FBI NORFOLK IDENTIFIES ALAN WADE WILMER SR. AS RESPONSIBLE FOR 1988 DISAPPEARANCES OF RICHARD “KEITH” CALL AND CASSANDRA LEE HAILEY

NORFOLK, Virginia — September 18, 2026 — Nearly four decades after Richard “Keith” Call and Cassandra Lee Hailey vanished from the Colonial Parkway area, the FBI Norfolk Field Office and its law enforcement partners say they have determined that Alan Wade Wilmer Sr. was responsible for their deaths.

Call, 20, and Hailey, 18, were students at Christopher Newport University when they disappeared in April 1988. Their remains have never been recovered, leaving their families without a burial site and investigators without the type of direct forensic evidence normally associated with a homicide prosecution.

The FBI said the determination was reached through an exhaustive review of the evidence and a convergence of investigative findings linking the circumstances surrounding Call and Hailey’s disappearance to other killings in the region connected to Wilmer. Investigators cited similarities in timing, location, victim disappearance patterns, and other circumstances that they said fit Wilmer’s established pattern of offending.

Wilmer died in 2017 and therefore cannot be charged or tried. The FBI’s conclusion is an investigative determination, not a criminal conviction rendered by a court.

According to the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia reviewed the evidence and concluded that, if Wilmer were alive, the evidence developed during the investigation would have supported federal prosecution.

That distinction is important. No jury will hear the case against Wilmer, and no criminal judgment can now be entered against him. The FBI and its partners are stating that the accumulated evidence is sufficient for investigators and federal prosecutors to identify him as responsible for the deaths of Call and Hailey.

Call and Hailey attended a party in the University Square area of Newport News on April 10, 1988. They left together during the early morning hours and were never seen again. Later that day, Call’s vehicle was discovered abandoned near the York River Overlook on the Colonial Parkway.

Their disappearance became part of a group of murders and missing-person cases collectively known as the Colonial Parkway murders, one of Virginia’s longest-running and most complex cold-case investigations.

Between 1986 and 1989, at least eight young people were murdered or disappeared along or near the Colonial Parkway and surrounding parts of southeastern Virginia. For decades, investigators worked to determine whether the cases were connected and whether one offender or multiple offenders were responsible.

Wilmer has now been connected by investigators to at least six murders and disappearances involving young people in Virginia during that period. Earlier this year, the FBI announced that advances in forensic science and DNA analysis had allowed investigators to determine that Wilmer murdered Cathleen Thomas, 27, and Rebecca Dowski, 21, in 1986. Their bodies had been found inside their vehicle along the Colonial Parkway.

The FBI said Wilmer’s identification in the Thomas and Dowski murders resulted from advances in forensic technology that were unavailable when the crimes occurred. Investigators combined modern DNA analysis with a renewed examination of decades-old evidence, eventually identifying Wilmer as responsible.

The Call and Hailey case presented a different challenge because their bodies were never located. Without remains or a preserved homicide scene, investigators could not rely on the same direct forensic path used in some of the other Colonial Parkway cases.

Instead, the FBI said the determination rests on the totality of the evidence and the significant similarities between their disappearance and other crimes attributed to Wilmer.

FBI Norfolk Special Agent in Charge Dominique Evans said the investigation remained centered on the victims and their families throughout the decades-long effort.

“Our commitment has always been to the victims and to the families who have carried this loss for nearly four decades,” Evans said in the FBI announcement. He said Call and Hailey deserved to come home and expressed hope that identifying the person responsible would provide their families with meaningful answers.

The Colonial Parkway Task Force includes the FBI, Virginia State Police, Hampton Police Division, and Suffolk Police Department. The investigation has continued through successive generations of detectives, agents, analysts, forensic specialists, and prosecutors.

Virginia State Police Superintendent Col. Jeffrey S. Katz said law enforcement never stopped working on the Colonial Parkway cases. He also credited analytical and forensic support funded through Virginia’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative under the Office of Attorney General Jay Jones.

The FBI’s earlier 2026 resolution of the Thomas and Dowski murders demonstrated the value of revisiting old evidence with newer forensic tools. In that case, investigators said advances in DNA analysis created opportunities that did not exist during the original investigation.

Those advances have transformed cold-case investigations nationwide. Biological evidence collected decades ago can sometimes be examined using techniques far more sensitive than those available at the time of the crime. Investigators can also combine forensic results with historical records, witness information, timelines, geographic patterns, archived case files, and evidence from separate investigations.

Cold cases involving missing victims remain especially difficult because investigators may lack remains, a known crime scene, or physical evidence directly connecting a suspect to the victim. In those cases, the strength of an investigative conclusion can depend on multiple independent facts converging on the same individual.

The FBI says that is what occurred in the Call and Hailey investigation.

The latest determination adds Call and Hailey to the Colonial Parkway cases for which investigators say families have received answers.

Cathleen Thomas and Rebecca Dowski disappeared in October 1986 before being found dead inside their vehicle. The FBI announced in January 2026 that Wilmer was responsible for those killings.

Robin Edwards and David Knobling, Teresa Lynn Spaw Howell, and Laurie Ann Powell have also been publicly referenced by investigators as part of the broader series of cases for which families have received investigative answers.

The FBI has not claimed that every Colonial Parkway case has been resolved through the same type of evidence or that every unanswered question surrounding the broader series has disappeared. The individual cases developed over different years, locations, and evidentiary circumstances.

What investigators are now saying is more specific: after reviewing the accumulated evidence surrounding Call and Hailey, they have determined Wilmer was responsible for their deaths.

Dominique Evans currently serves as special agent in charge of the Norfolk Field Office.

The announcement brings an answer to the central question that remained with the Call and Hailey families since 1988, but it cannot answer every question surrounding their final hours or recover what their families lost.

Their remains have still not been found.

No trial will occur because Wilmer is dead.

There will be no sentencing hearing and no opportunity for the families to watch a defendant stand before a judge.

What investigators can provide is an identification based on the evidence assembled across nearly 40 years of work.

Richard “Keith” Call and Cassandra Lee Hailey entered the case files as missing college students in 1988. Their names later became inseparable from one of Virginia’s most enduring unsolved crime investigations.

The FBI now says the uncertainty over who was responsible has ended.

The search for those answers survived decades of changing investigators, changing technology, and changing forensic capabilities. It ultimately reached a conclusion that could not have been reached through the original investigation alone.

For the families of Call and Hailey, the outcome cannot restore the lives lost or return their loved ones home.

It does establish what investigators believe happened to them and identifies the man they say was responsible.

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