The Charlottesville City Council has directed city Police Chief Timothy J. Longo and city staff to request bids to implement a public safety capital project which would include security cameras on the Downtown Mall and police body cams, according to The Daily Progress.
During an 11:00 AM news conference, it has been announced that Jesse Matthew will be charged with first degree murder with the intent to defile in the death of UVA student Hannah Graham. He will make his first appearance in the Albemarle Court on Feb. 18, probably through closed circuit TV from where he is being held in jail at Fairfax County. Matthew has not yet been formally charged in the death of Morgan Harrington.
Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Charlottesville police have issued an arrest warrant for Jesse Leroy “LJ” Matthew Jr., charging him with abduction with intent to defile, a felony.
Hannah Graham was last heard from early Saturday morning, Sept. 13, shortly after 1:00 AM. Eyewitness testimony and video evidence indicate that Matthew spoke to her, put her arms around her, and may have bought her a drink right around that time.
Early on in the investigation, police announced that a man fitting Matthew’s description was a “person of interest”. After police executed a search warrant at his Hessian Hills apartment and impounded his car to the state police forensics lab, Matthews himself came to the Charlottesville police station on Saturday with family members to declare that he wanted a lawyer. Matthews then reportedly took off at “a high rate of speed” and has eluded police capture since.
The CVille Weekly has published a thorough timeline of all the known events and news surrounding Hannah Graham’s disappearance and the investigation, and The Washington Post has aggregated all of their related stories.
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on four six and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #
Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
Monticello High School’s athletic director has pleaded guilty to rigging the bidding process for buying athletic apparel, CBS-19 reports, and did so in collaboration with Downtown Athletic. Fitzgerald Barnes—also a member of the Louisa Board of Supervisors conspired with a vice president of Team Distributors and the vice president of Downtown Athletic to create fake bids, ensuring that they’d get the required three bids, and that Downtown Athletic would be the lower bidder. That was a federal crime, but the punishment is just relatively small fines ($350–1,500). Downtown Athletic claims that they didn’t make any extra money off of this (something that cannot be known, since there were no competing bids), and the county school system says that Barnes did not personally gain from this. The school system has placed Barnes on administrative leave, and they’re considering whether he should keep his job.