NFT: Pete, Greg & CVA BBIers - Another missing girl in C-Ville

And it's on the news here too. Sad. Just seems like these things don't end well. Hope this is an exception.

My daughter is a UVA third year, and lives on 14th street, not too far from where this girl disappeared. Needless to say, I'm very concerned. She and her roommates are upset, as you might expect.

This is just off campus, in an area where many students live.

chances are that other than Clarke and Murphy these incidents aren't linked, but it remains unsettling.

also, this is the downside of so rigorously enforcing no alcohol policies in the dorms

the kids go to off campus parties

these policies privilege protecting the school from liability over the safety of students.

but at this point the corner and its environs are generally safe. The crime has shifted downtown.

But it does seem like this kind of thing happens much more than it should in what overall is a very nice, medium sized town, and has for a long time. What's more disturbing is that so many of these aren't connected at all - it's not one guy that's been doing it for years and evading detection. A while back there was even a BBIer (don't remember who) whose niece or cousin was murdered by a guy who broke into her home in Cville.

I don't ever remember feeling unsafe around Cville, whether it was the Corner or Downtown or whatever, but then I'm not a woman so I wouldn't be the target of these guys. When I was in school, however, was when the serial rapist was at large and a lot of girls I knew wouldn't walk around the Corner or the Rugby Rd area at night without being in a large group.

hopefully not related to this.

She is on a videotape at 12:46 leaving McGrady's pub, apparently intoxicated, headed east towards Preston Avenue. This is 35 minutes before she texted her friends that she was lost. If she was headed east on Preston, that is not a great place to be, IMO -- fairly commercial, car repair shops etc., a bit rundown looking.

from McGrady's is a pretty straight and well-lit trip downtown. I'm sure they'll scour every ATM camera and the like along the way and see if they can figure out where she might have gotten sidetracked.

14th and Wertland is a block off the Corner. Don't know how she could have been lost around there.

Just was exchanging messages with a friend from those days who lived near the corner of Page and 10th one year (I never lived around there, I lived a ways down JPA both years I lived off-Grounds) and said that it wasn't unusual to see some pretty skeevy characters roaming around at night.

I believe the report that she texted from 14th and Wertland at 1:20 was wrong. New reports are that the video at McGrady's is the most recent info. I read somewhere that her phone went out at 1:00.

Not familiar with McGrady's. Don't think it was around back in my Cville days.

I never really ventured off the Main St. corridor, so maybe that's why I didn't realize the neighborhoods up around Grady are kind of questionable. Used to go to the Downtown Mall a lot, but always via Main St.

the stuff back there is still in reasonably good shape. There are some questionable neighborhoods in proximity to it, but by and large it's not particularly dangerous. McGrady's is a decent-sized Irish pub and even at that hour I'd imagine there is a fair amount of foot traffic between there and downtown.

Not saying you're wrong, but why would there be a lot of foot traffic between Preston/Grady and downtown at 1:00 a.m.? Most college students don't live that way, to my knowledge.

kids walking back and forth to the Mall might explain it

but I've seen some earlier on Friday and Saturday nights. I believe it's less than a mile to the Mall, all pretty well-lit. I doubt hordes of people, but I don't think it would be out of place.

All I know is my daughter never goes there at night, except if there's a music event or something. The downtown mall doesn't have much going on at 1:00 a.m. for students, I don't think, and there isn't much going on in the area where she was last seen, except the bar she left (maybe others, IDK). I just don't see it as a highly trafficked route late at night.

My nephew is looking at UVa. I told my sister I was glad my niece wound up at NYU. It's weird thinking that way about NYC v. C'ville. But since the 90s, at least, some strange, bad stuff has happened there.

In comment 11866754 vibe4giants said:

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My nephew is looking at UVa. I told my sister I was glad my niece wound up at NYU. It's weird thinking that way about NYC v. C'ville. But since the 90s, at least, some strange, bad stuff has happened there.

It's still a safe town, they've just had some weird crime. And Randy Taylor is responsible for at least two of those crimes (and we're all assuming something terrible here, hopefully that will not prove the case) and he is now incarcerated.

And I've dated a couple women in C'ville proper (late 90s/early 00s). I've always felt safe there. But it hasn't always been true for the women.

And, yes. Hopefully, this turns out better than our worst fears.

I still remember how those flyers with the sketch of the suspect were EVERYWHERE in 1997.

The adminstration at W&L warns their students after receiving information from Lexington police that the Morgan Harrington murder suspect was seen in the area. I'm guessing someone was just jumpy with another girl disappearing.

since 2010. Only Harrington's remains have been found. And yet they've already decided this girl has nothing to do with the others. It's all strange.

I wouldn't be surprised if they announced that there is no connection solely to avoid general panic and rumors.

Not related to all this, but still a bit of local murder stuff - I didn't realize they had never solved the Colonial Parkway murders.

cont....someone on the thread discussing this at the Sabre mentioned that. I remember when the Colonial Parkway case was big news when I was a kid, but wasn't aware that they are still unsolved.

I agree with your jumpiness theory. I'm pretty sure all the authorities have is a very generic looking drawing of a light skinned black male. They don't have a named suspect I don't think. Anyone who reported seeing someone who looked like that drawing definitely was on high alert.

I went to NYU LAW. It was skeevy from 1986-89, but the area got a lot better after Clinton and Giuliani came to power. Crime everywhere in the city dropped, and removing the porn theatres from Times Square helped a lot.

6th Ave and West 3rd can still be a little hairy at night, but other than that period in the late 80s, prior to crime peaking everywhere in the US in 1991, I always felt safe in the city because so many people were around.

I have gotten harassed a couple times while I was walking by myself...once down West 4th-to-West 3rd in the Village in 1987, and another time on 41st/42nd...between 5th and 6th, along the northern side of Bryant Park, fairly late at night. In both cases, I cussed out the harassers for being such cowards to harass a woman walking alone at night... In the Village event, I waited to get to the entryway to my dorm, which had a security guard, and then I really let 'em have it.

But this stuff at C-ville (where my mom lived in the early 90s) is really scary. It sounds like a serial killer. Those guys are sneaky opportunists, and they hide and wait around for a woman who looks like she's off her game...upset or intoxicated and alone. That's what Ted Bundy did towards the end of his streak, that psychopathic lizard.

But I am going to tell my daughter (when she's older, anyway) this so many times that she'd do anything to get me to stop - avoid going out and about while intoxicated, whether drunk or high or whatever, and even when sober try to avoid going places alone at night. As schnitzie says, these scumbags are opportunists. Don't give them opportunities. If she was as drunk as she's being portrayed in these stories (and, granted, I have no idea how true that is) I don't know how the friends she went out with could have let her walk off on her own.

In comment 11867795 vibe4giants said:

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since 2010. Only Harrington's remains have been found. And yet they've already decided this girl has nothing to do with the others. It's all strange.

They convicted Taylor of the Alexis Murphy murder and he is the prime suspect in the Samantha Clarke murder. Whether he is a suspect in the Harrington murder depends on who you ask. So if he in fact accounted for all three, this looks less like a serial killer and more like a shitty coincidence.

They have her on video now very close to the Downtown Mall, and they have a witness (who they seem to credit) who saw her turn off E. Market (the street on the north side of the Mall)towards the Mall itself. They are obtaining all available video from businesses on E. Market and the Mall.

Not only that, by implication, you're blaming her parents, too. Probably in an effort to make yourself feel better and more in control, protecting yourself from the idea this could happen to your family. All of which is understandable.

But maybe her parents offered this girl the same kind of basic, common sense advice you will offer your daughter. And maybe, as drunken teenagers often do, she just ignored that good advice. She still doesn't deserve any blame. Being young, drunk and doing something un-wise is not an offense punishable by death. (This, of course, assumes something happened out of her control.)

I know I was given a lot of really sound, solid, wise advice and still did a metric shit ton of aggressively stupid garbage at that age.

Blame implies responsibility. In no way am I saying she is responsible for anything untoward that may (or hopefully may not) have happened to her. But was what she did smart? No, it wasn't. It put her in a vulnerable position. I said daughter since we're talking about a young woman here, but I'd say the same thing to my son with perhaps a slightly different emphasis - virtually nothing good comes out of being sloppy drunk, especially in public. Both young men and young women put themselves at risk that way, but I personally believe that the risks are greater for a young woman and it's therefore even more important for them to exercise appropriate caution.

Maybe my daughter one day blows off my advice as children so often do. It won't be for a lack of trying on my part. You can't control what kids do past a certain age, obviously, but I'll do everything I can to try to get them to think carefully about the risks they take and try to minimize them as much as possible. All I can do is try to influence her decision making process - I can't make the decisions for her.

I'm not a helicopter parent at all. Kids don't become equipped to handle the risks life will throw at them when you smother them in a cocoon. I get that, and I understand that you can be smart and do everything right and still be a victim. Bad things happen sometimes, but why make it easier for them to happen?

experience.

How did 19 year old Greg behave? You're acting as if this good advice ( Don't get drunk and do stupid, dangerous shit ) is something that only you have come up with. It's what most parents say.

And then what do most kids do?

Get drunk and do stupid, dangerous shit. (If you somehow wind up with the kids who don't do that, good on them.)

Behaving carelessly, as she may have, is about average for a college freshman. It's unlikely she was the only girl who got drunk and careless that night. But she appears to have been the only one who may have paid a high price.

I have more questions about her friends behavior, much of it sober.

Different kind of dumb, though, being that I was an incredibly angry, asocial misanthrope in those days, but that's a different story.

Anyway, you're right that it's hardly anything revolutionary, I just plan on beating the subject into the ground as much as possible in the hopes that constant reptition makes it sink in more. That's all.

And I agree and said so earlier - I don't know how her friends let her walk away alone in that condition. Pretty shitty friends.

The use of the past tense in the first paragraph of that post, but don't want to miller...

I'm only mildly angry compared to circa 1995.

running with (apparently) no one pursuing her, down to the Mall. Hopefully the surveillance footage from places along the Mall can shed some more light.

In comment 11868168 Greg from LI said:

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Anyway, you're right that it's hardly anything revolutionary, I just plan on beating the subject into the ground as much as possible in the hopes that constant reptition makes it sink in more. That's all.

I don't know how parents sleep. I always think 'Yeah, I know how much dumb shit I did that my parents never knew about. I can only imagine what my kids would be putting over on me.'

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Police are reportedly searching areas downtown including areas near the railroad tracks and areas near Garrett Street.

That's certainly not the best neighborhood in Charlottesville, far from it. What exactly that means remains to be seen.

hadn't frightened her. Maybe the bad guy was cruising around in a car, which is why it appeared no one was following her?

Really doesn't seem like this will end well.

Doesn't seem like she was simply lost. She passed by a ton of places where she could have stopped to ask for help and didn't.

hopefully they'll have something to report at 4 PM.

quickly. Doesn't it seem likely that as she approached the Downtown Mall, she knew where she was? She may have been lost a half hour earlier or later (we'll find out whether her last text was actually at 1:20, and they will probably be able to get her location from the phone co), but my thinking is that she might have planned to double back and go back to the Corner via West Main.

Detailed retracing of her movements, they're currently looking at all the film they can get from the Downtown Mall, mentions two unspecified locations she went in between leaving the Corner and her walk towards the DTM (presumably friends' apartments. She never actually entered McGrady's, only walked past.

Said people should start searching farm fields since that's where Morgan Harrington's body was found.

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Coy Barefoot @coybarefoot #BREAKING #HannahGraham appears on multiple surveillance videos on downtown mall before she disappeared- and a source tells me (cont'd) Coy Barefoot @coybarefoot #BREAKING that she is clearly visible on those videos. walking with another as-yet-un ID'd female.

For those who don't know Coy Barefoot is a well-known Cville writer

No word on what they were talking about.

The last video that they have has her walking east on the Downtown Mall (away from campus). If that's the case, she really was confused and had no idea where she was going. It's possible I suppose that she hadn't been there much.

the tweets have now been deleted. either bad information or information that wasn't supposed to be out yet.