The acclaimed Tennessee Williams tragedy A Streetcar Named Desire concludes with southern belle Blanch Dubois uttering the famous line “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” The play’s female protagonist has a morphed sense of kindness, as she associates the word with the attention, generally sexual in nature, she receives from strangers.

Twenty-five-year-old Alicia Reynolds, however, likely depended on the actual kindness of a stranger. In doing so, a real tragedy concluded with her life being taken.

Alicia Reynolds

Mark Reynolds and Alicia Showalter met while students at Goshen College in Indiana. Each described meeting the other as “love at first sight.” By March, 1996, they had been married for fourteen months.

As the young couple began their life together, they moved east to pursue their post-graduate educations. At Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, Alicia was studying for her doctorate in pharmacology while Mark was in dental school.

 

Bright Couple

As Mark planned to spend the bulk of March 2, 1996, studying, Alicia was looking forward to a day of shopping with her mother, Sadie Showalter. They arranged to meet at 10:30 a.m. at the Fashion Square Mall in Charlottesville, Virginia. The wedding date of Alicia’s twin brother, Patrick, was nearing, and mother and daughter were eager to browse for gifts together.

Alicia left Baltimore at 7:30 a.m. and began the one-hundred-fifty-mile drive to Charlottesville. Although Sadie had the shorter route, traveling sixty miles from her Harrisonburg, Virginia, home, she left late and was surprised not to see Alicia’s car when she arrived at the mall shortly after 10:30 a.m.   

Sadie Showalter, Alicia’s Mother

A worried Sadie phoned Mark after an hour passed with still no Alicia. He was not overly concerned as he had told his wife to drive cautiously because the roads were icy.

After another hour passed, however, Mark became worried when he received a second phone call from Sadie. Both were panicking when the afternoon ended with still no word from or trace of Alicia.

Mark Reynolds, Alicia’s Husband

At 6:00 p.m., Virginia state trooper David Russillo found Alicia’s car, a white 1993 Mercury Tracer, abandoned along United States Highway 29, two miles south of Culpeper, fifty miles from the Charlottesville shopping mall, and one-hundred-ten miles from Baltimore.

A white paper napkin had been tucked under the windshield wiper, an often used signal of car trouble. Trooper Russillo’s cursory inspection of the vehicle found no obvious signs of problems. After the Highway Patrol was unable to reach Alicia, her car was taken to an area mechanic, who, after a thorough examination, found no mechanical damage and deemed the car in perfect driving condition.

Alicia’s Car Is Found

State troopers set up a roadblock on Route 29 the following day, questioning motorists in the hopes someone would recall seeing Alicia; several had.  

 

Three people saw her talking to a clean-cut white man along the highway’s shoulder. The hood of Alicia’s car was up and they were looking at the engine. Another motorist said he saw her get into the man’s dark-colored pickup, which he thought was either blue or green.

Seen Along the Highway

Alicia’s disappearance was featured on the local news that evening. Afterwards, a man reported finding her credit card, a Citibank Mastercard, on a sidewalk in Culpeper. The card had been found several hours before her car was discovered on March 2. The man called the credit card company’s number and reported it stolen; no recent transactions had been made with it.

More tips soon poured in, leading investigators to fear the worst.

Alicia’s Disappearance is Profiled on Local Television

Over the preceding six weeks, twenty-three women had reported being pulled over by a man along United States Highway 29. Most of the incidents occurred along a roughly eighty-mile area between Culpeper and Manassas, with the majority commencing along a twenty-mile stretch near the Culpeper exits.  The descriptions of the man were similar and matched those of the man seen with Alicia Reynolds.

The first incident occurred on January 17, six weeks before Alicia’s disappearance. The last was reported on March 1, the day before she was last seen.  

The man’s M.O. was generally the same: he would pull behind women driving alone on Highway 29, flashing his headlights and honking his horn. Once beside them, he rolled his window down and yelled that they needed to pull over because something was wrong with their cars.

Those women who pulled to the side of the road reported the man politely approached them saying he saw sparks and/or smoke coming from their cars. He then proceeded to get beneath their vehicles and appeared to examine them. After a few minutes, he emerged to say he had found mechanical problems. At that point, the man offered to drive the women to the nearest gas station or convenience store where they could phone for further assistance. Those who accepted his offer said he was polite as he drove him to the venues without incident.

When the women had their cars examined, all were found to be running smoothly.

Composites and Descriptions of the Feigned Good Samaritan

However, when some women refused to pull over, the man yelled obscenities at them. Those who accepted rides found him pleasant and unthreatening . . . with one exception.

On February 23, one week before Alicia Reynolds vanished, thirty-seven-year-old Carmelita Shomo was driving along Route 234 near Dumfries, in neighboring Prince William County, thirty miles southwest of Washington, D.C. After pulling beside her and asking her to pull over, the man examined her car. He told her she had a loose bolt and it appeared that the “CV joints” were shot.

Carmelita accepted the man’s offer to drive her to a gas station to get help for her vehicle. The man was initially polite, but she began to feel uneasy after he slowed down on three occasions, saying he could not see because of a glare made by the cars behind him. Carmelita was sitting beside him in the front passenger seat and did not see any glares. She became more worried as the man began asking her personal questions.

When she asked the man to pull over to let her out, he became angry and attacked her with a screwdriver. A struggle ensued in which he pushed her out of the car. In her fall, Carmelita broke her ankle.

Although this incident occurred outside the area of the other attacks, the man’s description was the same. Authorities believed he had slowed down not because of glare, but to look for a place to attack the woman he intended to be his first victim.

Carmelita Shomo escaped injured but alive. Alicia Reynolds would not be so fortunate.

 

Composites of Carmelita Shomo’s Attacker

On March 8, a black parka was turned into Culpeper police. It had been found on March 2, the same day Alicia disappeared and when her credit card was found. The parka, confirmed as being Alicia’s, was found in Madison County, adjacent to Culpeper County, on Route 626, less than a mile east of Highway 29.

The following day, Alicia’s other credit cards were found in Culpeper. I could find anything stating whether or not any items had been purchased with them.

Two months later, investigators’ fears were confirmed.

More Personal Items Found

On May 7, two months after Alicia’s disappearance, a logging company worker noticed buzzards circling an area near Lignum, in rural Culpeper County, approximately fifteen miles southeast of where Alicia was last seen. Thirty feet off a gravel road used mainly by woodcutters lay a pile of sticks and pine tree branches. Beneath them, a pile of clothes covered human bones.

The remains were identified as those of Alicia Reynolds. She had been murdered, most likely on the day she had disappeared, as her body was found in a state of decomposition consistent with two months.

Alicia’s rings and her clothes, other than her parka, were still on her. Police have not released the manner in which she was killed.   

Remains Found

The killer’s selection of the remote logging road, where acres of woodland are harvested for pulp, suggested familiarity with the area. Alicia’s body was found less than a mile from the only building along the road, a home for abused children which had been operating for three years.

Heavy rains ensued shortly after Alicia’s remains were found, hindering the investigation into her murder.

The Area Where Alicia’s Body Was Dumped

Investigators believe the man’s flagging down the multiple women on the premise of car trouble were his trial runs, as he was building the nerve to commit murder. Carmelita Shomo is believed to have been the woman he planned to kill, but she was able to escape.

Alicia Reynolds, instead, became the unfortunate fatality.  

Unfortunate Alicia

Darrell Rice is believed by many investigators to be the man feigning the Good Samaritan along Route 29. His father lived near the highway, and Rice often used his dad’s pickup that was similar to the one believed involved in the crime.

In July, 1997, one-and-a-half years after Alicia’s murder, Rice was charged with the attempted abduction of Carmelita Shomo after she identified him from a photo lineup. After later being convicted of the July 7 kidnapping and attempted murder of cyclist Yvonne Malbasha, he was sentenced to eleven years in prison.

Darrell Rice

Rice was also charged with the murders of two homosexual hikers, Julianne Williams and Laura Winans. The women were found bound, with their mouths gagged and throats slit, along the Appalachian Trail in the Shenandoah National Forest on June 1,1996,  eleven weeks after Alicia Reynolds’ disappearance and seventeen days after her body was found.

Rice was described as a woman hater, particularly of lesbians. Julianne and Laura were last seen on May 24; Rice is seen on videotape entering the Shenandoah National Park on May 25 and 26 and a witness recalled seeing him in the park on May 24.

Forensic evidence, however, could not connect Rice to the crime scene and the charges against him were dropped due to lack of evidence in 2004. Similarly, nothing connects him to the murder of Alicia Reynolds.

Julianne Williams and Laura Winans

Navy veteran Richard Evonitz is another person of interest in the murder of Alicia Reynolds.

Before committing suicide, Evonitz abducted, raped, and strangled three teenaged girls to death in central Virginia.

Richard Evonitz

On September 9, 1996, six months after Alicia’s disappearance, Evonitz abducted sixteen-year-old Sofia Silva from her front yard in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Her decomposed body was found a month later in a creek off State Route 3 in King George County.

Eight months later, on May 1, 1997, Evonitz kidnapped, raped, and strangled to death fifteen-year-old Kristi and twelve-year-old Kati Lisk. The sisters’ bodies were found in the South Anna River five days later.

                                       

Murdered by Richard Evonitz: Sofia Silva, Kati Lisk, and Kristi Lisk

Over one year later, on June 24, 2002, Evonitz abducted fifteen-year-old Kara Robinson from a friend’s yard in Columbia, South Carolina. He took her to his apartment, raped her, and then tied her to his bed. After Evonitz fell asleep, Kara escaped and identified him as her attacker. Evonitz fled and was tracked to Sarasota, Florida. As police closed in on him, he killed himself. 

Nothing directly connects Evonitz to the murder of Alicia Reynolds.

 

Kara Robinson Escapes Richard Evonitz

The suspected killer of Alicia Reynolds is believed to have been between thirty-five-to-forty-five-years-old in 1996. He was five-feet-ten to six-feet tall with a medium build, appearing to weigh between one-hundred-eighty and one-hundred-ninety pounds.  He was clean shaven, had reddish-brown (some said light-brown) hair of equal length on the back and sides which he brushed back with his left hand. This description generally fits both Darrell Rice and Richard Evonitz.  

The man introduced himself to some women as “Larry Breeden.” Several men of that name have been questioned, but all have been cleared.

The man drove several different vehicles, a Neon most frequently, but also a Nissan, a Ford Ranger, and a Mazda. All of the vehicles were dark colored. When approaching Alicia Reynolds, he is believed to have used a dark Neon pickup with a splash of lighter colored pinstripes, possibly teal. He may have purchased, sold, or traded vehicles between January and March 1996.

No further instances of a man pulling women over claiming they had car trouble were reported in the Culpeper or surrounding areas following Alicia’s disappearance and murder on March 2.

Investigators have fingerprints and hairs they believe belong to the killer of Alicia Reynolds. I am guessing, but do not know for sure, that they are from her credit cards and parka.

A composite sketch of Alicia’s Alleged Killer

Alicia Faye Reynolds was murdered, most likely on March 2, 1996.

 

If you believe you have information pertaining to her murder, please contact the Virginia State Police Culpeper Division toll-free at 1-800-572-2260, or the Bureau of Criminal Investigation toll-free at 1-888-300-0156 or by e-mail at [email protected].

 

Who Killed Alicia Reynolds?

In the course of her studies for her pharmacology doctorate, Alicia was researching and working on developing a cure for bilharzia, an often debilitating disease affecting the urinary tract and intestines which is endemic in developing countries.

Following her murder, Johns Hopkins University and her family established the Alicia Showalter Reynolds Research Award for women planning to enter a science field as a career.

Honoring Alicia

 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/36229505/alicia-faye-reynolds 

• SOURCES
• America’s Most Wanted
• Annapolis Capitol
• Baltimore Sun
• Culpeper Star-Exponent
• The Free-Lance Star
• Harrisonburg Daily News
• KVTR Channel 6 News CBS Affiliate, Richmond
• Unsolved Mysteries
• Washington Post
• WHSV Channel 3 News ABC Affiliate Harrisonburg, Virginia
• Winchester Star