Marking one month since their 18-year-old daughter Hannah Graham disappeared after last being seen on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall, Susan and John Graham issued another statement on Monday expressing gratitude for the extensive search effort and pleading for anyone with information in the case to share what they know.
“It is heart-breaking for us that the person or persons who know where Hannah is have not come forward with that information,” they wrote. “It is within their power both to end this nightmare for all, and to relieve the searchers of their arduous task.” They also asked residents who have not yet searched their own properties to do so.
Graham, a second-year UVA student from Northern Virginia, was captured on surveillance video just after 1am on Saturday, September 13, walking east on the Downtown Mall first alone and then accompanied by a man who has since been identified as Jesse Leroy Matthew Jr. After fleeing Charlottesville, Matthew, a 32-year-old Charlottesville native, was arrested in Galveston, Texas, and charged with abduction with intent to defile in connection with Hannah’s disappearance. He is currently being held without bond at Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail, and police have said forensic evidence connects him to the disappearance and death of Morgan Harrington, whose remains were discovered on an Albemarle County farm in January 2010, three months after she vanished from outside a concert at UVA’s John Paul Jones Arena. That case is linked by DNA to a 2005 sexual assault in Fairfax.
The search for Graham, headed by the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, has been described as the most exhaustive in state history and has covered hundreds of square miles using volunteer and professional searchers on foot, as well as canine units and drones. Currently, between 35 and 50 people are continuing to search daily for any sign of the missing teen, according to Miriam Dickler, spokesperson for the city of Charlottesville.