CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — The weekslong search for a missing University of Virginia student appears to have come to a sad end with the announcement by police officials that they have discovered human remains that could be hers.
Further forensic tests are needed to confirm whether the remains are those of 18-year-old Hannah Graham, but Graham’s parents were notified of the preliminary findings, Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo told a news conference Saturday, shortly after the discovery was made.
A volunteer search for Graham that had been planned for Sunday has been canceled so law enforcement can turn their attention to the new evidence, officials from the Albemarle County Police Department said.
Longo said a search team from the Chesterfield County Sheriff’s Office found the remains Saturday on an abandoned property in southern Albemarle County — the same region where police found the body of 20-year-old Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington three months after she vanished in 2009.
Last month, after arresting a suspect in Graham’s disappearance, police said they found a “forensic link” between the two cases.
Thousands of volunteers had searched for the 18-year-old Graham in the weeks since her disappearance Sept. 13.
“Countless hours, thousands of hours, have been spent by literally hundreds of law enforcement, civilian volunteers in an effort to find Hannah,” Longo said. “We think perhaps today proved their worth.”
Jesse Leroy Matthew Jr., 32, has been charged with abduction with intent to defile Graham. A preliminary hearing is set for Dec. 4 on the charge. In the meantime, Matthew is being held in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.
Albermarle County Police are now taking over the investigation. County Police Chief Steve Sellers said anyone who may have seen suspicious activity in the area or may have seen someone who fits Matthew’s description in the area after Graham’s disappearance, should contact police.
“Today’s discovery is a significant development and we have a great deal of work ahead of us,” Sellers said. “We cannot and we will not jump to any conclusions regarding today’s discovery, so I ask for the public’s patience as we move forward and pursue what is now a new ongoing death investigation.”
Police officials Saturday afternoon had blocked the road leading to the site where the remains were found.
Surveillance videos captured some of what Graham did the night she vanished. Authorities say she met friends at a restaurant for dinner Sept. 12 before stopping by two parties at off-campus housing units. She left the second party alone and eventually texted a friend saying she was lost, authorities said.
She can be seen walking unsteadily and even running at times, past a pub and a service station and then onto a seven-block pedestrian strip that includes the Tempo Restaurant.
Tempo Restaurant owner Brice Cunningham has said Graham appeared to be incapacitated as she walked away with Matthew. Police have said they have no reason to believe she and Matthew knew each other before their encounter.
Matthew, an operating room technician at the university’s hospital who sometimes drives a taxi, had been drinking at the bar earlier that night before he encountered Graham, Cunningham has said.
A week after Graham went missing, Longo publicly described Matthew in detail without naming him, saying investigators wanted to talk to the “person of interest” and had searched his apartment because he was the last person to see her.
Matthew showed up at police headquarters, asked for a lawyer, and then sped away, according to a police account. His exit prompted a warrant for “reckless driving,” a charge that Longo cited as he named the suspect and appealed for information from anyone who saw him with Graham the night she disappeared.
Matthew was arrested a few days later in Galveston, Texas.
While Matthew was a fugitive in Texas, Virginia police added a charge of abduction with intent to defile, a violent felony that under Virginia law compels suspects to submit to DNA testing.
Very quickly thereafter, Virginia State Police announced a “forensic link” to Harrington’s killing. That case, in turn, has been linked by DNA evidence since 2012 to the rape of a woman in Fairfax, Virginia, who survived after a passer-by startled her attacker, the FBI has said.
Following Matthew’s arrest, Christopher Newport University released a statement noting that he had been named in a police file involving a Sept. 7, 2003 sexual assault on the Newport News campus. Matthew was a student there from January 2003 through Oct. 15, 2003.
Matthew had transferred to CNU after three years at Liberty University, where he also was briefly on the football team.
When he was at Liberty University, he was accused of raping a student on campus. That charge was dropped when the person declined to move forward with prosecution, Lynchburg Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael Doucette said.
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Associated Press Writer Brock Vergakis in Norfolk, Virginia, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
It kind of sounds like there has been a serial murderer in the area and there was a cover up. No?
What? In “reality” there has been a serial RAPIST murderer in the area for years, and he has finally been busted.
C’mon man, he is on in VIDEO walking with her before she went missing, there are witnesses as well, he has been accused of rape before, and DNA ties him to other crime scenes.
But in your world it’s one big coverup? Hysterical.
This POS needs to be thrown into the prison general population as soon as possible and get the repeated ass kicking’s he deserves for the rest of his life.
If only the Liberty student had pursued prosecution, at least 3 young women might have been spared horrible ordeals, and at least one might still be alive.
I don’t know about this particular rape case, but Liberty University (Jerry Falwell’s twice-born institute of higher learning) doesn’t like to acknowledge rapes. There was likely some pressure against the victim to shut up.
I live in Charlottesville, and this has been one more wrenching case of many. I think the reason that this got so much more national attention than other cases is because of the videos that showed her walking about a half mile from the downtown mall, and then another camera picked her up again on the mall. The video showed her talking to an older white guy, who said he was trying to see if she needed help. Then he saw Jessie Matthews come up and put his arm around her waist and she acted like she knew him, so he went on his way. Hannah and Matthew were then seen together later by several witnesses in Tempo, which is a bar at the Eastern end of the mall.
The situation with Morgan Harrington (she left an arena where a Metallica Concert was going on and they refused to let her back in, which was their policy) – most people surmise now that she voluntarily got into a taxi which was driven by Matthew.
There are several other missing young women from all around here, and it scares the bejebus out of everyone to think that a serial killer taxi driver was around for so long. I have seen police looking along the roadside and behind bushes as I was driving home from the grocery store. The thought of Hannah being tossed behind a rock like Morgan had been was just excruciating. I can’t imagine what her parents have been going through.
Of course all the information isn’t in yet, but the videos are very damning to his case. If the DNA is the link that they are alluding to, I can’t imagine that even his very excellent lawyer can help him.
Yes, he is innocent until proven guilty when he goes to court, but no one who has watched this unfold could be blamed for having an opinion.