Original subtitles

The murders are the ultimate mystery.

Where were they killed, by whom,

and with what motive?

Were they killed deliberately or by chance?

Questions, which, as of now,

have no answers.

[Joe] Nearly 40 years ago,

the Colonial Parkway became a symbol of terror

for a generation of Virginians.

[reporter] Eight young people.

All may have died at the hand

of the same killer.

It's Virginia's oldest and largest

serial killing spree.

The Colonial Parkway Murders.

Oh, my God. There's somebody that's targeting these kids.

A predator was hunting here...

[reporter] The cases involved abandoned cars at notorious

lovers' lanes.

...selecting targets at random...

[reporter] The cars contained victims' clothing,

wallets and keys,

with no signs of struggle.

...and leaving no survivors.

It was horrible.

[helicopter hovering]

[Joe] Now, we're able to say,

after all of those years,

the perpetrator has finally been identified.

Serial killers always have a pause between their events.

But as time moves on,

-the hunger returns. -[gun cocking]

[gunshots]

"Let me do this again,

'cause, God, it was good the first time."

[opening theme song playing]

[Joe] I spent my career closing murder cases.

But I'm not the only one who answered the call.

It takes a rare breed to solve the unsolvable,

to catch a ruthless killer,

to find justice for the dead.

That's what it takes

to be an American detective.

[siren wailing]

At about 5:30 in the evening...

[sirens continue]

...two park policemen respond to a 911 call,

reporting an accident on the Colonial Parkway.

They are flagged down by an individual.

They follow him a short distance

to an embankment

above the York River, which flows through the park.

They see a 1980 white Honda sedan,

nose-first in the river.

[car doors closing]

They immediately work their way down,

to see if there's someone trapped in this car.

They find two women in the car

with a ghost-like appearance.

And their throats have been deeply slashed.

[radio beeps]

This is not an accident,

it's a homicide.

What you see in front of you

is the actual Colonial Parkway.

My name is Danny Plott.

During the Colonial Parkway murder investigations,

I was a special agent

with the Virginia State Police.

Back when the 1986 murder occurred,

the Colonial Parkway was similar,

but it wasn't as well-maintained.

It was a beautiful scenic drive.

But in the late '80s, when these murders occurred,

it was... it was a pretty dark and spooky place.

Plott is an old-time cop.

Danny has suffered the slings and arrows, like me,

of the press and the public and the two-bit politicians,

and so on and so on.

So, it was a natural thing that he and I became friends.

-Hey, man. -[Danny] Joe.

How are you?

-Good. Yourself? -The same.

I'm still walking around.

Me and you both.

Danny first called me because he liked my show.

I watched it an episode of Homicide Hunter,

and Joe's...

Joe's show was wonderful.

You know, he would say something

and then, there'd be the, "My, my, my."

I was impressed.

And he let me know that,

and asked me what it was like to live in Colorado Springs,

and I informed him I had moved.

And he said, "I live in Suffolk, Virginia."

No shit.

He asked if we could meet for lunch.

I said yes.

Talking with Joe is an experience in itself.

His ability with murders is amazing to me.

I talked to him for hours

about the Colonial Parkway Murders.

Which I had vaguely heard about,

2,200 miles away, in Colorado.

They meant nothing to me at the time

because they were outside my jurisdiction.

But now, they interested me.

Danny Plott mentioned that there's been

an enormous amount of press coverage.

There's been a book written about him,

all kinds of things,

and I did not disagree with his thought process

on the entire case.

He was certainly on the right track.

For 37 years, the killer was unknown,

and the Colonial Parkway Murders

was his torturous career case.

[Danny] Solving the case became an infatuation.

It became frustrating.

Sometimes we felt like we were really close

in finding who did these murders.

And then, something would knock them out of it.

Every stone that you could think of was overturned,

yet here we were.

Nobody was in handcuffs.

The Colonial Parkway is a rural, scenic road

that connects three of the biggest historical

places in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Yorktown all the way to Jamestown,

and the Williamsburg area.

And because it's a federal park,

there are no structures, no businesses, no billboards,

no marks of the 21st century.

There are trees and bushes and vines.

So, if you're on this stretch at night,

you're in a Stephen King novel for 23 miles.

The Parkway also has multiple overlooks.

You can call it a lovers' lane.

If you wanted privacy,

it was the perfect place.

[girls giggling]

The murders started in October of 1986.

-[sirens wailing] -[radio chatter]

The park rangers were aghast at what they saw.

The park police summoned

the Federal Bureau of Investigation,

the only jurisdiction within that park,

because it is federal property.

[camera shutter clicking]

[Danny] The two girls,

they were identified immediately

because their identifications were in the car.

Cathleen Thomas.

And Rebecca Dowski.

Their throats had been cut very badly.

This was something brutal.

What was very puzzling to the FBI,

that blood was not in the car.

[Steve] The amount of blood

would have been substantial, and we've never found

any bloody prints, any bloody clothing.

Clearly, inside of that car is not the crime scene.

Somewhere else they were killed, and put into that car.

Was it driven there? I don't know.

[Joe] They examine the ground

in this pull-off area,

assuming they will find a second set of tire tracks.

They find tire tracks

that match the tires on the Honda,

but they find no tire tracks

of another vehicle.

[Danny] What was really perplexing was,

the car was covered in diesel fuel.

And there were matches...

around, where it appeared

that someone had tried

to get the diesel fuel to light.

Diesel has a very high ignition point.

You could light an entire book of matches

and throw it into liquid diesel fuel,

and all that would happen is,

the diesel fuel would put out the fire.

It was a failed attempt at trying

to cover up their crime.

Now, what does that tell you?

[police radio chatter]

Whoever this is has diesel fuel.

There's a lot of people that carry diesel fuel

in and around, in their vehicle.

Truckers do,

people that have a diesel car,

or people with boats.

Interesting.

This was not an easy case to solve.

Why would somebody target two women?

There's no money taken,

and they're viciously, I mean, viciously attacked.

Whoever is responsible for this crime...

is an organized offender.

He has a plan.

He somehow gets control of these people,

and then, he attacks and kills both,

and sends the car

over the side of this embankment.

You and I both know

it's not difficult to push a car.

You kick it out of gear,

and one person can easily move a car.

Sure, but remember that it's sitting

in an overlook. It's a paved overlook.

Then you have a patch of grass.

-[Joe] Hmm. -And there's a curb.

Not a high curb, but there's a curb,

so someone, or some people,

were strong enough to push it,

pop it over that,

but with two passengers in it,

always felt like it was somebody with some strength.

Likely a man.

-Could have a helper. -Yeah.

[Joe] So, now you have a solid view

of what this crime scene looks like.

But you're not even really sure how it happened.

You need an autopsy to tell you more.

So, the FBI agents head

to the Virginia State Medical Examiner's Office.

[water dripping]

The autopsy results show that

the girls had been dead for a minimum of 24 hours.

Rebecca's throat was cut and it was cut viciously.

But Cathleen was almost decapitated.

There's a brutality in that.

I think that says that somebody

was really angry for whatever reason.

There was no evidence of sexual assault

on either victim.

But they found something else.

The autopsy revealed that

both girls suffered ligature strangulation.

A ligature is any device

used to put pressure on the neck,

to restrict the windpipe,

to die from asphyxia.

[Danny] And in Cathleen's hair,

there was a small piece of rope.

[Joe] The autopsy further decides that

the throat slashing was accomplished postmortem.

It had nothing to do with their death.

They were dead when their throats were cut.

They were essentially killed twice.

Who the hell are we dealing with here?

[dramatic music playing]

[reporter] Rebecca and Cathleen

were last seen Thursday night.

A Honda Civic was found off the Colonial Parkway.

It had been rolled into these bushes,

almost into the water.

The women were found with their throats slit...

[Joe] The FBI agents go and notify

the two victims' families of their untimely demise,

and say, "Tell me about your daughter."

My name's Bill Thomas.

I'm the older brother of Cathy Thomas.

She was fun and smart

and, uh, a great friend.

And her attitude

was just so positive,

that people were drawn to her.

She graduated in the second class

from the US Naval Academy that had women.

She ended up first serving on this ship,

a submarine tender called the SS L. Y. Spear.

Now, it's during this time, though,

she's also investigated

for being a lesbian.

In the 1980s,

the Navy remained archaic,

with draconian rules.

Homosexuality was not acceptable

in any form.

Particularly so in a female.

This was not gonna be a place

that she could live her life as a lesbian

in an open fashion.

And she resigned her commission.

[Bill] Even though she'd left the Navy

with great reluctance,

Cathy was actually turning a corner

into a really happy,

less pressured,

version of her life.

She was dating this wonderful woman, Rebecca Dowski.

Rebecca Dowski came from Poughkeepsie, New York.

She originally attended Dickinson College,

and had transferred

to the College of William & Mary in Virginia.

She was a very bright student

and she really fit in well there.

[Bill] She was in her senior year.

Sweet, smart, extremely athletic.

She was on the championship women's softball team.

So, both Cathy and Becky had this

"I can accomplish anything" attitude.

Cathy and her girlfriend

were not accepted by society at large.

Privacy was very important to them.

What better place

than the Colonial Parkway at night?

[Blaine] The FBI investigators

focused on Cathy

being in a lesbian relationship with Becky.

Now, what really makes that come into play is,

she had been dating someone else.

[indistinct shouting]

[Steve] There were all of these rumors

that one of Rebecca's ex-lovers had gotten angry,

and retaliated against the both of them.

He was Muslim. The Muslim religion

does not always look

at gay or lesbian relationships kindly.

-[indistinct conversation] -[chuckling]

[Joe] Ex-boyfriend, Sharif Ali,

realizes that Becky has left him

for another woman.

He is furious.

He has very strong feelings about homosexual behavior,

and now, he's been passed over for a member

of the same sex, by his girlfriend.

It makes him an astounding suspect.

[siren wailing]

So, they bring Ali Sharif in for questioning.

And he admits...

that he has been embarrassed by her departure

for another female,

but he would never do her harm.

He also has an alibi.

He was in Washington, DC for the weekend,

200 miles away

during the time of the killings.

He may have had a motive,

but he physically couldn't have done it.

Over the next few weeks,

the investigation slows,

but the notoriety of the case

really starts to move.

[reporter] The two friends were last seen together

in Dowski's dorm room at 7:00 p.m.

Police sources think Dowski and Thomas

then drove here, to the Colonial Parkway.

I remember the ratings were extremely high.

People were watching.

They were talking about the romantic relationship

between the two.

One of the motives for a killer

is someone that is

opposed to this type of lifestyle.

[reporter] Friends say driving along the Colonial Parkway

was a Thursday night routine

for Dowski and Thomas.

But what happened October 9th wasn't routine.

It was murder.

I don't think we understood

the full gravity of what happened out there,

in October of '86

until September of ' 87.

Then I think it took on a different life of its own.

[police siren chirps]

[Joe] An Isle of Wight sheriff's deputy

is out patrolling

the Ragged Island Wildlife Management Area.

There is a black pickup truck.

The door is open

and no one is around.

Something was going on.

The truck was running,

the radio was on,

and there were shoes and articles of clothing

in the truck.

He calls for assistance.

[police sirens wailing]

They go through the truck, and they notice a wallet

on top of the dashboard

that contains a driver's license.

[Danny] It was a gentleman named David Knobling.

David Knobling was 19 years old.

He was a resident of Newport News.

[Joe] His mother has already reported him missing

'cause he didn't return home

after an evening out.

[Danny] The last time he was seen

was in the company of a young lady

named Robin Edwards.

Robin was also a Newport News resident,

and she was 14 years old,

and was also missing.

[Joe] Now, everyone is alarmed.

So, where are the occupants of this vehicle?

And what has happened to them?

Ragged Island is a creepy place to go.

It's very secluded.

[Danny] This parking lot

was used as a lovers' lane type area.

It sounds a lot like Colonial Parkway.

They had a feeling this wasn't going to end well,

and they were right.

[dramatic music playing]

[reporter] Twenty-year-old David Knobling

and 14-year-old Robin Edwards

were last seen Saturday night.

His truck was found

with the keys in the ignition, door open,

and radio on, near the James River Bridge.

[Joe] The Isle of Wight sheriff's department

launches a massive search.

It's very difficult to search.

There are vines and weeds

and brush of all sorts.

They could be almost anywhere.

Personnel from multiple agencies,

a helicopter...

[helicopter hovering]

...search dogs.

This search goes on for days.

And, unfortunately, on the third day...

they found something.

[Michael] My dad was out there, at Ragged Island.

Chest waders. Walking that whole area,

looking for him.

Karl Knobling, God bless him.

There were people that were telling Karl Knobling

not to go down the beach.

He said, "I... You aren't gonna stop me.

I'm going down there."

David Knobling's father, Karl Knobling,

found the bodies.

[helicopter hovering]

I can only imagine what that's like.

Because they were not in very good shape.

Oh, he was broken-hearted,

broken-hearted, and we were out there with him.

It was so devastating.

Karl Knobling was a broken man.

Yeah, my dad didn't even have a chance

to call us and give us a heads-up.

My mom and I...

[sighs]

We found out on the news.

I remember hearing my mom scream.

My God.

It was horrible.

The bodies were found

further down, on the riverbank itself.

The James River there is brackish or brine.

It's not freshwater, it's not saltwater.

It's a combination.

And that...

did not do good things to human bodies.

Both bodies are bloated from decomposition,

having been out for three or four days.

Robin Edwards had one gunshot wound,

execution-style,

to the back of her head.

David had two gunshot wounds.

A gunshot wound to the left shoulder...

and one shot to the back of the head.

I think Robin was shot first.

[gunshot]

And I think David knew

he had one chance.

We speculate

he tried to climb a sandy clay bank,

and he was within

almost grabbing distance

of a tree line.

[gunshot]

That's where he was shot, once in the shoulder.

That incapacitated him enough to where...

[gun cocking]

[gunshot]

He was then shot in the back of the head and killed.

[Michael] I totally disagree with that.

He would definitely not run from a fight.

Even if the guy had a gun, he wouldn't run from it.

[radio chatter]

[Joe] So, why are these bodies

such a long walk from where the truck was located?

Why would they go

such a far distance from this vehicle?

When you leave that parking lot

and you wanna go down here,

you have to walk down this boardwalk,

'cause all this is marshland.

-Like, swamp. -[Joe] Mmm-hmm.

So, to get down to here, a good little walk.

But you don't walk down a wooden,

older boardwalk barefoot.

-Not willingly. -No, not willingly.

So, how did they end up down there?

Two possibilities, in my opinion.

They were running from somebody...

-Mmm-hmm. -...barefoot,

because they don't have time to put their shoes on.

Or they were marched down there

by the perpetrator.

So, who would wanna murder

these two people in cold blood?

Investigators go to the families,

to see if they can determine suspects.

[Michael] This is the way I see my brother.

Like this one.

Just him laid back, cutting up, having fun.

Smiling, you know?

I definitely looked up to David.

He tried toughening me up,

and he did it with kicking my butt a lot.

[laughing]

He was a great brother.

I met Robin through my cousin, Jason.

We went to the same school together.

She was always a real cool person.

We had, sort of, prepared ourselves

for them to find her

either hurt,

possibly drowned.

We were not prepared to find her murdered.

Robin was the youngest

of the Colonial Parkway murder victims.

She was 14.

She had been through a lot in life.

She was the kinda girl that often ran away.

She got into trouble. [chuckles]

She could be very, very sweet

and she could be the most aggravating

and irritating child in the world.

Uh...

She was very independent.

[sighs]

[Blaine] But Robin was also at a turning point in her life.

She was finally starting

to apply herself to her classes.

She was starting to turn things around.

[reporter] The big questions unanswered are,

why was David with Robin at the wildlife preserve?

And what happened after they got there?

[Michael] That day, I followed him out,

bummed a cigarette from him.

And we talked in the driveway

for 15, 20 minutes, I guess.

And then, he left.

I carried that through my life,

that I was able to say bye to him.

I don't know why.

It just seems so small now,

but, at the time, it was big.

[Joe] So, they learned that David and Robin

were hanging out in an arcade in the area

with their friends.

And David agreed to take Robin home.

They are not a couple,

according to their family.

But what does the killer see?

A man and a woman.

And what would he assume from that?

They are lovers

in lovers' lane,

as were the first two women.

Much of this is very familiar.

[reporter] The murders are the ultimate mystery.

Where were they killed,

by whom, and with what motive?

Were they killed deliberately or by chance?

Questions which, as of now,

have no answers.

[Danny] That drove those of us

that worked on the task force,

that we need to find this person,

because...

they're just heartless and brutal.

When David and Robin were autopsied,

the investigation revealed

that Robin had been sodomized,

and there was still semen in her cavity.

The medical examiner said,

"This sample is very degraded

because you had bodies

laying in the water for three days."

[Joe] This is 1987.

DNA is in its infancy.

DNA databases were either non-existent

or just starting,

but the sample was preserved.

So, now what?

[telephone ringing]

There is a possibility

the motive is sexual assault of a female victim.

But it's only a possibility.

But why kill them?

There's no answer for that.

Despite the differences,

the similarities are just too great.

Proximity,

darkness, area, type.

People don't get killed in parked cars very often.

The odds are great

this is the same person, or persons,

responsible for both.

You've got a hunter, somebody who's busy.

A year later,

the appetite returns.

They haven't been arrested.

They probably haven't even been talked to.

No, they haven't been found.

So, now they become convinced

that maybe they're pretty clever.

"Let me do this again,

'cause, God, it was good the first time."

"But I'm not gonna do it where I did it before."

No, but still in the general vicinity.

They kill where it's convenient.

Places they know.

And I would be very worried that the bodies

were gonna start to pile up here.

Four dead, and there's gonna be more dead,

if that theory is correct.

He's going to do it again.

He will continue unless he is stopped.

These murders came to be known

as the Colonial Parkway Murders.

[reporter] Police sources claim

the two cases are so alike,

the same persons may be responsible.

This story really picked up from the very beginning.

It was very much an East Coast

highlighted story,

'cause double murders were incredibly rare.

These young couples are violently dead...

in an otherwise picturesque place.

How could this be?

Everyone was talking about

whether this is the work of a serial killer.

[Blaine] Once the police realized,

"Oh, my God, we're dealing with connected crimes,

or potentially connected crimes,"

police presence on the Parkway increased dramatically.

[police siren chirps]

[Bill] And that was the first time

we heard about the possibility

of a serial killer,

or a pattern emerging.

And...

I felt the investigation began to shift.

[Michael] It turned this area upside down.

I mean, people were scared

to go up and down the Parkway,

and my mom was...

scared to death when I went out.

Scared to death.

[Joe] Everyone is very busy now,

looking for people

who seem to be out of the area,

seem to be doing something that doesn't look right.

[Danny] After the murders, people realized

they may be going to the Colonial Parkway

at their own risk, but it didn't stop 'em.

I'm sure the last thing they thought of

is that they would get approached or grabbed

on the Colonial Parkway.

It scared a lot of people, but, unfortunately,

it didn't scare 'em all.

[reporter] The families held a vigil, a memorial,

to remind us all the killer is still out there.

The pressure exerted by the press and by the public

results in the formation

of a Colonial Parkway Murders task force,

where agencies come together.

More heads are better than one.

Danny Plott was a trained

and experienced homicide agent.

Plott became in command.

We were given a conference room

and told to have at it.

The common theory at the time is that

the perpetrator is driving around

the Colonial Parkway area, looking for victims,

parked in a car, alone in the dark,

in a lovers' lane kind of area.

[Danny] One thing we tried,

we took a male agent and a female agent,

and we put them in cars.

Different nights,

different times,

and waited to be approached.

I worked some surveillance.

I had a beard,

I had actual hair.

I was lucky enough to know who I was with,

but you run out of things to talk about

after a couple hours.

Surveillance is cool in the movies.

It is far from it in real life.

We were approached.

-Police! -[gun cocking]

But all we did was,

I think, scare the living daylights

out of somebody that just

was hoping they could see naked flesh.

Somebody that just kinda hung around

and tried to look in.

Nobody wished any more for an arrest

than those of us that were on that task force.

Your killer is a shadow in the night.

You're pedaling a bike that is stationary.

And no matter how hard you pedal,

it goes nowhere.

The task force established tip lines.

[telephones ringing]

And you get hit with tons of tips

that are just crazy.

Many people will call in and report

that little green men from Mars

are responsible for this.

[telephone ringing]

But every once in a while,

somebody says something that sounds reasonable.

And you pay attention to that.

There was a man named Sammy Rieder

that said he saw Robin and David.

Maybe here's a lead we can work with.

[reporter] Sam Rieder was at Ragged Island,

and remember seeing David's truck.

I just took one quick look around.

I flashed my headlights back in the brush,

but I couldn't see anything.

He paints himself as an eyewitness.

They bring Sammy Rieder in, they talk to him.

So, Mr. Rieder says

that he stops at Ragged Island

on his way home from a date.

He notices this truck.

He said that he saw

Robin and David get out of the car.

[Joe] He admires the truck. Said it's very nice,

very clean.

[Danny] The truck was running,

the radio was on.

[music playing on radio]

[Joe] So, he says all these things,

none of which is earth-shattering,

because it's what the press reported.

[Danny] Another statement was...

[gunshots]

"I heard two shots.

They had to be coming from the marshland,

way in the back.

I decided it was time to leave, and I left."

There are several things wrong

with Rieder's statement.

[Blaine] There were actually three shots fired that night.

Two were fired at David Knobling,

and one at Robin.

Sammy didn't mention anything about them being barefoot,

but their shoes are in the car.

The sand down there is not smooth sand.

It is made up with a lot

of jagged shells, et cetera.

[Joe] It is extremely unlikely,

not wearing shoes or socks,

that they would walk this far in rough terrain

on their own accord.

Somebody marched them down

to the place where they died.

They did not get out of the car

and go strolling down there.

[Joe] He is inserting himself

in a serial killer investigation.

Now, why would he do that?

[Danny] When Mr. Rieder was pressed,

he finally admitted,

"Well, I took money out of David Knobling's wallet."

I don't know if he figured

if he came up with this tip,

and they found his prints somewhere on the truck,

he would be able to say,

"Well, I was just looking in."

Well, I think he did it out of trying to cover his ass.

[Joe] What he saw was a wallet,

and he took advantage of it.

Oh, Sammy,

why are you wasting our time with this?

He didn't kill two people. He didn't know who did.

Law enforcement were very frustrated

with the investigation.

They weren't solving the case.

People were fearful.

I've noticed that a lot of girls

aren't walking on campus by themselves,

especially late at night.

Obviously, we have to, uh, consider

that there's a dangerous person, or persons,

still in the community.

[Danny] We needed this task force

to try to,

if not tie these murders together,

find common denominators,

or separate them.

[telephone ringing]

Plott is experienced and he's smart.

He sees the rivers,

and he said, "Hey, look at this map.

What is around all of these crime scenes?

Water."

How do you move in water?

You move in water in a boat.

The thing I remember about the autopsies

of Cathleen and Rebecca

was this rope that was found.

It was a piece of nautical rope,

which, to me, nautical rope is either used

on a boat,

or used to tie up a boat.

Now, that is an interesting fact.

What if our man is a boater?

Maybe we've been thinking about this

wrong the entire time.

How did he approach these people?

If he used the boat in some way,

I think he had to anchor the boat on the river,

and use a smaller boat to come to the bank.

We've got a trolling motor. It makes literally no sound.

So, you can maneuver around in this water

and nobody even knows you're there.

You have no obligation, legally,

to put lights on your boat. You're not at sea.

You're in inland waterways,

no one's gonna question you.

-You're a waterman. -Right.

The word "waterman" is very specific to this area.

It's people who are involved in the oyster business

and the fishing business, in the York River,

in the James River, in the Rappahannock River.

They have their own dialect,

they have their own language.

Generationally, all the way back

to the colonial period.

This could be a waterman.

That's someone we need to concentrate on.

So, what else do we know?

The toys used in these crimes

are the toys that watermen use as tools.

Most of these boats have diesel motors.

[motor whirring]

Diesel was used in Rebecca and Cathleen's murder.

Whoever killed them brought diesel fuel

with them to the scene.

We have an extremely sharp

instrument that cuts their throats.

Fishermen take care of their knives.

-Part of their living. -Part of their living.

Sharp as a razor.

You can filet a fish in a heartbeat.

This all became known as the waterman theory.

[Joe] Danny Plott and other cops he brought with him

to survey the fishermen in the area.

These are an unusual lot.

They operate in private. They're loners.

They are tough as oak.

They did not take kindly

to being, you know, even interviewed.

They picked a lifestyle

that they don't want to interact with people.

And for strait-laced FBI guys

to walk into a waterman bar and say,

"Hey, we want to ask some questions."

They're not going to get any progress from that.

At this point, it's an all hands on deck

sort of investigation.

But as it turns out,

shortly they will discover even that is not enough.

[telephone ringing]

[typing]

[imperceptible]

[Joe] The park police have informed Danny Plott

they have found yet another abandoned vehicle

on the Colonial Parkway.

The keys are in the ignition,

the car is running and nobody's around,

and Plott's heart is in his throat.

They're going, "Oh, shit! Here we go again."

The Colonial Parkway serial killer

is back in business.

[sirens wailing]

[indistinct radio chatter]

[Joe] Danny Plott is very concerned.

Where are the people from this car?

[indistinct radio chatter]

[imperceptible]

This has a lot of similarities to the other murders.

[Andy] Lovers' lanes,

near water,

only one mile

from the Thomas-Dowski crime scene.

One mile. Are you kidding me?

The Park Rangers informed Plott

that they ran a registration check on the vehicle

and determined it's owned by Keith Call.

They contact Call's parents.

They report him missing that morning.

The parents say he was with a female named Cassandra Hailey.

And Cassandra Hailey's parents also report her missing.

Where are they?

[male reporter] Some of their clothes and the car keys

found inside the car.

[female reporter] A Navy security team looks through the woods.

Park Rangers use a Bloodhound and a boat

for air scent over the water.

Other dogs combed the beachfront area.

[male reporter] A dog traced the couple's scent to the water's edge.

And then the scent ends.

[Joe] The dogs are telling them

those bodies are in this water.

But they're not there now

because water moves and it moves bodies with it.

[Danny] I searched the Parkway

in a company of United States Marines,

who walked an arm length away from each other

across the whole area, near where that car was found.

The search dogs take the scent,

and they march directly to the York River.

And that night the nor'easter had been passing through.

-Right. High waves. -High current.

Sixty, 70 mile-an-hour winds and driving rain.

So, they are disposed of,

killed by some method or means.

They go in the York River,

the nor'easter comes,

and sweeps somewhere

out to sea,

maybe all the way out.

[squawking]

Wouldn't take much.

And these two poor, unfortunate young people

are never found.

Not a trace of them.

The families couldn't even have a funeral.

♪ Amazing grace ♪

♪ How sweet the sound ♪

[Doug] I didn't want to think the worst to start with.

All of a sudden, you know, there's all these police calling the house.

And then, as the day went on,

you just kind of came into that reality

that something had happened.

Keith just vanished into thin air.

[Joyce] Keith was really just a good-hearted kid,

and you just don't ever think

that when somebody walks out of the door,

it's going to be the last time you see 'em.

[Doug] He was into computers, you know.

We had some of the first.

He was in there banging away on his Commodore 64

and learning everything about that.

And he was just like that '80s guy.

In 1988, when this happened,

he was in his first semester of college.

And then with Cassandra,

they were friends.

And she was really a pretty girl.

Cassandra was the "it" girl.

I mean, she was a cheerleader.

She's got a magnetism about her.

She was very bright.

She was really looking forward to completing her education

and going on with her career.

They went out that night to a movie,

and then they decided

to stop by some kind of college party going on there.

[male reporter] Friends confirmed Keith and Sandra

partied at the University Square Apartments, April 10th.

They left around 2:00 a.m.

Then disappeared.

[Danny] And then Cassandra had to be home at a certain time.

They said their goodbyes,

and that's the last time anybody saw them.

The Parkway was not a place that you went like that,

and just left your car there.

Keith was more responsible than that.

The other murders had already happened,

Keith wouldn't have went there.

It always haunted me,

and it haunts me to this day,

that we did not find Keith and Cassandra's remains.

We have to find the murdering son of a bitch who did this.

[Joe] They finally decide, "All right,

let's go back and start over."

[Danny] About six months into the FBI task force

of the Colonial Parkway murders,

we had come to a couple of conclusions.

Looking at all the scenes,

the vehicles, the wallets out,

we decided who we were looking for

was a person of authority.

So imagine now it's nighttime here.

You're with somebody you care about.

You're not really thinking about anything.

And then suddenly...

[knocking at window]

[Danny] There's a knock on your window,

and a man with a flashlight says,

"What are you doing here?

You're not supposed to be here."

[Joe] What if this killer poses as a policeman?

In the process of somebody getting out their ID,

he pulls a gun.

So he now has control. Could that be?

Of course it could.

[Blaine] During this era you could buy an old cop car,

complete with a sidelight et cetera,

for 300 bucks at a police auction,

and duplicate being a cop.

We decided to hold a press conference

with the FBI's blessing,

and it exploded.

[Blaine] It reached the point

where even in the newspaper articles,

they were warning people to verify

if they were being pulled over,

that it was really a policeman.

[Danny] The media took it and ran with it

because it made a good story.

[Joe] Nothing about this seems to work,

and then you begin to convince yourself

that nothing will ever work.

Law enforcement are running out of room at the morgue.

This is one serious guy.

He's not gonna stop.

As cases go on for years,

they become more difficult.

The Colonial Parkway murders have slowed down.

Nothing much has been happening.

No news, no new events.

[telephone ringing]

An anonymous tipster calls the task force

and says an individual has been harassing couples

in the lovers' lane pull offs on the Colonial Parkway.

They called him a Peeping Tom.

Really?

Now that is interesting.

Who might you be, Mr. Peeping Tom?

And what are you doing on the Parkway?

[squawking]

Through a FBI or state police tip line,

we get a tip that a man in a blue truck

is stopping and looking in parked cars

on the Parkway.

They get a tag.

The tag reads EM-RAW.

"Eat 'em raw."

What do you eat raw?

[both] Oysters.

[Joe] Hmm.

[Danny] That truck comes back to a waterman

named Alan Wilmer.

So now, the FBI has somebody that they can look at.

[Joe] This could be him.

This could be the Colonial Parkway killer.

And they need to act fast.

[Danny] The FBI and the Virginia State Police

now have what appears to be a viable suspect.

The FBI surveils him.

Goes to his residence,

where they find him cleaning his truck.

[Blaine] They noticed Wilmer was out

spray painting the back of his vehicle

and that he was bleaching the interior of the vehicle.

Now, why would he do that?

Is he concealing evidence?

Maybe this is our guy.

They immediately go to get a search warrant.

[Joe] The FBI returned to Wilmer's place.

They present him with the warrant.

He is cooperative.

He steps aside, and they search the premise.

They do the search warrant of his truck.

Doesn't reveal a whole lot,

but the search of his house

reveals... several things.

[Joe] They find an enormous supply of pornography.

They find guns,

they find pairs of handcuffs

and other bondage devices.

I am not saying that makes you someone that kills people,

but you put everything together,

this is not your average guy.

[Joe] They continue to talk to him.

He denies any knowledge of any of this.

Denies everything.

They have no evidence that could result in an arrest.

They decide that they will have an FBI polygraphist

take a shot at this guy.

[Danny] Mr. Wilmer was interviewed,

and he did admit to being on the Parkway

and approaching a vehicle or two.

[Blaine] Which was very useful information.

But his story changed a little bit.

He said, "Yeah, I was on the Colonial Parkway,

but I wasn't in that particular pull off.

I was in another one.

I walk around out there

and I look for places to fish,

nothing wrong with that."

And there isn't anything wrong with that.

So he takes the polygraph.

And the polygrapher says, "He didn't do this.

He's innocent."

And the FBI looks at that polygraph and then says,

"Well, you [bleep] better be right."

The FBI decided that him passing a polygraph

and the lack of direct physical evidence

was enough to say,

"He's not the one."

[Joe] He looks good, nothing happens.

He moves on, and so does the task force.

[Danny] FBI and state police,

if one of us got a lead,

you know, we'd let the other one know.

But the leads, they just weren't there.

And, you know,

uh, family member...

They weren't shy, and I don't blame them.

And they sometimes

weren't shy in the media, you know.

"My son, daughter...

Sister, brother...

Brutally murdered. What are you doing?"

[Doug] You didn't hear nothing about it, the FBI didn't.

Didn't talk to anybody.

And then Joyce

would consistently pick up the phone

and call them up

and ask them about the case and all that.

[Joyce] It seemed like... sighs]

...they weren't giving us a lot of information.

It just kind of went dead.

And I didn't handle it very good at all.

And even to this day,

that is the worst thing that's ever happened.

It's just like somebody walks out the door

and they're fine,

and they just don't come back and you don't have answers.

You don't have a body.

The anxiety was terrible at that time.

You know, it's just not knowing what happened to him.

Just nothing but anxiety.

It just doesn't go away, you know.

You have to become your own advocate

because no one else will do it for you.

We're the ones now

kind of trying to advance this case.

I'm looking for answers.

Who killed my younger sister and her girlfriend?

All of these other families,

mine included, deserve answers.

All our answer was,

"We're doing everything we can."

It had been years.

Nothing.

[siren wails]

Labor Day weekend, 1989,

and a Virginia state trooper is investigating

an abandoned vehicle in a rest area

that's left running with the keys in the ignition.

And when he ran the tag, of course,

ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

This is the car of a missing person.

The car comes back to 21-year-old Daniel Lauer

reported missing with 18-year-old Annamaria Phelps.

The Colonial Parkway killer is back.

And maybe this time he's left the waterfront.

[Joe] The investigators are instantly suspicious

that this is the Colonial Parkway killer.

But what's different?

[female reporter speaking]

They call it the New Kent rest area.

[Joe] This rest area

is many miles from the Colonial Parkway.

This is inland, not the waterfront,

where he has been for years.

[Danny] So I went up there and I found the car.

A gold Chevy Nova with black primer.

[Joe] He sees this car,

clothes in the back seat,

the key is in the ignition,

car running.

It is no question it is deja vu.

We're dealing with the same guy.

Annamaria Phelps was an 18-year-old young lady

from Amelia County, Virginia,

who had recently dropped out of school.

[Blaine] School wasn't for her. She wanted to work.

She wanted to get ahead in life.

She wanted to be on her own,

and she had a boyfriend named Clinton Lauer.

The other victim, Daniel Lauer,

was her boyfriend's brother.

[Blaine] Daniel, he was a horse lover.

He liked riding.

He was six foot tall.

He was a dominating force.

Anybody that handles horses. He wasn't a weakling either.

Daniel was doing very well.

His father had a painting business, and he worked there.

His father had gotten him a Chevy Nova.

In many respects,

he was on the right path for independence himself.

And Daniel had decided

he wanted to kind of get out on his own.

And the plan

was for Annamaria Phelps and Daniel Lauer

to drive to Virginia Beach.

And the best way to get there was on I-64.

[car starting]

[tires screech]

[Danny] We learned from the families

that they never arrived in Virginia Beach.

[Joe] If they are in fact missing

and they're not in this car, then where are they?

Could the Colonial Parkway killer

have abducted and killed them, just like the others?

[radio chirps]

Where are these people?

What has happened to them?

And the search begins.

[Danny] There was a search by special agents

of the Virginia State Police

and troopers of Virginia State police

in the general area.

No Annamaria and Daniel, again.

It's very frustrating,

and I can only imagine

what it's like for the families.

We really love both of them very much.

And, um, if there's anything at all

that you can do to help, we'd appreciate it.

[Joe] Six weeks later, on October 21, 1989,

two turkey hunters find something shocking.

[Danny] I get a call.

"Hey, we need you to go near the New Kent rest area."

I'm there.

There was a logging road.

That was the best way to describe it.

And there was a deputy stationed there,

and I stopped and he said, "Go up here."

You didn't walk very far up the fork in the road,

and then you went into the woods.

I could see they already had a tent set up.

[Joe] They find skeletonized remains of humans.

Two skulls and bones.

[Danny] These are two young people that, unfortunately,

the best way to describe it nicely

is they melted into the ground.

They were so badly decomposed at the time

that it was very difficult to determine

exactly what happened.

[Danny] That's me with a shovel in my hand.

I would have been

thirty-three, maybe.

I believe that it had rained slightly,

as you can tell.

One man's wearing a raincoat.

The bottom photo

is Annamaria's locket.

That was found at the fork of the road.

We speculate that that maybe

was where she was killed, and that locket came off.

When the general area was searched,

there was, you know, very little to find.

No bullets. No knife.

No anything.

[male reporter] An autopsy confirmed the body of Annamaria Phelps.

Another body is believed to be Dan Lauer.

The skeletal remains

were taken to the Smithsonian Institute

with the forensic anthropologist Dr. Doug Owsley.

[Joe] Autopsies of skeletons yield little other than sex and age

and any wounds to the bone structure.

[Danny] When he examined the skeletal remains,

Dr. Owsley found

what he deemed a knife wound

on Annamaria's left hand.

And he speculated that

if someone is getting ready to cut your throat,

you hold your hands up.

And it was a diagonal knife wound

on her third finger.

That's the only trauma

that he could say.

[Joe] Is this the Colonial Parkway killer?

Well, of course it is.

There's a change here and there in the MO.

But so what?

Either way, they work.

[male reporter] The couple's disappearance

is strikingly similar to others,

including Robin Edwards and David Knobling.

The only difference is that

they were found in the woods

instead of in the river.

The victims are in cars. There's two of them.

They're probably very vulnerable.

He strangles, cuts the throat

of Rebecca and Cathleen.

He shoots David and Robin.

He disposes of the bodies,

however it was done,

of Keith and Cassandra.

And then lays the other two side by side.

[Joe] There are a couple of things that are different,

but there are some things that are not.

[Danny] Two on the Parkway,

two within easy driving distance of the Parkway.

[Joe] His method up to now

has been the sea and the water.

Now his method is a concealment in the deep woods.

What does that mean?

Did he become fearful

of the increased patrol activity on the parkway?

Probably.

He doesn't want to stop killing.

He just wants to stop the police from getting close to him.

And the reality is he may never be found.

This individual has eluded law enforcement for years.

If he's shifting his MO

and he's committing other murders,

we may not even recognize them as his.

He's a killer. That's what he does.

The question always becomes,

"Has he done other crimes?"

Of course he has.

That's what's kind of scary.

There's going to be other victims.

How many did he kill?

We have no clue.

[Joe] There have been eight dead.

There's a possibility there are others dead

that we don't even know about.

And the case continues to be cold

despite their focus on it for years.

They've gotten nowhere fast.

[Danny] After the task force,

I worked several years in the fugitive unit as a special agent,

which took me away from it,

and it was given to somebody else.

But I worked in and around the same office,

and I did not have the least bit problem saying,

"Hey, anything new with Ragged Island?

Anything new with the Parkway murders?"

"No, go away."

Despite all the effort, despite all the leads

and all of the investigative work,

the years begin to tick by,

and no justice has been found for the family.

[Michael] My mom and my dad

kept in touch with the police over the years,

and I took it with a grain of salt.

I had zero expectation

about finding out who killed my brother

after the tenth year,

the twentieth year, the thirtieth year.

And it's been a horrendous waiting game the whole time.

Just a cold waiting game.

That's all it's been.

[Joyce] It's not like it was forgotten,

but it's just like, "What do you do?"

None of us were brought up in law enforcement.

None of us had any background on what to do

if your brother is abducted or murdered.

[Bill] So you've got eight victims, 16 moms and dads.

We've lost nine of them so far.

Both of my parents passed away.

It's been 37 years.

I can't really say it gets easier to talk about.

All of these victims

have been dead much longer than they were alive.

[Joe] Many of the investigators involved in this are retired,

but this is not a case anybody ever forgets.

It's been very hard on Danny.

[Danny] I retired from the state police in 2013,

but those murders have never been far from my mind,

and I still remember the frustration

of, "Why can't we find this person?"

[door creaking]

[Joe] It's the worst feeling in the world.

You feel like a failure.

You feel like you haven't done your job.

You know better.

You did everything humanly possible.

It just wasn't enough.

And you beat yourself up for that.

[siren wails]

[Joe] December 2017,

law enforcement responds to a 911 complaint

about a foul odor emanating from a private residence.

[indistinct radio chatter]

They find a badly decomposed body

that basically is a bed full of soup.

[Danny] The decay was horrible.

They don't know if they're dealing with a natural death,

a suicide or a murder.

[indistinct radio chatter]

[Joe] The autopsy reveals

advanced arterial sclerosis and blocked arteries.

In other words, his heart got blocked up,

and it stopped and so did he.

They take samples of these remains

for the purpose of obtaining DNA

and the possibility of using it

to identify the individual.

Little did anyone know this was someone

who was directly under their noses the entire time.

January of 2024

was when we got the first substantial break

in the Colonial Parkway murders.

[Joe] A detective is going through the daily crime sheets,

notices this death case.

Looks at the name and recognizes it.

It was from years ago.

I was called and the person said,

"The name Alan Wilmer mean anything to you."

And I said, "Yeah...

Parkway murder suspect."

[Joe] This was the guy

that was identified by an anonymous person

as a Peeping Tom on the Colonial Parkway.

The FBI looked at him

and they let him go because they couldn't prove anything.

Suddenly, there's a connection

back to the Colonial Parkway.

Which means a connection, potentially,

to all the Colonial Parkway murders.

Which means you start looking

for where do we have DNA

that we might be able to compare.

Robin Edwards had been sodomized,

and to the credit of the Virginia State police,

they managed to maintain

some of the samples of that DNA for ages.

Alan is deceased,

but now we have a DNA sample from him.

And they compare that sample

taken from the victim

to the sample taken of Alan Wilmer Sr.

and it's a 100% match.

Well, my, my, my.

After decades of work and effort

and theorizing,

they finally have a name

all these years later.

Alan Wilmer Sr. is...

the Colonial Parkway killer.

The best way to put what I was, was ecstatic.

You know, I was ecstatic.

I was also humbled

and...

a little bit irritated at myself

that...

I knew that Alan Wilmer

was a great suspect.

[Joe] But who is this guy?

Who is Alan Wilmer Sr.?

What was Alan Wilmer besides a murderer and piece of shit?

He was a waterman.

[Joe] He was a commercial fisherman

specifically who farmed

clams and oysters.

He spent the majority of his time

on his boat,

a vessel he named Denni Wade.

[Blaine] From a geographic perspective,

the anchor point is the York River,

and that's where he worked every day.

It makes complete sense

that it was a waterman all along.

[Joe] Also, Wilmer was an avid hunter.

He belonged to a hunt club

not far from the area

where the fourth murder victims were

discovered skeletonized.

[Blaine] When you look at Phelps-Lauer,

their bodies were found

on a private hunting reserve.

Is there a connection?

We don't know.

But where there's smoke, there's often fire.

[Joe] Everything about Alan Wilmer's life fits

the entire style

of the Colonial Parkway Killer.

He moves by boat.

He's around at night,

where you can see

the lovers' lanes from the water.

Everything about him seems to come together

once he's identified

and firmly linked

scientifically to one victim.

[Michael] The FBI had called us,

and they let us know

that they had a DNA match.

I was shocked.

I was absolutely shocked.

[Joyce] I got a call

from our case agent,

and they were bringing up Alan Wade Wilmer.

It was just like, "Oh, my God". [chuckles]

"Oh, my God".

Our family went through

so much frickin' heartache and pain

wondering what the [bleep] happened

to my brother, you know?

And come to find out,

they had the right guy the whole frickin' time.

[Joyce] When you talk about anger,

there has been like

35 years' worth of anger.

It's just-- it's maddening.

There he was in the very beginning.

[Bill] I'm still angry about it to this day.

I thought it was outrageous.

They told my family

they were looking at watermen.

This is that guy.

Is he responsible

for Cathy and Becky's murder as well?

[Blaine] It always makes me wonder,

could law enforcement have prevented

the things that followed?

The deaths, the loss of life.

[Danny] The FBI decided

that him passing a polygraph

was enough to say

he's not the one.

The decision was made,

and that wasn't made by me.

I can't say we let him go,

but...

we didn't do enough.

I would have done anything,

threatened him,

anything else to try to get him to admit to it,

but I don't think he was the kind of person that would.

[Joe] He passed a polygraph, but so what?

He also happens to be a sociopath,

so he doesn't react.

Thus a polygraph is useless.

He's not capable of emotion.

[Danny] Someone like Wilmer,

"I killed two people today.

Big deal."

That's what makes him so dangerous.

Why is there only a DNA hit on one case

when there are four double murders

that everyone says are connected?

One possible answer is

no evidence contained any perpetrator DNA.

[Danny] Robin and David's murder,

that is the only one of the four

that there was actual known DNA evidence.

[Joe] So what is known

about the four Colonial Parkway double homicides?

[Blaine] At the very beginning,

the FBI behavioral profilers said watermen.

[Danny] The first three,

'86, '87, '88,

all of them took place

right against the water.

Either the York River

or the James River.

You're dealing with a creature from the Black Lagoon.

[seagulls squawking]

[Joe] It's possible that in the first murder,

he spots Cathy and Rebecca...

[girls laughing]

[Joe] ...in Lover's lane

together in a car,

approaches them.

He strangles them and he slashes their throats.

And he put them in Cathy's Honda,

soaked it in diesel fuel,

tried to burn it.

Then he shoved it over the embankment,

assuming it would sink in the river and disappear.

His attempt at disposal is a disaster.

In the second killing,

David Knobling and Robin Edwards,

he sodomizes Robin Edwards

and he shoots her in the back of the head.

[Joe] David is shot in the shoulder...

and the back of the head.

They're thrown in the river,

assuming they'll float away,

but they wind up trapped under the embankment.

Another failure.

However, DNA this time remains behind,

which ultimately becomes his undoing.

[Danny] By Keith and Cassandra's murder,

he had perfected his craft.

[Joe] If this was his third murder,

he abducted and killed them,

threw them in the water.

He went out and he fished, clammed, oystered

from that boat.

How hard would it have been to take them out on that boat

and dispose of their bodies?

It would have been very easy.

[Joe] The fourth murder,

Daniel Lauer and Annamaria Phelps,

they are discovered miles away from the parkway.

[Danny] My best speculation is

they stopped

at the eastbound rest area of New Kent.

That's where Wilmer took control of them.

And then they were carried to these two positions

where they were found.

It seems he learns from his mistakes.

He gets better at disposing of remains.

But what is his deal about couples?

Does he hate them?

What motive could there be?

Maybe just a willingness to kill.

And perhaps that's the only motive he needs.

Now we learned that Wilmer's sphere was even larger.

We now have some evidence

that we can weigh against these other cases.

[Danny] Here we have Alan Wilmer.

We have him tied to the murder of Robin and David.

Luckily, we got DNA from that.

But that wasn't the only crime his DNA hit on.

He was tied to another murder of a lady in Hampton.

[Joe] There was a 29-year-old woman

named Teresa Howell

who left a nightclub and disappeared.

She was found naked, strangled, and raped.

And the perpetrator DNA

was none other than Alan Wilmer Sr.

[Blaine] We now know that he killed people

that were alone,

so the net gets cast pretty wide

to look at cases

that this guy may have been involved with.

[Joe] Well, it's always difficult to say

what will happen now.

Will the DNA science advance further?

Will they be able to determine something

from some of these cases

to link him directly to the crime?

It's entirely possible.

Prosecution will never occur.

You can't prosecute a dead guy.

But I hope he's facing some kind of judgment.

Well, you would hope so.

You would hope so.

Perhaps he moved to a higher court.

If we had had hindsight in law enforcement in general,

FBI, state police,

Isle of Wight County Sheriff's Office,

this would have been handled different.

But the only answers we can really for sure give is

to Ms. Howell's family, the Knobling family,

and the Edwards family.

The FBI and the Virginia State Police,

they have not stopped.

And I hope they can tie him to any and all of them.

All these families deserve answers.

This completely destroyed my mother.

In one night, she lost her only daughter,

her youngest child, and her best friend.

This is a solvable case.

All it takes is time, attention, and resources.

It's not something that we ever wanted,

to be burying a younger brother.

Keith was just starting out his life.

He had aspirations.

He was a good kid.

I hated that he didn't have the opportunity

to grow up, you know, and to have a family.

I mean, that guy robbed Keith.

He robbed him of a whole entire life.

That was my big brother, man, you know?

Doesn't get any tighter than that.

I mean,

[choked up] it's not fair.

I missed so much with him.

So much.

I know my life would have been so much different

if he was still in it.

God, I wish he was still here.

[Joe] Some people never have to pay the bill

for what they've done in their life.

They just croak,

like everybody does.

I'll be quite frank with you.

I hope there is a special, special place in hell

for this man.

And every day what he did to those kids

is done to him

for eternity.

Then, maybe,

it'll be a little bit of justice.

[Joe] There's supposed to be justice and punishment.

That's not always the case.

Wilmer denied the hangman's noose.

However, he died in his hovel of a trailer

and turned into a puddle of DNA.

No one cared about Alan.

Maybe Alan didn't either.

He cared about killing,

and he got pretty good at it.

[interviewer speaking]

[man speaking]

There are people in this world

who are patently evil.

[woman] My mind went to that.

Someone took her, someone is trafficking her.

I just felt like I gotta solve this case.

A lot of murderers are emotional when

they take a life... not him.

He's cold as ice.

[distant gunshot blasts]

How much worse will it be if we don't get who did this?

And I'm like, what?

What do you mean they've been murdered?

[Kenda] We're not just the police, we're the murder police.

When Cain busted a cap in Abel,

did he send a uniform to take the report?

No, he sent a [bleep] detective.