Virginia Fisherman Is Linked to Three 1980s Killings, Police Say

A Virginia fisherman who died in 2017 was responsible for the killings of three people in two separate cases in the southeastern part of the state that sat unsolved for more than 30 years, the police announced this week.

New DNA evidence linked the man, Alan W. Wilmer Sr., to the 1987 killings of David L. Knobling, 20, and Robin M. Edwards, 14, in Isle of Wight County, which were among a series of killings in the area that were known as the Colonial Parkway murders, the police said. They said he had also killed Teresa Lynn Spaw Howell, 29, in the nearby city of Hampton in 1989.

“If Alan Wilmer Sr. was alive today, he would be charged in all three of these homicides,” Corinne Geller, a spokeswoman for the Virginia State Police, said at a news conference on Monday.

Mr. Wilmer, of Northern Neck, died at his home in December 2017, police said. He was 63.

The authorities said that they had matched Mr. Wilmer’s DNA to evidence recovered at the scenes of the three homicides. His DNA was obtained after his death, the authorities said.

Ms. Geller said that investigators from several agencies, including the F.B.I. and the Hampton Police Division, had pored over evidence collected over the years, including witness statements, and had narrowed down a list of potential suspects. Mr. Wilmer was among them.

She added that Mr. Wilmer, through his genetic material, had been pegged as a suspect in both cases “a couple years ago,” but he could not be identified because his DNA was not in law enforcement databases. He had no felonies on his criminal record, the authorities said.

Ms. Geller said she could not share further details, including those regarding how and when Mr. Wilmer initially became a suspect in each case, as the investigation was continuing.

The 1987 deaths of Mr. Knobling and Ms. Edwards had been tied to a series of unsolved double homicides in the area in the late 1980s that became known as the Colonial Parkway murders. The Knobling and Edwards killings were among three such cases that took place along a specific stretch of highway from 1986 to 1989, according to the Crime Museum. Two other people went missing in the same area, and it is believed that they were killed.

Mr. Knobling and Ms. Edwards were last seen together on Sept. 19, 1987, and Mr. Knobling’s truck was found in a nearby parking lot the next day. The authorities discovered their bodies on a shoreline in the Ragged Island Wildlife Management Area, a vast expanse of marshland in southeastern Virginia, on Sept. 23, 1987. The pair had been shot to death, the authorities said, and Ms. Edwards had been sexually assaulted.

Two years later, on the morning of July 1, 1989, construction workers in Hampton found Ms. Howell’s clothing strewed around near their job site, leading to the discovery of her body in a nearby wooded area, the authorities said. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled, the authorities said.

At the news conference on Monday, Brian Dugan, the special agent in charge at the F.B.I.’s Norfolk office, said Mr. Wilmer was the subject of several active investigations into other slayings that took place around the same time, including the rest of the Colonial Parkway murders.

“While he may or may not be connected to these cases, we are still pursuing justice for these victims and will investigate all options,” Mr. Dugan said.

The authorities asked anyone who might have known Mr. Wilmer to come forward to aid in the investigations and offered a description of his life at around the time of the killings.

Mr. Wilmer was a fisherman in the 1980s who operated a small wooden commercial fishing boat, built in 1976, called the Denni Wade, the authorities said.

He also drove a “distinctive” pickup truck — a blue 1966 Dodge Fargo with a Virginia license plate that read “EM-RAW.” It was one of many trucks he was known to drive, the authorities said.

Mr. Wilmer would have been in his late 20s at the time of the murders. He had brown hair and blue eyes and was about 5 feet 5 inches tall, the authorities said, adding that he had a muscular build and wore a tightly cropped beard.

He had also operated a landscaping business called Better Tree Service and belonged to at least one hunting club, they said.

The cases were the latest in a wave of cold cases that in recent years have been solved because of advances in DNA technology.

At the end of the news conference on Monday, Ms. Geller delivered a statement on behalf of the Knobling and Edwards families.

“For 36 years, our families have lived in a vacuum of the unknown,” Ms. Geller said. “We have lived with the fear of worrying that a person capable of deliberately killing Robin and David could attack and claim another victim.”

“Now we have a sense of relief and justice knowing that he can no longer victimize another,” she added.