PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) – Could Alan Wilmer Sr., who died in December 2017, be responsible for another “Colonial Parkway Murder?”
On Jan. 8, Virginia State Police announced that Wilmer Sr. was responsible for the murders of Teresa Lynn Howell in July of 1989 and David Knobling and Robin Edwards in September of 1987. His DNA is connected to all three murders.
Knobling and Edwards were part of what is now known as the Colonial Parkway Murders, a series of four double murders during the 1980s. Included in the Colonial Parkway Murders are Cassandra Hailey and Keith Call. The Christopher Newport University students vanished in 1988 after a party in Newport News. Call’s car was found on Colonial Parkway. Their bodies were never found.
As WAVY first reported on social media, Wilmer is also tied in with the Hailey-Call case.
Blaine Pardoe wrote what is known as the bible of the Colonial Parkway Murders, “A Special Kind of Evil.” According to Pardoe, Wilmer was indeed an early suspect.
Pardoe interviewed Irv Wells, who died in May 2022, but was FBI Special Agent in Charge during the Call-Hailey crime.
In an interview for the book, Wells told Pardoe one thing that caught their eye was Wilmer’s unique looking 1966 Dodge Fargo with the license plate, EM-RAW.
On Page 205 in Pardoe’s book, he refers to the pickup truck and the license plate EM-RAW, which was brought up at Monday’s news conference. He abbreviates the license plate and notes it, because Wilmer was given a polygraph test — which he passed.
“Yeah. They not only talked to him, but they surveilled him. They surveilled the guy. He was under active surveillance at the time. And I feel horrible. I feel like the FBI, to a certain degree, has dropped the ball here, and there’s no way around that. This person fit their profile. They had identified this person as someone who trolled the Colonial Parkway and harassed people. They got a warrant, got in there. And, you know, they didn’t find anything that tied him to Call-Hailey. But, you know, for God’s sake, this is something that, you know, they had the guy, they had him, and he got away,” Pardoe told WAVY.
Pardoe added, “What we can take away from this right now is the FBI engaged this person on a different Colonial Parkway Murder case and he was their prime suspect in the beginning. Now he has been linked to another Colonial Parkway murder through DNA testing. We are just at the end of the beginning of this.“
WAVY contacted FBI Spokesperson Krystal Cawabata who confirmed Wilmer Sr. was an early suspect ,along with others, in the Call-Hailey disappearance. “We collected the DNA profiles of Wilmer Sr. and passed along that profile to Virginia State Police and Hampton to test their cases. There were three matches. [The] Hampton case of Teresa Lynn Howell, and Isle of Wight cases of David Knobling and Robin Edwards. At this time, we do not have enough DNA evidence to forensically link Wilmer Sr. to the Call-Hailey case,” Cawabata said.
Special Agent in Charge at the time Irv Wells, who passed in May of 2022, told WAVY they had to let the suspect go, but Wilmer’s name was never mentioned in that interview, “They were both polygraphed by one of the bureau’s best polygrapher, and it was his opinion they were not involved.”
Wilmer’s name was also never mentioned to Pardoe, “He definitely didn’t show up in any of the research that we did interviewing law enforcement on the Ragged Island murders.”
The FBI says there is no DNA evidence at this time connecting Wilmer to any of the other Colonial Parkway murders.
“So, you know, to say that there’s no evidence that links him to them, I would add the words, as of right now, there is not. That doesn’t mean there won’t be something down the road that links this guy to these other cases,” Pardoe said.
Continue to check WAVY.com for updates.