ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, September 24, 1996 TAG: 9609240057
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FREDERICKSBURG
SOURCE: Associated Press
For the third time in 41/2 months, police are investigating the discovery of a woman's corpse in the tiny community of Lignum.
Men who were training dogs found the partly decomposed body just west of Lignum on Sunday, but police would not discuss details.
Police said they will wait for the results of an autopsy Wednesday to identify the body and determine the cause of death.
Authorities have been investigating the Sept. 9 disappearance of 16-year-old Sophia Silva of Spotsylvania County. Detectives working on the case met Sunday night with the Silva family, Pat Sullins of the Spotsylvania Sheriff's Department told the Free Lance-Star newspaper of Fredericksburg.
A family friend who answered the phone at the Silva home Monday referred inquiries to the state police.
FBI agents assisted in the search for the high school girl, and dogs were brought in to search the area around her home earlier this month.
Even though three bodies have been discovered near the Culpeper County crossroads too small to appear on most maps, investigators don't necessarily believe the deaths are related.
``We're still not saying they're linked. It would be premature to say that,'' said state police spokeswoman Lucy Caldwell.
On May 7, a logging company worker found the body of Alicia Showalter Reynolds in a clearing near Lignum.
Reynolds was driving from her home in Baltimore to Charlottesville when she was last seen March 2 along U.S. 29. Witnesses reported seeing Reynolds, 25, getting into a dark pickup truck south of Culpeper.
Her disappearance drew intense publicity throughout Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia and prompted weeks of searches of fields, ponds and lakes. Police have cleared more than 450 suspects and followed nearly 5,000 leads, but tips have dwindled from hundreds a day to a trickle, Caldwell said.
In July, the body of 74-year-old Thelma Scroggins was found in her Lignum home. On the night she died, she had been speaking on the phone with a friend and hung up to answer a knock at her door. Her purse and green pickup truck were missing, police said.
Her slaying also remains unsolved.
LENGTH: Short : 50 lines KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB