Gregory Jon Phelps stars as Pericles in one of the featured productions in American Shakespeare Center’s fall lineup. Photo credit: Michael Bailey
If a high seas adventure delivered in iambic pentameter isn’t enough to get you off the couch, then maybe the added splendor of seeing it performed on an authentic Shakespearean stage—in the same manner that the bard himself would’ve produced—will get you searching for your shoes. Staunton’s famous replica theater is staging Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Labeled as a romance with elements of comedy, the story centers around the ill-fated prince who is driven from his land by a secret, but perhaps most intriguing is the debate over whether Wm. Shakespeare actually wrote it.
Saturday 9/27. $16-42, times vary. Blackfriar’s Theater, 10 S. Market St., Staunton. (540)851-1733.
Former Venable fourth-grade teacher Corey Schock. File photo.
The former Venable Elementary School teacher who pleaded guilty earlier this year to a single count of online coercion and enticement of a minor and was sentenced to serve 10 years in federal prison with no chance of parole was permitted to move home with his wife and two children after a judge agreed to revise the conditions of his bond.
Corey Schock had originally been ordered to stay with his parents in Allentown, Pennsylvania, as a condition of his bond. But since his August 29 sentencing, according to court records, he has been residing at his home in the Greenbrier neighborhood until the Federal Bureau of Prisons notifies him to report to prison to begin serving his decade-long sentence, which his defense team calls “draconian, wildly expensive” and serving “no valid purpose.”
According to a defense motion filed August 26 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, prosecutors’ decision to transfer the case against Schock from the state to the federal system resulted in a drastic increase in the length of his prison sentence. Schock was initially charged at the state level with possession of child pornography and the use of a computer to facilitate a crime for his electronic interactions with a 15-year-old Northern Virginia girl with whom he exchanged numerous sexually explicit texts and images. Had he been convicted of those state charges, the motion argues, the recommended sentence would have been just three months.
The 44-year-old married father of two daughters was a beloved fourth grade teacher at the school, and the charges and his subsequent conviction stunned families of his current and former students. The defense motion ascribes Schock’s criminal behavior to untreated depression, points out he made no attempt to have physical contact with the victim, and states that a psychological assessment found him a “very low risk” to reoffend. More than two dozen people penned letters in support of Schock, requesting sentencing leniency from the judge.
Former Venable principal Ron Broadbent, who hired Schock and is now retired, wrote that even knowing of the charges against Schock, he would request that Schock teach his own daughter if she were going into fourth grade.
“That is how well I feel I know this man,” he wrote.
Former UVA Architecture professor Daniel Bluestone and his wife also weighed in, questioning the length of the sentence.
“It is so very sad that some weakness or sickness has delivered Corey Schock to your courtroom,” they wrote. “However, this man has a good heart and enormous gifts that he can, and should, continue to offer to society. Prison is not likely the place that will allow him to again be a good father and a good citizen.”
While the glowing character references may have convinced the judge to amend the bond conditions, there is little leeway in sentencing at the federal level, said
C-VILLE legal analyst David Heilberg, who doubted the defense request for an amended sentence would be granted.
“Grounds to get this relief don’t seem present here, and it’s hard to see how someone with these charges could qualify except in extraordinary circumstances,” said Heilberg, noting that, unlike in Virginia state courts, there are no suspended sentences in federal cases.
Schock, who will serve out his sentence at the minimum security facility in Butner, North Carolina, did not respond to a message requesting comment. A call to the Bureau of Prisons requesting Schock’s reporting date was not returned by press time.
Correction: Architecture professor Daniel Bluestone is no longer at UVA; he is now director of the Preservation Studies Program at Boston University.
The Head and the Heart will have lots of hometown friends in the audience and possibly, clean laundry, when the band takes the Pavilion stage on Friday. Publicity photo
The Head and the Heart have the holygrail of indie rock band success: One good male singer, one good female singer. It’s a combination, along with a well-timed whistle or catchy chant, that has made Peter Bjorn and John, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Gotye, and a handful of others huge overnight sensations on the strength of one song.
But The Head and the Heart don’t have a “Young Folks.” They don’t have a “Home.” And they have yet to write their “Somebody That I Used to Know.”
When the six-piece folk rock band plays the nTelos Wireless pavilion on September 26, Charlottesville is bound to find out why. The Seattle-based folksters are too moody, too brooding, and a bit too off-kilter to crank out one of those windows-down-sing-your-heart-out pop sensations.
“We would never go out and try to write something like that,” singer and violinist Charity Rose Thielen told C-VILLE Weekly in a recent interview. “We’re never trying so hard to be something.”
The band has come closest to producing a seminal modern duet on its latest record, Let’s Be Still. On the LP’s title track, Thielen warbles alongside honey-tongued Josiah Johnson to produce an eminently listenable two-part sing-along with some measure of catchiness. Still, it’s not the crossover blockbuster some might have thought The Head and the Heart could produce.
“That song is one of the songs on the album I can just listen to over and over again on repeat and never get sick of it,” Thielen said. “It is sonically easy on the ears…but we didn’t do it just because we understand that it could be cutesy to have a duet between me and one of the guys.”
The lack of commercialism of The Head and the Heart is likely due to Thielen’s own unique voice. She’s not the polished singer Johnson is—she’d fall more in the Joanna Newsome camp than that of Norah Jones if she were a solo act. And it’s no wonder the first breakout hit The Head and the Heart produced, “Lost in My Mind,” rode the wave of the male lead’s swelling vocal.
Johnson is indeed the driving creative force behind the band’s updated folk sensibility, though guitar player and singer Jonathan Russell also contributes a good deal of songwriting, and Thielen kicks in as necessary, as well.
“For the first album, [someone] would write half a song, and someone else would finish it,” Thielen said. “For the second album, we had been with each other so much from touring, anytime we could get alone we would revel in it.”
That doesn’t mean the second record was produced without collaboration, and indeed Let’s Be Still sounds in many ways like The Head and the Heart’s full-length debut as a realized band. At just nine songs with some around the two-minute mark, the first record comes off more like an EP or a particularly well-polished demo, written and produced in a dreamy college student’s dorm room. There’s a hint of angst in the music, a me-against-the-world mentality, but it’s also laden with up-tempo hope and earnest optimism.
Let’s Be Still is a more complex and layered musical effort—with Thielen providing her violin chops sparingly but effectively, Chris Zasche dropping steady basslines, Kenny Hensley finding his place on the keys, and Tyler Williams keeping the beat. The song lyrics feel more grounded and realistic.
“The album is a little more mid-tempo-y, moody, and contemplative than the first,” Thielen said. “Both albums are an expression of where we were at the time. For the second, we’ve had some time just to be and a longer time to write and record. We are really excited about that because we haven’t had that as a band.”
Excitement is in the air for the next effort, as well. Thielen said with the current record about a year old, the band is now plotting its next move. The tour that swings through Charlottesville this week will wrap up in December, and The Head and the Heart is hoping to get back to writing and recording as soon as they have some time off.
What has not been plotted is what direction that album will take, according to Thielen.
“Who knows how the third will sound,” she said. “I think it will be our best record yet. We have so much in us that hasn’t been exercised. These first couple of albums were incredible, being on Sub Pop which allowed us to solidify our vision and unify as a band. Everyone has grown so much, and I think we are bursting at the seams.”
The Head and the Heart’s stop in Charlottesville will be a welcome respite as the band finishes up its 2014 road trip, according to Thielen. Two of the band members, Russell and Williams, grew up in the Richmond area and still call Virginia home.
“I’m sure they’ll try and go home and do laundry,” Thielen said. “Whenever we have come back and played Charlottesville or Richmond, it resonates with me. I feel like an adopted hometown-ian. We’re excited to come back to our second home.”
In A Walk Among the Tombstones, Liam Neeson takes a new approach to the aging tough guy role. Image courtesy of Universal Pictures
Having spent most of the last decade punching wolves and shooting whomever in pursuit of something or other, Liam Neeson’s career resurgence has been a mixed bag. On the one hand, he’s remained relevant in a genre that usually condemns talented performers to straight-to-DVD purgatory. On the other hand, there is now a very strong mold for him to break, now that an entire generation of filmgoers knows him more as the man with a “particular set of skills” than as Oskar Schindler, Michael Collins, or Rob Roy.
AWalk Among the Tombstones is an attempt to steer Neeson’s career in a different direction while it still capitalizes on the gruff, no-bullshit, bizarro ’90s Harrison Ford niche he’s filled since 2008. Neeson stars as former alcoholic New York cop turned sober semi-legal private investigator Matthew Scudder, the central character of many Lawrence Block novels (whose last appearance on the big screen was in 1986’s atrocious 8 Million Ways to Die starring Jeff Bridges). We first meet Scudder in 1991, when he gets into an off-duty shoot-out in the midst of a drinking binge. Fast forward to 1999, and Scudder has given up both badge and booze to a life of not-quite-crime, performing no-questions-asked tasks and solving problems for people who would prefer to remain off the police radar. It’s at this point in his career that Scudder is approached by drug trafficker Kenny Kristo to locate the men who abducted his wife, then killed her after collecting the ransom. Along the way, he becomes a makeshift mentor to a homeless teen named TJ with a detective’s instinct of his own.
Every criticism you will hear or read about A Walk Among the Tombstones is completely true. It isn’t enough of a departure for Neeson to be seen as altogether different from the characters he played in Taken or The Grey. Writer-director Scott Frank’s grisly fascination with the killers’ perversions and sadistic cruelty toward women borders on perverse itself. Giving the killers scenes shown entirely from their point of view sucks some of the mystery out of Scudder’s pursuit. The film also has a curious way of sabotaging its own momentum with predictability and completely avoidable clichés, best exemplified by an extended voiceover that forces a sloppy 12-step metaphor over a situation that would have been much more interesting on its own. Every attempt at stylization falls flat on its face. And the abundance of limp Y2K jokes would even feel forced in an Adam Sandler movie.
But if you can get past everything that’s wrong with it, there is a life to this film that makes it stand apart. Scudder’s brand of detective work, as a private investigator to the criminal world, is a lot of fun to watch in action. Neeson’s onscreen presence may be of the same tone we’re used to, but in this context, its familiarity with a dash of unpredictability is exactly what makes this former cop who isn’t beholden to any law enforcement procedure come to life. His mentorship to TJ is formulaic and Frank chooses strange words to put in the mouth of newcomer Brian “Astro” Bradley, but the chemistry between the actors carries it through. And though it plays by genre rules, after a certain point, the opportunities for audience predictions run out as genuine suspense over what might happen next takes over.
A Walk Among the Tombstones isn’t the first of its kind. Hell, it’s not even the first attempt at a suspense franchise by an Irish actor this month (Pierce Brosnan’s The November Man). But if Neeson is in fact looking to enter the next stage of his career, this film is as good a capstone to his action hero days as he could ask for.
Playing this week
Boyhood Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
Chef Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
Dolphin Tale 2 Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
The Drop Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
Guardians of the Galaxy Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
The Hundred-Foot Journey Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
If I Stay Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
Let’s Be Cops Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
The Maze Runner Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
No Good Deed Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
The November Man Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
This Is Where I Leave You Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
Tusk Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
When the Game Stands Tall Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo holds up a new poster announcing a reward for information leading to Hannah Graham at a press conference Wednesday night.
UPDATE, noon Thursday, September 25: An employee of the Galveston Sheriff’s Office confirmed this morning that Jesse Matthew was apprehended there after someone spotted him and called in a suspicious person report.
Texas news website Click2Houston has reported that Matthew was camping on a beach on the Bolivar Peninsula when an observer reported him to authorities. A deputy sheriff then arrested Matthew after running the plates of the Nissan Sentra he was driving and discovering he was wanted for abduction in the Hannah Graham case.
The Galveston Daily News reports that Matthew appeared in front of a judge in county court Thursday morning, where he said he would not fight his extradition to Charlottesville.
The original report on Matthew’s arrest was posted at 8pm Wednesday, September 24:
Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo announced Wednesday night that Jesse Matthew, charged yesterday with the abduction of missing UVA student Hannah Graham, has been taken into custody in Galveston, Texas.
“This case is nowhere near over,” Longo told a room full of reporters at the department’s second hastily called evening press conference of the week. “We have a person in custody, but there’s a long road ahead of us, and that road includes finding Hannah Graham.”
Richmond FBI Special Agent Adam Lee spoke briefly about the arrest, calling a sheriff’s deputy in Galveston “the hero of the day,” but declined to share details of how officials there captured Matthew.
“It’s a positive close to this chapter in this very important case, and we look forward to more positive developments,” Lee said.
Longo said the process of extraditing Matthew to Charlottesville has begun. He said he may not be able to share many more details of the investigation going forward, but stressed that the search for Graham is ongoing. The reward for information leading to her location is now $100,000.
Matthew had last been seen by police on Sunday, September 21, when he walked into the Charlottesville Police Department with members of his family. The day before, he had been named a person of interest in the disappearance of 18-year-old Graham, who has been missing since the early hours of Saturday, September 13. Matthew retained a local former prosecutor as his attorney, then sped away from the department, losing police and leading to a reckless driving charge.
Former electoral board member Stephanie Commander and Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta were charged with a combined 10 felony counts on Wednesday, September 17. Photos: Charlottesville City Police
Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta is back at work after her arrest last week on multiple felony charges related to misuse of public funds, and the majority of the electoral board that has the power to fire her say they want to see her keep her position—at least until after the November elections.
Iachetta and local defense attorney Stephanie Commander turned themselves in to police on Wednesday, September 17. Their arrests marked a dramatic moment in a scandal that unfurled over the course of several weeks, thanks in part to relentless prodding from The Daily Progress: For years, Iachetta had been approving taxpayer-funded cell phone plans for Commander, a former electoral board member who left office in 2011, as well as Iachetta’s husband, Pat Owen, a former employee who left the registrar’s office in 2009.
The cell phone payments first came to light when a deputy registrar brought them to the attention of City Manager Maurice Jones in March, according to reports. But it wasn’t until last month that Jones ordered an investigation, prompting the appointment of a special prosecutor from Nelson County to look into the payments. Electoral Board Chair Joan Schatzman has criticized him harshly for not acting sooner, but Jones said in an e-mail this week that he initially wasn’t aware of how long the cell phone payments had been going on.
“I was under the impression that this was a recent issue,” Jones wrote. “I intended to discuss this with Ms. Iachetta at our annual meeting this past summer,” but once he learned the payments had been going on for years, he immediately asked for a police investigation.
Iachetta and Commander have since repaid the city more than $7,000, but they still face serious consequences. Commander received four felony counts of embezzlement, which could mean four years in jail—not to mention disbarment. Iachetta was charged with six felony counts of misuse of public funds and assets, which carry a maximum sentence of 60 years. Neither responded to requests for comment for this story.
But Iachetta is not in immediate danger of losing her job. The sole Republican on the electoral board, Rick Sincere, declined to comment, but the two Democrats indicated they wouldn’t necessarily force Iachetta out of office, let alone call for a vote before November.
“We’re focused on the election right now,” said the electoral board’s vice chair, Democrat Jim Nix, who has expressed frustration with how the incident was aired in public. Iachetta, like other registrars in the state, is serving a four-year term that ends next June. Only a majority vote by the three-member board can remove her, said Nix, and the grounds must be nonperformance of duty.
When asked whether the board might vote her out, his response was sharp.
“I have no idea, and if I did, I wouldn’t share a comment now,” he said. “I can tell you absolutely nothing will happen before the election.”
Board Chair Joan Schatzman, also a Democrat, said she and Nix might have disagreed on how to handle the media fallout around the cell phone debacle—“he wanted to keep it quiet and I didn’t,” she said—but they agree that Iachetta should stay for now, and the ultimate decision should weigh the outcome of the charges she’s facing. Schatzman said she met with Iachetta Monday, and was satisfied that the registrar would be able to oversee the November election even as she’s dealing with her felony charges.
“What she did with the phone bills and running the election are two different things,” Schatzman said. “If she’s convicted of a felony, so long. If not, then the board is going to have to discuss it. Sheri’s given us 16 years of good, clean, efficient elections, so if she pleads to a lesser charge and it’s a misdemeanor, well, everybody makes mistakes.”
The legal community is watching, too. Charlottesville defense attorney David Heilberg said the arrest of Commander came as a surprise.
“She’s always been a conscientious, capable, and well-liked attorney, and she does a lot of court-appointed work,” he said.
As for what kind of defense she might mount, and what explanation she might offer for continuing to use a city-funded phone three years after she left office, Heilberg said it’s possible she could claim she understood the phone was paid for in return for “uncompensated long-time volunteer service.” Commander and Iachetta’s move to pay back what they owed wasn’t necessarily an admission of guilt, either—of civil liability, maybe, he said, but not criminal.
And the buck likely stops with them. For Jones to be held criminally liable, a prosecutor would need to show he was a co-conspirator or an accessory.
“That’s a little more extreme,” Heilberg said.
A few things are sure. The situation is unusual, he said—he can’t remember a Virginia registrar ever being tangled up in a case like this. And, he added, “it really is unfortunate.”
Highly accomplished principal timpanist and percussionist of the Charlottesville Symphony I-Jen Fang has performed around the globe. Photo credit: R Stillings.
Celebrate 40 years with the Charlottesville Symphony at the University of Virginia at its inaugural season performances. Kate Tamarkin directs the masters of classical music through a specially commissioned piece entitled “Fanfare for a Ruby Celebration,” composed by Randol Alan Bass, and Emmanuel Sejourne’s “Concerto for Marimba and String Orchestra,” featuring intrepid percussionist I-Jen Fang. Works by Antonin Dvorak and Zoltan Kodaly round out the program for an exciting premiere.
Students at a Thursday, September 18 vigil for Hannah Graham at the UVA Amphitheater. Photo: Chris Pecoraro
By the time Hannah Graham’s parents, John and Sue Graham, first spoke about their daughter’s disappearance on Sunday, September 21, the 18-year-old UVA second-year had been missing for more than a week. It showed. Sue Graham, dressed in a long-sleeved T-shirt bearing Hannah’s ski team logo, wore a mask of pain while her husband offered an emotional plea to anyone who might have seen her in the early hours of Saturday morning, when she vanished after being spotted with a man on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall.
“Did anybody see Hannah?” he asked, pointing at the throng of reporters in the City Space at the east end of the Downtown Mall. “Did you see Hannah? Did you see Hannah? Who saw Hannah? Somebody did.”
The somebody police centered their attention on is Jesse Matthew, a 32-year-old lifelong Charlottesville resident who has now been charged with her abduction. Matthew admitted to being with Graham after she apparently walked a mile and a half from the UVA Corner to the Mall in the early hours of Saturday, September 13. Portions of the trek were captured on multiple surveillance tapes, where the tall, slender student, dressed in a gold crop top and black jeans, can be seen in grainy snatches circling a patio, running down a street, and finally, being accompanied up the Mall by a man police say is Matthew. As Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo put it with dramatic emphasis at Sunday’s press conference, “I believe Jesse Matthew was the last person she was seen with before she vanished off the face of the Earth.”
But Matthew is still missing. He met with police Sunday, asked for a lawyer, then sped away and lost the cops who had been tailing him. State police issued a warrant for his arrest for reckless driving, and then at yet another packed press conference on Tuesday night, Longo announced the big charge: abduction with intent to defile. He wouldn’t say what led to the charge, but he said state and federal law enforcement are looking for him—and for Hannah.
For now, Graham’s parents and a fearful but still hopeful community can only wait, and search, and examine again the evidence that’s trickled out over the course of the last week and a half.
“We need to find out what happened to Hannah,” her father said Sunday, “and make sure that it doesn’t happen to anybody else.”
What happened?
Retracing Graham’s steps and the investigation as it’s unfolded since she went missing in the early hours of Saturday, September 13. (Click photo below to enlarge.)
Friday evening, September 12: It’s a big party night at UVA. Two frats—St. Anthony Hall and Zeta Psi—are hosting blowouts. Bars on the Corner are packed. Hannah Graham has been hanging out with friends from the UVA ski and snowboard club at Camden Plaza, a student housing complex near the Corner on 15th Street NW. Security camera footage shows her in a hallway at 9:15pm and again 15 minutes later, dressed for a night out—shiny crop top, black skinny jeans.
11:30pm Friday, September 12: Graham leaves Camden Plaza (1). Friends later say she told them she was headed to a party.
12:15am Saturday, September 13: Graham is seen leaving a party near 14th Street.
12:46am Saturday, September 13: A security camera at McGrady’s Irish Pub (2)—about half a mile east of 14th Street—captures Graham there for several minutes. She walks around the perimeter of the bar’s outside patio, approaches the door, then continues east onto Preston Avenue.
12:55am Saturday, September 13: A second security camera at the Shell gas station at Preston and Harris Street (3), another quarter mile down the road, picks up the image of Graham running east, then slowing to a walk. A witness later tells police Hannah walks down 2nd St. NE past Fellini’s and onto the Downtown Mall minutes later.
1:06am Saturday, September 13: Graham makes contact with friends for the last time, sending a text message telling them she’s lost in the area of Wertland Street—a mile and a half from where she actually was. (Police initially said that message was sent at 1:20am.) In the next two minutes, two more security cameras capture images of her walking east on the Mall, half a mile from the Shell station. The first is outside Sal’s Caffe Italia (4), the second a block east at Tuel Jewelers. A white male is briefly seen following her. Also visible in the footage is a heavyset black man with dreadlocks dressed in what appears to be a white shirt and shorts. Witnesses later report spotting Graham at Mall restaurant Tempo with the dreadlocked man not long after. It’s the last sighting of her.
Sunday afternoon, September 14: Graham’s friends and family realize nobody’s heard from or seen her since the early hours of Saturday morning—more than 36 hours before. At 4:34pm, someone calls 911. Police launch a search in the Corner area in the evening with a bloodhound, but turn up nothing.
Monday morning, September 15: The Charlottesville Police Department issues its first press release announcing the disappearance and investigation. UVA sets up a website with information about Graham, and Dean of Students Alan Groves tweets the news that a student is missing. Facebook and Twitter explode with posts and photos as people spread the word.
Tuesday, September 16: The search for Graham expands to cover the Preston Avenue corridor and much of downtown Charlottesville as police obtain the surveillance footage from McGrady’s and the Shell station. Graham’s parents issue their first statement, saying their daughter “would not disappear without contacting family or friends.”
Investigators search for signs of Hannah Graham along Preston Avenue. Photo: Tom Daly
Wednesday, September 17: Major papers across the U.S. pick up the story. Police announce they’ve seen the Downtown Mall footage, and say a witness—the white man seen following her in one video—has described seeing her talking with an unidentified black man, who put his arm around Graham. At 3pm, Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo holds the first press conference and urges landowners to walk their properties looking for signs of Graham.
Thursday, September 18: Police release the witness’s description of the person seen talking to Graham: A heavyset black man in his 20s or 30s, with a goatee and a closely shaved head. The city announces it’s joining local businesses and individuals in offering a $50,000 total reward for information “leading to the cause of her disappearance.” Hundreds of UVA students gather at the UVA Amphitheater at 9pm for a candlelight vigil.
Friday, September 19: Early in the morning, police execute search warrants on an apartment on Hessian Hills Way in Albemarle, spending hours searching a burnt-orange Chrysler and an apartment, but making no arrests. At 5pm, Longo holds a second press conference, where he describes the car’s owner, who lives in the apartment, as a person of interest in the case. He turns out to be the man visible in the Sal’s footage—a man with dreadlocks, not a close-shaved head, as the witness remembered. Police say they believe Graham may have left downtown in his car after visiting Tempo.
Police outside Jesse Matthew’s Hessian Hills apartment on Friday, September 19. Photo: Max March
Saturday, September 20: More than 1,000 volunteers gather at JPJ Arena and board buses to join local searches for Graham organized by the Virginia Department of Emergency Management. The person of interest is named by media as Jesse Matthew, a 32-year-old lifelong Charlottesville area resident.
Sunday, September 21: Longo holds a third press conference, announcing that Matthew came to police the day before and asked for a lawyer, then left the department, speeding away from and losing the police who were following him. Police say a warrant has been issued for his arrest on misdemeanor reckless driving charges. Graham’s parents speak publicly for the first time, pleading for information that could lead to her.
Hannah Graham’s parents, Joe and Susan Graham, at a press conference on Sunday, September 21. Photo: Max March
Monday, September 22: New details emerge about Matthew, whom police say is still at large: He works as an operating room technician at UVA, and is a former Charlottesville cab driver. A wanted person poster is released with information about the car he is believed to be driving, a light blue Nissan Sentra. Police return to his now-vacant apartment and take away more evidence.
Tuesday, September 23: Police hold an evening press conference to announce that they’ve charged Matthew with abduction with intent to defile in connection with Hannah Graham’s disappearance. Chief Longo won’t speak to what specific evidence gave them probable cause to make the arrest, but says state and federal resources are now focused on finding Matthew, who remains at large. And he says, the search continues for Hannah, “even as we speak.”
Sickeningly familiar
For any parent, the idea of a child gone missing is an unimaginable horror, and for Gil and Dan Harrington, the disappearance of Hannah Graham and the subsequent national media firestorm her case has stirred is the grimmest deja vu. Nearly five years ago, the Harringtons’ then-20-year-old daughter Morgan vanished after leaving a Metallica concert at the John Paul Jones Arena and being denied reentry. The Virginia Tech student’s remains were found three months later in a cow pasture in southern Albemarle County.
Since Morgan’s death, the Harringtons have become activists, pushing for campus safety legislation and founding the nonprofit Help Save the Next Girl. They have repeatedly warned that their daughter’s killer is still at large, and have expressed fear that he would not be caught before another woman died. But despite certain obvious similarities in Morgan and Hannah’s cases—both young women found themselves alone and possibly lost on the city streets of Charlottesville after dark before they vanished—Gil Harrington warns against trying to link Hannah’s case to Morgan’s or any other until more information is available.
“What’s important is finding Hannah,” she said. “The search is critical, in the acute phase, and we have the chance of a better outcome than we had in Morgan’s case. Let’s make it happen.”
Dan and Gil Harrington. File photo
The community has rallied, with 1,200 people participating in a weekend search that covered 85 percent of Charlottesville. Harrington says she’s heartened both by the outpouring of support she’s seen and also by the police response to the case.
“I’m really impressed by the passion and compassion that Chief Longo has shown us in the last two press conferences,” she said. “He’s making the community aware that they have some responsibility to do everything they can to find this young woman. I like that he enlisted everybody.”
Harrington said she and Dan have reached out to the Graham family through police to offer support, and they have stood in the background at recent press conferences. Gil Harrington was in Charlottesville again on Monday, September 22, at the Copeley Road Bridge where Morgan was last seen on October 17, 2009, and where a plaque memorializes her.
“It was a visceral need. I couldn’t stop myself from coming,” said Harrington. “It may be silly, but anointing this bridge is kind of my way of shouting from the rooftop. I want to find Hannah Graham, and I want everyone in this community to know that this has happened and to bring her back from the limbo of the missing.”
Anxiety on Grounds
UVA students played a key role in spreading the early word of Graham’s disappearance via Facebook and Twitter, and last Thursday night, thousands of them gathered with faculty and other community members at the UVA Amphitheater for a vigil for Graham—so many that the undergraduate organizers ran out of candles. On a stage was a Union Jack and a propped-up pair of skis, a nod to Graham’s country of birth and her favorite extracurricular activity. The night ended with UVA a capella group The Hullabahoos singing Edwin McCain’s “I’ll Be.”
Students at a Thursday, September 18 vigil for Hannah Graham at the UVA Amphitheater. Photo: Chris Pecoraro
The event was hopeful, but the atmosphere on Grounds has been tense. Many students said that as details have come out, they’ve started reevaluating their own behavior as they field calls from worried parents watching the Graham story unfold from afar. Many women in particular said they were changing their habits out of fear.
“We agreed to buddy up when walking home,” said 19-year-old second-year Meredith Lawrence last week. “We have started carpooling to the library because we do not feel safe anymore.”
Some are paying closer attention to the level of security at their off-campus apartment complexes. Lawrence, like others, said she’s now hyper-aware of her surroundings, even in and around the place she calls home. She lives on the first floor of a building next to the one where Graham lived.
“My roommates and I do not feel safe at all,” she said. Entry to her building is supposed to require a key fob, but people often prop the door open with a rock, especially on weekends, so they don’t have to carry the fobs with them. “When that’s the case, literally anyone could come in,” Lawrence said.
Others said it’s the city beyond the UVA-centric Corner that has them acting cautious—and wondering how their fellow student ended up so far from familiar territory.
“Directly around my apartment building, I feel safe,” said fourth-year Allison Lank, “but if I were walking alone towards Preston and McGrady’s…I would not feel quite as safe.”
“I think we forget UVA is not all of Charlottesville,” said one male student who asked to remain anonymous—not an uncommon request for reporters to hear as the story of Graham’s disappearance went international last week, drawing more news outlets to the on-edge campus. It’s a story that’s changing the way those at the school see their town, he said when stopped on his way to class on the Beta Bridge, where one wall is painted pale blue with “Bring Hannah Home” in green script. “We are not safe just because we are students here and live here,” he said.
UVA’s administration has acknowledged the effect of the disappearance of one of the University’s own on the school and students. Vice President and Chief Student Affairs Officer Patricia Lampkin addressed parents in a letter last week, encouraging them to talk to their kids, stress personal safety and counseling, and get their own support. President Sullivan has issued several statements of her own, and addressed the crowd at the Amphitheater last week, calling on people to hold onto hope that Graham will make it home safely.
“To be concerned and to be hopeful is not a contradiction,” she said. “We hold these two feelings side by side in our hearts, and they unite us in our support for Hannah and her family.”
But the longer the school community goes without news of their classmate, the harder it is for some. “This is my greatest fear coming true,” said another student, a female who also asked not to be named. “That a girl, like me, just disappears into the night.”—Courteney Stuart, Graelyn Brashear, and Nicolette Gendron
A still from video surveillance taken from Sal's Caffe Italia on the Downtown Mall shows Hannah Graham walking at 1:06am on Saturday, September 13, minutes before she vanished.
In 2007, Charlottesville Police Chief Tim Longo wanted to put 30 security cameras on the Downtown Mall, raising concerns from civil libertarians about government surveillance and from City Council about cost. Seven years later, leads in the search for missing UVA student Hannah Graham have come from private surveillance cameras, and Longo had an I-told-you-so moment at a September 17 press conference.
“How long have I been saying that video surveillance is huge in the retrospective investigation of crime?” queried an at-times visibly frustrated Longo. “Thank God for the merchants. Thank God for the people who have taken it upon themselves to equip their own property, and look how beneficial it’s been in this case.”
Sal’s Caffe Italia on the Mall has one of the cameras that picked up Graham as she headed east in the early morning hours of September 13. Jennifer Finazzo-Schneider, whose family owns Sal’s, said she supported Longo, and last year decided it was time for the restaurant to install its own camera. “They’re very inexpensive now,” she said. “We have a lot of young girls who work here. Safety should be the number-one concern.”
They initially checked the video September 16 and noticed nothing, but once Graham’s timeline became more complete, “We slowed it down, and there she was,” she said.
Finazzo-Schneider holds no truck with civil libertarians worried about privacy. “Once you step outside your home, you’re in the public view and people should get over it,” she said. She’d like to see cameras on the Mall, side streets, and Water and Market streets—although she stresses that the Downtown Mall is much safer than when her family opened Sal’s in 1985.
Surveillance cameras could give people a false sense of security, she acknowledged. “But in this case, it could have made a difference four days ago,” she said. “There are clues now. Maybe we can find and trace who did this. With Morgan Harrington, she stepped outside JPJ Arena and vanished.”
Still, others remain concerned about government-installed cameras in public places, calling it a slippery slope. “Studies show surveillance cameras don’t necessarily deter crime,” said Jeramie Scott with the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, DC.
He cautioned that if cameras are installed, police should be transparent about how long recorded information is retained, how it would be shared, and what technology is being used, such as license plate readers or facial recognition. The public should be aware and be able to voice concerns before cameras are installed, Scott said, and there should be clear guidelines for their use.
Surveillance cameras in public can easily be used for the mass surveillance of those exercising their First Amendment rights, such as during protests, he said. And as for those who say safety is more important than privacy concerns, responded Scott, “I’d rather be safe and protect our privacy and civil liberties.”
The Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville called for cameras on the Mall in 2010. When asked about whether the group would bring the issue before City Council again, executive director Bob Stroh was adamant that it wasn’t the time. “We’re not touching this issue until we find Hannah,” he said. “That is not a topic for discussion.”
Vice Mayor Dede Smith said City Council has discussed the issue in the past and asked for additional information. “It’s not an easy question at all,” she said. “There are a lot of public concerns historically about surveillance cameras and how they might be misused. That’s why we need a calm discussion and not a reactionary one.”
And until Graham is found, she agreed such discussions probably are premature. “We’re all very concerned. It’s very upsetting.”
Hannah Graham’s disappearance has dragged the cases of other missing women back into the public eye.
Hannah Graham’s disappearance has dragged other local missing persons cases, abductions, and murders back into the public eye—particularly those of Nelson County teen Alexis Murphy, whose body is still missing even as her convicted murderer, Randy Allen Taylor, sits in jail, and Morgan Harrington, whose remains were found in Albemarle in 2010 three months after she vanished after leaving a Charlottesville concert.
But Virginia’s list of missing women is long, and while much attention has been given to the fact that several disappearances have taken place along the Route 29 corridor in recent years, a closer look shows that nearly every corner of the Commonwealth has its share of unsolved cases. The following reverse-chronological list is not a comprehensive one; the Virginia State Police’s online missing persons database includes more than 40 adults and upwards of 280 children. Here, we’ve gathered information on many of the women from that database considered endangered or involuntary missing persons. Some have been gone for decades, and while the flurry of news coverage of their disappearances has largely stopped, their families are still waiting for answers—just like Hannah Graham’s.
Dashad “Sage” Smith
Age at time of disappearance: 19
Missing since: November 20, 2012
Missing from: Charlottesville
Smith was last seen on West Main Street. Dashad, who identified as transgender and also went by Sage, was allegedly going to meet Erik McFadden, who spoke with police once, then disappeared.
Heather Hodges
Age at time of disappearance: 22
Missing since: April 9, 2012
Missing from: Rocky Mount
The mother of a 2-year-old, Hodges was last seen by her boyfriend Paul Jordan. Jordan told police he left their home around 10:30pm to get Hodges a late-night snack, and when he came home she was gone.
Dana Lynn Turner
Age at time of disappearance: 43
Missing since: September 22, 2011
Missing from: Chesapeake
Turner told her family she was going to North Carolina for a job, and was never heard from again. Gene Morris, one of the last people to see her, was arrested for unrelated crimes and committed suicide in prison after Turner’s belongings and blood with her DNA were found in his home.
Bethany Anne Decker
Age at time of disappearance: 21
Missing since: January 29, 2011
Missing from: Loudoun County
Believed to be about five months pregnant at the time of her disappearance, the George Mason University student was reportedly last seen by a man she was living with, Ronald Roldan, at home on January 29. Her husband Emile Decker left for a tour of duty in Afghanistan on February 2. Investigators were unclear as to whose child Decker was carrying when she disappeared.
Samantha Ann Clarke
Age at time of disappearance: 19
Missing since: September 13, 2010
Missing from: Orange County
Clarke told her younger brother she was going out at night, and never came home. Randy Allen Taylor—who was later convicted of the murder of missing teen Alexis Murphy—was the last person to have contact with Clarke, but was never charged.
Joan Renee Cook
Age at time of disappearance: 45
Missing since: January 24, 2010
Missing from: Roanoke County
The mother of a 7-year-old at the time, Cook was last seen by her husband around 11pm when she left home on foot. A text message hours later revealed that she was about six miles away near Salem’s third exit on I-81, heading south.
Hattie Gertrude Brown
Age at time of disappearance: 48
Missing since: May 16, 2009
Missing from: Halifax County
A retired Army sergeant, Brown disappeared after dropping her nephew off at a party. Her nephew was named as a suspect, but was never charged with kidnapping or murder.
Margaret Gail Stamper White
Age at time of disappearance: 35
Missing since: May 13, 2008
Missing from: Augusta
White’s former boyfriend Charles Melvin Spencer said she was home one night when he went to bed, and gone the next morning. Police named Spencer a suspect in the five-years-earlier disappearance and murder of his wife, Joann Spencer, in 2003, but he was never charged. In 2013 he was charged with attempted murder of his then-girlfriend, and spent a year in jail. UPDATE: According to a September 24 NewsLeader report, the case began to collapse in the spring when a judge granted a motion to suppress evidence, and the victim was reluctant to testify. On Tuesday, September 23, 2014, Spencer pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault, and was given 12 months in jail with 11 months suspended. He had already been in jail for more than a year, and was released from the Middle River Regional Jail on Tuesday.
Linda Lunsford
Age at time of disappearance: 38
Missing since: December 26, 1996
Missing from: Chesterfield County
The Walmart employee was last seen with her former boyfriend and co-worker at McDonald’s in Village Marketplace shopping center. Media reports say her former boyfriend’s kids saw her at their house the day she disappeared.
Cassandra Lee Hailey
Age at time of disappearance: 18
Missing since: May 16, 1988
Missing from: Newport News
The college freshman was last seen with Richard Call, who picked her up that day for their first date. Call’s vehicle was found abandoned on the Colonial Parkway, full of the couple’s belongings, including cash and clothing. Three other couple’ bodies and abandoned cars full of possessions were found along the Colonial Parkway between 1986 and 1989, but Hailey and Call’s bodies were never found.
Rebecca Ann Crist
Age at time of disappearance: 25
Missing since: May 3, 1988
Missing from: Staunton
Crist received a mysterious phone call at home, asked her sister to babysit her son, then left and never returned. Media reports say that phone records from that day are not available.
Virginia Welch
Age at time of disappearance: 22
Missing since: July 12, 1982
Missing from: Roanoke
Welch was known to be associated with biker gangs and involved with drugs, and her family reported her missing after weeks of not hearing from her. Media reports say police didn’t have many leads on people to interview, but Welch’s family was always suspicious of her male roommate, whom they say changed his story multiple times.
