York County, VA - On Tuesday, Fred Atwell Jr., 62, pleaded guilty to one count of obtaining money through false pretenses by faking a raffle that he claimed would raise money to help solve the infamous Colonial Parkway murders.
According to Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Jeremy Markle, Atwell held a car raffle which was supposed to raise money for a fund started by the victims' families. The families paid Atwell for fees for his efforts on the raffle. However, there were no cars.
Atwell is facing up to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced in May.
In recent years, the family members of the Colonial Parkway Murders have held various fundraising events to raise reward money as well as to hire a team of private investigators in an effort to finally solve the notorious string of grisly murders.
More than 20 years after the last murders (at least officially) occurred in the case, the FBI has yet to solve even one of the crimes.
In January 2010, the FBI announced that they were reopening the case, using new DNA testing. The victims’ families are still waiting for those results.
Frustrated with the lack of progress, the families now hope to discover who killed their loved ones on their own. Joyce Call, the sister of one of the victims, told the Daily Press: “There's a murderer out there and he deserves to be held accountable.â€
Between 1986 and 1989, there were eight bodies found at different points along Virginia’s Colonial Parkway. They were all killed in pairs, they were all young, and in some of the cases, the victims’ car was found with the driver’s side window rolled partially down, leading to speculation that the killer was either a police officer or security guard, or someone posing as such.
The case which has come to be known as the Colonial Parkway Murders has never been solved.
-On October 12, 1986, the bodies of Cathleen Thomas, 27, and Rebecca Ann Dowski, 21, were found in Thomas' Honda Civic, at the bottom of an embankment along the Parkway. Their throats had been slashed.
-In September 1987, David Knobling, 20, and Robin Edwards, 14, were discovered murdered at the Ragged Island Wildlife Refuge, on the James River. The bodies were found by Knobling's father.
-On April 9, 1988, Cassandra Lee Hailey and Richard Keith Call were reported missing after attending a party in Newport News. It was their first date. Call's car was found on the Colonial Parkway the next day. Their bodies have never been recovered.
-In October 1989, the bodies of Anna Marie Phelps, 18, and Daniel Lauer, 21, were found by hunters in the woods of New Kent County near a rest stop on Interstate 64. They had been missing for nearly a month.
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