ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, November 13, 1996 TAG: 9611130061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CULPEPER
SOURCE: Associated Press
AN EPISODE OF ``Unsolved Mysteries'' will focus on the case 8 p.m. Friday on WSLS (Channel 10).
A man who prowled Virginia highways in search of women to sexually assault found his fantasy victim in Alicia Showalter Reynolds, a state police criminal profiler said Tuesday.
And now that the man police believe flagged down two dozen female motorists near Culpeper has killed one of his victims, he won't hesitate to do it again, Special Agent Larry McCann said.
``Once you do it, once you kill, it's no big deal the second time,'' McCann said at a news conference called to release details of a criminal profile of the suspect.
The man convinced Reynolds that her car was malfunctioning and abducted her when she pulled over, but probably did not intend to kill her, McCann said.
``I think what we have here is a sexual assault that went bad,'' McCann said.
Reynolds' body was found in May, two months after she disappeared.
Police are frustrated that they have made no arrest despite heavy publicity and thousands of calls to a special hot line since Reynolds' death. An episode of the television show ``Unsolved Mysteries'' will focus on the case Friday at 8 p.m. on WSLS (Channel 10), Roanoke.
The man flashed his headlights or motioned to women to pull over on the pretext that something was wrong with their cars, police said. The man then posed as a Good Samaritan who offered to drive the women to a telephone or somewhere else for help, police said.
In all but one other apparently related case, the women were not harmed, McCann said.
The killer was practicing, McCann said.
``He has a fantasy. He's dreamed about it. He's planned every aspect of this case except the victim,'' McCann said. ``In Alicia Reynolds he found the victim.''
All the other reported incidents predated Reynolds' disappearance March2, police said.
Reynolds, a 25-year-old pharmacology student from Baltimore, was last seen along the shoulder of U.S. 29, peering under the hood of her car, and then getting into a dark pickup truck with a man.
A week earlier, a woman in Prince William County accepted a ride from a man in a dark pickup who resembles the Reynolds suspect. The man tried to assault her, and she was injured as she bailed out of his truck, police said.
Police are unsure that case is related because it happened some distance from the other reported incidents, Caldwell said.
McCann discounted the theory that Reynolds' death is related to the subsequent killings of three Virginia women. All four bodies were found along a 40-mile stretch of Virginia3.
``We are looking at them individually,'' he said.
The suspect in the Reynolds case preferred a certain physical type - young, white, petite - that perfectly describes Reynolds, McCann said. None of the other three homicide victims resemble her, he said.
McCann said the suspect sometimes backed off if the woman at the wheel didn't match his physical preferences. He also backed off when he discovered a second person in the car, McCann said.
The man twice identified himself as Larry Breeden, although McCann said that is probably not the suspect's real name.
The stalker was probably visibly nervous after the Reynolds killing, but is now calmly lying low somewhere other than Culpeper, McCann said. The suspect may have once lived near Culpeper, or passes through, McCann said.
``For some reason he knows Culpeper, but Culpeper does not know him,'' McCann said.
Someone, however, does know the sandy-haired man and knows or suspects he is a killer, McCann said.
``It's important that they [come forward,]'' McCann said. ``This fellow is going to kill again. This is not the only victim.''
LENGTH: Medium: 77 linesby CNB