A cold case involving the death of a Gloucester teen has been solved more than 37 years after that murder took place, the Virginia State Police announced last week.
The late Alan W. Wilmer Sr. of Lancaster has been named as the person responsible for the 1988 stabbing death of Gloucester teenager Laurie Ann Powell. She was 18 years old. Wilmer died in 2017 at age 63 and was identified as the killer through DNA results.
Last year, Wilmer was also named, through DNA testing, in the 1987 deaths in Isle of Wight of David Knobling, 20, and Robin Edwards, 14, in one of several cases known collectively as the Colonial Parkway Murders, as well as the 1989 death in Hampton of Teresa Lynn Spaw Howell, 29.
Virginia State Police public relations director Robin Lawson and Capt. Timothy Reibel announced the finding at a press conference Friday in Suffolk and streamed live on social media platforms.
Reibel said that Wilmer had never been convicted of a felony, so his DNA was never obtained “until it ...