“Someone knows something,” says Dan Harrington, pictured here with wife Gil on March 17 in front of John Paul Jones Arena. “They need to come forward.”
PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART

Her parents desperately wish it weren’t so, but they say they’re convinced: Morgan Harrington suffered before she was killed.

On the five month anniversary of the Virginia Tech student’s disappearance and less than two months after her remains were discovered in a remote area of a southern Albemarle County farm, her parents, Dan and Gil Harrington, spoke to reporters in front of the John Paul Jones Arena, where Morgan attended an October 17 Metallica show the night of her disappearance, to beg anyone with information about the case to come forward and to urge caution in the Charlottesville community.

“A monster walks among you,” Gil Harrington says, calling her daughter’s killer a “violent, sadistic and dangerous man.”

Although a medical examiner quickly ruled 20-year-old Morgan’s death a homicide after her body was discovered January 26, police have been silent in recent weeks and have released no further information on her cause of death.

However, her parents, both medical professionals, say signs of violence were obvious on their daughter’s remains, which were released from evidence and returned to them in February.

“He chooses to kill in a savage and brutal way,” says Gil Harrington, an oncology nurse, of her daughter’s killer, “to break her bones before he murdered her.” Dan Harrington, a psychiatrist, confirms that his daughter’s skeleton showed “brutal damage.”

While the Harringtons won’t comment on which of Morgan’s bones were broken— and acknowledge that they do not yet know her actual cause of death, pending the release of the official autopsy report— they remain convinced that the person responsible is an experienced criminal and may be a convicted sex offender. (more)

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The Battle Building will transform West Main’s streetscape.
Odell & Associates

“Building, but not sprawling” was the headline of a recent UVA Magazine story on the school’s $308 million build-a-thon this year— in the face of a recession and UVA budget cutting. But next year one massive project will dramatically alter West Main’s streetscape (something UVA has long been threatening to do): the $141 million, 7-story, 200,000 square foot Barry and Bill Battle Building at UVA Children’s Hospital, which is scheduled to go up on a temporary parking lot beside the 12th Street Taphouse from 2011-2014.

The new building, which will serve as an outpatient surgery and (more)

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So long, Larry.
PHOTO COURTESY POLLSTAR

John Paul Jones Arena officials announced March 16 that Jason Pedone, assistant general manager for the venue since 2007, has replaced Larry Wilson as general manager. Wilson, who has been GM since the arena opened in 2006, has taken a loftier GM position for SMG— the management company that operates the Arena on behalf of the University— in Jacksonville, Florida, where he’ll manage six venues in the city.

“Larry leaves us in a great situation,” says Pedone, who served as the director of event services for SMG at Reliant Park, home to the NFL’s Houston Texans, before coming to Charlottesville to assist Wilson. “My goal,” he says, “is to keep a good thing going.”

Indeed, despite some early skepticism about whether or not such a small community could support such an arena, Wilson lured many of the world’s top touring acts to town, including The Police, Metallica, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billy Joel, Justin Timberlake, Eric Clapton, and U2, with acts like Larry the Cable Guy, Lipizzaner Stallions, and The Wiggles thrown in for good measure. Under Wilson’s management, the arena was named Pollstar’s Best New Major Concert Venue 2006.

Wilson also managed the Paramount Theater in town, but Pedone says (more)

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Unshoveled sidewalks like this one on Water Street were common this winter.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Even though snow blocked sidewalks all over town for weeks following major snowstorms in what was a record-breaking winter, no one has been convicted under Charlottesville’s ordinance requiring snow removal from public sidewalks.

Police declined to issue citations following the December 18-19 Snowpocalypse because the city had done such a poor job clearing its own sidewalks.

The snow removal ordinance hit another hurdle this week when judges dismissed charges against five people and businesses, including McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Yellow Cab, who were cited in February for not shoveling.

Defense attorney Andre Hakes argued in Charlottesville General District Court March 12 that Virginia’s Dillon’s Rule, which says a locality can only adopt laws that are allowed by state law, does not give the city authority to make (more)

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Medical personnel attend to the victim, whose pelvis was shattered in the incident.
PHOTO BY REID DAVISWORTH

The monster truck emcee struck and rolled over by one of the trucks in the Friday, March 12 show at John Paul Jones Arena remained hospitalized in serious condition at UVA hospital on Tuesday, March 16, and according to a representative for the company responsible for organizing the weekend’s two shows, the prognosis for the injured man, Ken Dickinson of Lyndhurst, is bright.

“I had the pleasure of speaking with him Saturday at intermission,” says Zane Rettew, safety and entertainment director for Checkered Flag Productions. “They expect him to make a full recovery.”

According to Rettew, Dickinson (more)

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Virginia Foundation for the Humanities president Rob Vaughan will not have to announce the demise of the Book Festival this year.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities escaped a House of Delegates proposal to eliminate its state funding the same week its most widely known program, the Virginia Festival of the Book, runs.

“We were never not going to survive,” says VFH president Rob Vaughan, “but we were going to be impoverished.”

The Charlottesville-based organization did not come out of the budget process unscathed, losing $290,000 on top of $550,000 that had already been cut from its current $3.8-million budget. And Vaughan credits the Foundation’s supporters for lobbying legislators.

“I was really delighted with the number of people who said they called, and they called (more)

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Graycie the parrot is the subject of Jenny Gardiner’s latest book, which will not be called Parrothood.
FILE PHOTO OF GARDINER BY JEN FARIELLO

Sleeping with Ward Cleaver author Jenny Gardiner’s tale of life with a sharp-beaked parrot got her a book deal with Simon & Schuster— and threats about trademark infringement for the title, Parrothood: Twenty Years of Caring for a Vengeful Bird Determined to Kill Me.

New York African gray parrot breeder Patrica Barth asserted that she held the trademark to “planned parrothood,” and that gave her exclusive rights to the word “parrothood.”

Gardiner’s book comes out March 16, and it’s now called Winging It: A Memoir of Caring for a Vengeful Parrot Who’s Determined to Kill Me.

“I was completely within my legal rights, but with someone as (more)

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This is a late bloom for this UVA-area winter jasmine.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

The heavy snowfalls and cold temperatures accompanying the Snowpocalypse and Snowmageddon are showing their effects. Charlottesville flower blooming and amphibian-growing have started later than usual, and in particular, the little tree frogs known as spring peepers have just begun peeping. Is this cause for concern?

“They’re going to have to get active pretty quickly to reproduce before predators get active in the ponds,” says nature writer Marlene Condon. “They really have a narrow window in which they can reproduce.”

Condon says that a quick shift to hot weather could limit the peeper populations, which serve the dual purposes of limiting insects and feeding hungry animals. Amphibians such as the peepers need a stretch of cool weather in order to reproduce.

“There are years,” says Condon, “when the conditions are just never right.”

Over in the world of flora, the bellwether winter jasmine at the corner of University Avenue and Rugby Road bloomed on Wednesday, March 10, the latest yellow eruption in (more)

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Pilot James Arvid Youngquist, 62, of Reston died in the Louisa crash.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Less than a week after a fatal plane crash at a front yard in Louisa, the National Transportation Safety Board has released a preliminary report which cites “a loss of engine power” and several recent bouts of trouble with the right engine of the twin-propellered Cessna which crashed March 4 shortly after take-off.

“The right engine had problems,” says flight instructor Skip Degan, although he seconds NTSB investigator Bob Gretz’s caution, uttered when interviewed at the site a day after the wreck, against drawing conclusions from such an early report.

Still, instructor Degan says the report’s emphasis on engine troubles and power loss, coupled with witness statements that the plane was discharging grayish black smoke and appeared to be rolling before a nose-down impact point to a chilling scenario: a stall-spin.

Degan, who examined the report but is unconnected to the investigation, notes that (more)

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A CTS bus downtown.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Perhaps the most fascinating part of the whole brawl-at-the-mall that caused Charlottesville Fashion Square to shut down for an hour on Friday night, March 5, is the statement released by Simon Malls. The release declares that unsupervised juveniles— said to number around 100 by NBC29— arrived via public transportation. The Newsplex doesn’t give a total for the crowd, but Charlottesville Transit Service buses appear to hold a little under 50 people.

Albemarle County Police Corporal Ken Richardson says that preliminary reports suggest total involvement (more)

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Mark Linkous was the subject of a February 28, 2002 Hook cover story.
ARCHIVE

He died once 14 years ago, but this time Mark Linkous won’t be coming back. The 47-year-old musician who performed under the name Sparklehorse and was known for his haunting melodies and poetic lyrics, committed suicide on Saturday, March 6 in an alley outside a friend’s home in Knoxville, Tennessee by shooting himself through the heart.

“It’s very distressing,” says his cousin-in-law, Tracey Linkous of Charlottesville, noting that Linkous had become increasingly withdrawn from extended family over the past several years and that he was devastated over the disintegration of his marriage. Linkous’ manager, Shelby Meade, confirms that the musician was in the process of divorce.

The subject of the February 28, 2002 Hook cover story, when he was living near the tiny Buckingham County town of Dillwyn, Linkous famously overdosed in London in 1996 and suffered cardiac arrest, but was revived after spending several minutes technically dead. Hospitalized for months, he regained the ability to walk with leg braces— but more importantly, he retained his ability to sing and write songs. While his work never achieved mainstream commercial success, it inspired (more)

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The Cessna Crusader burned after impact.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

A preliminary report pointing to possible causes of the fatal front-yard crash of a private plane in Louisa could be posted later this week, following National Transportation Safety Board policy.

“It’s really day one of an investigation that takes about six months,” said NTSB official Bob Gretz. “We’re still in the fact-finding phase.”

Gretz, a senior air safety investigator based in New Jersey, made his comments on site March 5, a day after the twin-engine Cessna Crusader crashed shortly after take-off from Freeman Field in Louisa, a town about 20 miles east of Charlottesville.

The pilot, identified as 62-year-old James “Jay” Youngquist of Reston, died in the fire, which consumed the one-and-a-half story Cape Cod-style residence near Jefferson Highway, better known as U.S. 33. A man inside (more)

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Could this be you in November?
PUBLICITY PHOTO BY JACK LOONEY

You may be ready to say “I do”— but sometimes your wallet is not. For couples across the country, Charlottesville is quickly becoming the destination of choice for brides longing for whimsical Southern elegance, and with its countless vineyards and historical properties, luscious Blue Ridge backdrop, and talented community of local vendors, who could blame them? But while Charlottesville’s wedding industry is on the upswing, some local couples are not— which is why those same local vendors are teaming up to throw one lucky couple a dream wedding for free.

“Times are hard right now, and people aren’t doing as well, and there’s a war,” explains local photographer and project mastermind Jack Looney. “Everyone around here has big hearts, and as quickly as I could tell them what I was thinking, they were up for it.”

The idea for the Charlottesville Free Wedding Project stemmed from Looney’s own pro bono photography work— nearly fifty percent of his business, he says. After approaching (more)

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Front yard clutter? City zoning inspectors ordered this Cherry Avenue resident to relocate the satellite dish.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

Satellite dish in my yard
Tell me more, tell me more
Who’s the king of your satellite castle?

We may not know exactly what Dave Matthews meant in his song “Satellite,” but last month Cherry Avenue resident Susan Blake had no doubts about what a letter she received from the city had to say about the dish in her yard: relocate it within a month— or face legal action with fines up to $5,000.

After losing her job with a construction company, Blake was looking for ways to save money, and switching from cable to satellite television was one of them.

“I was paying $62 per month for Comcast, but now I’m paying $27 per month for DirecTV,” says Blake. “That savings practically pays my electric bill.” Of course, those $27 offers are only good for the first year, but with things so tight for folks like Blake, many people are switching over.

However, that small piece of mind was shaken by the letter she received from (more)

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A 19-year veteran, Hopwood monitors Anchorage Farm January 26, the day Morgan Harrington’s body was found.
PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART

One of the Albemarle County Police officers who shot Colby W. Eppard has left his job as part of a shakeup that appears to have resulted in the demotion of two other officers and a multi-week suspension for the Department’s top spokesperson, Lt. Todd Hopwood.

The information comes in response to a Freedom of Information request filed by NBC29 and fulfilled by County spokesperson Lee Catlin, who indicates that the officer who left, Caleb Marden, departed March 2. No cause was cited, but NBC29 asserts that at least one of the punished officers engaged in “inappropriate” behavior “while on the clock,” but the media outlet did not offer any specifics.

The recently demoted officers are Caroline Morris and Scott Cox, the latter of whom (more)

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Kay Peaslee is moving to Indianapolis and will take along her cat Yang Guifei– named for the most famous concubine of the Tang Dynasty.
PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART

She covered news as the founder of the theObserver, a long-lasting weekly paper, and made news as an activist who, along with her late husband Alexander “Sandy” Peaslee, pushed for the controversial— but ultimately unsuccessful— reversion of  Charlottesville to town status. Now, Kay Peaslee is preparing to start a new chapter.

“I’m moving to Indianapolis, to be near my youngest daughter,” says Peaslee, sitting in her spacious downtown McGuffey Hill condo while her oldest daughter, Sarah Peaslee, packs boxes and sorts family photos in preparation for her mother’s Thursday, March 4 departure.

Now 87, Peaslee says the decision (more)

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Alexandra Fitzsimmons may not be able to return to Concepcion, where she teaches English.
PHOTO COURTESY ALEXANDRA FITZSIMMONS

Like most people in Chile, Alexandra Fitzsimmons was asleep when one of the largest temblors ever recorded rumbled to life at 3:34am. As her bed slid across the room as if inside a ship rocked during a storm, she pretty quickly realized that it wasn’t a dream.

“We’re very lucky,” says Fitzsimmons, 25, in a telephone interview from a friend’s apartment on a seventh floor in Santiago. There are cracks in the ceiling and chunks of drywall that have fallen out, but from the outside, she says,”You’d have no idea anything happened.”

Fitzsimmons considers herself particularly fortunate because (more)

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Attorneys James Schroll, Steve Blaine, and successful bidder Bill Moses clear up a little paperwork to return ownership to Moses and his wife.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

The only bidder at the foreclosure auction of the multi-million-dollar spec house built in Patricia Kluge and Bill Moses’ Vineyard Estates was… the couple themselves, as Clover Acquisitions LLC.

Their attorney, Steve Blaine, put down a $150,000 deposit, and their bid of $3.675 million, which covers the interest and principal on the mortgage held by Sona Bank, was accepted by auctioning attorney James Schroll in front of the Albemarle Circuit Court Monday, March 1.

The 6,600-square foot house on 2.895 acres was built in 2007 and is assessed for $2.76 million. It’s on one of 24 lots that make up the 511-acre Vineyard Estates subdivision near (more)

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The RSWA had “no success” fixing billing problems at the BFI/Republic transfer station—- but Van der Linde got sued.
FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

For over two years, the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority publicly branded Peter Van der Linde a cheat and attacked the recycler with an anti-mafia statute as part of a $20 million lawsuit, based largely on the unsubstantiated testimony of a disgruntled former Van der Linde employee, now serving jail time for attempted extortion.

But a curious thing happened when the Authority dropped its lawsuit on January 20. As Van der Linde agreed to pay $600,000 to settle it, the Authority’s corporate partner in trash, BFI/Republic, also agreed to pay a six-figure sum.

“The big question,” says vocal lawsuit critic Betty Mooney, “was why BFI agreed to pay when RSWA had never named them in their lawsuit. Is this now an admission that BFI owed funds to the community?”

The Hook asked BFI, RSWA board members, and City Councilors why BFI agreed (more)

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The rink was officially opened on May 1, 1996.
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Lee Danielson was right— an ice rink in Charlottesville is a money-loser. And now the latest owners of the Charlottesville Ice Park, admitting that they’ve seen losses that “mounted more quickly than we anticipated,” reveal they will shut down the Charlottesville Ice Park later this year.

“The reality is that the Central Virginia area, while being enthusiastic about the rink to a degree, does not have enough people interested in skating often enough to support the operation,” co-owner Bruce Williamson writes in a remarkably candid open letter to staff, avid skaters, and parents of young skaters.

Williamson, a lawyer, helped purchase the facility in 2003 after Danielson and co-developer Colin Rolph feuded over its viability.  Despite carving off the upstairs party room as retail space (now housing the Eloise boutique), the new owners— now consisting of (more)

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On the block: the first homestead in Vineyard Estates, developed by William Moses and Patricia Kluge.
ALBEMARLE COUNTY WEBSITE; LISA PROVENCE

The high-dollar development of Patricia Kluge and Willam Moses, already beset by a multi-million-dollar spec house in foreclosure, earned another unwelcome distinction Friday as a judge ruled that a realtor’s $2 million lawsuit against the project can move forward.

The attorney for the Vineyard Estates development, Dave Thomas, argued February 26 in Albemarle Circuit Court that an email that estate broker Frank Hardy sent a day after a meeting in which the two sides discussed ending Hardy’s exclusive listing agreements for the 24-lot development, amounted to a contract.

“We all agree that we would like to accept your offer of $25,000 together with the release of the existing contact list,” Hardy wrote in the email. “Would you like to prepare a document which would terminate our agreement upon receipt of funds?”

(more)

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After years of boom times, Albemarle County Executive Bob Tucker presents a diminished budget for the second year in a row, this one 12 percent less than two years ago.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

With the University of Virginia as the big employer in town, Albemarle County has often been thought to be sheltered from the financial pain other parts of the country are suffering. The fiscal year 2010-11 budget County Exec Bob Tucker unveiled February 25 dispels that notion.

Tucker’s $293,850,901 budget is $10.3 million trimmer than last year and nearly $40 million less than fiscal year 2008-09.

The good news for homeowners is that the property tax rate holds steady at 74.2 cents per $100, so while homes lost value in the county on average 3.96 percent, at least those tax bills will be a few bucks less.

The bad news: All those best-place-to-live attributes (more)

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Tom Morgan’s country song includes a girl named Heather.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

When Tom Morgan packs up his up Chevy Cavalier February 27 and heads north with Led Zeppelin blasting, he’s leaving behind his morning drive time gig with 99.7 WCYK “Your Country.” He doesn’t have a job waiting for him in Philadelphia, but he does have a woman, and leaving a payin’ DJ job in a tough economy for love sounds a lot like the country tunes Morgan has been playing since 2006 at “Your Country.”

“I’m moving for love,” declares Morgan, 27.

The Roanoke native grew up with a father who “lived and breathed radio” and worked in the business for 30 years in Norfolk.

Morgan cut his country teeth in Knoxville, and that experience got him back to Virginia, where he started doing afternoons at Charlottesville’s only country station.

He says “Your Wake-Up Call with Tom and Pam” is the number one or two morning show in the area.

Monticello Media general manager Dennis Mockler can’t confirm that— as the station no longer (more)

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