The Murder of Hannah Graham

By Peter Dover

 In the tragic case of Hannah Graham, however, social media would play both a positive and negative part. It would raise awareness of her disappearance, would generate a wave of support and practical help. But also, would be largely responsible for leading the public into a frenzy of impractical suggestions and ill-informed opinions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jul 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201251208

Book preview

THE MURDER OF HANNAH GRAHAM

PETER DOVER

table of contents

HANNAH GRAHAM

JODI HUISENTRUIT

BRITTANEE DREXEL

MISTY COPSEY

ANGEL RESENDIZ

MISSING MADELEINE

PATRICIA MEEHAN

ARLIS PERRY

We live in the age of social media.  Or, at least, so we are frequently told. For anybody above the age of forty, such a world can be confusing.  Older generations were brought up differently, sensing no need to share their every move, their every action, their every opinion.  But times change, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. 

Of course, we know the down sides of social media.  The abuse people feel able to give which they would never utter, at least when sober, were they facing their victim; the impact on sleep as teenagers stare at their screen into the night, unable to relax even when they turn off their phone or tablet; the opportunities the phenomenon gives to exploiters and criminals.

Yet there are good sides to the various tools social media aficionados employ.  Families can keep in touch when separated by distance; information can be shared, loneliness tackled.  In the tragic case of Hannah Graham, however, social media would play both a positive and negative part. It would raise awareness of her disappearance, would generate a wave of support and practical help.  But also, would be largely responsible for leading the public into a frenzy of impractical suggestions and ill-informed opinions.

Hannah Graham was a college student.  A happy, successful girl with a love of sport who went missing on September 13th 2014, having just started her second year at the prestigious University of Virginia. 

After two days with no contact from their daughter, her increasingly anxious parents reported their concerns.

‘This is every parent’s worst nightmare,’ said her father, in a statement broadcast on local television. ‘Everybody knows what happened to Hannah could happen to their child.’

A mixture of social media and CCTV allowed police to trace many of her movements on the evening of her disappearance.,

She leaves her apartment, looking forward to a normal Friday night out, as shared by students across the nation.  Her first stop is a restaurant, McGrady’s.  However, the footage shows that she is stumbling a little. Perhaps she is a touch tipsy – we later discover she has already spent time at one friend’s party.

Hannah is dressed in a sparkly gold top and full length trousers; attractive but entirely appropriate attire.  The next sight of her shows her running, and although this is suspicious, police felt that her movement was not a cause of concern.  She is heading towards the mall, and is in a relatively safe area of the city.

The subsequent shot of any significance is of a man.  He is tall, heavily built with long and distinctive dreadlocks.  He enters a building, and leaves quickly, just as Hannah is passing it.  It appears as though he has decided to follow her. He is around thirty yards behind the student, with some other people between them. 

The story unfolds almost as though lit by a slow moving strobe light.  We get pieces of the prologue to the developing tragedy, rather than a complete story.  Because the next footage, recorded from the CCTV camera above a jewellery shop, shows the tall, heavy man walking with Hannah. It is the last known image of her, taken in the paved mall in the centre of Charlottesville, the unimaginatively named Downtown Mall, one of the longest pedestrianised shopping centres in the US.

Significantly, when police magnified the image, they see that the man has his arm around her waist.

Subsequent searches and talks with friends reveal that Hannah was on the way to her second party of the night when she was abducted.  It is assumed that she had entered McGrady’s to meet up with a friend with whom she would head to the gathering, but they had already left.  It is close to the beginning of the semester, and Hannah is new to this part of town.  It would appear that she is unsure how to get to the location of the party she is about to attend.  At 1.06 am she texts a friend, stating that ‘I am lost.’  The phrase takes on a tragic irony in the light of what we now know.

There is one final sighting her which is not recorded.  It comes to light not from CCTV or electronic messaging but from old fashioned witness statements.  She has stepped inside a bar, called The Tempo.  Numerous eye witnesses report seeing Hannah there with the tall, heavily built man.  His distinctive appearance, complete with flowing dreadlocks, helps to set the image in people’s minds.

Who can guess what was going through the protagonists’ minds as they sat at the bar.  Was Hannah comfortable in the man’s company?  Was he misreading signals he thought she was giving off?  Or, was he already planning the rape and murder that would soon take place?  To some of those who observed the couple, his intentions at least were clear.  A witness would later tell police: ‘He was going to f*** her!’

Lloyd Snook, an attorney, followed her case as it unfolded in the weeks and months after her disappearance and the eventual discovery of her body, left exposed above the ground to be picked at by the buzzards.  Snook saw that there was a strong set of images from CCTV which tracked her journey that night...but once she is down town, so that trail ends.  ‘She just vanishes,’ Snook told the CBS ‘48 Hours’ programme.

As the news of the disappearance of a bright young eighteen year old started to gather pace,  the minds of locals, of the police and the media were driven back to an older case, but one still fresh enough to haunt the corners of their memory. The crime in question is that which befell Morgan Harrington.  She was another young lady, and she too went missing.  The thought that Charlottesville had a serial killer on the loose began to cause unrest among the population. 

The twenty year old was staying with her parents for the weekend so that, on the night of October 17th 2009, she could attend a concert by her favourite band, the rock group Metallica.  They were performing at the University of Virginia’s John Paul Jones arena.  .

Jill and Dan Harrington recalled hearing the news that something appeared to have happened to their daughter.  ‘I knew that moment that something terrible had happened,’ said Jill.  The police told them that Morgan’s purse had been found, abandoned, in a parking lot. ‘You knew, that moment, that Morgan was gone,’ reported Dan.

Lindsay Crisp was a long-time friend.  ‘She was like the moon,’ she said. ‘She reflected the light that was in the world. Wherever she walked in there was a shift in energy.’

At the concert, Morgan had left her seat to visit the rest room.  Sometime on the way there, it seems that she fell – a witness reported seeing her bleeding from her face.  She then left the building on her own. ‘They wouldn’t let her back in,’ said Dan. 

She was confused, and may have taken a ride as a hitchhiker.  She was seen alone, and injured, on a bridge.  However, her parents feel it is most likely that she took a cab, feeling safe to get in one.  The community responded to the plight of the missing girl and her family; social media led to two thousand people helping to comb the surrounding area in the hope of finding her. 

Even the band, Metallica, supported the search, sending out an announcement urging people to give any information to the authorities, however insignificant it seemed.  Through social media, Morgan’s story was kept at the forefront of people’s attention.  But it was all in vain. 

Three months later, in January 2010, her remains were found on a farm just ten miles from the campus.  Forensic searches gave no clues to the police, but another event began to make sense.  A couple of weeks after the young girl had gone missing, a t shirt had been found draped over a bush near the campus.

‘It was put out like a trophy,’ said Jill.  And the police were able to identify Morgan’s DNA, plus that of another person, on the clothing.  The other person was known to the authorities, but not by name.  Rather, it was through a further crime, committed a hundred miles away and four years earlier.  In 2005, a woman had been sexually assaulted and attacked in Fairfax, Virginia. 

The victim was walking from a shop at a supermarket at around 8.30pm.  She became aware that she was being followed. The police officer leading the investigation was Michael Booth.  ‘She turned round and came face to face with him,’ he said. ‘She asked him if she could help him.’

He followed her home, and by her front door she was seized, carried across a parking lot and into a wooded area.  In all probability, the unnamed victim’s life was saved by a chance event.

Mark Castro was visiting a friend’s house to watch a boxing match.  As he pulled in to park, the lights from his car shone into the wooded area.  The attacker saw the lights, stood and fled.  The victim staggered towards Castro dazed and covered in blood and mud. 

DNA evidence was discovered under her finger nails, and the next day, having been treated in hospital, she was able to give a description to police.  A tall, heavily built man was identified, but he was not known to the authorities.

The beautiful city of Charlottesville is a place of extremes.  It is home to a population educated significantly above the norm, but also containing a worrying number of families living in poverty;  a university city whose twenty thousand students sees the local population increase by fifty per cent during the academic year – the community pulsates with youth for eight months out of every twelve, during the other four the bookstores and university shops that litter Downtown Mall stand largely empty.  The city is wealthy, but crime is substantially above the national average; yet robberies are relatively low, when felonies occurs, they tend to be of the violent kind – strikes on people; muggings, sex attacks, assaults.  Homicide.  The city is also a tourist trap to visitors who flock for its wine tours.  And, by a strange quirk of statistics for a city of just 40000 inhabitants, it has been home to no less than three presidents. 

Yet maybe the oddity of the city is not surprising.  Let us not forget that it is named after the British Queen Charlotte.  She had the misfortune of being wed to one of Britain’s longest serving but maddest monarchs, George III.  His bouts of uncontrollable fury, bizarre behaviour and chronic depression were later put down to porphyria, a genetic disorder that still exists to a small degree in some modern royals.  Strangeness could be said to be in the city’s blood.

But to the Graham family it was home, and had been since they emigrated from the South of England when Hannah had just stepped out of nappies.  They had lived in the affluent county of Berkshire, home of Windsor Castle, Ascot Racecourse and the prestigious, exclusive (to those with the financial power or highest intelligence) Eton College. 

Berkshire lies to the west of London, just outside the M25 orbital that circumnavigates the city.  Another major artery stretches westwards through the county before heading on to Wales, and along here, some thirty miles from London, lies the town of Reading – the largest of its kind in the country (most of the bigger towns in England are, in fact, cities, so Reading’s claim as being Britain’s largest town is somewhat less impressive than it seems at first