, they were just lying neat as a pin each on her own separate sleeping bag and air matteress.
Gimme a break.
He said, "I'll get you and your little dog too!"
Give it a rest man, Daryl confessed to doing it while in jail. Is that not good enough for you?
If the amount of duress applied was anything like what was used on Covington and then, Cooper, in the Mahoney case, you could get any FReeper on the board to confess to the crime, me included. Whether they had ever been in Virginia, or not.
IIRC those facts you request are very much included in several of the standard published stories of the case easily retrieved from search engines.
They had graduated at Smith, had been living in Vermont, were from Minnesota (Williams) and Maine (Winans) IIRC, and were in process of trying to move down to DC or Balto IIRC, but do try the search engines.
IIRC there was said to be but little blood in the tent.
If Darrell's last name was Condit, I could see tying this
case to scary Gary. Otherwise, I can't fathom a connection
as indicated in the article title.
I don't know anything at all about these other cases. As far as Chandra Levy goes, we know for a fact that she had delusions of "stealing" Condit and settling down with him. My hunch is that she stopped taking her pills and got knocked up. Once she told Condit that she was going to have his baby, he decided that she had become more trouble than she was worth.
The camp/murder site was not "virtually AT the Lodge". It was, in fact, across (east of) the skyline drive in White Oak Canyon, at least 1/2 mile from Skyland Lodge area, which is on the west side of the north-south running Skyline Drive.
I doubt he (whoever it was) crept upon them in the middle of the night. Probably meet them during the day, followed them to their campsite, threatened them at knifepoint, then bound, gagged and eventually murdered them.
I wonder if they've shown that sketch to witnesses in the Skyline case.
I can't say I see a particular resemblance between that sketch and Condit. The sketch still seems to me to look much more like John Kasich.
That's odd.
Senators tend to look a lot like each other, have you noticed that? This is a similar phenomenon.
The devil of it in the Lisk and Silva cases is that no one at all ever saw a suspect, or remembered seeing any suspicious person or figure around, it was just a total stumper. Those three girls, one after school yr had just begun, the others (2 sisters) soon before it was to end, were taken from their yards in lovely weather just minutes after the school bus dropped them off. Not one clue in any of them, SFAIK. Except the shaving off of pubic hair, a Conditism.
Rice would never have been capable of committing rape, much less murder, IMHO. The lesbians were not sexually assaulted, in any story I had read, nor did any struggle or ordinary common-law-defn of assault hardly, just killed.
PS: Rice has been unfairly sentenced so harshly as he was for a first offender in the Canadian-bicyclist matter, IMO.[He talked dirty, and threw a soda can which he said was empty and she said had some drink in it. He never touched her, and she said she was "run off the road" by his pickup, but this was into a nicely graded and mown, grassy scenic-pulloff area, and she was not injured. Mad as hell, though. And I am not saying wrongly, but not 11 years worth.
FTR Reynolds was killed 3-2-96; Williams and Winans OOA 5-27-96; Silva was killed 9-9-96; the Lisk sisters May 1, 1997, same day of year as Chandra (ooa 5-1-01). Modafferi on 6-23-97; Caity Mahoney slain late on 7-6-97, or just possibly early on 7-7. Rice incident with Canadian woman, OOA 7-14-97. Mirzayan slain OOA 8-21-98. Chiang slain 1-9-99.
We will know we are getting somewhere when CONDIT's DNA, not Rice's, is compared to all four of these girls, and not just to the 3 in Spotsylvania. Maybe staffers or Darrell Condit too? Where was Carolyn on those dates?
The very fair, slight Anglo-Saxon (5'10") nearing middle age in Showalter-R. was obviously not of the same man as that, and the S-R sketch was DEFINITELY OF THE PERP, while the sketch on the Skyline was just a man that desperate pleadings with hundreds, resulted in just one or two persons saying they had seen, some day that Mem-day weekend in that general area of the SNP, and may well have nothing to do with the case.
In the Modafferi murder, similarly she had been earnestly conversing with a frowzy blonde at a coffeeshop, in that case Spinelli's, so much so that she forgot and left her paycheck behind when she left with Frowze. I have seen news reports that a sketch WAS done, and also that one was NOT done, of that Frowze, but in any event none was ever released to the public SFAIK.
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