Missing Virginia College Student What Happened to Hannah Graham?
Like many University of Virginia students, Hannah Graham was taking full advantage of life in the lively college town of Charlottesville. On Sept. 12 the 18-year-old sophomore met friends for dinner at “the Corner,” a seven-block stretch of restaurants on the edge of the bucolic redbrick campus. From there she headed off to two parties in nearby apartments. But what happened to the straight-A student after she left the second gathering is a mystery. Graham was seen on grainy surveillance videos wandering Charlottesville’s downtown after 1 a.m. and texted friends that she was lost. At press time no trace of her has been found. Since that night, the case has captured national attention and stunned students. “People are scared,” says one, who now carries a knife for protection and adds that her friends arm themselves with pepper spray. “This isn’t supposed to happen.” Graham’s anguished family feels that all too keenly. Says her father, John, who tearfully held up Hannah’s stuffed bunny Bibi at a press conference: “It’s every parent’s nightmare.”
Search teams, canine units and even an aerial drone have combed Graham’s last-known whereabouts and the nearby countryside but have thus far turned up little. But authorities did zero in on a suspect: Jesse Leroy “LJ” Matthew Jr., 32, a local hospital worker who was captured walking behind Graham on the video footage. Cops arrested Matthew in Galveston on Sept. 24, booked him on charges of abduction with intent to defile and extradited him to Virginia, where he is being held without bond. Those close to Matthew are stunned. “He is the first person to put a hand out to help someone else,” says a friend. “This is a person who couldn’t hurt anybody.”
But on Sept. 29 Virginia state police, who searched Matthew’s apartment before his arrest, announced a “forensic link” between him and Morgan Harrington, a 20-year-old Virginia Tech student murdered in the same area in 2009 (see box). That ignited a firestorm of speculation that Matthew may be linked to other crimes. Authorities confirmed to PEOPLE that investigations into other rapes, murders and missing persons cases, dating back to 2002, are being reviewed. “The arrest provided a significant break in the case [of Harrington],” Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller wrote in a statement. Another police source adds that officers are working off the assumption that a serial predator has been in the area: “We can’t and don’t ignore anything related to this.”
While the families of the missing anxiously await answers, those closest to “LJ” struggle with questions of their own. A former high school star athlete, he worked as a patient technician and volunteered as a football coach at Charlottesville’s private Covenant School. “He was a big, happy presence,” says friend Sa’idah Rutambika, 32. Still, Matthew has been in trouble before. While attending Liberty University in 2002 he was accused of sexual assault; no charges were brought. And in 2009 Matthew was arrested on charges of misdemeanor assault and battery on Erik Wilke, a Charlottesville attorney whom he reportedly punched in the face in a road-rage incident, then remorsefully drove to the ER for stitches. Says Andre Jerry, a police officer who played football with Matthew at Liberty: “I’m shocked. I never saw LJ as a violent person or someone who would abduct somebody.”
Investigators in nearby Campbell County are looking for a connection between Matthew and the murder of Cassandra Morton, 23, who vanished a week before Harrington, though the sheriff says there is no evidence linking the two. It’s one of a host of cases now under the microscope, including those of Samantha Ann Clarke, 19, last seen in Orange County in September 2010; DaShad Laquinn Smith, 19, who disappeared in Charlottesville in November 2012; and Alexis Murphy, 17, last seen near Lynchburg in August 2013 (in May, another man, Randolph Taylor, was convicted in Murphy’s abduction). “We’d be derelict if we didn’t look for further information in light of the Jesse Matthew case,” says Chief James Fenwick of the Orange police department.
With suspicion swirling around him, Matthew has hired former Commonwealth attorney James Camblos, who told NBC News that the state “has yet to provide me with any evidence of links to those two cases,” referring to Graham’s disappearance and Harrington’s murder. The only charges filed against Matthew to date are in the Graham case; his first court appearance is Dec. 4.
As police continue their search for Graham, her parents and friends wait with diminishing hope. Born in England and raised from age 6 in Alexandria, Va., outside Washington, D.C., along with her older brother James, Graham is known as a studious athlete with a razor-sharp wit. “You would always see her reading a book or studying at softball practice,” says Danielle McHugh,who played with Graham on West Potomac High’s softball team. “She is very funny, really smart. Every day, I pray that she returns home.”