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Spotsylvania County Sheriff Ron Knight told reporters yesterday that investigators on the Lisk slaying case are "not blind" and have long been looking into the possibility of a link with the slaying of 16-year-old Sofia Silva.
Until earlier this week, authorities had repeatedly denied that there was a link between the two cases. The bodies of 15-year-old Kristin and 12-year-old Kati Lisk were found 5¸ weeks ago.
Knight's response came on a day when authorities criticized the media for revealing information about connections between the cases.
They stopped short of saying the information was incorrect, but said it would hinder their investigation.
Capt. Pat Sullins said the reports "may have damaged the task force's ability to identify and apprehend the assailant or assailants ... we've lost a major investigative tool."
In maintaining early on that there was no connection between the three girls' slayings, police said they already had solid scientific evidence against a suspect in the Silva slaying. And he was safely behind bars when the Lisk girls disappeared May 1.
The "proof" was blown away Monday when the FBI crime lab confirmed that a state lab examiner made a mistake in assessing the evidence gathered in the Silva case.
The four fibers that were the heart of the prosecution's case against Karl Michael Roush no longer point to him as a suspect, authorities said.
The state lab had said the fibers from Roush's van matched those found on Sofia's body after it was recovered from a King George County creek.
"We were going on the lab's report from the Silva case," Knight said.
An abduction charge against Roush is expected to be dropped at a Monday court hearing.
Authorities are now waiting on results from tests on DNA evidence to determine whether the three slayings could be the work of a serial killer.
Knight said he expects those results any time now. DNA tests typically take six weeks.
If the tests confirm or refute a link between the cases, Knight said, he will release that information right away.
At yesterday's press conference, Sullins referred to Washington station WUSAöTV's report that Sofia and one of the Lisk sisters had their pubic areas shaved. The information about Sofia was found on a medical examiner's report filed in Spotsylvania Circuit Court.
The Free LanceöStar reported the same information yesterday after independently confirming it with a law enforcement source.
When asked why releasing the information could hurt the case, Sullins said, "Any information that's made public without being released by this office can jeopardize our case."
She would not confirm whether the information was true. Knight said he didn't know if it was true because he hadn't seen an autopsy report.
"We don't want the bad guy to know what we know," Knight said as reporters and cameras gathered around him after the official news conference had ended. "Remember, you're working with a warped mind here. They almost take pride in what they've done."
Gregg McCrary, a retired FBI behavioral scientist who lives in Spotsylvania, said the shaving may point to one killer.
"We're assuming the offender did this," he said. "If it's offender behavior, then it's significant."
People who commit such crimes often leave behind an identifying trademark, he said.
"They're sort of behavioral fingerprints of the offender," he said.
Such an act could point to an important link between the three slayings, but "it's not necessarily as important as hard forensic evidence."
McCrary said that if the killer did the shaving, "it's hard to know exactly why he's doing it. He may not even know."
Knight said reporting on the shaving could cause the killer to change his signature. Authorities also said it might inspire copycat killers to use the same approach, so as to throw off police.
Free LanceöStar Managing Editor Edward W. Jones said no one raised those points "with us before the story was published yesterday or requested that we not print the story."
He added, "We decided to report on the similarity involving shaved hair because it could be an important link between the Silva and Lisk cases. It suggests that the same person may have killed all three girls."
At yesterday's press conference, Sullins also read statements from the Lisk and Silva families, who asked the media not to report information that was not officially released by the Sheriff's Office.
"You have never been in a situation like we are," Phyliss Silva, Sofia's mother, said in her statement to the media. "You can never understand or begin to comprehend the mental, physical and emotional devastation we are going through."
Her statement also said, "If you could only walk in our shoes for a while, maybe you wouldn't be so quick to report all the gory details."
