ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 17, 1996 TAG: 9611180065
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CULPEPER
SOURCE: Associated Press
Telephone calls poured into the Virginia State Police office in Culpeper after the television show ``Unsolved Mysteries'' aired a segment on the abduction and murder of Alicia Showalter Reynolds.
Some of the calls were encouraging, a state police special agent said.
``Folks have done exactly what we asked them to, and that's call in,'' J.K. Rowland of the state police's Bureau of Criminal Investigations said about an hour after Friday night's program. ``It's the information we asked for.''
About 10 special agents manned phones at the Culpeper office. State police received about 100 calls in the first hour after the segment aired. Authorities also staffed phones in California, site of the ``Unsolved Mysteries'' hot line, state police spokeswoman Lucy Caldwell said.
The segment lasted about 10 minutes and explained how the 25-year-old Baltimore resident left her home about 7:30 a.m. on March 2 to drive to Charlottesville to meet her mother for a shopping trip.
Reynolds never showed up. A state trooper found her abandoned car the same day along U.S. 29 about two miles south of Culpeper. Her body was later found in a wooded area.
The show explained that for several months leading up to Reynolds' disappearance, more than 20 women said they also were stopped by the man believed to have abducted her.
Police said the man would flash the headlights of his dark Nissan pickup truck and honk the horn to try to get the women to stop on the pretense that something was wrong with their cars.
If they did stop, he would check their cars, sometimes offering to give them rides to a gas station. In at least two cases, the women accepted rides and came to no harm. But other women said the man got agitated and angry, banging his fists on his steering wheel, if they did not accept his help.
Rowland said state police received ``credible information'' in Friday night's wave of calls, but he would not say whether authorities were ready to act on any of the calls.
About 30 percent of the suspects featured on ``Unsolved Mysteries'' are apprehended, the show's producers have said.
Anyone with information about the Reynolds case should call the Virginia State Police at (540) 829-7400.
LENGTH: Short : 49 linesby CNB