Encouraging dogs and cats to share space is simple with close supervision and private feline retreats. File photo.
Sure, we’ve got Coke versus Pepsi, Yankees versus Red Sox, and Apple versus Android. But do any of these really hold a candle to the age-old rivalry between cats and dogs? If their depiction in pop culture is any indication, they’ve been squaring off since the dawn of time.
I’m always a bit envious when clients pull out their phones and show me pictures of their cats and dogs cuddled together in interspecies bliss. Did I raise my animals wrong? In my home, it’s more of a cautious tolerance, broken any time she gets sick of his dopey exuberance and issues a swift swat to the snout (claws tucked in, mercifully).
So maybe they won’t all be best friends. But it’s usually not that hard to get cats and dogs living in relative harmony. And maybe this doesn’t come as a surprise, but the trick mostly revolves around letting the cat set the pace.
Even the most gregarious cats need their downtime, and they need space to get away when canine chaos has become too much to bear. Especially during the initial introductions, it’s important to make sure that cats have an easy path to solitude when they need it. Strategically placed baby gates can grant your cat access to private rooms while stopping the dog, and tall structures like carpeted towers can let cats survey their kingdoms while escaping the drooling rabble below (just make sure they don’t feel trapped up there). I’ve even seen people install indoor cat doors to keep the peace. These private areas are the best places to keep things like food and litter boxes, and probably some selection of toys and bedding.
Those early interactions should always be under direct supervision, especially in the first few weeks. This tends to be easier if the dog is still a puppy (what better time to ingrain the notion that cats are not indoor squirrels?), but even adult dogs are usually able to learn that the family cat is special among tiny mammals. These introductions should be slow, and dogs should be safely on-leash until they are trustworthy. For many dogs, the instinct to chase is not easily suppressed, and no cat should be made to feel like prey in her own home. Getting dogs tired before each session can also help reduce the odds of a dust-up. And at any point in the process, if the cat feels it’s time to go somewhere else, don’t interfere. Cats need to be able to escape when they want, and forcing things will only build more fear and confusion. This can take a long time for many animals—sometimes months.
Are there instances where dogs and cats just won’t sort out their differences? Of course, but they are happily few and far between. In those rare cases, it may be best to find a new home for someone—it’s sad, but not as sad as coming home to a preventable tragedy. Luckily, for most cats and dogs, sharing a home turns out not to be so difficult after all.
Dr. Mike Fietz is a small animal veterinarian at Georgetown Veterinary Hospital.He received his veterinary degree from Cornell University in 2003 and has lived in Charlottesville since.
Look, we get it. Cracking open that 2015 calendar gives rise to all manner of inspiration—get fit for bathing suit season! Read more books to shine in idle party chit-chat! Bone up on your ballroom skills before your cousin’s autumn wedding! Then suddenly it’s February and, not only have your dancing shoes collected a fine layer of dust, but the only new skill you’ve acquired is figuring out how to get a crispier bread on your nightly grilled cheese (hint: It’s mayonnaise!). We’re here to help, with 30 resolutions and advice from local experts.
Sure, you could continue to think it’s clever to resolve to not make any resolutions at all (O.K., we do too), but we’ve made it easy to do everything from reading more and drinking less to getting a new job and, of course, losing those last 10 pounds. Start by resolving not to make excuses, then get started.
By Graelyn Brashear, Danielle Bricker, Elizabeth Derby, Laura Ingles, Tami Keaveny, Susan Sorensen, Courteney Stuart and Caite White
Love Canon’s NYE audience can expect fan favorites like ZZ Top’s “Legs,” Toto’s “Africa” and Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone,” plus some retro sounding originals sprinkled into the set. Publicity photo.
Going out on New Year’s Eve can feel like an obligation. You don’t want to be on your couch when the clock strikes midnight, so you grab a bar of soap, put on clothes that don’t have any holes and hand your money to whatever establishment has the least offensive-sounding, all-inclusive night out.
We can’t guarantee that this list of NYE events will ensure you have the best time of your life ringing in 2015’s first hangover. But at least you’ll know what you’re getting into.
The Headliner
On the eve of 2015, Love Canon, the raddest ’80s cover band to call Charlottesville home, will take the stage after the Richmond-based 10-piece No BS! Brass Band. Grits and Gravy will then take the Southern Café and Music Hall stage, rounding out a bill that’s the surest thing on NYE this year.
Love Canon made its name by remixing ’80s tunes with a bluegrass bent. Dobro player Jay Starling said the band members pick their favorite tracks and flesh out arrangements together.
“Some of these tunes have kind of become our own,” Starling said. “The thing we’re doing could easily be poorly done, but I think we put the time and effort into it to make it good.”
Starling said the band’s set at the Jeff will focus on the rearrangements that have made them locally famous, but the band will also “pepper” the set with originals.
Love Canon has certainly earned the right to dabble in originals. Frontman Jesse Harper has had considerable solo success, putting him onstage with the likes of David Grisman, Josh Ritter and Jason Mraz. “There’s a lot of talent in the band,” Starling said. “Adam, with his jazz background, can whip up a tune in next to no time.” Banjo player Adam Larrabee, mandolin maestro Andy Thacker, bassist Darrell Muller and fiddler Nate Leath complete the six-piece.
The Rap Show
Main Street Annex’s Jeyon Falsini has hinted that big things are coming for his mid-size music space in 2015, but for NYE, he’ll turn to his current bailiwick and throw down a hip-hop dance party. Host Blacko the Rapper will kick things off at 10pm and introduce three or four deejays led by locals DJ Rush Hour and DJ Flatline and Northern Virginia’s DJ Marvelous. Falsini said when Flatline and Marvelous “get together they spin a lot of ’90s and throwback tunes.”
The Crowd Pleaser
It’s not a standalone NYE event, but worth mentioning is First Night Virginia, billed as a “community celebration of the arts.” Charlottesville began featuring family-friendly New Year’s Eve events on and around the Downtown Mall in 1982, making C’ville’s First Night the second oldest event of its type in the country. This year’s festivities will include music of all types, historical reenactments, comedy, film and theater.
The Traditional
If you’re fixated on the old school dinner and dancing NYE, check out Commonwealth Restaurant and Skybar. Three prix fixe dinner seatings will be followed by a countdown party hosted by DJ Stroud until 2am. Party favors and a champagne toast will be provided.
The Untraditional
Bar scene newcomer the Tin Whistle Irish Pub has a banger to throw in the works with its All Irish New Year’s Eve starting at 10pm. The event will feature the restaurant’s usual focus on Irish food and drink, and DJ Nigel and For Stars will fill the speakers with Irish bands like the Pogues, U2 and the Cranberries. Want an excuse to start the excess early? The clock strikes midnight in Ireland at 7pm.
(Left to right) Charlottesville Police Chief Tim Longo,
UVA Associate Dean Nicole Eramo, and Nelson County residents at a public meeting with Dominion in October. Photos: Rammelkamp Foto; Dan Addison, UVA University Communications; Graelyn Brashear
This year, Charlottesville’s local news was national news. Below, we take a look the people behind the biggest headlines of 2014 —and explain why you should be watching them in the months to come.
No. 1: Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo
If local residents weren’t able to recognize Tim Longo by sight at the beginning of this year, chances are good they can now. So can people around the country.
When murdered UVA second-year Hannah Graham’s disappearance made national news, the city police chief’s impassioned press conferences left a lasting impression. He appeared at an emergency meeting of the University’s Board of Visitors in the wake of an explosive Rolling Stone story on campus rape to describe the department’s response to allegations of gang rape. He again stood in front of cameras earlier this month to describe the “evil, senseless and brutal” murders of a mother and daughter in their Rugby Avenue home.
“It’s a tough job to be a police officer anywhere in America today,” said Longo in a recent interview in his downtown office. Tragedy, horror and the national spotlight followed on the heels of a nationwide firestorm of anger at police sparked by the shooting death of unarmed teen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. That incident has reignited frustrations over police-community relations here in the city.
Longo said he’s trying to address those frustrations as a difficult year winds down. He’s met several times with local pastors and community leaders, and they agree on several things, he said: The department needs to improve communication between police and the public, increase minority representation on the force and up capacity in order to do more foot-patrol community policing.
He insists it’s not just talk. He has asked the city for 20 new officers and two more supervisors over the next three years. He’s pledged to produce quarterly updates for public perusal on stop-and-frisk and use of force incidents, and to reform the citizen complaint process. A contract is pending for police body cameras for the entire force. And he’s working with those same pastors and others to develop a series of workshops where residents will be able to learn about —and question—police practices.
Some of the criticism directed at the chief and the department in the last year demonstrates the fine line police have to walk. As the Hannah Graham disappearance unfolded on the national news, Longo made the controversial decision to attach a name to a person of interest—Jesse Leroy Matthew, Jr.—before an arrest warrant was ever issued. Family and friends of another missing person, Dashad Sage Smith, now gone two years, blasted police for not doing enough to go after Erik McFadden, a person of interest in that case who vanished during the initial investigation.
But when it comes to an active investigation, “you don’t know what I know,” he said bluntly. “If I’m trying to get a result, the message is important. I formulate that message based on the information I have. I’m smart enough to know where that line is.”
The criticism weighs heavily on him, said Longo. He watched scores of angry residents shout demands for reform at a City Council meeting on December 15 as it was livestreamed, he said, and it didn’t feel good.
And he worries about the cumulative impact of a year of horrors on his force. Many of the patrol officers who are the first on the scene when things go wrong are very young, just starting out in their careers, and they’ve seen terrible things this year.
“We have our public face, our composed face, which is necessary when we’re going about our work at a crime scene,” he said, “but when these doors close, we’re just as human as anyone else. We cry, we get frustrated, we get angry, we ask why.”
He said he hopes people recognize the work those officers do, and that they join the conversation about policing practices that he promises will continue.
What else does he want? “I’m hoping for a better year,” he said.
Runner up: UVA Associate Dean Nicole Eramo
Nicole Eramo is beloved by the survivors she’s walked through the aftermath of sexual assault at the University of Virginia since she took the job in 2006. In April, she was honored with the Z Society’s highest award for her work. By November, following the notorious Rolling Stone article about an alleged gang rape at a fraternity, angry mobs were calling for her head—or at least her job.
Though the story has now been largely discredited, many readers’ eyes popped when they learned that 183 students had been expelled from UVA for Honor Code violations since 1998, but none had been kicked out for rape in that same period.
As chair of the Sexual Misconduct Board, Eramo already was navigating treacherous shoals with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights investigation of UVA for possible Title IX violations.
But that was nothing compared to the maelstrom that followed the Rolling Stone article, in which Eramo, a UVA grad herself, was portrayed as a University tool who didn’t encourage students to report their assaults to police. Within days of the story, the Cavalier Daily published an outpouring of support for Eramo from students and colleagues, including Jackie, who wrote, “I do not want to go to the University of Virginia if she is not a resource for students in need of help in the aftermath of sexual violence.”
With the federally mandated policy in the crosshairs and legislators proposing that all sexual assaults be reported to police, the future is unclear for how campus rape will be handled. While Eramo declined to be interviewed for this story, in September she told WUVA, “I am afraid if we only have a single sanction, that will hurt our reporting for cases of sexual misconduct. I think you would be surprised at the number of survivors I’ve worked with who don’t even want to file a complaint.”
In November, the Board of Visitors issued a statement condemning sexual assault and vowing to instill a culture of reporting rape. We suspect that whatever happens, Eramo will still be there.
Runner up:Residents of Nelson County
In May, one of the country’s largest energy providers announced its intent to build a 550-mile natural gas pipeline through West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina. The timeline for the $5 billion project is astonishingly short: Dominion plans to have the whole thing built and online by the end of 2018.
But many Nelson County residents are doing everything they can to make sure that doesn’t happen.
It’s safe to assume that not everybody in the rural county is dead set against the 42″ pipe cutting through their region. But the number who are is significant. About 70 percent of Nelson residents approached by Dominion have refused to grant access even for those preliminary surveys—significantly more than in any of the 11 other Virginia counties on the route. A handful have beat the company to the punch and sued, claiming Dominion violated legally mandated survey notification procedures.
We’ll see soon enough how loud their protests will get: Dominion has started the federal approval process for the project, and will host a series of open houses in affected communities next month.—Graelyn Brashear and Lisa Provence
Devils Backbone Brewmaster Jason Oliver is helping oversee the construction of a new 120-barrel brew house at the brewery’s Lexington Outpost. Photo: Jon-Phillip Sheridan.
Jason Oliver wanted to make Devils Backbone a “brewer’s brewery.” That might seem like a terrible idea. Why would you want to run a brewery that appeals to such a small audience?
But in the process of running a brewery that appeals to people like him, Oliver has unwittingly—or perhaps wittingly—turned DB into a place that has something for just about everyone. Prefer a light beer that’ll remind you of your favorite domestic macrobrew? Gold Leaf Lager’s your beer. Maybe you’re a novice craft beer drinker and enjoy a Sam Adams Boston Lager now and again. DB has its Vienna Lager in bottles year round. Consider yourself a full-fledged beer geek? There’s the celebrated Schwartz Bier, the elusive Sixteen Point double IPA, the Kilt Flasher Scotch ale, the list goes on.
DB’s extensive beer list has resulted in unqualified success for Oliver and company owners Steve and Heidi Crandall. The brewery has been one of the most decorated contestants at the Great American Beer Festival over the past three years, and it’s continuously expanded, last year overtaking Starr Hill as the largest craft brewery in Virginia. Just about the only thing DB hasn’t done to this point is produce the super exclusive, large-format bottled, often barrel-aged, brews that draw national attention to the likes of Richmond’s Hardywood Park Craft Brewery and its Gingerbread Stout variants. But even that’s in the process of changing, as DB is building a new 120-barrel brew house at its Lexington Outpost. The expansion will not only allow the brewery to keep meeting demand for its core products, but it’ll allow Oliver to release more experimental brews in the future.
“For the über beer geek, perhaps we don’t have the flashiest offerings out there, but we’re gearing up to do that,” Oliver said. “We’re going to have more flexibility soon that we don’t have right now because we got to make the ‘donuts,’ you know?”
Just how good are Oliver’s donuts, the core beers that pay the bills? The Brewers Association seems to think they’re frickin’ Spudnuts-good. For three straight years, the association has named Devils Backbone the best brewery in the nation for its size class, which has ticked up every year. In 2012, DB won Very Small Brewing Company and Very Small Brewing Company Brewer of the Year at the Brewers Association’s annual Great American Beer Festival. The year after that, Oliver and crew took home Small Brewing Company and Small Brewing Company Brewer of the Year. This year’s title was for Mid-Size Brewing Company and Mid-Size Brewing Company Brewer of the Year.
What does all that mean exactly? Chris Swersey, a Brewers Association employee who’s the competition manager at the Great American Beer Festival, said it’s pretty simple. Breweries get three points for each of their beers that earn a gold medal in each style category, two points for silver and one point for bronze. The brewery with the most points wins best brewery in its size range. This year, DB earned three points from its Schwartz Bier, two points each for its Old Virginia Dark Lager and Turbo Cougar and one point for its Alt Bier, making it the clear winner among mid-size brewers, which make somewhere in the extremely wide range of 15,000-6,000,000 barrels per year. (If there had been a tie, the winner would have been the beer maker with the most gold medals.)
Swersey warned against comparing the Brewer of the Year to the companies it bested, but for some context, other breweries in the same size range as DB this year include Stone, Dogfish Head, Sierra Nevada and the Boston Beer Company (Sam Adams). DB’s gold medal Schwartz Bier bested the popular Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery out of Farmville, North Carolina, which won bronze in the category.
“They’ve done well over a period of time, and that is a testament to consistently great quality,” Swersey said. “They make beers that really speak to a lot of different people.”
Oliver said the ability to speak to many comes from knowing the basics. Before you start experimenting with flavors, you have to know how to produce a great base beer, he said. Champion Brewing Company owner Hunter Smith, who studied brewing under Oliver at Piedmont Virginia Community College many years ago, said that was his main take away from the man he considers his beer making mentor.
“I learned a lot about respecting the brewing process,” said Smith, who in practice has a penchant for going for bold, experimental flavors. “As strange as it may sound coming from me, [he taught me] to focus on understanding the basics before you go messing around with all kinds of bizarre things.”
The Black Candle documents the history of the Kwanzaa holiday from its beginnings during the mid-’60s Black Power Movement to present day traditions. Photo courtesy of Asante Filmworx.
The award-winning Kwanzaa documentary, The Black Candle, will be screened as part of the annual heritage celebration. The film, narrated by poet Maya Angelou, tells the history of Kwanzaa and includes well-known sports, music and arts leaders who explore the African-American experience as it relates to seven founding principles (unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith) that continue to be relevant today. A discussion follows the film.
Saturday 12/27. Free, 3pm. Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, 233 Fourth St., NW. 260-8720.
Baylor Fooks (left) and Jeff Carnejos, co-founders of Blue Ridge InternetWorks. Photos courtesy BRI
Finally, a little good news for Charlottesville in the national media: The city made tech and financial headlines last week when mobile company Ting announced it was buying a controlling share in locally owned Blue Ridge InternetWorks as part of a plan to expand a lightning-fast fiber optic cable network here.
Ting entered the wireless mobile market in 2012, when Toronto-based parent company Tucows launched it as a customer service-centric, no-annual-contract-required alternative to big mobile providers.
Ting CEO Elliot Noss said last week that his company wanted to make a similarly disruptive entrée into the wired cable Internet market by building fiber optic networks able to provide gigabit-per-second speeds, just like Google is doing in Kansas City, Kansas and other urban areas out West, and Verizon has done in more densely populated parts of the East Coast. The difference is that Ting is aiming smaller than the telecom giants.
“We have the opportunity to earn great returns on fiber investment in markets that are too small for them and might otherwise be left behind,” Noss said in a conference call with investors and media on December 16.
They’re starting with Charlottesville.
The decision had a lot to do with the fact that BRI has already started building the necessary infrastructure here, Noss said in a follow-up interview, and with a certain philosophical chemistry that was evident as soon as a third-party consultant introduced the heads of the two companies over the summer.
“We think they’re good entrepreneurs, and we all sort of see the future the same way,” said Noss of BRI co-founders Baylor Fooks and Jeff Cornejo. In addition, “it’s the right business opportunity, in that there’s 35 miles of fiber already in the network.”
Fooks said the fiber network Ting will make possible here is best described as transformative: “You don’t realize what you’re going to be able to do with it until you get it,” he said.
When it comes to Internet speeds, “people are used to talking in terms of megabits per second,” Fooks said. Most cable customers in Charlottesville see slower-than-average speeds compared to the rest of the state, he said—between 20 and 30 megs, with upload speeds that are inevitably more sluggish than those for downloading. “Gigabit is 1,000 megs, downstream and upstream.”
Noss and Fooks did not reveal the financial details of the deal that landed Ting a 70 percent stake in BRI, and they’re not providing specific numbers for how quickly they plan to build. But Fooks said with Ting pumping capital into the fiber network, the company will be able to connect homes at 20 to 30 times its current rate—and it will be hiring.
“It’s great news for BRI and BRI’s staff,” said Fooks. “We’ve been competing in a capital-intensive market for a lot of years, and this is just a huge breakthrough for us.”
Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, Gillian Robespierre's Obvious Child and Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer all fall among 2014's best underrated films. Photos courtesy of Fox Searchlight and Rooks Nest Entertainment.
Under normal circumstances, assembling a list of a given year’s best films is a simple matter of keeping score as you go, adding and removing movies as the months roll on, knowing full well that your carefully assembled rankings will probably just get blown to hell in the fall when the big studios start rolling out their prestige flicks. This method usually makes for a well balanced list of high-profile and dark horses while whittling out the ones that are worse in retrospect.
But in 2014, the rush of high quality flicks never came to offset the outsider picks. Unlike 2013’s slate of award season smashes (The Wolf of Wall Street, 12 Years a Slave, Her), this year’s Oscar contenders have been alternately limp (The Judge), well-meaning but flawed (Rosewater), existential overkill (Interstellar), uninspired (Big Eyes) or performance-driven but otherwise unremarkable (The Theory of Everything).
So without any frontrunner competing for ad and print space, there’s more room for newcomers, genre flicks, experimental fare and topical films. The following movies stood out on this critic’s end of year list.
Genre
After nearly being buried by The Weinstein Company because director Bong Joon-ho (The Host) and producer Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) refused to massacre the film in edits, Snowpiercer benefited from a much- deserved word-of-mouth campaign. Defying labels and expectations, the film contains science fiction without any expository baggage, action without any idiotic heroics and is political without being didactic. It might not be your cup of tea, but it is certainly one of the year’s most perfectly realized visions.
Two of the year’s greatest achievements in genre filmmaking are Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (sci-fi) and Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (horror), both of which partially explore the difficulties women face in maintaining their independence against threats both corporeal and existential. Each has a bold and unique vision with breathtaking visuals and gripping terror that you’ll need to see to believe.
Newcomers
Contributing to The Babadook’s impressiveness is the fact that it is writer-director Kent’s feature debut, a massive feat given how tonally, visually and structurally sound it feels. The horror never gets in the way of the drama, there are no cheap scares or obvious setups, and it is legitimately terrifying in both style and narrative. Look for great things from her.
Proving that Hollywood’s lack of trust in women is self-defeating, another female newcomer—Gillian Robespierre—had her massive break in 2014 with Obvious Child starring comedian Jenny Slate. Though perhaps known among closed-minded crowds as the “abortion comedy,” Obvious Child is an intelligent and hilarious subversion of romantic comedies that explores how its lead character’s on-stage honesty is challenged by off-stage reality.
Experimental
After filming every summer for 12 years, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was released in 2014. A first in nonfiction cinema history, audiences saw a young boy (Ellar Coltrane) grow up before their very eyes from age six to 18. Its boldness is matched by its coherence, and Boyhood is as revolutionary as it is just plain good.
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu is known primarily for dramas such as Babel and 21 Grams, but this year saw him plunge into playful territory with Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). There’s no shortage of gimmicks—a masked single take, stunt casting Michael Keaton as a washed-up actor best known for playing a superhero, flirtations with magical realism—but Iñárritu keeps things moving with humor and taste.
Political
The Academy’s race problem is well-documented in its history of preferring tales of white saviors over black self-empowerment. Fortunately, this year saw a film that actively confronts the self-congratulatory white liberal guilt that has dominated Hollywood for far too long. Selma tells the story of the voting rights marches in Mississippi, with moments that feel pulled straight from today’s front pages. It neither reduces Martin Luther King, Jr. to kitsch nor propels him to sainthood, depicting activism in progress as honestly as the film world has ever seen (and making Ava DuVernay the first black woman nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Director).
Citizenfour is a bit of astonishing documentary filmmaking, which sees director Laura Poitras thrust into the Edward Snowden affair after production had already begun. Describing the plot beyond this is pointless as so much about Snowden’s story is unprecedented, but it is as valuable a piece of political journalism as it is documentary artistry.
Rutherford Institute head John Whitehead demands that Greene County schools train staff so they don’t have to call police when a 4-year-old is unruly. Photo: Stephen Canty
Local civil rights organization founder John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute sent a stern letter to Andrea Whitmarsh, superintendent of Greene County Schools, about policies that allowed an out-of-control 4-year-old to be handcuffed, carted away by a Greene County sheriff’s deputy and shackled at the sheriff’s office October 16 until his mother, who was en route to Nathanael Greene Elementary School, could pick him up.
While the child was in police custody, Whitehead wrote in the letter, officers had him talk to an inmate to “scare straight” the preschooler, a charge Greene County Sheriff Steve Smith said is false. The child “was never around inmates,” said Smith.
“Rather than recognizing the imprudence of treating a young child like a hardened criminal, school officials and the sheriff’s office not only defended their actions but actually suspended [the child] from the pre-K program and instructed the mother to seek ‘homebound instruction’ for him,” wrote Whitehead.
Whitehead wants Greene schools to implement policies that make clear that handcuffing and shackling preschoolers is not O.K., train its staff to deal with unruly tots rather than call police, rescind the child’s suspension and remove the incident from his permanent record.
Sheriff Smith said he supports his deputy’s handling of the child, who had already assaulted three teachers and jumped off a wooden play kitchen at the school. The boy was shackled in the sheriff’s office because “he kept trying to run away,” said Smith, who added that when the boy’s mother came to pick him up, she gave the deputy who brought him in a hug. “I know it’s one of those things that don’t look good on the face of it,” said Smith, “but the bottom line is we have to protect the community.”
This updated and expanded story, which appeared in print Wednesday, January 7, includes reporting from a previous, shorter piece on the Sage Smith investigation that ran online on December 24. To read the original post, scroll down for the next page.
More than two years after Dashad Sage Smith* went missing, recently unsealed court documents offer information about the case that until now was unknown to the pressand public. The records, which include search warrant affidavits and court orders, detail Smith’s potentially contentious relationship with Erik McFadden, the last man Smith had phone contact with, and show the extent to which police tried to track down McFadden in the months that followed.
In a six-page document attached to a March 2013 search warrant affidavit, police make their case for gaining access to McFadden’s phone records and bank and e-mail accounts, laying out what they’d learned of his interactions with Smith and others before and after Smith, who is transgender and was 19 at the time, disappeared on November 20, 2012.
According to the documents and further explanation from Charlottesville Police Detective Sergeant James Mooney, Smith’s own phone records gave investigators their first clues.
Police were able to confirm the phone number associated with the last incoming call to Smith’s phone, the documents show, and Smith’s father, Dean Smith, posted the number on Facebook with a plea for help. Soon after, he was contacted by a man who said he recognized the number as belonging to Erik McFadden. The documents state the man told police in an interview he’d exchanged texts and e-mails with McFadden and met him for sex on multiple occasions, and that on November 21—the day after Smith went missing—McFadden had called the man asking him to delete McFadden’s contact information from his phone. He didn’t think much of it, the man told police, but became concerned when he saw Dean Smith’s Facebook post. The man said he told McFadden on November 23 he was talking to police, and he never heard from McFadden again.
Erik McFadden. Photo courtesy Charlottesville Police Department
The documents say phone records show McFadden also had an ongoing sexual relationship with Smith. The two had been communicating for several weeks leading up to Smith’s disappearance, and planned to meet the night of November 20 for sex.
“It’s pretty graphic sexual stuff,” Mooney said of their communications. “It was about money, too.”
They had met on Craigslist, said Mooney, and from their text messages, it appeared Smith had asked for and received some kind of payment from McFadden already. “The suggestion is blackmail,” Mooney said, though he added he couldn’t be sure from their back-and-forth if the exchanges added up to blackmail, prostitution or neither.
The police documents also introduce someone who has been critical to the investigation from the early days: McFadden’s girlfriend at the time, a UVA student who called police four days after Smith vanished to report she hadn’t heard from McFadden, who was staying at her 14th Street NW apartment while she was away with family for Thanksgiving. Once police told her about McFadden’s possible involvement in the Smith case and his sexual relationships with other people, she became a key link between McFadden and investigators. She turned over the belongings he left in her apartment, including his computer and clothes, according to the documents, and she initially encouraged McFadden to talk to investigators. He did so, briefly—that’s when he told a detective he had planned to meet with Smith near the Amtrak Station on West Main Street on November 20, but that he “got stood up.”
But then McFadden stopped talking to police, and never showed up for a planned meeting with a detective in Charlottesville. His girlfriend forwarded investigators an emotional e-mail McFadden sent her on November 30, which is reproduced in police documents, in which he provided a different account of the evening Smith went missing.
McFadden told her he “never did anything sexual with that guy and he was blackmailing me.” He goes on to say in the e-mail that Smith threatened to harm McFadden’s girlfriend, and that Smith had “a lot of enemies.” He and Smith met that night, he said, but some other people showed up and McFadden “kept walking not looking back.”
McFadden said in the e-mail he was “going somewhere out mid west” and told his girlfriend he was sorry for hurting her. “even ir [sic] we dont see each other again i wanted you to know i really really cared and loved you,” he wrote.
Police used McFadden’s differing statements and his sudden departure, paired with Smith’s disappearance and uncharacteristic silence, to make the case for gaining access to McFadden’s phone records, e-mail accounts, bank records and even his Twitter account.
“These facts when considered together present probable cause to believe that Dashad Smith has been abducted, is either being held against his own will or has met with harm,” reads the six-page attachment to the March 2013 search warrant. “It is reasonable to believe that Erik McFadden has knowledge of these circumstances and the previously requested searches will yield evidence of such.”
But those records didn’t advance the case any further, said Mooney. McFadden has surfaced a few times since, he said, sending e-mails to his girlfriend from Yahoo accounts he then abandoned. But Mooney said police are still treating Smith’s disappearance as a missing persons case, and don’t have enough evidence for an arrest.
“If we were to charge this guy, I don’t think we could get a conviction,” he said. “I don’t think it goes beyond a reasonable doubt for an abduction. There’s still a possibility [Smith] just went off on his own. Same with Erik McFadden. He could have just been running from his lifestyle.”
That explanation doesn’t satisfy Smith’s grandmother. As she faced her third Christmas without her grandchild, Lolita Smith said she was frustrated and angry that police haven’t charged McFadden with a crime.
“He was the last one that had contact with Sage, but he’s just a person of interest, and there’s nothing they can do about that?” Lolita said. “I don’t understand that. They pick people up for less than that all the time.”
She said she’s not sure what to think about the blackmail allegations.
“I’m not saying he didn’t do it, but I’m not going to say he did, either,” she said. “I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened.” But she doesn’t think it should have any impact on the urgency of the case.
Despite the efforts police made to look into McFadden, Lolita still feels they didn’t press hard enough in the investigation from the start.
“Don’t tell me there’s nothing y’all can do,” she said. “Y’all are the police.”
She can’t let go of a last sliver of hope that her grandchild is still alive. The two of them used to have a habit of catching up on the phone in the early hours of the morning, Lolita said. For months after Smith disappeared, Lolita would get several calls a week from a blocked number between 1 and 3am. She’d pick up and hear nothing.
“Either somebody was playing a very bad joke on me, or that was him letting me know, ‘Hey granny, I’m still around. Don’t give up on me,’” Lolita said. The calls stopped when she lost her old phone and got a new one with a new number.
She just wants closure now.
“If Sage has gone to be with our maker, then I need to know this,” Lolita said. “Just not knowing where my grandbaby’s at is killing me. It’s eating me alive.”
*Like most publications, C-VILLE refers to people by using the gender of their choice. In Smith’s case, we’ve had to rely on what others have told us, which has led to some ambiguity. Smith often presented as a female and used the name Sage. Police have used Smith’s legal name, Dashad, and referred to Smith as male throughout their investigation, while some of Smith’s friends use the name Sage. Smith’s family uses both names, but Lolita Smith has said she’d like people to refer to her grandchild as female. We’ve avoided pronouns where possible, and left peoples’ quotes intact.
