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FBI won't address Evonitz issues

FBI refuses to address issues raised in report on area slayings

Date published: 2/3/2008

By PAMELA GOULD

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller and Lab Director Joseph DiZinno are refusing to address questions about why the bureau reneged on its pledge to forensically evaluate serial killer Richard Marc Evonitz for three unsolved slayings in the region where he lived.

Six weeks after The Free Lance-Star requested the interviews, FBI spokeswoman Ann Todd said Thursday that the requests had been denied. She referred questions to the FBI's Richmond Division, calling the cases pending investigations.

Mueller and DiZinno were aware that the Richmond Division had already twice denied the newspaper's request for a follow-up interview on the topic in December.

On Friday, FBI Richmond Division spokeswoman Dee Rybiski said acting chief Jeff Troy was denying the latest request "out of deference to the families" of the three young women slain in 1996.

"This is a pending investigation, and we're not going to be discussing our investigative efforts," she said.

Alicia Showalter Reynolds was abducted March 2, 1996, along U.S. 29 in Culpeper County while traveling from Baltimore to Charlottesville. Her remains were found two months later in Lignum.

Julianne Williams, 24, and Laura Winans, 26, were slain in May 1996 at their creekside campsite in Shenandoah National Park.

No one has ever been charged in Reynolds' death. Federal prosecutors indicted Darrell Rice on capital murder charges in the deaths of Williams and Winans. They dropped the case after forensic tests failed to link him to the slayings but could not exclude Evonitz as the source of two hairs found at the crime scene.

Evonitz killed himself in June 2002 as police were about to arrest him. Subsequent tests on evidence identified him as the killer of three Spotsylvania girls--Sofia Silva, 16, and sisters Kristin Lisk, 15, and Kati Lisk, 12--killed in 1996 and 1997.

In 2002, authorities pledged to forensically check Evonitz for every crime the Spotsylvania resident might have committed. But a detailed Free Lance-Star investigation published in November found that those tests were never done.

Family members of Reynolds, Williams and Winans have said they want to know why Evonitz was never forensically evaluated as a suspect in the slayings of their loved ones. They are pushing for the tests to be done.

"Why not?" John Winans said on Friday. "It's worth the money."

Patrick Showalter, twin brother of Alicia Showalter Reynolds, echoed that plea in a letter to the editor published in the newspaper last week.

"Do the DNA testing on Evonitz," he wrote. "If Evonitz murdered my sister, I would like to know for sure."

Pamela Gould: 540/735-1972
Email: pgould@freelancestar.com

In November, The Free Lance-Star published the findings of a more-than-18-month investigation into the unsolved slayings of Alicia Showalter Reynolds, Julianne Williams and Laura Winans. The key findings include: State and federal authorities falsely stated they were conducting forensic evaluations of serial killer Richard Marc Evonitz in an attempt to determine every crime the former Spotsylvania County resident committed in his 38-year life, including any possible involvement in Reynolds' death. Authorities instead focused their attention on Maryland resident Darrell Rice, charging him in the deaths of Williams and Winans even after dozens of forensic tests found no link to him. Although Evonitz could not be ruled out as the source of two key head hairs found at the Shenandoah National Park site where Williams and Winans were killed, the FBI Lab failed to conduct further steps outlined in its protocol to seek a more definitive answer. After Evonitz couldn't be ruled out as the source of the head hairs, federal authorities didn't request that other evidence in the Shenandoah slayings be checked against him. At the urging of the lab's expert on Evonitz, evidence in the Reynolds case was sent to the FBI Lab in 2004, but the lab never examined it or compared it with samples from Evonitz. ON THE NET To read the full report, go to fredericksburg.com.

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Date published: 2/3/2008

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