Dry grass snaps underfoot as Gil and Dan Harrington make their way across the winter-yellowed fields of Anchorage Farm, where one year ago a farmer checking fences discovered the badly decomposed remains of their daughter, Morgan Harrington. The discovery brought a tragic end to a three-month search for the 20-year-old blond beauty, who disappeared after leaving a Metallica concert at the John Paul Jones Arena.

“This is not evil land,” says the bereaved mother, kneeling on the spot her daughter’s body lay and touching the earth. “But there was an evil man or men here who killed my daughter.”

Joined by a clutch of reporters, the parents undertook their first visit to the field, and on the walk down  to the site, the 53-year-old mother clutched the arm of her husband, Dan, and cried softly amid the rolling hills nine miles south of Charlottesville.

Gil Harrington’s outpouring of emotion stands in sharp contrast to the stoic frustration she expressed both in the early days of her ordeal and again in recent months as she has learned of a powerful new tool that could assist the investigation.

With police expressing their own frustration at finding a suspect, Gil Harrington has begun speaking out about the tool, which recently helped California investigators nab an alleged serial killer. It hasn’t yet been used in her daughter’s case— not because there’s any law preventing it, but because there’s no policy regarding it at all.

“That,” says Harrington, “is not an acceptable delay to use technology.”

The tool she’s talking about is familial DNA searching, a process by which an unidentified DNA profile— like the one investigators have obtained in the Harrington case, which linked it to an unsolved 2005 Fairfax rape— is run through the state’s DNA databank looking not for an exact match but for a close match that would identify a family member of an unidentified perpetrator and could point in the direction of potential suspects.

The method went high profile last summer with California’s so called “Grim Sleeper” case, and now law enforcement officials across the country are wondering if some of their own toughest cases might be cracked with familial DNA.

The ‘Grim Sleeper’
Beginning in 1985, Los Angeles detectives were stumped by a series of murders of women, many of them prostitutes, whose bodies were found in alleyways on the city’s southside. After a series of exposés by the L.A. Weekly in 2007, including an interview with the killer’s only known surviving victim, police feeling the heat of public pressure ran DNA of the unidentified perpetrator (dubbed the Grim Sleeper because of an apparent 14-year hiatus in killings) through the California DNA database looking for a familial connection. After linking the killer’s DNA to DNA taken from a man convicted on a felony weapons charge— a man who turned out to be the killer’s son– police homed in on 57-year-old Lonnie David Franklin Jr., and believed they’d found the killer. Franklin was arrested in July 2010 and has pleaded not guilty to 10 murder charges.

Only one state besides California— Colorado— currently uses familial DNA searching, but Virginia, a leader in the forensic use of DNA and the first state to fully fund its DNA databank in the mid-1990s, may soon follow suit, according to Gail Jaspen, chief deputy director of the Virginia Department of Forensic Science. In fact, she says, both the Attorney General’s office and the Virginia Crime Commission have ruled that there’s no legal obstacle preventing the state crime lab from conducting such searches and releasing results to law enforcement. The reason it hasn’t already begun, she says, is that Virginia simply didn’t have the necessary technology.

“We are indeed interested in acquiring the capability to do this as expeditiously as possible,” says Jaspen.

That would be welcome news to the Harringtons, for whom the idea that any stone has been left unturned in the search for their daughter’s killer is source of pain and fear— fear that another woman will be killed by the same man, and another family forced to endure the agony they’re suffering.

“It seems like it’s getting harder now, perhaps because that protective cloaking of shock is dissipating,” says Gil Harrington. “It’s more apparent that she’s not here, her closet doesn’t smell like her anymore, we’re starting to forget what her voice was like.”

No named suspects
The Morgan Harrington case began October 17, 2009 when a disoriented Harrington left the concert alone and began hitchhiking on the Copeley Road Bridge. During the recent media tour, the lead investigator, State Police Agent Dino Cappuzzo, told reporters that a bloodhound and eyewitness accounts confirm the area around the bridge as the last place the Virginia Tech student was spotted alive.

The case has stumped investigators, and a series of revelations over the past 12 months— starting with the discovery of Morgan’s body— have provided evidence to work with but yielded no named suspects. Perhaps the most significant revelation came in July, when investigators confirmed that forensic evidence— later confirmed to be DNA— had linked Morgan’s case to a 2005 unsolved brutal rape in Fairfax. A sketch of the suspect in the Fairfax case generated dozens of new leads, but none have led to an arrest. If Morgan’s killer has a parent, sibling, or child who’s been convicted of a felony since the Virginia DNA databank was launched in 1989, her parents say, there’s a chance a familial DNA search could narrow the potential field of suspects in her case down from countless thousands to a few dozen.

The Harringtons aren’t the only ones eager to see familial DNA searching become a standard weapon in Virginia law enforcement’s crime-fighting arsenal— particularly in violent crimes where a predator remains on the loose.

“A lot of times when you have a convicted felon, you’ll find other felons in the family,” says Albemarle County Sheriff Chip Harding, who pushed for and helped win legislation to fully fund Virginia’s DNA databank back in the mid- ’90s after learning that 150,000 DNA samples had been collected from felons but hadn’t been entered into the databank.

Thanks to that funding, as of December 31, the Virginia DNA databank holds neary 328,000 DNA samples taken from convicted felons and those arrested for violent crimes. By the end of last year, says Harding, law enforcement officials had had 6,957 “hits”— when DNA evidence taken from a crime scene matched a DNA profile in the databank, in many cases leading to a conviction.

Harding recalls one local case that highlighted the critical importance of the databank in solving crimes. In 1999, a man broke into a UVA student’s apartment and raped her while holding her boyfriend at gunpoint. The police had no suspects, just some saliva on a beer can.

Because of a backlog of cases, it took a month for the state crime lab to finally process the DNA. And then came the “cold hit,” an event Harding calls “my most exciting moment in law enforcement.” The DNA from the apartment pointed to a man named Montaret Davis as responsible for the assault and paved the way to a conviction.

The validation process
In late December– after lobbying by the Harringtons— the state came one step closer to making familial DNA searches a reality as the Department of Forensic Science received and installed the familial DNA searching software used in Denver crime labs. Currently, says Jaspen, the software is going through a validation process to “ensure that it does what it’s purported to do and that our people are qualified to perform the searches.”

But installing software and actually using it are two different things– particularly in the Harrington case, according to State Police spokesperson Corinne Geller, who says investigators must proceed cautiously with any further DNA testing because the “amount of the evidence available is limited.” (DNA evidence is destroyed when it is tested.)

Limited DNA samples aren’t the only potential stumbling block for investigators. The use of familial DNA searches has already attracted the attention of the ACLU, which filed a legal challenge against California’s policy of collecting DNA from arrestees (as opposed to only from convicted felons).

A July 15 editorial posted on the ACLU of Southern California’s website explains the concerns about familial DNA testing.

“Whether we should expand familial searching isn’t just about the success in this case,” the editorial states in the wake of the Grim Sleeper arrest. “It’s about whether familial DNA searching is really the silver bullet prosecutors suggest, and whether privacy and civil rights concerns have been adequately addressed. The answer to both questions, for the moment, is no.”

And any use of familial DNA here in Virginia will receive similar scrutiny, says Kent Willis, head of the Virginia ACLU, who sees DNA profiling of any kind– particularly of those arrested but not convicted of a crime– as a possible slippery slope.

“First it was just convicted felons, then they moved to anyone arrested for a violent felony,” he says of Virginia’s DNA collecting policies. “We’re concerned that what may happen with familial DNA testing is that once you’ve started the process, unless you create strict protocols, that its use will continue to be expanded and expanded.” For instance, he says, “there are always calls to expand [DNA collection] to anyone arrested for felony or misdemeanor. The ultimate extension is that we should take everyone’s DNA at birth.”

Harding, however, scoffs at the notion that the system would be abused, and says he believes concerns about privacy issues with DNA are overblown— and that old school investigative practices are actually far more invasive.

“I’d argue that intrusion was at its greatest in the old days, the late 70s, early 80s, when there was no such thing as DNA,” he says. Harding, who worked for the Charlottesville Police Department for three decades before his 2007 election to sheriff, recalls following up on tips by digging into the alibis of anyone whose name came up in the course of the investigation— in some cases, hundreds of people.

By contrast, he says, “If I get a list with five or six names on it from a familial DNA search– if one is extremely close, it’s a really good lead– all I’m seeing is who in the family tree might meet the profile, then I put them under surveillance and take a sample.”

“Taking a sample” helped Charlottesville police finally catch the Charlottesville serial rapist back in 2007. After one of Nathan Antonio Washington’s victims recognized the butcher at the Barracks Road Harris Teeter as the man who’d brutalized her, police followed Washington and plucked from the trash a Burger King soda cup he’d just discarded. DNA on the straw matched the profile of the assailant who’d eluded police for nearly a decade. Washington was arrested and is currently serving four life sentences.

The ACLU’s Willis says the capture of violent criminals like Washington– and DNA’s proven ability to exonerate the wrongly convicted– make objecting to its use in criminal matters complicated. But he hopes the state will proceed with caution.

“What we want to see come out of the Virginia Crime Commission is a proposed bill that would prevent police from implementing familial DNA and would instead create a study to determine its cost, efficacy, and consider potential invasions of privacy and its impact on fairness in criminal justice system,” says Willis, stressing that the ACLU is “not opposing familial DNA testing; just arguing that the state ought to move slowly into this and know exactly what it’s doing and what the consequences might be.”

The Harringtons, however, say moving slowly when their daughter’s killer remains at large is “crazy.”

“It’s a tool and a technology that exists, and it should be in the hands of law enforcement in this state,” says Gil Harrington. “I don’t know why it would require such prodigious time.”

Correction: Special Agent Dino Cappuzzo’s last name is misspelled in the print edition of this story.–ed

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Convicted murderer Jens Soering tasted the possibility of going home last year when outgoing Governor Tim Kaine okayed his transfer to Germany. However, one week later, newly sworn-in Governor Bob McDonnell revoked the transfer, and now Soering is suing McDonnell, arguing that he doesn’t have the power to undo Kaine’s signed agreement with Germany.

The lawsuit was first revealed in the Daily Progress, and a new analysis by a top constitutional scholar suggests that this is one prison lawsuit that won’t quickly disappear.

Charlottesville attorney Steve Rosenfeld filed the suit for Soering in Richmond Circuit Court January 18 and says it raises important aspects on constitutional and statutory limits to the governor’s power.

“Here a governor a few days in office revokes his predecessor’s approval on an international treaty,” says Rosenfield. “The concern Governor McDonnell ought to have (more)

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For weeks, people around the county have awakened to find their cars have been broken into. But on January 23, a complaint that people were going through cars in the Old Trail neighborhood led to the arrest of three teens who police say have broken into more than 200 vehicles.

Christopher Ballard, 18, is charged with five counts of grand larceny; Kristie Ryder, 19, is charged with two counts of grand larceny, and an unidentified 17-year-old faces eight counts of grand larceny, which is a felony that carries up to 20 years in prison.

The rash of car break-in reports has been coming in since November, says Albemarle police Sergeant Darrell Byers. Most recently, seven vehicles in Mill Creek were reported hit January 16, over 20 off East Rio on January 17, and more than 20 reported on January 20 in the Georgetown Green and Pantops areas. Most of the vehicles were unlocked, says an investigator.

Police were already looking for the alleged perps January 23 when the call came in from Old Trail in Crozet. The suspects “attempted to leave the area at a high rate of speed,” says Byers.

The alleged getaway vehicle, a Honda Pilot, was (more)

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It had been over 40 years since Jimmy Gunn had been behind bars, and he was terrified of going back. He began telling friends that it wasn’t fair that a 60-year-old with myriad health problems couldn’t serve his 30-day marijuana sentence on house arrest. He even called the Hook to complain about what America’s war on drugs was doing to him. And six days after entering the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, he was dead.

But a marijuana sales conviction last fall coupled with a 1969 possession conviction may have given authorities little option.

Gunn had a history of poor health. He was bipolar, took medication for panic attacks, and relied on an inhaler to treat his emphysema, according to friends and family.

Still, to his friend Teague Herren, Gunn seemed healthy enough when Herren drove Gunn to court on December 9. They were hoping the judge would consider a motion for home electronic monitoring and a restricted driver’s license. Instead, Gunn was taken to jail.

“I dropped him off at court, and a week later he’s dead,” says Herren, “for a pot charge.”

Gunn was an artisan carpenter whose work graced the home of the late Dave Matthews Band saxophonist LeRoi Moore. But after a bout of cancer, Gunn had relied on disability insurance, and friends suspect he supplemented his income by selling pot.

According to his attorney, Jessica Phillips, who filed the motion requesting home monitoring, Albemarle Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Higgins and the Commonwealth’s Attorney were open to Gunn serving his time at home as long as the jail said he qualified.

It seems that in 1969 Gunn was convicted of possession of marijuana for five grams of marijuana, which is roughly the equivalent of a “dime bag,” ten dollars worth of pot. Then it was a felony. Today, it would be a misdemeanor.

Phillips checked with jail officials, and says she was told Gunn was wouldn’t qualify for house arrest due to his prior conviction, even though though it was handed down during the Nixon Administration. And even though he was in very poor health, according to Gunn’s ex-wife Debbie Davis.

“He wanted home arrest,” says Davis. “Given his age and his health, and given it was only for pot, I don’t understand why he wasn’t given it.”

Gunn’s recent legal troubles began last year after he sold marijuana to an undercover officer. After that, the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement Task Force raided his house and found approximately four pounds of pot in dozens of plastic baggies, according to an inventory sent to a forensic lab. An old shotgun added an additional charge: possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Anyone who is convicted of a reefer offense in Virginia automatically loses his driver’s license for six months. That posed an additional hardship on Gunn’s ability to get his medications. He’d lived in the same Barboursville cottage for 30 years, but after his October 6 conviction, he was evicted.

When they learned that Gunn’s death followed the confiscation of his ever-present inhaler, some of Gunn’s friends initially cast blame in the direction of the Jail.

Other jail deaths: Four other inmates have died in the jail or after they were taken to the hospital in the past 10 years, according to information provided by the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail.
Kenneth R. Banks was in for six months with a sentence revocation/probation violation. He’d been playing basketball in the recreation area September 1, 2009, and was found unresponsive on the ground. He was taken to UVA Medical Center, which notified the jail he died of cardiac arrest.
Jane A. Barbour had been sentenced to 90 days for possession of alcohol by an interdicted person, which means she’d been forbidden to have booze as a result of  other offenses. She came into the jail on June 6, 2006. Two days later, she was found face down and unresponsive in her cell, and pronounced dead by the emergency medical technicians. Official cause of death: accidental choking.
Lloyd L. Fitzgerald was serving a 10-day sentence on the weekends for a DUI when he was discovered dead in his cell when breakfast was served March 13, 2004. The coroner called it cardiac arrest.
Walter B. Ditchkus Jr. was brought in on a public drunkenness charge and tried to hang himself February 13, 2001. He was taken to UVA Medical Center and died February 21, 2001. The jail does not have a cause of death in its records.

However, Colonel Ron Matthews, the Jail superintendent, notes that Gunn had been placed on suicide watch December 12 because he’d tried to harm himself with a plastic fork. It was shortly after 11pm the next day, when Gunn told an officer that he was cold, says Matthews.

“Five minutes later, the officer finished his work and went to check on him,” says Matthews. “He was unresponsive.”

According to court records, Gunn was in a coma when he was taken to UVA Medical Center and placed on a respirator. On December 14, the charges against him were dismissed, and his family and friends were able to see him. The next day, he was taken off the respirator and died.

Prisoners with medical issues “get better care in jail than they do out on the street,” says Colonel Matthews. When inmates are on suicide watch, they aren’t allowed to have items that they could potentially harm themselves with, like inhalers, and they’re checked every 10 to 15 minutes, he says.

“As an administrator,” says Matthews, “that’s the worst thing that can happen when someone under your care dies.”

The medical examiner determined that Gunn died from a pulmonary embolism— a blood clot from the leg that blocks the main artery to the lungs.

Gunn’s emphysema would not have been a factor in the pulmonary embolism, says Dr. Samuel Coughron, who was Gunn’s doctor and who had prepared a letter for the jail detailing his patient’s condition.

“In general, when something like this happens, you’re screwed,” says Coughron. “You’re dead before you hit the floor.”

Jimmy Gunn’s family and friends still are grappling with his death, and some remain concerned about whether an inability to get his medications and inhaler could have played a role in his death.

“It was a needless death,” says Teague Herren. “He wasn’t suicidal.”

–updated 11:30am with Gunn’s November call to the Hook

–edited 11:25pm on Sunday, January 22

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A trusty looking for a snack from a vending machine in the lobby of the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail led to the facility being locked down for a week.

Metal rods were discovered missing from the vending machine in the lobby January 6 in an area only available to jail employees and trusties, says the jail’s superintendent, Colonel Ron Matthews.

“To be on the safe side, we closed down the jail and did a 100 percent search,” he says. The missing 16- to 18-inch rods did not turn up, and the individual suspected of having access to the machine denied having a snack attack.

“We stopped all inmate movement,” Matthews explains. “We were looking for something that could potentially injure someone.”

That meant that for approximately 530 inmates, all recreation and visitation came to a halt. At a jail built to house just 329 inmates, the lockdown left some inmates crammed into a 5′ by 8′ cell with up to three other people.

The inmates were only told that they were locked down for security reasons with no further explanation, according Marjorie Sunflower Sargent, who received a letter from a friend incarcerated there.

“We are very stressed out,” Kevin O’Connor wrote to Sargent. “Some people experienced panic attacks and others traumatic psychological and emotional consequences… What the hell is going on? Please help us.”

To Sargent, a human rights activist, locking so many people in an overcrowded facility is “unconscionable.”

When a search did not turn up the vending rods and a week had passed, Matthews tried a new strategy.

“We offered him immunity,” he says. The trusty ‘fessed up that when he tilted the vending machine to get candy, the rods came out. He said he threw them in the trash and they were taken out with the regular trash.

On January 13, the lock down ended.

As for the inmate responsible for his fellow prisoners being locked down for a week— how safe is he?

“He won’t go back to the general population,” says Matthews. And he has the option of going to another facility.

The jail superintendent says this is the second lock down he’s had since coming here in 2004, and observes, “That’s part of corrections life.”

–updated January 17 with the more common spelling of “trusty.”

Updated January 18 with the Marjorie Sargent and Kevin O’Connor remarks.

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Since his release from prison two years ago for the infamous 1989 graduation rape, Jeffrey Kitze has had a hard time getting a date. Returned to prison last year for unwelcome dating overtures, he was found guilty Monday, January 10, of stalking a Charlottesville woman.

Singles are often told that volunteering is a good way to meet people, and that’s the avenue Kitze tried following his January 2009 release after serving 20 years for raping and beating his sister’s UVA Law School roommate. Kitze donated time to the Virginia Organizing Project, but it was the attention he lavished on a fellow volunteer at a group called Food Not Bombs that resulted in the stalking conviction.

Wearing prison stripes, Kitze, 49, did not testify during the three-and-a-half hour trial, but according to the victim, he had plenty to say to her.

She told the court she first encountered him while riding her bike on Water Street in October 2009. He allegedly remarked that he knew her name from watching her on public access television and said the two would have plenty in common even though she was in her 20s.

Kitze soon started showing up at Food Not Bombs events. While cooking with the woman one day, he said she wouldn’t believe how old he was.

“I bike 100 miles a day,” the victim quoted the lovelorn Kitze. “I’m in shape. I have a beautiful body.”

By November 2009, she saw him walking by her then-residence on Nalle Street in the Fifeville neighborhood.

“Here,” she said in court, “was the (more)

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Reporters hoping to catch a glimpse of George Wesley Huguely V, the wealthy college lacrosse player who became a striped-jumpsuit-wearing inmate, were denied another opportunity on Monday, January 10, as his lawyer won a third continuance in the case in which Huguely is charged with slaying his ex-girlfriend.

“Judge, I can say that both sides have been moving with diligence,” declared Huguely lawyer Fran Lawrence. “There’s just a lot of stuff that’s still out there.”

Lawrence noted that the defense team, which also includes Rhonda Quagliana, has yet to examine about 20 of the approximately 112 items arrayed in the case against their client, a 23-year-old whose previous spurts of violence went unpublicized until he allegedly erupted last spring in a fatal rage.

On May 3 inside an apartment on 14th Street, Charlottesville police found the lifeless body of Yeardley Love, a fellow lacrosse player. They arrested Huguely, who lived next door, after he allegedly confessed to repeatedly bashing the young woman’s head into a wall of her bedroom and then returning to take her computer and toss it in a dumpster.

Lawyer Lawrence has termed the incident a tragic accident, and he seems eager to win a round in the public relations battle. On Friday, January 7, Charlottesville’s top prosecutor revealed (more)

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After spending nearly three weeks behind bars, accused wife-killer Eric Abshire was forced to wait seven hours past his scheduled hearing time before he was led into the Orange County Circuit courtroom at around 5pm on Thursday, January 6 for his first appearance in what appears already on its way to becoming a lengthy legal process.

Wearing handcuffs, leg shackles, and the orange-and-white-striped uniform of the Central Virginia Regional Jail, where he has been held since his December 17 arrest on first degree murder and perjury charges, the 36-year-old Abshire painted a bleak picture of his finances as he asked Judge Daniel Bouton for a court-appointed attorney.

Standing erect and speaking in a steady tone, the former dump-truck operator said he worked full-time until his arrest, and he denied having any assets, including a vehicle. His checking account balance, he said, is $120. (As previously reported, Abshire— who allegedly attempted to secure $300,000 of his late wife’s life insurance proceeds— declared bankruptcy in May 2009.)

(more)

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When Aaron B. Tobey decided to exercise his First Amendment rights by displaying the Fourth Amendment on his chest while going through security at the Richmond International Airport, he expected that he might be detained for further questioning.

“He was astounded he was arrested for disorderly conduct,” says his father, Charlottesville accountant Robert Tobey.

At the airport conveyor belt, Aaron, 21, removed everything but his shorts to reveal what he’d scrawled on his torso: “Amendment 4: The right of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated.”

“He thinks like I do,” says Robert Tobey, explaining that his son, a graduate of Western Albemarle High School and now an architecture student at the University of Cinncinnati, finds that new airport security procedures that force passengers to choose between a full body scanner that produces what some consider a virtual strip search or an invasive body pat down are “security theater,” says Tobey père.

The account of the incident, first reported in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, said Aaron stripped down to his underwear, but his father says it was just a pair of running shorts. And the elder Tobey, who took part in protests during his own youth, contends that his son acted respectfully and complied with the security procedures. But apparently the Transportation Security Administration was not amused with (more)

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The man who lived under a cloud of suspicion for 41 years as the main suspect in the murders of two young women at an ice cream parlor has sued the City of Staunton and as many as six unnamed individuals for more than $200 million for what he describes as decades of harassment that continued long after evidence cleared him.

A year after the 1967 crime at High’s Ice Cream, Bill Thomas was tried and acquitted of first degree murder in the death of 19-year-old Constance Hevener. However, he remained under indictment for another 40 years for the same-night killing of 20-year-old Carolyn Perry. In his suit, Thomas, who now lives in southern Augusta County, makes several shocking allegations.

Among them, he claims that the lead investigator for the Staunton Police, Dave “Davie” Bocock, knew the day after the double-slaying that Thomas was innocent and that Bocock also knew who did it: High’s employee Sharron Diane Crawford.

The suit alleges that Detective Bocock engaged in a cover up because he was romantically involved with Crawford and may have fathered more than one child with her. Surviving family members have refused DNA testing, even as relatives of the victims have pleaded for an explanation. Further, the suit states, Crawford, in a 2008 deathbed confession, told investigators that immediately following the murders, Bocock— who died in 2006— had helped her bury the murder weapon on his property.

The case rocked Staunton two years ago when the deathbed confession became known. Now, the case stands to further strain this picturesque Shenandoah Valley city because the current mayor, Lacy B. King Jr.— a 32-year police veteran and former deputy police chief— is named in the suit.

While acknowledging that Bocock was demoted (more)

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When murder suspect and UVA lacrosse player George Huguely spoke with police in May, he allegedly described an altercation with former girlfriend Yeardley Love in which her “head repeatedly hit the wall,” and his lawyer called Love’s death “an accident with a tragic outcome.” Now, the defense is trying to prove that.

Lawyers for Huguely were in a Charlottesville court December 15 seeking access to Love’s medical records, a request the prosecution calls “a fishing expedition.”

Although the medical examiner determined that Love died May 3 from blunt force trauma to the head, Huguely’s attorney, Fran Lawrence, argued that the cause of her death was unknown, and that’s why he subpoenaed records from UVA Athletics Department, UVA Student Health, and from the Charlottesville-Albemarle Rescue Squad, the last of which Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman had already agreed to enter the court record.

Amphetamines were found in Love’s body, according to the toxicology report, in an amount that would be consistent with her prescription for Adderall, a stimulant widely used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, said Bill Gormley, who (more)

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A Charlottesville jury has awarded what’s believed to be Virginia’s largest wrongful death award— more than $10 million— and seemed to send a message to the family of a woman who died when a cement-laden truck from Allied Concrete rolled and crushed her car three years and a half ago.

“It speaks to the level of tragedy the family experienced,” says Bryan Slaughter, a trial lawyer who watched part of the December 7-9 proceedings. “It also says Allied’s conduct is not going to be tolerated in this community.”

Jessica Lester, 25, was driving to work with her husband, Isaiah Lester, on June 21, 2007, when they crossed paths with a mixer driven by Allied employee William Donald Sprouse, who chose curvy, two-lane Route 53 over Monticello Mountain to haul 36,000 pounds of cement to a bridge rebuild in Palmyra, rather than taking Interstate 64 and U.S. 15.

Trial testimony showed that Sprouse had a history of driving infractions. On the fateful day, the plaintiffs allege he was driving too fast around a curve when he lost control of the truck, which overturned on top of the Lesters’ Honda.

Jessica Lester grew up on an organic farm in Nelson County where she was home-schooled. A graduate of Piedmont Virginia Community College, she was training to become a nurse coordinator for UVA neurosurgeon Greg Helm. Instead she became his patient.

The neurosurgeon testified (more)

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Fairfax Deputy Police Chief Steve Sellers will be the next Albemarle County Police chief, county exec Bob Tucker announced Monday..

Sellers, a 28-year-veteran of the Fairfax County, has led the investigations division for Fairfax including heading a task force that successfully investigated snipers John Mohammed and Lee Malvo, who terrorized Northern Virginia in 2002.

Sellers succeeds John Miller, who retired September 30 after 21 years as chief.

“We are very happy to bring someone of Steve Sellers’ caliber,” says Tucker in a release.

Sellers, 49, says he’s wanted to be in law enforcement since he was five years old. He got both his B.A. in business administration and master’s in public administration at Virginia Tech. He’s also a graduate of the FBI National Academy.

Although the population of Fairfax recently topped the one million mark (to Albemarle’s less than 100,000), Sellers says Albemarle and Fairfax share similar demographics as far as an educated population. The two jurisdictions also face similar crime trends, economic uncertainty, and traffic issues.

“There’s a lot,” he says, “I can transfer from Fairfax.”

In November, two of Albemarle’s six supervisors said that personal integrity would be an important quality they’d seek in a new chief. Earlier this year, in March, four officers were disciplined for unspecified “inappropriate” behavior “while on the clock.”

“I don’t support or condone any behavior that erodes the public trust,” says Sellers. “I have 28 years with a highly regarded, ethically sound police department. Truthfulness is an absolute must. Truthfulness, integrity, and public trust are very high on the list.”

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Besides being accused of murder in the death of UVA classmate Yeardley Love, George W. Huguely V has been branded a spoiled rich kid. But according to an action taken by a local lender, the Huguely family appears to be enduring the kind of financial setbacks that have affected many property owners in the ailing American economy.

According to property and other public records, an 8.34-acre parcel of land along upscale Morgantown Road owned by a company controlled by the accused killer’s father, George W. Huguely IV, has fallen into foreclosure proceedings.

The auction, under the auspices of Charlottesville attorney Rick Carter, was slated for the steps of the Albemarle County courthouse at noon on Tuesday, December 7. According to a source, that auction was called off. The reason, says Carter, is that the land-owning company has declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Purchased five years ago for $485,000 in a transaction funded by Virginia National Bank, the originally 10.34-acre property was replatted a year later with a two-acre parcel sold off as the building site. The remaining land appears to contain no house.

An early deed of trust from VNB shows indebtedness of $325,000. How much debt remained on the property at the time of the foreclosure action could not be immediately learned.

The Albemarle assessor values the tract at $333,800. The property is held by a West Virginia partnership whose general partner, and the person signing the documents, is George W. Huguely IV. The company’s legal address is a building in Bethesda, Maryland, that also serves as the headquarters for the Huguely Companies. Efforts to reach the elder Huguely were not immediately successful.

In 1993, a West Virginia firm (more)

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Ever since a woman walking her dog on Free Bridge Lane discovered the body of Anthony Lorenzo Johnson on the ground beside his ‘81 Buick Regal back on February 21, 2005, the case has remained open for Albemarle police. That changed December 6, when an Albemarle grand jury indicted a man who would have been a minor when he allegedly killed Johnson.

Nearly six years later, Joseph Michael Harris, now 22, has been charged with first-degree murder and three other felonies in the homicide and robbery of Johnson, 22, whom his family called “Bunny.”

Over the years, Albemarle police worked with Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents in investigating the case, according to a release.

Johnson, who was from the tiny James River town of Columbia, worked for Piedmont Concrete at the time of his death, and he left three children. He’d been shot once in the head. The investigation is ongoing, say police.

“It’s nice to be able to give a little bit of closure to the Johnson family,” says Albemarle Lieutenant Greg Jenkins.

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It was only a poster, but it meant everything to Wendy Marsters.

The Northern California high school teacher has been listening to Dave Matthews Band since 1995, and she catches the band’s show every time they happen near her home. But for the final show on the final tour before a fan-freaking hiatus, she decided to cross the continent.

“I knew it would be epic— ” she says in a phone call from Chico, “epic in Dave Matthews Band-ness.”

And she even found an epic seat in Charlottesville. As the 20th person in line for the November 20 show at John Paul Jones Arena, the 41-year-old parlayed her 12-hour wait into primo, second-row seats.

“I had the best seat in the house,” says Marsters “And I wanted a poster as a symbol of this trip.”

Every DMB show has a different, limited edition poster, and Marsters paid $40 for one of the 650 Methane Studios posters printed just for the Saturday event.

“There’s key shows that sell out and are important and people collect the posters,” explains Marsters. And because the Charlottesville show was the last one until 2012, there’s one offered on eBay for $400.

After the three-and-a-half hour concert, Marsters went to the nearby McDonald’s restaurant while the Arena traffic cleared. She started talking to a young man from Richmond who’d also been at the show, and who asked how much she wanted for the poster and offered her $250, she says. No way, responded Marsters.

“It’s priceless to me,” she says she (more)

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