Bill Moses and Patricia Kluge want to spend more time at their Morocco pad– but Albemarle will remain home.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Undaunted by a slow housing market, winemaker Patricia Kluge has listed her Albemarle House for $100 million, outstripping not only any price tag around Charlottesville, but pretty much the United States as well, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Listed by Sotheby’s International Realty, the estate in the neighborhood of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello boasts eight bedrooms, 13 bathrooms, a theater, a spa and sauna, and an Islamic gallery— nearly 24,000 square feet in all.

The chapel where Kluge’s mother is buried is not included in the offering.

Does listing the built-in-1985 Georgian, just weeks after celebrating the 10th anniversary of Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyard, mean that Kluge and husband Bill Moses plan to move from stomping grapes to stomping out of the area?

Not at all, says winery spokeswoman Kristen Moses Murray. The sale of the house and 300 acres still leaves an ample 2,000 acres of vineyard, forest, and pasture, plenty of room for (more)

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A motorist gets out of the way of the chase near Madison House on Rugby Road.
PHOTO BY CHARLOTTESVILLE P.D.

There has been an arrest in the case of the 85mph chase that resulted in a stolen car scalping a house on Rugby Road. About two months after the summertime incident, a 17-year-old city student was arrested, according to Charlottesville spokesperson Ric Barrick, who also— in response to a reporter’s request— released a tape of the chase, a 112-second video in which even the police car hits 85mph on the residential road.

In a related development, a work crew installed a guardrail Friday at the spot where the vehicle left the roadway to prevent such future dangerous aerobatics, but in so doing, the crew cut an underground gas line, causing a road detour lasting much of the morning.

Meanwhile, Friday, October 30 is also move-back day for (more)

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Morgan Dana Harrington disappeared during a Metallica concert October 17.
FACEBOOK PHOTOS

Morgan Harrington, the young woman who disappeared during the October 17 Metallica concert, received a facial injury before she left the John Paul Jones Arena, according to multiple sources.

According to the sources, Harrington was seen inside and outside the Arena with blood on her chin prior to her disappearance, say witnesses who wish to remain anonymous. Thirteen days after her disappearance, a police spokesperson confirms the accounts but says investigators doubt the injury points to any altercation.

“It was a minor injury,” says Virginia State Police spokesperson Corinne Geller. She explains that police chose initially not to release the detail because the injury was “consistent with what someone would suffer from slipping and falling, not with any kind of assault.”

Contacted about the report of the chin injury Thursday, Harrington’s father, Dan Harrington said he had not (more)

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“I deserve health care.”
SCREEN CAPTURE

One local filmmaker (along with a pack of kids at Riverview Park) might play a key role in the health care debate if a new video keeps advancing in the Obama Health Care Reform Video Challenge. Already, the 30-second spot from Charlottesville has been chosen from over 1,000 submissions to become one of just 20 finalists.

Eric Hurt— who once shot a television show about Spudnuts— wrote, directed, and shot “I Deserve Health Care” with producer Erica Arvold. Voting for the Challenge is now open, and individuals are encouraged to watch the top videos, vote for their favorites, and help select the winning ad that will air on national television.

The whole enterprise, but particularly Hurt’s video and a graffiti video, drew the outrage of FoxNews commentator Sean Hannity, who interviewed a conservative commentator who blasted Hurt for “grooming the next generation of entitlement-seekers.”

–last updated 6:49am Friday
Spelling of Spudnuts corrected 9:20am Friday

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Hastily stitched-together photo from the bridge which carries Copeley Road over the CSX/Buckingham Branch train tracks.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

The young woman whose disappearance during an October 17 Metallica concert touched off a national search was last seen on a bridge around 9:30 that night near busy Ivy Road. The information came in a Wednesday morning press conference in Charlottesville in which State Police Lieutenant Joe Rader expressed hope that a newly detailed timeline would provoke additional clues from concert-goers and other witnesses.

“Perhaps you saw someone stop a vehicle,” said Rader. “Perhaps you saw this young lady get into a vehicle. Somewhere out there lie the answers or lies the vital link.”

Rader described the timeline, pieced together from witness interviews, as fairly accurate, but he noted that it changed within the 30 minutes before the press conference began— and that it remains subject to further refinement, particularly since some witnesses were not wearing watches.

“We believe that what happened from 8:30 to 9:30 is very relevant,” Rader said, adding that subsequent info is also important. “Nothing is too trivial. If you think (more)

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Independent Bob Fenwick wants to defy the odds and get on City Council.
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Independent City Council candidate Bob Fenwick is getting a lot of buzz– and support from a broad coterie of Republicans, Democrats, and independents. But is that enough to get him elected to Council in a city long dominated by Dems?

It’s hard enough for a Republican to get a seat on Council— ask Rob Schilling, who was elected in 2002, the first Republican in 16 years. For an independent running without even minority party support, what are the odds?

“It is virtually impossible,” says Schilling. “The last independent (more)

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Phil Bradley survived 36 hours (plus at least 50 years) after the crash.
PHOTO BY ED ROSEBERRY

While several newspaper photographers slipped up to the top of Bucks Elbow Mountain 50 years ago to photograph the rescue and recovery operation after Piedmont Airlines Flight 349 was discovered with a sole survivor 36 hours after it went down in fog, another photographer reached the scene and has revealed his photographs for the very first time.

Ed Roseberry, who would go on to fame as a leading chronicler of Charlottesville and University life in the 1960s, was there on the Mountain in 1959 with with his 4×5 Speed Graphic camera to capture images of survivor Ernest Philip “Phil” Bradley as Bradley was taken up the mountain in a stretcher. The images did not come easy.

Roseberry, then 34, had driven his new Vauxhall station wagon up the Skyline Drive (more)

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Unlike the rest of “the nine,” Morgan opted for a red dress on prom night. (Others: Amy Melvin, Maggie Herrick, and Jenna Testerman.)
PHOTO COURTESY HARRINGTON FAMILY

The parents of missing Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington urge would-be sleuths not to blame the 20-year old woman’s friends for failing to report her disappearance during an October 17 heavy metal concert in Charlottesville.

“They’re not to blame,” says father Dan Harrington. “Everyone wants to make them out to be the bad guy, but they’re not the bad guy.”

The woman’s disappearance didn’t get reported to authorities until the next day when her father called police after she failed to show for a pre-arranged visit home to study math and balance her checkbook.

But should the friends at the concert have reported her missing?

“I wish they had,” says her dad, “but I don’t know that (more)

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Harrington’s dad holds Kirby while mom gives the family’s “I love you 2 much” signal Saturday.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

It’s been hell on earth for the parents of missing Virginia Tech student Morgan Dana Harrington.

“God, this has been a long week,” says her father, Daniel “Dan” Harrington, who last saw his daughter around noon on Saturday, October 17, just hours before her disappearance from a concert in Charlottesville. “This,” says mother Gilbert “Gil” Harrington, “has been physically, emotionally, quite a hit.”

During a recent interview at their home in Roanoke, the couple speak fondly of the 20-year-old daughter they eagerly hope to see again; yet throughout an hour-long conversation, they occasionally refer to her, seven days gone at that point, in the past tense.

“You have a choice,” says Gil, pronounced JILL, “you can dissolve in the corner or become hard and bitter– or forge a way to find something positive because that’s what Morgan is, or was.”

“She always called me Papa,” says Dan. “She said (more)

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Morgan Harrington, center, with her father at left and her mother at right, on a recent family vacation.
PHOTO COURTESY HARRINGTON FAMILY

The father of Morgan Dana Harrington believes that the person responsible for abducting her outside the October 17 Metallica concert is someone from the Charlottesville area.

“If I had to bet my guess,” says Dan Harrington, “this is someone local.”

He expressed his theory Saturday morning in a living room interview, sandwiched between visits from the top television network morning news programs and a visit from two members of the Virginia State Police. While investigators continue (more)

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