Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 4, 1994 TAG: 9410040077
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The girls' bodies have never been found. No one has been charged in their disappearance.
The suspect had a close relationship with Blaine Hodges and his family and was also known by at least one of the two girls who disappeared in 1977.
Investigators on the Hodges murder case have questioned the man, but he has not been charged. The four members of the Hodges family were found killed in their burned-out home on Aug. 29.
Roanoke police talked to the man about the disappearance of two 14-year-old girls - Tammy Akers and Angela Rader. The two girls vanished after they skipped classes at William Ruffner Junior High School.
Detectives questioned the man in 1980, after two young women said they were at a party a couple of years earlier where the man drunkenly fired a gun and sobbed that "he wished he hadn't hurt Tammy."
Police learned nothing from their interview with the man, who was known to party with young girls. They watched him closely for a few years. In 1984, he was charged with sexually molesting a girl younger than age 13, but was acquitted.
Vinton Police Chief Rick Foutz would not confirm that investigators were looking at a possible link between the two cases.
But Foutz did say they have "looked at a number of open cases and that one of those could be the cases" of the two missing Roanoke girls.
Some members of the girls' families believe the man murdered Tammy and Angela. The case is still an active missing-persons investigation in the Roanoke Police Department.
Years after the girls' disappearance, one of Tammy's sisters revealed to her family that the man had sexually molested her when she was 13. The abuse continued until she was 15, when she stopped going near him, she said.
Roanoke police would not comment on the investigation into the teen-agers' disappearance or the man's involvement.
Sources close to the Hodges murder say they are looking at a number of suspects, one of them this man.
The fire at the Hodges' home was reported by passersby just before 5 a.m. Aug. 29. After it was extinguished, rescue workers discovered the four victims.
Teresa Hodges, 37, was found strangled and badly burned in the living room, near where the fire began.
Blaine Hodges, 41, was found in his upstairs bed, shot once in the head. The couple's daughters, Winter, 11, and Anah, 3, were found in a neighboring bedroom, each shot twice in the head.
Their deaths launched a multi-jurisdictional investigation, culling a team of detectives from the state police violent crimes unit as well as police from other departments in the area.
For more than a month, investigators have collected mounds of evidence from the Hodgeses' home at 232 E. Virginia Ave. But they have not released many of the details of what is believed to be the first quadruple murder in Vinton's history.
Keywords:
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