On March 2nd, 1996, Alicia Showalter Reynolds of Baltimore, Maryland, said good-bye to her husband and left her home. It was a Saturday at about 7:30 A.M. Alicia planned to drive more than 150 miles to spend the day shopping with her mother in Charlottesville, Virginia. She left early, giving herself plenty of time to be at the mall by 10:30. Alicia’s mother arrived on time, expecting her daughter at any moment. But when Alicia was late, Sadie Showalter became worried:
“Right about 11:00, she wasn’t there, and I said, ‘This is not like Alicia. I wonder what’s going on?’ But I made myself wait until 11:15, and I then finally called her husband, Mark.”
Mark Reynolds:
“At that point, I said, ‘You know, the weather is kind of bad this morning. You know, there was a little fog, there was a little drizzle. It could’ve been some slick roads. Maybe she just slowed down a little bit, so give her a little while and give me a call back.’”
A red compact car and a dark green pick up truck driving down the road next to each other.
He told women they had car problems
Sadie continued to wait. An hour passed, then two, but Alicia never showed up. At 6:00 that evening, a Virginia state trooper found Alicia’s car abandoned along a highway near Culpepper, Virginia, 50 miles from the shopping mall. A white paper napkin had been tucked under the windshield wiper, a commonly used signal of car trouble. When the car was examined, however, there were no mechanical problems.
The next day, the local news began broadcasting reports of Alicia’s disappearance. Police set up a roadblock where Alicia’s car was found, hoping to track down people who may have seen something. At least three people claimed they saw Alicia talking to a clean-cut white man with a dark-colored pickup truck. Close to 20 women called to say that they had recently been approached on the highway by a man fitting that exact description. Police began to realize that whatever had happened to Alicia might have been a plot that had been evolving for weeks. According to Special Agent Thomas Carter with the FBI in Fredericksburg, Virginia:
“Most of the witnesses talked about a man who would come up behind them or beside them in a dark, small pickup truck flashing his headlights, honking his horn, looking in any way he could to attract their attention. Most of the women that did have some concern for their vehicle did manage to pull off to the side of the road. He immediately jumps underneath the vehicle, conducts an examination, comes out, and then engages them in a very polite conversation about the mechanical difficulties that he has allegedly uncovered.”
Several detectives stand by as two coroners lifting a black body bag out of the grass.
Her body was found in a wooded area
At that point, the helpful stranger usually offered to drive the woman to the nearest phone. At least two women accepted his offer and nothing happened to them. Other women found the stranger to be anything but courteous. Agent Carter:
“Some of the women would not pull over for him, but merely went to the next exit or to their destination and had someone else look at their vehicle. The only instances where we have found the individual became agitated were those instances where women either refused his assistance or refused to pull over for him. And in those instances, there was a display of anger by him such as pounding his fist on the steering wheel or murmuring things under his breath.”