ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 1, 1996 TAG: 9612030018
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-26 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE (AP)
SOURCE: IAN ZACK DAILY PROGRESS
It sounds like a scene from a dark movie thriller: Police descend below the well-manicured lawns of an idyllic village to capture a suspected kidnapper living in a serpentine network of tunnels.
But a similar plot played out in November beneath the historic grounds of the University of Virginia.
The setting was the intertwining 5-mile network of steam tunnels that convey heat via steel pipes to buildings on campus.
A colorful, almost mythic history has sprung up around the 40-year-old utility tunnels, which are just below ground level on the university's Lawn and central campus. As students have learned, the tunnels are tall and wide enough to walk in, despite the dangers involved in doing so.
But Charlottesville and university police were taken aback when an investigation led them early one morning three weeks ago to find an 18-year-old man suspected in a vicious beating and abduction sleeping on a makeshift bed inside one of the tunnels.
``I really was surprised that we had someone that had set up permanent home residence there,'' University Police Chief Michael Sheffield said.
``But then again,'' he added, ``I'm not surprised.'' There has been all kinds of skullduggery linked to the tunnels.
The man police discovered was Billy Ray McKethan, a bespectacled vagrant with tousled reddish hair wanted in connection with the Nov. 2 robbery, abduction and beating of Evan James Kittredge, a 33-year-old transportation manager at the university.
Police might never have found McKethan had someone not led them to a section of the tunnels near Clark Hall, about a five-minute walk from the Rotunda. Apparently McKethan had entered the 8-foot-tall, 8-foot-wide tunnel through a manhole.
``He was on a board on top of some pipes with covers on top of him,'' said Charlottesville Police Sgt. Don Campbell, one of the arresting officers.
The tunnels were dug in the 1950s, much to the chagrin of Virginia students, who resented the shovels desecrating their Lawn.
But the predominantly male student body soon found a use for the tunnels, according to retired psychology professor Raymond C. Bice, now the university's official historian: More than a decade before women were admitted as undergraduates, lovestruck men found that one of the passages led to the basement of McKim Hall, which then contained dormitory rooms for nursing students.
Administrators enforced a strict curfew at the dorm.
``I think it was about 10:30 when all males were ushered out,'' Bice said. ``And males were somehow getting in in great numbers.''
``They would get in the building and get in the elevator and go on and get right up to where the women were and, of course, the women were delighted,'' Bice said. ``Administrators were not so delighted.''
Officials got wise and eventually locked the basement door of McKim. But as with the Parisian sewers of the last century, exploring the tunnels became a kind of rite of passage at Virginia.
``When I was a student, that was one of the prime entertainment options,'' said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at Virginia who graduated from the university in the early 1970s. ``People would go down to the tunnels and roam around for an hour or two, have some fun.''
Sabato said students would sneak below ground to smoke marijuana and ``at one point, some of the secret societies were having their meetings in the steam tunnels.''
That could explain an observation by Charlottesville Police Lt. J.E. ``Chip'' Harding. Or perhaps it doesn't.
``Over the years, we have heard and maybe even reported at times that there would appear to be cult activity in the tunnels, devil signs or candles being burned,'' Harding said.
Students have ventured into the tunnels less frequently recently, but Sheffield said police still occasionally shoo someone out. Last year, a utility worker discovered a cache of paintings, apparently left by art students.
Rats have been spotted scampering along the concrete floor of the passages and an entire family of cats were rescued there. One black-and-white mongrel cat, dubbed ``Steamer'' now makes her home in the campus heating plant.
University officials say the tunnels are more dangerous now than ever, in part because of the age of the thickly insulated steel pipes that line its walls. The pipes carry pressurized steam at temperatures hotter than 370 degrees.
``There are sections of the tunnel that have poor insulation or no insulation, which we are working to remedy, but there is a danger of getting burned,'' said Cheryl Gomez, university director of utilities.
More worrisome, she said, is that an old pipe could burst, leading to a blowout of scalding hot steam which could suffocate instantly.
``The velocity of exploding gas is faster than anyone can run, even ... Tiki Barber,'' a star tailback on Virginia's football team, said Barry Schnoor, superintendent of heating plant.
LENGTH: Medium: 92 linesby CNB