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[Music] 2023 [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
00:01:46
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who would like for his Tombstone to read man's
00:01:53
best friend here is the captain if he dies he dies it's good to be seen and good to see you thanks for listening
00:02:01
thanks for ton of [Music] friend this week here in the garage we are very happy to be featuring amateur
00:02:12
Cowboy by the hot- handed Gunslinger Brewers over at good fire Brewing Company amateur Cowboy is an imperial
00:02:19
double New England hazy that hits on all fronts with abundant tingling zesty hop
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oil and an extra smooth medium bodied drinkability a BV 8% garage grade 4 and a half bottle caps out of five and let's
00:02:35
give some thanks and praise to some of our friends that helped us fill up the fridge this week first up a big shout
00:02:40
out to Katie in Oldtown Alexandria Virginia and last but certainly not least we have a long distance cheers to
00:02:48
Emma halam in Aus Denmark everyone we just mentioned they went to our website truecrime garage.com clicked on the Pint
00:02:57
glass that helped us out with this week's beer fun and for that we thank you yeah BW are you in beer run make
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sure you go to True Crime garage.com and sign up on our mailing list so you're in the no and Colonel
00:03:10
that's enough of the business all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
00:03:22
[Music] crime [Music] October 2009 Charlottesville Virginia a group of successful young
00:03:57
women made their way to see a concert but at some point in the evening the group lost one of their
00:04:06
own 20-year-old college student Morgan Harrington was last seen near the University of Virginia campus sometime
00:04:15
after 9 p.m. then she was gone September 2014 5 years later on the same college campus 18-year-old Hannah Graham was
00:04:32
last seen just after midnight two female college students both successful young women
00:04:41
with their whole lives ahead of them go missing and startling similar [Music] circumstances both are alone on the
00:04:51
streets of Charlottesville Virginia at night both vanish triggering massive searches Terror for women on campus an
00:05:03
insurmountable heartbreak for their families there is no known connection between these two other than the
00:05:11
circumstances of their disappearances little did anyone know but the University of Virginia
00:05:19
College campus had a monster prowling its streets this is true crime garage and this is is the true crime story of the
00:05:31
back to school [Music] [Music] [Music] killer let's go back to October of 2009 Morgan Harrington is a 20-year-old
00:06:02
student at Virginia Tech studying to be a teacher even though Morgan was at college she was still close with her
00:06:10
parents Dan and Jill and her brother Alex Harrington Morgan was an avid music fan and if I can say so myself Morgan
00:06:19
had great taste in music this is going to take us to the late afternoon early evening hours of Saturday October 17th
00:06:30
2009 I would imagine that Morgan was rather excited about this night because she along with some friends were going
00:06:37
to go and see one of Morgan's favorite bands live in concert the heavy metal group Metallica was playing at the John
00:06:47
Paul Jones Arena on the University of Virginia Campus located in Charlottesville Virginia Charlottesville
00:06:56
is located in the North near middle part of of Virginia this is from what I have
00:07:04
seen this is from what I have seen online it's a beautiful campus and a very pretty independent city as well
00:07:12
it's hard to believe that such horrible things are going to happen there Morgan and some of her friends bought tickets
00:07:19
for the Metallica show taking place on October 17th now as said Morgan is attending Virginia Tech so Morgan and
00:07:28
her friends are going to make the drive from Virginia Tech to UVA that night in Morgan's car but Morgan wasn't driving
00:07:37
the vehicle Morgan was playing at cool she was planning on drinking that night and in fact was drinking a little
00:07:44
leading up to the concert as well so one of her friends signed up for the job of
00:07:50
the DD designated driver they drove the 147 Mi between the two schools and about
00:07:58
2 hours hours and 15 minutes Morgan's friend the DD kept the car keys as the group proceeded into the arena so now
00:08:10
they are inside the arena and of course the place is packed it's Metallica on a Saturday night on a college
00:08:16
campus around 8:30 p.m. is Morgan tells her friends she's going to go off to the
00:08:23
restroom she left to go find the bathroom but when she wasn't back at her seat after about 15 minutes her friends
00:08:32
start to get worried now we know from phone records that at 8:48 p.m. her friend called Morgan's cell phone to ask
00:08:40
where she was and when she would be back at her seat right Morgan answered the phone and says that she was outside of
00:08:48
the arena and could not get back inside now the details of this are a little tricky here we don't know how or
00:08:56
why she got outside of the Arena maybe she went outside the doors to smoke and didn't realize that she would not be
00:09:04
able to reenter the venue but according to some witnesses she was told that she would
00:09:11
not be allowed back in that they were not allowing reentry into the venue Morgan had been drinking for a couple of
00:09:20
hours by this point this according to a statement of the facts Witnesses said she appeared to be intoxicated at this
00:09:28
point in our timeline in fact she had a cut on her chin from a fall she had taken on the arena Concourse in front of
00:09:37
several people furthermore Morgan had no cash on her at this time she's locked outside of the venue no cash in hand
00:09:46
right she had given her money to one of her friends to buy a concert T-shirt or some momento from the concert and her
00:09:54
friends remember had her car keys since her friend had the car keys and her other other friend had the money I
00:10:00
wondered if maybe her ticket stub was given to one of her friends as well could be she could have still had the
00:10:07
ticket stub and as we've seen a lot of times in these venues when you have thousands and thousands of people right
00:10:14
you get let in uh if you choose to leave you're Outdoors now and again According
00:10:20
to some witnesses that's what the statement was that she was told by security that if you go outside we can't
00:10:29
can't let you back in and like you said she took a fall so it's kind of hard to tell how intoxicated she actually was
00:10:37
that's exactly right and so now she's outside of the concert can't get back in I guess we have a couple of options here
00:10:44
Captain if if we're Morgan do you wait right outside the doors you can't even get back into your car if your vehicle's
00:10:50
locked at this point it's really unfortunate because this is going to put her in a bit of a desperate
00:10:57
situation maybe had she had had some money she could have walked to a nearby bar and just tried to wait it out she's
00:11:02
not of drinking age but we do know she is drinking that night yeah and as you pointed out with that fall and her level
00:11:09
of being intoxicated and evidence of such with that fall it it doesn't seem to me that
00:11:16
Morgan may not have been thinking straight by this point right because one of the things if she had her keys is she
00:11:23
could have just went out to her car and slept it off yeah and we we are not telling people to smoke cigarettes yes
00:11:30
we are it's bad for your health there's no mystery about that but if you're going to do it do it old school and go
00:11:36
into the bathroom don't don't leave the venue try to get away with it in the bathroom so she's not thinking straight
00:11:42
this this is interesting because we do have some witnesses that will come forward later saying that oh we saw
00:11:48
somebody with matching her description and she appeared to be acting erratic at some point and may not have even been
00:11:56
acting as one would expect when seen leaving the arena we have a statement here in fact a quote that says after
00:12:04
9:00 p.m. Witnesses observed Morgan in the University Hall west parking lot this is the Lanigan track parking lot
00:12:14
and then she was also seen on the Copley Bridge just north of Ivy Road sometime after 9:20 p.m. that
00:12:22
night at the time that she was on the Copley Bridge Witnesses advised that she was alone spotted alone and appeared to
00:12:32
be hitchhiking with her thumb out not a good sign now Morgan's friends tried and
00:12:38
tried to call her several times to no avail keep in mind though they are at a concert it's loud so we don't know how
00:12:45
many times they attempted to call her but their statements are we tried to call her time and time again and at some
00:12:52
point we can't get a hold of her so she's outside of this Arena she's in intoxicated so it's she's already in
00:13:00
a dangerous risky situation but now you're trying to hit hike you're putting yourself in even
00:13:09
a more dangerous situation when her friends discovered that Morgan had not made it back to the
00:13:15
dorm they decide well we need to file a missing person's Report with the University of Virginia police according
00:13:24
to that missing person's report when they last saw her they stated that was wearing a black mini skirt knee high
00:13:31
black boots black leggings sorsky brand chain necklace I hope I said that correctly and a black customade panta
00:13:42
T-shirt that was designed for her by a friend on the morning after Morgan's disappearance so now we're at October
00:13:51
18th this is around 900 a.m. we get a University of Virginia lacrosse play player who is off going about their day
00:14:02
finds a purse lying along a fence line at the Lanigan track parking lot remember we have witnesses saying that
00:14:11
they saw Morgan at this track parking lot inside the purse this purse is turned into police inside the purse
00:14:20
police recovered Morgan's student ID driver's license and her debit card of course this is a very very bad sign
00:14:30
also inside the purse was a small empty flask this is according to Morgan's friends was the source of the alcohol
00:14:37
that she had been drinking on the way to the concert leading up to the concert now that Lanigan track lot that parking
00:14:45
lot that we were talking about where Morgan's purse had been found was used by several local taxi companies as a
00:14:53
staging area during events at the arena so you have basically a Bank Of Vehicles
00:15:01
taxi cabs are going to pull up park there probably engine still on and they're hoping to catch fairs of people
00:15:10
coming out of the Arena so very common stuff here but that is a space where she was seen and then later her purse is
00:15:19
found so this would point to the obvious that maybe Morgan had been trying to get
00:15:26
a cab we do know that she's without cash maybe she was intending to use her debit
00:15:32
card but regardless if she was trying to get a cab or not now we have to be concerned is why is she missing why is
00:15:39
she without her purse and why is her purse found abandoned on the ground with with with several pieces of
00:15:46
documentation that she would need to be getting around and navigating hopefully back to her dorm let me be Captain
00:15:54
Obvious for a second we have to remember that she's over 2 hours away from her dorm from her school from her friends
00:16:04
when she goes missing so Morgan goes missing late at night last scene just before 9:30 p.m. apparently trying to
00:16:13
hitchhike but later the next day her purse is found in this parking garage parking lot area then Captain things go
00:16:21
from Grim to very dark very quickly this is when the following day police find Morgan's cell phone so this is
00:16:31
actually taking place over the course of two separate days of searching for Morgan or any clues of her
00:16:38
whereabouts on October 19th and 20th police located Morgan's cell phone and the cell phone cover from various areas
00:16:47
in the University Hall west parking lot the phone's battery the cell phone's battery was missing when this phone was
00:16:56
found and this is very TR especially with what we know today about how investigators are finding people and
00:17:04
solving crimes right was this something that was done intentional by someone that may have
00:17:12
taken this young woman or was this just happen stance that she dropped the phone
00:17:21
in her State and lost the phone and and and went on about her night trying to find a way home it's it's a little
00:17:29
difficult to say but I think that details like this will become very much clearer as we continue to go through
00:17:37
this week's case story and timeline well I agree with you cuz I think finding her
00:17:42
purse that makes sense and in the sense of she was intoxicated she was wondering
00:17:48
around is it possible that she just dropped it and didn't notice but when you so but when you find her cell phone
00:17:55
and the battery is taken from from that phone that's a big red flag the the other thing that's confusing here about
00:18:04
these details of this timeline is that none of this really makes a whole lot of sense when you try to play it out right
00:18:10
so what we have here is the phone and the purse especially the purse are found in
00:18:18
a location where she's seen earlier prior to being seen out on the bridge trying to hitchhike a road a ride so why
00:18:28
would she go to this area lose her purse and then she's seen in a different location further away at a different
00:18:37
time trying to hitchhike home well some of the actions of her friends I I I don't agree with one your friend calls
00:18:45
you and says I'm outside the arena somebody can go meet me at this door maybe you can talk to security she's
00:18:53
with us can you let her in at some point you go well she's really intoxicated we
00:18:58
saw her fall and hurt herself maybe we need to leave this show and then once you get out of the
00:19:09
concert you can't find her you have her vehicle don't leave town we don't know that none of that didn't happen right we
00:19:20
don't know that they didn't offer that up and and she said no I'll be fine enjoy the concert I'll see you
00:19:25
afterwards right um but what we do know is yes they return back to their campus and then when they find that she's not
00:19:32
there they're reporting her missing right away this will lead obviously to so many unanswered questions with no
00:19:39
sign of this young woman of Morgan despite what turns into massive searches of the entire area we remember the the
00:19:48
purse was found the following day the cell phone the next day and then the cell phone cover is found the following
00:19:54
day after that so we're we're searching for over 3 days now at some point a $150,000
00:20:02
reward is offered for information this is including $50,000 chipped in by the band
00:20:11
Metallica now the band's lead singer and guitarist James Hatfield put out a video
00:20:17
asking for anyone with information to please contact the police saying something to the effect of you know
00:20:23
we've lost one of our own somebody that was there to have a good time that night
00:20:28
had has disappeared and we need to find this young woman now we're going to go all the way out to November
00:20:37
11th this is when there's another devastating find so this is roughly about six days shy of Morgan missing for
00:20:47
a month now at this point police respond to a call of a paral of private property
00:20:54
on 15th Street Northwest near the intersection of Grady Avenue there they're called out there because what
00:21:03
was found was a black panta T-shirt discovered lying spread out a top some bushes well like you said
00:21:11
wasn't it a custommade shirt it was and on top of that what we're going to get is some forensic science here to tell us
00:21:24
that it was in fact Morgan's shirt the very panta shirt that she was wearing when she went missing right so they they
00:21:32
recover some uh hairs that are going to later be identified as very likely having to been belong to Morgan now some
00:21:43
further interesting details about this t-shirt and the way that it's found all the reports say that it
00:21:50
appeared to have been put on display as if someone wanted it to be found now we don't know if the person that took
00:22:00
her would have gone to this area and placed it there for it to be found or if it's something as simple as
00:22:10
we've we've all seen this right you the the winter glove that somebody puts on display near the front door or the exit
00:22:19
door of a grocery store because they found it in the parking lot it could be as simple as somebody that was walking
00:22:27
found this shirt and thought you know what I'm going to put it in the most obvious spot so if whoever lost this
00:22:34
comes back to retrace their steps they will they should see it and be able to collect their item yeah that makes sense
00:22:41
now the the tricky thing here though is we're talking almost a month after this poor girl has been
00:22:49
missing as you pointed out Captain it's a unique shirt so they're suspicious that it is hers and as I was getting to
00:22:58
they determined that the the hairs that they found on this shirt contained mitochondrial DNA a profile consistent
00:23:08
with Morgan's mother's DNA So based on that DNA obtained from the that information and
00:23:18
from the shirt this meant that the hairs came from someone related to Morgan's mother and of course Morgan's missing so
00:23:27
obviously they're going this is very likely Morgans which is not good now there was a lot of other evidence on
00:23:33
this shirt as well there was a blood stain that was found on the t-shirt which proved to contain genetic
00:23:39
information a DNA profile from an unknown person who was already in codus cotus is the FBI's DNA database which
00:23:49
contains the St Str DNA profiles of millions of convicted violent offenders arrestes and others who DNA is entered
00:23:59
into a database pursuant to the laws of the state in which they have police contact some of them are unidentified
00:24:09
offenders whose DNA was collected at a crime scene but whose identity police do not
00:24:16
know that was the case here DNA from an unidentified person already and codus matched the DNA from Morgan's case what
00:24:26
this meant was that police now knew that the perpetrator whose blood was on Morgan's t-shirt was the same person
00:24:36
unknown to police who had committed a crime in Fairfax Virginia four years prior back in
00:24:44
2005 so if that suspect's blood matches the blood in this case and they have a composite sketch of that individual that
00:24:55
essentially means you have a comp you have have a composite sketch in both cases yes that's exactly right that what
00:25:02
police will learn once they find out that the DNA on Morgan Harrington shirt matches unknown unidentified DNA
00:25:13
that is in codus from that prior crime that when they go back to review the details of that prior crime they
00:25:22
find that there was a composite sketch of a potential suspect that existed but when they investigated that crime no
00:25:32
suspect had been located so you have this weird scenario of yes this is a great lead but that composite sketch
00:25:41
never led to a suspect in the previous crime four years prior so it dries up rather quickly in
00:25:50
the Morgan Harrington [Music] C this show is sponsored by better help do you look forward to the holidays maybe
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or visit angie.com today you can do this when you Angie [Music] that all right we are back cheers mates
00:28:15
if you haven't got the Colonel's book then what are you waiting for Now's the Time just go to Amazon the best way is
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just search Nick Edwards and it will pop up right there and you can purchase on Amazon
00:28:34
or I loved listening to it on Audible The Great Kevin Pierce making me sound smarter yeah Mr Pierce thank you
00:28:45
yeah I I uh i' I've told a lot of people if it was you reading it I never would have finished it I would have shut it
00:28:51
off immediately yeah I would have been like this is a real [ __ ] sandwich all right let's get back to the case cheers
00:28:57
mates cheers captain now this we're going to go out four months after Morgan disappeared to the next big line item on
00:29:07
our timeline here this is January 26 2010 and by this point of course everybody is expecting the worst and and
00:29:18
have been for four months now but this is confirmation well especially when you find the shirt with blood evidence yeah
00:29:26
unfortunately this is information of what they were really worried about this is when Morgan's body was found at
00:29:33
Anchorage Farm in southern albam Marley County Virginia by land owner Dave bass so he owns this piece of land he he
00:29:43
actually owns several Acres out there and I didn't have it in my notes how large his property is but for my
00:29:49
understanding Captain it was several hundreds of Acres wow and so he has portions of his land that he very likely
00:29:56
does not go to on a regular basis now he's out on his tractor and he initially thought that he
00:30:04
found a deer carcass and then upon further examination realizes that there's a human skull there so we've got to call
00:30:14
this in right and so he calls it in and now based on the state of the remains that are recovered there at that
00:30:21
property it was estimated that the body had been there and been outside died and
00:30:28
deceased for most if not all of the period that Morgan Harrington was missing now some pieces of clothing and
00:30:36
jewelry were recovered with the remains but Morgan's boots leggings and necklace
00:30:44
were never found the remains were sent to the office of the chief medical examiner in Richmond where Dr Kevin Wy
00:30:53
performed an autopsy she was positively ided using dental records so now we do know that it
00:31:01
is the missing Morgan Harington the cause of death was homicidal violence of an undetermined origin this because of
00:31:10
the decomp that had taken place the manner of death of course was homicide but it wasn't clear exactly what had
00:31:17
killed Morgan but they did know based off of the scientific evidence that she suffered violence near simultaneously
00:31:26
with her death she had a spiral fracture of her upper left arm and two rib fractures which according to the medical
00:31:36
examiner occurred at or near the time of her death a review of the case by Dr Donna Boyd a forensic anthropologist at
00:31:45
Radford University confirmed Dr Way's conclusions but also located an insize fracture in Morgan's
00:31:53
skull that had also occurred at or near the time time of death all of this is to
00:31:59
say that Morgan suffered a violent end at the hands of someone else we now are taking our missing person's case and
00:32:08
making it officially a homicide investigation all right Colonel it's time to jump in the
00:32:17
DeLorean and jump five years ahead yeah we're going to move forward 5 years later in our timeline unfortunately this
00:32:26
is because in September of 2014 well everything that we pretty much just discussed it's going to happen again
00:32:35
this time we have 18-year-old University of Virginia sophomore Hannah Elizabeth Graham she's the only daughter of John
00:32:44
and sug Graham she's a student athlete at University of Virginia she's on the ski team an honor student born in
00:32:53
England but raised in Fairfax Virginia she's described as smart outgoing sociable fun and a very positive
00:33:01
outgoing person on the night of September 12 Hannah met up with some of her friends and fellow ski team members
00:33:11
to pregame a little bit before they went out to party for the night yeah right study hard work hard Party hard when you
00:33:17
have the opportunity so meeting up with friends and fellow ski team members the group went out for the night they began
00:33:25
drinking around 700 p.m. at 9:33 p.m. they left their apartment and went to a place called fig a
00:33:33
restaurant in downtown Charlottesville this is across the street from the University again this is this is not a a
00:33:42
large area right so we have to be specific here that Charlottesville is a university town it's not a big city at
00:33:49
all it's 43,000 people it's the size of most suburbs the air quotes downtown mall as
00:33:59
it is called is the street area bordering the gates to the university it's it's it's not an
00:34:08
allinclusive interior inside mall that's sprawling this is more of an open uh walk from business to business kind of
00:34:18
setting right so this area the downtown mall area features bustling bars restaurants ice cream shops and college
00:34:29
apparel shops as well it's and this is considered to be a very safe environment a very safe neighborhood Hannah and her
00:34:37
friends spent several hours at the Fig restaurant leaving around 11:00 p.m. so then they go to a college party at an
00:34:46
apartment in Charlottesville once there Hannah decides that she's not going to be
00:34:52
staying very long and she actually leaves with a friend to go to another Park party however they're going to continue
00:34:59
to drink and eventually Hannah becomes pretty intoxicated so around 11:50 p.m. that's
00:35:07
1150 p.m. she told her friends that she wasn't feeling very well and she would like to go home one of her friends
00:35:15
walked her outside of the party they go out to the sidewalk area this is located
00:35:21
at the Camden Plaza Apartment on 14th Street the friend is offering to walk Hannah home Hannah says no she's going
00:35:30
to be fine you go back and enjoy the party I'm going to make my way home so she started walking on her own in the
00:35:38
direction of her apartment as she walked she continued to text her friends but then her texts were increasingly filled
00:35:46
with misspellings and indecipherable messages and this is because she's impaired yeah not good
00:35:55
then Hannah started sending messages indicating that she was lost at some point I was going to say yeah maybe one
00:36:02
the text messages are not clear because she's one intoxicated but but two sometimes when you're walking and you're
00:36:09
trying to find your way you're you're not really fully paying attention to the text that you're
00:36:14
sending well and this is unfortunate too because if if her friends were to go out
00:36:20
and try to look for her on foot they're not going to have a whole lot to go off of if her text to them are
00:36:27
filled with misspellings she doesn't know where she is and indecipherable messages which this is all a little
00:36:33
confusing to me because this campus isn't that big of a area no but it's understandable to me that that this
00:36:42
young woman got lost and and here's where I go with this it's it's dark out it's incredibly late right we do know by
00:36:49
all reports and we'll have further information of this later that Hannah is intoxicated and the other thing that I
00:36:57
wonder too this is her sophomore year the this is the very beginning we've just gone back to school this is
00:37:04
September of 2014 it's very likely that she may have moved and and now is living in a new
00:37:13
apartment or new dorm right so she she might have a hard time finding it even if she were not impaired just with it
00:37:21
being dark and living in a new place and coming from a location that she may not
00:37:25
be familiar with regardless of that situation though Captain what we have here is we do know that she does send
00:37:32
several texts to her friends unfortunately the last text that will be sent comes in at approximately 1
00:37:41
a.m. and the text is very short and just says I got stuck down though remember we're saying that the texts aren't
00:37:50
completely making sense right guessing here and others have speculated on this and it seems correct that she's probably
00:37:59
trying to say I got stuck downtown right uh and then it turns into down though when Hannah didn't show up for her
00:38:07
scheduled early event on Saturday morning this is the 13th her friends were alarmed and tried
00:38:16
to reach her several times so they're getting no luck so what they do is they take it a step further and they contact
00:38:25
Hannah's family and her parents and say look this is a situation she was walking home by
00:38:32
herself late last night after we were all out partying we had a scheduled event early the next morning we're all
00:38:39
here she's not here we can't get a hold of her but that is somewhat reasonable because she left the party cuz she was
00:38:45
feeling sick correct and we've all slept one off right uh at least the colonel has a couple of times but I'm sleeping
00:38:54
one off right now Mom and Dad dad and all the friends and classmates schoolmates are in agreeance that this
00:39:02
is totally unlike Hannah to one not be responsive to the communications but also two to fail to show up for a
00:39:11
commitment now once she hadn't turned up by Saturday afternoon parents and Friends Banning together call the police
00:39:20
Charlottesville police became heavily involved right away they were assisted by the State Police they were able to
00:39:29
locate witnesses that saw Hannah and found surveillance footage that showed Hannah walking on the night of September
00:39:36
12th into the early morning hours of September 13th now here's what they found around 12:45 a.m. Hannah was
00:39:46
spotted walking past McGrady's Pub this is at the intersection of gr and Preston
00:39:52
Avenues there they talk to a bouncer a bouncer knows noticed Hannah walking by she then turned around and walked by
00:40:01
again but going in the opposite direction he made the observation that she was probably
00:40:07
intoxicated he asked her if she's okay do you need some help to which the young lady which we will later know as Hannah
00:40:16
rep replied that she was okay and did not need any help at all so then she walks away heading East on Preston
00:40:23
Avenue right Hannah turned up shortly thereafter again on surveillance footage this from the Preston Avenue Shell
00:40:30
Station at 12:55 a.m. she had walked East down Preston from McGrady the Shell station footage showed Hannah walking
00:40:39
East on Preston and then making her way toward the downtown mall she was then seen on surveillance footage from Reed's
00:40:48
supermarket and The Crossings apartment complex and again she's continuing East on Preston at this time now we're going
00:40:56
to go to 101 a.m. when she is seen on surveillance footage from felin's restaurant she's walking East on the
00:41:06
south side of Market Street she turned right and walked South down Second Street Northwest again toward the mall
00:41:14
so you can tell by some of these movements even if you're not familiar with these these streets and you're
00:41:19
trying to picture this in your mind what you what you envision here is a young lady that's walking the streets
00:41:30
but constantly kind of turning around and and and going in a very roundabout way indicating that she's either quite
00:41:38
intoxicated and doesn't know where she is or she's lost and doesn't know where she is or what is very likely a
00:41:45
combination of both at different points in this timeline yeah not a safe place to be now police do find witnesses who
00:41:52
said that they saw someone matching Hannah's description she's at a bar according to the statement with a man
00:42:00
and then Witnesses also seeing her on the street in the company of this same man
00:42:07
now after that she's not seen again well I'm guessing from those eyewitnesses is
00:42:13
how we get the composite sketch this is crazy Captain because I can I can remember you're crazy man being out
00:42:23
somewhere and watching TV rest or something and they they're showing on the TV they actual they they piece
00:42:31
together and taped together these different pieces of surveillance footage right and they were showing them to the
00:42:39
public they're like okay here here's she's seen walking by herself oh and then here at some point
00:42:45
she's seen walking with a man and we're being told by witnesses that she was spotted in the company of this man not
00:42:52
only on the street but in a bar what they're telling the public with this with this surveillance footage that they
00:42:59
spliced together that hey we we're looking for two things here John Q publ we need help
00:43:08
finding this young lady she's not been seen number one and number two we need some help identifying who this man is
00:43:17
because he should know where she is or or or should be able to offer us some kind of information as to what they were
00:43:24
talking about that night or where she may have gone where he last saw her right so the public is being asked to
00:43:31
help with several different items in this investigation and kudos to the police for crowdsourcing this because I
00:43:40
think it really moved and furthered their investigation rather quickly rather than
00:43:46
to hold on to this information and due to that effort they were actually able to identify the male that was with her
00:43:55
yeah they're going to get some help from the public here captain and we're going
00:43:59
to identify this individual as James Leroy Matthew Jr he is a 32-year-old taxi driver or one-time taxi driver he
00:44:11
is 6'2 in tall 270 lb so he's a big boy I think part of the quickness to identify this individual is his size and
00:44:24
stature now we have some timeline info for this guy uh for the night in question so September 12th to the 13th
00:44:35
2014 here's what we had earlier in the evening on the 12th Jesse Matthew coached a football
00:44:44
game at the Covenant School then afterwards he goes out bar hopping and during his bar hopping
00:44:55
Adventures he begins a pattern of physically invasive and inappropriate behavior toward women that he encounters
00:45:04
that night yeah it sounds like a real douche canoe without you know without dragging this out longer than it needs
00:45:11
to be basically what he's doing Captain he's going up to different women he's engaging them in short
00:45:16
conversation at the bars and then he's grabbing their legs their butts um won't leave them alone he's making sexually
00:45:26
suggestive comments to them and and and not just making them uncomfortable making them extremely uncomfortable
00:45:33
because they are very obviously not excited about his advances they're they're telling hey leave us
00:45:41
alone don't touch us you know what are what are you doing and a couple of the girls or young women that he met that
00:45:48
night he's even you know picking them up maybe he thinks he's trying to show some
00:45:54
form of affection but people don't like to be just picked up especially by a a large individual 6'2 270 lb so this is a
00:46:05
strong guy now responses from these women to leave them alone they're saying you know I got a boyfriend I'm not
00:46:13
interested why don't you get lost that he's unfazed by all of this and he's so pers persistent and
00:46:22
Relentless with his physical contact that several women they end up leaving the bars to avoid this guy further
00:46:31
interaction with this dude so then he starts traveling bar to bar places called The Lazy parrot and a
00:46:40
place called Rapture and then a place called Blue Light he ended up at a a establishment called Tempo where he
00:46:48
grabbed a woman's butt she hit him she then hid from him but he found her and continued to harass her until somebody
00:46:59
came along and told him hey buddy get lost so he closes out his tab at 10:3 a.m. 10:3
00:47:10
a.m. remember I've said it before victims sometimes just get unlucky we know that her last text was sent around
00:47:21
1:00 a.m. that she was lost downtown down though stuck down though and it's assumed that he closes out his tab at
00:47:33
103 walks out of the establishment and walks right into Hannah Graham's path so we were talking earlier
00:47:43
because there's something very haunting when when you see this surveillance footage and so you
00:47:51
see this footage of Hannah walking and she passes Jesse yes and Jesse almost sees the
00:48:03
state that she's in and turns back around to follow her I mean it's very haunting that we we can't say for
00:48:14
certain if that was the moment that he made a lot of decisions but we we can guess that he did make at least one
00:48:21
decision there so what what we have is just as the captain described we have Hannah who is staggering
00:48:28
eastbound near a location called an establishment called s's Cafe this is at 221 East Main Street from there the
00:48:37
police are going to get surveillance video footage that will show her walking Eastbound past s at 10:06 a.m. now on
00:48:48
the same footage what they see is Jesse Matthew who walks past Hannah picture this they're going in opposite
00:48:56
directions as the captain said he probably made an observation as to her State at the time and then made the
00:49:05
decision I'm going to whoop turn around and go the same way follow her and approach her so on the on that footage
00:49:14
that was released that I remember seeing that they asked the people to help with
00:49:20
you can see him walk past her turn around and then he starts to follow Hannah Graham and eventually Catch
00:49:28
catches up with her and he doesn't snatch and grab her what he does he he approaches her in a
00:49:36
what may even appear to be some kind of friendly manner with the gesture of putting his
00:49:42
arm around her now what we would end up with we get a female witness that will come forward who says look not only did
00:49:53
I too have an encounter with Jesse Matthew that same night fended him off if you will at one of the
00:50:01
bars but I also saw that same guy with his arm wrapped around Hannah Graham later that
00:50:09
night and telling police at that time Hannah was visibly drunk the witness protested to uh actually approached the
00:50:18
two of them and protested to Jesse Matthew saying look dude you know you were being a jerk earlier and this girl
00:50:25
you're walking with you don't know her you don't even know her and you got your arm around her right he tells her to
00:50:34
shush and then the witness and her friend they decide to follow Jesse Matthew with the young
00:50:42
woman Hannah Graham who would later be identified as Hannah Graham they follow the two of them out of concern into that
00:50:50
business called Tempo the the EST establishment called Tempo where he sits down and he sits Hannah Graham down in a
00:50:58
booth with him he buys her a drink he buys himself a drink he pays for these drinks uh that really helps us later
00:51:07
know his movements because he's paying via credit card soon thereafter the witness tells her friend and this is
00:51:17
another one of those haunting situations they're commenting about what they see or what
00:51:24
they expect could happen and probably maybe even suspecting the worst but what was said to from one witness to
00:51:36
the other is quote he's going to [ __ ] her up and right after this before they know
00:51:44
it the two were gone Jesse Matthew and Hannah Graham had left the bar well again this
00:51:52
individual's intimidating he's intimidating I mean his size is he's a little over
00:52:00
6'2 I believe he weighs about 270 this is a this is a big boy what we end up seeing from surveillance footage
00:52:08
here Captain is the two of them walking arm in arm proceeding Northbound up Fourth
00:52:14
Street and then we have footage from the red pump at fourth in main streets that
00:52:20
captures them again this this is at uh 1:18 a.m. the next we have a male witness who sees
00:52:27
Hannah walking ahead of Jesse Matthew on Fourth Street Matthew followed her she crossed East Market Street at the
00:52:35
crosswalk and as she did again we got Matthew following her and he catches up to her again putting his arm around her
00:52:44
they walked to a parked vehicle and stopped this was Jesse Matthews vehicle it's a 1998 orange
00:52:53
Sebring the male witness continued to observe as the male who we now know as Jesse Matthew unlock the passenger door
00:53:01
and gesture to Hannah to get in who said to him very loudly I'm not getting in that car with you what is it
00:53:10
stolen to the witness Hannah sounded scared he proceeded toward his own parked vehicle and heard nothing else
00:53:18
when he drove by that spot just seconds later the vehicle's gone and also are the two people
00:53:26
the male who is identified as Jesse Matthew and then Hannah [Music] Graham joining us back here in the
00:53:45
garage same bat Time same bat Channel and until then be good be kind and don't litter
00:54:03
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