FBI reneges, stonewalls over Evonitz and Rice
Despite the urgings of some family members of the victims in the unsolved 1996 slayings of three Central Virginia women, the FBI is refusing to say why it backed out of a commitment to compare DNA from known serial killer Richard Marc Evonitz, pictured at left, to crime scene evidence.
According to this morning's Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star, the FBI won't explain why it failed to follow through on its 2002 promise to perform forensic analysis to explore whether Evonitz, who killed three girls in the greater Fredericksburg area in 1995 and 1996 and might also be considered a suspect in the Route 29 kidnapping and slaying of Alicia Showalter Reynolds and the slaying of two women camping in Shenandoah National Park.
It's all academic for Evonitz, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 2002 while fleeing police pursuing him for a harrowing rape and kidnapping, in which the teenaged victim escaped while he slept.
But for fans of Darrell David Rice of Kent Island, Maryland, pictured at right, forensic testing would be welcome indeed. Rice, freed last summer after more
than a decade behind bars in an attempted kidnapping, has found his name linked by authorities to the unsolved murders, even to the point of getting indicted in 2002 for the Park killings. He claims he's innocent and that neighbors hound him over crimes he says he didn't commit.
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5 comments
Thanks for the updates on this story. Very strange indeed. The FBI never answers to the public. Maybe the U.S. Attorney for that region may have an answer.
The FBI and Va State Police need to wake up and face reality: the case of my twin sister, Alicia Showalter Reynolds, has grown cold. Although my family has been repeatedly told that the case is still active and that it is being worked on, I believe that officials are stonewalling on evidence potential linking Evonitz with Williams and Winans and subsequently my sister. I call for new investigators and for DNA testing to be done on Evonitz. We can forgive mistakes being made in these investigations; but we will not tolerate a cover-up, and neither will the public.
I have experience in this area, I can tell you why. If the FBI does DNA testing and it's determined Evonitz was the correct suspect in the park killings, the U. S. government might as well hand Rice a blank check. After all, they had originally charged him with the murders.
Law enforcement agencies will seldom reopen cases and investigate them properly after they have jumped the gun and charged the wrong person.
He was charged with the murders but did not go to trial. He went to prison for 10 years for attempted kidnapping that was totally seperate from the murders. Evonitz was a pedophile.
That's correct, Dr. Know. But for the rest of his natural life he will in the eyes of the public remain a suspect in the park killings because of his arrest in the same.