If you’ve lived in Hampton Roads, you know the often-irritating trek on Interstate 64. Sure, it’s a highway with beautiful surroundings, namely trees and some fine views of the numerous waterways, but also often a nightmare when you’re behind the wheel.
During my short time in the region from 2007 to 2009, I worked at the Daily Press in Newport News, Virginia, first as a copy editor and later as an assistant sports editor and assistant desk chief. For the first year and a half at the Daily Press, I commuted from Williamsburg to the newspaper office in Newport News.
On a good day, I got to work in 45 minutes. I was fortunate to work an odd shift and left for work early in the afternoon, a time during which the traffic usually wasn’t bad. However, if there was an accident on I-64, you might as well plan on the commute being two hours. The shoulders on the interstate are few and far between, and the median is essentially a forest. Any issue resulted in a traffic jam.
At night, though, the drive was quiet, even pleasant. I typically left the office after midnight and only saw a handful of cars as a I drove north back to Williamsburg. One night, I decided I could outlast Mother Nature and make it all the way home without going to the bathroom. It became obvious that I was not going to win that battle about 15 minutes from home.
I hit an exit as soon as I could to take care of business in the solitude that was a dark roadway connected to I-64 and somehow ended up turning back to the south. I could only see a few lights off in the distance from the main highway. I might normally find this serene, but I also knew I was on the Colonial Parkway.
Now, you’re probably asking yourself, “Why would that matter? It’s a beautiful part of our country.” It mattered because I was a true crime junkie. And if you’ve followed true crime much in the past 30 years, you’ve heard of the Colonial Parkway.
I finally got far enough off the road that I was comfortable taking care of business, stopping my car on a side road. I very briefly turned off my headlights and realized just how dark – and eerie – it was on the Parkway. I turned the lights back on and left the engine running, careful not to lock myself out.
My mind wandered immediately. All I could think about was the Colonial Parkway Murders, a series of killings in the late 1980s that had not been solved more than 20 years later. Miraculously, I was no longer concerned about taking a piss. I quickly got back in my car, retraced my route back to I-64 and drove home.
It was likely just my imagination, but the moment I stepped out of my car that night on that desolate road, I felt like I was being watched. It was the last time I drove on the Parkway.
As a person who wrote a true crime book and still Googles “cold case” at least once a week, “Colonial Parkway Murders” was weekly fare in my Internet searches. Some of that fascination, of course, is that I lived near that roadway. Some of it is that it was and is a thoroughly interesting and sad case.
It reminded me of the case that really hooked me on true crime, the Green River Killer. Much like that awful case, the probable culprit all along was not only a local, but also someone on the police’s radar since the early days of the investigation.
In early January last year, the FBI named a prime suspect in one of the Parkway Murders (the case includes the murder of at least four couples) and in another case in nearby Hampton: Alan Wilmer Sr. You can learn more in-depth about Wilmer in my former colleague Pete Dujardin’s terrific reporting for the Virginian-Pilot.
Like Gary Ridgway in the Green River case, Wilmer passed a lie detector test and was no longer considered a suspect. More murders followed, and he was not identified until a DNA test more than 30 years later. Wilmer died alone in 2017 and wasn’t found in his home for three weeks. Law enforcement officials saved a sample of his DNA and compared it to the DNA in the Parkway and Hampton murders.
The FBI and Virginia State Police are still investigating the other cases in the Parkway Murders, but it seems probable that Wilmer was involved in the killings.
I doubt Wilmer was on the Parkway on that evening I drove home in 2008, but the murders he committed undoubtedly served as nightmare fuel for many folks driving down the dark, secluded roads on the Parkway.