2009.08.31
Search warrant shows sweatshirt, hairs, car collected
A search warrant return filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court over the weekend shows investigators took a sweatshirt, hairs and the 1992 Toyota Camry belonging to David Metzler.
Metzler's body was found inside the automobile and the body of Heidi Childs was found outside.
-- Shawna Morrison
Whose sweatshirt? Hopefully not one belonging to the victims, but rather possibly to their killer?
Hair follicles could be useful, but it would need to be matched with a suspect through forensic data such as DNA.
Comment by Fred — August 31, 2009 @ 3:18 pm
fred, seriously, maybe you ought to hold off on the law and order act or reserve it for somewhere besides the comments on the live stream of these kids' funerals.
what a terrible lost these families have sustained. what a blessing that they have such strong faith and strong community.
Comment by seth — August 31, 2009 @ 3:55 pm
Seth:
You are mistaken.
I am not responding in the same thread of this blog as the one dealing with videocast of the funeral service, this is a thread about the search warrant. See the header post from Roanoke Times staff, time stamp 2:37, author Stephanie Ogilve, "Search warrant shows sweatshirt, hairs, car collected".
There is a slender window of time now that this may be solved, soon the newspaper headlines of this paper will be dominated by college football and people will forget the particulars of this atrocious crime.
Fred
Comment by Fred — August 31, 2009 @ 5:10 pm
I can comment on anything I want if you can talk about faith. Alot of the sense of strength that communities have are subject to the strength of the law enforcement which maintains a safe environment. It's important that the investigation remain open and new information presented to the public because finding evidence now is simply much easier than finding it later. Faith doesn't discover evidence. Investigation does!
Comment by Chris — August 31, 2009 @ 7:51 pm
Does anyone know if this is online anywhere? it is no longer streaming on this site, it's a sermon or something, but i would like to watch funeral after the fact since the website was down...
Comment by justinchina — August 31, 2009 @ 11:55 pm
In this day and age, anyone who commits murder must be either stupid or not watch the crime shows on cable TV. Unless you're already homeless, have no job, home, car or friends that you can be tracked with, already own a plane ticket, have no previous criminal record, and you're going to leave the country, change your name, have reconstructive plastic surgery on your face, go to a lawless country where you can't be found, never come back to the US, and never tell another human being what you've done, you're going to be caught. Hahaha. There are so many ways now that forensic science can be used to catch you that it's envitable. They'll catch whoever did this in probably 3 weeks!
Comment by Nelson — September 1, 2009 @ 2:29 am
regardless of where you commented, this comment thread showed up on the live stream of the funeral. you'd think a sense of decency might lead people to show some restraint.
and, you're right, without commentors on a local news website suggesting it, surely the investigators wouldn't have known to look for dna on the hairs!
i don't think i realized faith and criminal investigation were mutually exclusive. i certainly didn't realize the investigation was being performed via web comments on a news story.
Comment by seth — September 1, 2009 @ 10:23 pm
justinchina, http://blip.tv/file/2540766 is David's.
Comment by Dee — September 2, 2009 @ 12:01 am
justinchina: The funerals for David and Heidi can be viewed online at http://www.hbclynchburg.com. You might also want to check out the Prayer Group for the Metzlers and Childs on Facebook.
Comment by Kay — September 2, 2009 @ 6:29 pm
[and, you're right, without commentors on a local news website suggesting it, surely the investigators wouldn't have known to look for dna on the hairs! ]
surely you can not be serious in that statement! do you really think that highly trained and skilled investigators and forensic experts would have overlooked such obvious things like looking for DNA on hairs???
Go ahead and talk about Jesus all you want, since that seems to make you happy. But try to leave the investigation to the trained professionals. If they need your invaluable input I am sure they will ask for it.
Comment by Leisure Suit Larry — September 2, 2009 @ 6:37 pm
Being a former officer of the law, I kind of wonder what investigative experience any of the prior posters have. Being a fan of CSI is relatively unimportant in any criminal ivestigation.
Big Al
Comment by BIG AL ESQUIRE — September 13, 2009 @ 4:21 pm
I don't know how Virginians can live in a place with so much crime. New England is horribly cold, but at lest the crime is much less. I don't understand why the south is so violent.
Comment by hulahanawinkle — October 27, 2009 @ 6:21 am
Really? Have you seen crime statistics lately? I did a check of the FBI crime stats for 2006, and Virginia's violent crime rate is basically the same as Connecticut's. Now, the sparsley populated NE states do far well, with Maine having the lowest rate (1), VT (3) and NH (4) close to that, and RI (7) splitting the difference between ME (1) and CT (14). However, the more populated NE states like NJ (25), NY (29), PA (30), MA (31) all have rates significantly higher than VA (17). Basically, the violent crime stats follow a general trend of the lower density, more sparsley populated states having fewer violent crimes per segment of the population (ME, ND, VT, NH, SD, UT, RI, WY, ID, MT are the top 10 safest), while, in general, more densely populated states have more violent crime per capita (CA, TX, DE, LA, FL, TN, SC all rank in the bottom quartile). It's not so much a north-south deal as a dense/sparse thing. Of course, there are a few outliers. Alaska ranked at the 6th most violent sandwiched between Deleware and Louisiana, and some of the small NE states like RI are fairly densely populated but ranked low in crime stats. One possible significant factor in the crime issue is the poverty levels in many states ranked high in the crime numbers. CA, TX, FL, TN and SC all have large immigrant populations with high poverty rates...while states like ME, VT and NH generally seem to have higher income levels and less poverty concerns.
Comment by Other John — November 3, 2009 @ 11:46 am