Cold Case Murders
Seeking Information on Colonial Parkway Murders
| FBI Norfolk January 07, 2010 |
If you have any information relevant to the Colonial Parkway murders that occurred during the 1980s, please e-mail it to us at Colonial_Parkway_Murders@ic.fbi.gov.
Here is a summary of the murders:
Sunday, October 12, 1986, the U.S. Park Service received a report that a car was off the road east of Cheatham Annex. Upon responding to the area, Park Rangers located a white 1980 Honda Civic in a wooded area off Colonial Parkway between the Ringfield Plantation overlook and the York River. Cathleen Marian Thomas and Rebecca Ann Dowski were found deceased inside the vehicle—both had been stabbed and strangled. They were last seen alive on Thursday evening, October 9, 1986, at a computer lab at The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia.
On Saturday evening, April 9, 1988, Richard Keith Call and Cassandra Lee Hailey went on their first date. They attended a party at the University Square Apartments in Newport News, Virginia, which lasted past midnight into Sunday morning. This was the last time they were seen. Later that morning, Richard Keith Call’s father found his son’s vehicle abandoned at the York River overlook off the Colonial Parkway near Yorktown, Virginia. Clothes belonging to the victims were found inside the vehicle. The victims have never been located.
Two additional cases of similar circumstances occurred around the same time. Both cases are being investigated by the Virginia State Police. On September 20, 1987, David Lee Knobling and Robin Margaret Edwards were found deceased at the Ragged Island Wildlife Refuge in Isle Wight County, Virginia, and on September 5, 1989, Daniel Lauer and Ann Marie Phelps were found deceased in the vicinity of a rest area off Route 64 in New Kent County, Virginia.