In 1996, This Graduate Student Was Traveling To Visit Her Mom But Never Showed: Then, Her Car Was Discovered Abandoned, Her Remains Were Found In A Field, And Her Family Believes A Known Serial Killer Was The Perpetrator
In 1996, Alicia Showalter Reynolds was a twenty-five-year-old graduate student attending the prestigious John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Friends and family knew her as a brilliant young woman.
“Talented, kind, gentle soul,” added Sadie Showalter, her mother.
But, on March 2, Alicia set out to visit her mother in Charlottesville, Virginia, when tragedy struck.
She had gotten up early that day to prepare for the one hundred and fifty-mile drive. And once in Charlottesville, Alicia was supposed to meet up with Sadie for a shopping day.
So, at about 7:30 a.m., she kissed her husband, Mark, goodbye and got on the road. Alicia was not set to meet up with her mother until 10:30 a.m., so she left herself plenty of time for the trip.
Unfortunately, though, Alicia never made it to the mall. Instead, Sadie sat there for over an hour, awaiting her daughter’s arrival. And, when she did not show, she phoned Mark.
Mark suspected that inclement weather might have delayed his wife and told Sadie to hold tight. But, after several more hours of waiting at the mall, Sadie eventually went home– still puzzled about her daughter not showing up.
Then, later that evening, at 6:00 p.m., Alicia’s car, a Mercury Tracer, was discovered abandoned on a highway in Culpeper County, Virginia– just fifty miles away from the mall. A napkin was also left on the windshield describing how Alicia had suffered car troubles. However, an inspection later determined that the car was in good shape.
Virginia State Police; pictured above is Alicia
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And after Alicia never returned home, authorities deployed a roadblock on the highway the following day to canvas for any witnesses. The effort did not come up dry.
In fact, a few people claimed to have seen Alicia pulled over on the side of Route 29, speaking with a man who drove a blue pickup truck.
The man was described as being between thirty-five and forty-five years old at the time. He was of medium build, stood between five foot ten and six feet tall, and had medium to light brown hair.
Plus, at least twenty additional women later came forward and shared their own experiences with the man. Apparently, while they were driving down Route 29, he kept trying to get them to pull over their cars.
The man reportedly tried flashing his lights, honking and even yelling at the women that he was having trouble with his car.
A few of the women claim they did pull over but that the man directed them to a pay phone. Others reported that they simply ignored him and, once the man realized, he raced away angrily.
However, one woman’s run-in with the man ultimately forced the police to consider that they had a potential serial killer on their hands.
The woman described how, just one week before Alicia’s disappearance, she had been driving home when the man approached her. This time, though, he claimed that her car was unfit to drive and offered the woman a ride home.
She ultimately accepted, but just a few minutes into the drive, the man began attacking her. Thankfully, the woman was able to escape from his pickup truck even though she did break her ankle in the process.
This terrifying tale pushed authorities to believe that the man was a serial killed attempting to perfect his future encounters and attacks on women. Moreover, they believe that Alicia encountered the same man and fell victim to a ruse that sparks had been flying under her car.
Then, two months later, on May 7, a local resident noticed vultures in a field about fifteen miles away from where Alicia had vanished before realizing they were flocking to a woman’s remains.
Investigators later confirmed that the remains belonged to Alicia. And even though her exact cause of death was never released, officials released that she had been murdered. The crime also likely occurred on March 2– the day Alicia never showed up at the mall.
It has now been over twenty-six years since Alicia’s murder, and her family has spoken out about their grief, hopes for justice, and suspicions about the killer. More specifically, the Showalters believe that Richard Marc Evanitz– a known serial killer– was behind Alicia’s murder.
On September 9, 1996, Richard kidnapped Sofia Silva, a sixteen-year-old girl, from her Virginia home’s front steps. Weeks later, she was found murdered and left in a pond.
Richard was also tied to the kidnapping of sisters Kristin and Kati Lisk on May 1, 1997. He had taken the girls– who were fifteen and twelve years old at the time– from their Virginia home before murdering and throwing them in the river. In turn, Richard’s known proximity to where Alicia had been traveling and timeline have pushed the Showalters to believe he is a prime suspect.
“You usually don’t have two serial killers around the same area around the same time,” Sadie said.
However, Richard ultimately shot and killed himself on June 27, 2022, after being surrounded by police in Sarasota, Florida. Moreover, his possible responsibility for Alicia’s murder has never been confirmed. Tthe Showalter family has continued searching for answers in hopes of finally getting justice and closure.
“My message would be, ‘Why hide? You have hidden long enough,'” Alicia’s father, Harley Showalter, said in a 2017 interview with WUSA9. If you have any information at all about Alicia’s disappearance or murder, investigators urge you to call the Virginia State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation at (888) 300-0156.
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