Suspected Serial Killer's Tally Raised to 6

A string of unsolved killings that loomed over Virginia's Colonial Parkway for decades just came into sharper focus. The FBI on Tuesday revealed a dead man previously implicated in two of at least eight killings and disappearances of young people along or near the parkway between 1986 and 1989 has been connected to two more. Modern forensic testing tied Alan Wade Wilmer Sr. of Lancaster County to the 1986 deaths of Cathleen Thomas, 27, and Rebecca Dowski, 21, whose bodies were found in a car along the scenic route in the first of a cluster that came to be known as the "Colonial Parkway murders," per CBS News. That brings Wilmer's total suspected killings to six.

Wilmer, who died in 2017 at age 63, had already been publicly identified by Virginia State Police as the suspect in the 1987 slayings of David Knobling, 20, and Robin Edwards, 14, as part of the serial couple killings, as well as the 1989 strangling of Teresa Lynn Spaw Howell, 29, and the 1988 stabbing of Laurie Ann Powell, 18, whose deaths are considered unrelated to the parkway series, per the Virginian-Pilot. Authorities say he would've faced prosecution in all six of those cases had he been alive.

The Colonial Parkway investigation is described by the FBI as one of Virginia's most complex and persistent cold-case efforts. Dominique Evans, who heads the FBI's Norfolk field office, called the latest development "a testament to the tenacity of generations of investigators," adding that agents "will not stop, we will not forget, and we will seek justice no matter how long it takes," per CBS. The bureau says it is still actively pursuing leads in the four remaining unsolved cases: the 1989 killings of Annamaria Phelps, 18, and Daniel Lauer, 21, off Interstate 64 in New Kent County; and the presumed 1988 killings of Cassandra Hailey, 18, and Richard "Keith" Call, 20, near the Colonial Parkway's York River Overlook. Their bodies have not been found.