RICHMOND, Va. — DNA evidence has lead to a suspect in three killings in the Hampton Roads region in the late 1980s, possibly connected to a string of crimes known as the Colonial Parkway murders.
State and federal investigators revealed that Alan W. Wilmer Sr., a waterman with no felony record who died in 2017 at his home in Lancaster County, Va., has been linked to evidence left at the scene of the shooting deaths of a young couple, David L. Knobling, 20, and Robin M. Edwards, 14, whose bodies were found at the Ragged Island wildlife refuge in Isle of Wight County in 1987.
Similarly, evidence also tied Wilmer to the killing of Teresa Lynn Spaw Howell, 29, in Hampton in 1989, authorities said. Howell’s death was not thought to be part of the parkway string of murders, which involved couples killed or missing from remote parking areas between 1986 and 1989.
The parkway cases have haunted southeastern Virginia, for both the horror of young people being killed in remote “lover’s lane” areas and for the way the killings seemed to just stop, with no explanation for those left behind.
The families of Knobling, Edwards and Howell released statements thanking law enforcement officials and asked for privacy as they expressed their grief.
“For 36 years, our families have lived in a vacuum of the unknown. We have lived with the fear of worrying that a person capable of deliberately killing Robin and David could attack and claim another victim. Now we have a sense of relief and justice knowing that he can no longer victimize another,” the Knobling and Edwards families said.
Howell’s family said: “While we are grateful for the closure that has been provided, nothing will bring Teri back. The void left by her absence over the years is inexpressible.” Howell had last been seen after midnight at a Hampton night club, and her body was found later that day in the woods near a construction site across town. She had been strangled and sexually assaulted.
A state police spokeswoman said this week that DNA evidence had suggested a link between the Ragged Island and Hampton cases several years ago but that it wasn’t until more recently that the link pointed to Wilmer.
He has so far not been connected to the other cases involved in the parkway series, which the FBI has long investigated as potentially the work of a serial killer.
“Although similarities in these series of double homicides that spanned a three-year period cannot be ignored, at this time there is no forensic nor physical evidence to link the Isle of Wight County homicides to those other double murders,” Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said Monday at a news conference in Suffolk.
Geller said the evidence pointing to Wilmer was so conclusive in the Hampton and Isle of Wight cases that he would be arrested and charged with the three murders if he were alive. She said investigators had developed him as a suspect after going back into the case files and reviewing old evidence and witness statements.
Once they learned that Wilmer had died at age 63, they obtained a DNA sample and sent that to the state forensics lab, Geller said. His was not the only sample tested, she said, suggesting that the DNA of other possible suspects was also analyzed. Geller added that the technology used was not available more than 30 years ago.
FBI Norfolk Special Agent in Charge Brian Dugan said investigators are continuing to look for other crimes that Wilmer may be responsible for and declined to go into further detail about his movements, his connection to the crime scenes or his possible motives. Dugan appealed to the public for more information.
Police said Wilmer was 5-5 with a muscular build, weighing about 165 pounds. He had sandy hair, sometimes wore a closely trimmed beard, and had blue eyes. He drove what authorities called a “distinctive” blue 1966 Dodge Fargo pickup truck with a personalized Virginia license plate, “EM-RAW” — though he was known to drive other vehicles, too.
Wilmer, whose nickname was Pokey, also owned a commercial fishing boat, a custom-built 1976 wooden craft named Denni Wade, and frequented the waterways and marinas around the Northern Neck, Gloucester and Middlesex counties, and Hampton Roads. Officials said he liked to hunt — belonging to a hunt club in the Middle Peninsula area — and sometimes operated a business called Better Tree Service.
Officials released a statement from his relatives saying that news of Wilmer’s “crimes has come as a complete and horrific shock to our family. We are learning about this news nearly the same time as everyone else. The man who committed these crimes was not someone we knew. The revelation of what he’s done has deeply impacted our family as we are forced to reconcile who we believed him to be with the unimaginable things he has done.”
The family expressed sympathy for the victims and pledged to cooperate with law enforcement.